The Hamel Happy Hour

Saturday, February 16, 2013

Cuijk.


I'm pretty dang certain it's pronounced something similar to "cook"...but make a funny little "er" sound in the middle, sort of.  

The morning ( 4 a.m.) was beastly cold.   It snowed again the night before, and even though I barely slept, and I have a very difficult time sleeping on transportation...it was nice seeing the periwinkle and coral of the sunrise reflecting in all of the empty fields on the sides of the Autobahn.  I've been here for months now and I am still impressed by the amount of hawks I see.  I stopped counting somewhere around twenty.

The rest stops in Germany are phenomenal.  They have a convenience store, a cafeteria, a fast food restaurant and the NICEST public restrooms I've ever seen.   There is a catch though, there is a 70 euro cent toll to use the toilet but you are given a 50 euro cent coupon back to use on anything at the stop...you can collect them and stack them if you want too.

For your toll you get a magic robot that sanitizes the toilet seat at your request...it also does it automatically after you use it. The bathrooms are impeccably clean nice smelling, and they even thought of putting in a nice backsplash.  Good on you Deutschland.


The market itself is as big as four football fields and it has it's own food court and live entertainment.  It has everything you could possibly imagine.   Carved oak furniture, Tiffany lamps, Pre WWII dishes, crazy leggings, lingerie, licorice, flower bulbs, a truly impressive collection of stuff.   And I was lucky enough to find some treasures for me.



This was what caught my eye first, and I instantly thought of Twin Peaks, but it's a little too Victorian to fit in with either the Great Northern or my ideas of how to make our apartment cozy.   And they were asking 175 euro.



I did find this little guy for 35 euro, it pretty much made my week.  I went with church gals...who were looking for antiques or a good price on furniture to make-over...so I stuck out pretty bad, but what's new.

That's not even the best find.   I had passed by this stall a few time and it was filled with the coolest stuff. Top hats and straight razors, old medical stuff, opera glasses old war helmets and furs, and then there in the back of the shop on a rack with binoculars was a beautiful, perfect, brass and leather spyglass.  What kid hasn't wanted one of these to go on an adventure with, and now I have it, naturally to go on adventures with.



Thursday, February 7, 2013

The Bluebird.



It's no secret that I am not a great photographer, so please forgive that.    This is my first watercolor in a long time, so forgive that too :)




     This is also my second animal painting, my first one was a unicorn behind Josh Groban on my bedroom wall, but that is beside the point.   All in all I like the was and the ghost-y effect of the branches, but the feathers got a little muddled and I am hesitant to do any more work on it because watercolor is super good at one strike you're out.  The more I look at it the more I notice it lacks depth, but I pretty much only had instruction in high school and not much practice at watercolor, but I think it will come in time.

     I also took all of my art of Facebook, which is silly because most people want to get their art out to the world.  I guess the older I am the more personal I'm becoming.   I can be a bit more personal about the art piece in a blog versus a little blip about on Facebook.  I don't do this for anyone else but me, and while I have done work for other people it has been for the most part free.  

     Our landlord dropped by last night and commented on it, he asked if it was a Kingfisher, I replied no that it was some sort of Bluejay, probably from the East Coast, and he replies in his accented English. " Wow. I hauf never seen one of deese birds."   Which got me thinking, that I could probably paint a picture of a Jackalope and convince him that we have them in the States in the Midwest somewhere.

     Lastly, I did this bluebird in part for, or inspired by my Dad...who I will always associate with Bluejays.



Friday, February 1, 2013

Creatures!

I'm not very good at caning just yet, but it's a part of polymer clay that I really enjoy, even if I'm sucky at it.   This is my turn out from the Donna Kato tutorial on Fire Mountain Gems.  I definitely should have chosen different colors and made the white bits smaller.  The smaller wing is from a separate cane, I tried it again with what I had left over, I rolled the one smaller slice into the pasta machine and shaped it a little more afterwards, I am much more satisfied with the smaller one. 


And this is my Mom's old crabby cat Roady.   I'll probably make it a magnet...or the creepiest cat lady necklace ever.


I'm in love with this one, I am not sure how I'm going to turn it into a pendant, but it's nautical and sparkly.   LOVE. I don't care how much I love Kung Fu and war history, glitter still beats them.  Always.



Finally I'm getting the hang of doing miniatures, I don't have the motor skills just yet to add detail to the smaller pieces with clay, so this little teeny guy is going to get a sweet paint job, and I even remembered to add a ring for using it as a pendant.


I had some leftover from the glitter nautilus, so I made a bunch of these leaves with head pins, and I'm going to try and make a necklace with most of the components being handmade, I think if I add enough glaze or translucent liquid sculpey, I'm  going to end up with a product that closely resembles dichroic glass (with out the price tag)

That's all for this week, I think I'm going to focus a bit more time into making jewelry...there is a Bazaar coming up and I want to try my luck.