31 Hearts Challenge

Ayala Art is running a daily art challenge for July called 31 Hearts.  I found out about this on the forum for 7 Card Draw, an Etsy team I belong to.  If you want to participate too (you don't have to post one every day), go to Ayala Art and click on 31 Hearts.

Anyway, here is my first entry, an ACEO I did back in 2009.

I hope you can see the heart shape formed by the swans heads and necks.  This ACEO is for sale on Etsy here.

The Zoo Trip

As I mentioned earlier, I'm on vacation.  Friday the 13th, my husband, daughter and I took a trip down to the Virginia Safari Park.  We had visited it before, but that was a few years ago.

Basically, it's a drive through zoo where you can buy feed and feed the animals. We didn't buy feed this visit because I wanted to get pictures and the critters can be more aggressive when they want food. 

The Park has added a walk through section with caged animals so there was lots more to see.  There was a reptile house, a parakeet house where you could feed them right out of your hand, a flamingo house, and you could also feed a giraffe (but we didn't).  There were monkeys, tigers, tortoises, farm animals, kangaroos, cheetahs, and peacocks, to name some.  And one large white cat was prowling in the grassy area behind one of the monkey cages (I don't think it belonged to the zoo :) ).

The drive through part has various kinds of deer, camels, llamas, elk, wildebeest, camels, bison, ostrichs, and zebra, to name a few.

We took lots of pictures but I haven't uploaded them to the computer yet. 

The day was cloudy, but the rain held off until after we left.  We had a great time.

The Big Storm of June 29, 2012

The evening of June 29, 2012 brought a big storm here which the weather forecasters called a derecho.  It brought high winds of up to 80 mph that did a lot of damage.  We lost some roof tiles off our apartment building and two trees in the front yard were damaged, one so severely that it had to be cut down.  I took pictures of it before that happened.  Here is one of them.  Click on the picture for a bigger view.

We often parked near this tree.  Fortunately, it fell in the grass and not on our car.

The power went out for at least two and a half hours ( I went to bed so I don't know when it came back on).   Some folks in our area were without power for a week afterwards.  It was definitely scary to watch in the dark.  But our cat, Smoky, found it fascinating and kept getting up in the window to watch. 

We had the TV on when the power went out and it got fried.  All we saw on it when we turned it back on was a horizontal line.  Take my advice and don't turn on your TV during a storm to check for any emergency messages.  Keep a battery operated radio for that.  We haven't bought a new TV yet and it's been a bit strange without one (we're watching things on our computer).

Anyway, we consider ourselves fortunate.  Things could have been much worse.

I'm Back!

I've been neglecting my blog, but I'm going to try to post more frequently.  I'm on vacation right now (have been since Friday) and figured it would be a good time to get back in the swing of things.  There's been some interesting things going on which I'll detail in some catchup posts.  But for now, hi, and thanks for reading.

Fair Results and Another Win

We went to the fair Tuesday night after I got off work. In the art exhibit, I placed first in watercolor, second in drawing, second in mixed media, and third in computer graphic design or illustration. I took fourth place in the experimental category of photography.  I am happy. :)

I also realized today that I forgot to blog about winning seven free ACEOs in July's 7 Card Draw on Etsy.   The 7 Card Draw is an Etsy team that I am a member of and at the end of every month, one lucky person who posts to the team discussion forum is selected to win seven free ACEOs from other members of the team.  Click on the link above to see full details on how it works.  Because of illness and being busy, I didn't actually find out I'd won in July until August 11th.  I'll post a picture of what I chose after I get them all in the mail.

Entering the Fair

Well, it's almost midnight here and I am a bit tired.  I took a vacation day from work because today was the day to take entries to the county fair.  I entered four pieces of art--a watercolor painting, a drawing, a mixed media artwork, and a computer art piece.  I also entered the photography competition for the first time, putting in six photos.  It took me most of the day to print and mount photos and frame my art.  But I didn't have to wait long to enter my stuff.  I missed entering the fair last year so it was great to be able to get some things together for this year. 

Judging of art and photos is tomorrow morning.  Not much prize money is involved, but I'm hoping to win something.

Catching Up and ACEO Giveaway

Well, it's after midnight again and I've spent most of the evening catching up on email and checking Etsy, eBay and Zazzle.  While reading eBay groups, I found out Ayala Art blogged that she is giving away 14 ACEOs in a drawing to be held on July 15th.  If you'd like a chance to win these ACEOs, just leave a comment on her Friday, July 08, 2011 blog entry.  Click on Ayala Art above to get to the blog.

I just had another five days off from work (trying to use up most of my paid vacation days).  I didn't work on art, but I did take a lot of photo references of mostly flowers at the arboretum on July 8th and July 10th.  I bought a few more frames at thrift stores and got a lot of still life materials (mostly flower arrangements, but also some vases and candlesticks) at an auction I went to on June 29th.   Now if I can just get motivated to work more on my art!