2011 in review

First, I want to say thank you to all of you who read my blog.   It really does mean a lot to me to have people reading and following what I’m doing.  You are amazing.  There is a song that goes, “Merry Christmas.  May your New Years dreams come true.”  I hope they do.  And now, here is what WordPress sent me.

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 13,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 5 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

Blackety Black, Please Come Back

I may have said this before, but I love working from black backgrounds.  When I did the paintings of the fawns, I started out with a black background.  I am going to do the same for the painting of Sue’s dog, Seamus.

Because he is a black dog and dark colors will take over the majority of the canvas, it makes sense to paint the canvas black so that less dark layers will be required overall.  I used acrylic paint, because it dries quickly.  Then I sketched him using white chalk.

When working with white chalk, mistakes can easily be erased with a damp cloth.

Next, I’ll continue with oil paint.  My goal is to finish this painting by the tenth of January.  I think this piece will move pretty quickly.  Famous last words?

A Happy Birthday Portrait

Today is a special day.  And to mark this special day, Tom and Amy McNamara, Bob and Chris McNamara and Cyndi and Young Song have asked me to paint a portrait for their sister Sue.  It is her birthday!  The subject?  Sue’s adorable dog, Seamus.  Here he is:

Doesn’t he have such a great face?

Normally I stretch my own canvases, but this time I bought a 12″x12″ canvas at Michael’s.  You can’t tell from this photo, but it has a good, thick frame that will stand out from the wall by an inch and a half.

I quickly did a thumbnail sketch so that I could plan out the composition.  Here is what I came up with:

Sue, I wish you a very happy birthday and a wonderful and blessed year.  I will keep posting updates so that you can see the progress of this painting over the next couple of weeks.  If you want to give any input on the painting, feel free to contact me at melodyjmartin@gmail.com.

Snow in a Jar

This year has been a little disappointing as far as snow goes.  The other day I decided to do something about it and made a few snow globes.  This year my Christmas will be white, even if it’s only in small scale.

The materials needed are:

• A jar or snow globe
• Epoxy
• Small figurine(s)
• glitter or a snow-like substitute that won’t float in water
• Distilled water
• Glycerin (can be found at a pharmacy)
• enamel spray paint (optional)

I used a sauce jar so it still had the brand on the lid.  I used gold enamel spray paint and painted the lid gold to hide the lettering.

I glued the figures to the lid of the jar with epoxy and let them sit overnight.

Then I filled the jar almost all the way with distilled water.   The instructions that I used said to add a dash of glycerin.  I added a tiny bit, because I heard that adding too much can make the “snow” stick to the sides of the jar.  Other instructions said to add a teaspoon.  Next time I’ll try that.  The glycerin helps to suspend the glitter in the water so it falls slowly.

For the snow a variety of things can be used.  I tried glitter which is the standard option, but I also added ground eggshells.  This was really time consuming.  It worked out well though because a few days before the snow globes I made chocolate parfaits.

I still had heavy whipping cream left from that recipe, so I decided to make Spinach Bacon Quiche using the heavy cream.

This left me with six eggshells.  The only thing was that minion and I had to remove all of the skins on the inside of the eggshells which was a little much.  I used the back of a spoon and rolling pin to grind the shells.  They look nice when they lay, but when the globe is shaken the egg shells sink right away.

Was that just way too much information?  So I mixed the glitter, eggshells, and water together.  The glitter and the eggshells together equaled about a tablespoon.

Then I closed the lid of the jar and shook it up.  I didn’t glue the lid on until I was satisfied with the way the snow  looked.  If you’re not happy with how it turns out you can always pour the water out and try again.

Here are a couple of other snow globes that I made:

I can’t wait to make more snow globes.  You may have guessed by my terrariums that I love these little worlds.

Why Decorating for Christmas Matters to Me

Decorating for Christmas seems like such a trivial thing to many who believe in the religious importance of Christmas.  Then there are others who decorate for Christmas because it’s just the thing to do at this time of year.  I don’t know where you fall, but I’ve sort of been tossing between these extremes and wondering where I fall and what I believe.

This year as I was putting up my Christmas decorations I felt a very distinct feeling that I was doing more than just making my house look nice for the holidays.  It felt more like I was decorating for a party.  And not just any party, but the birthday party of Jesus.  Then I realized that the reason that doing this matters to me is because I want to acknowledge the importance of the birth of Jesus.  It just blows my mind when I think about how this baby was born to ordinary parents in a barely-on-the-map town in a stable of all things, and we’re still celebrating his birth over two thousand years later!  Even if you don’t believe that Jesus is the son of God, you have to wonder why  this time of year matters so much to so many people.

At the request of one of my readers I’ll show you some of my Christmas decorations, but now it just doesn’t seem grand enough.  Maybe next year I’ll go all Clark Griswold.  Maybe.