Sunday, July 12, 2009

Sunday, so there must be pictures!



Ah, origami. It's one of those things that I haven't tried yet, other than those fortune teller things we used to do in elementary school. Do you remember those?

At the first meeting of our Artist's Way group, our ringleader showed us how to make flowers. It was to get our artistic juices flowing.

Yesterday, one of the other women will be making boxes for a corporate event, and looking at all the cuteness, I thought I'd give it a go.

An important part of the Artist's Way is taking yourself on an Artist's Date once a week. I didn't quite follow the rules this time as Gale went with me, but we parted ways once we got to Pearl Art Supply. She does Artist's Dates too, so she understands that we needed to go browse alone. One thing that Pearl carries is origami paper, and origami is something Keith also has an interest in. I purchased 2 packs of paper, and last night I made my first box.
Origami is like so many crafts. It's actually pretty easy to understand and do, but mastering it is quite another thing altogether. I'm happy with my box as a first try, but my lid doesn't quite fit the box properly, so I can see where I need to improve. I also understand that I'll build from the baby steps, and that's as it should be.

Next, you will see a flock of owls in process. I did enlarge the pattern to see if it would work the same, and it does. I've been getting better about where to place the fold, sewing down the beak, etc. The tiny one on the far left has safety eyes. While I like the way the eyes look, the posts and washers are really too big for a project this small. That's pretty disappointing as I think the eyes look great. Keith likes the little red button eyes better than the white buttons. You may need to embiggen the picture to get a better look at the red eyes. (Yes, if you're not a Simpsons fan, you may think that embiggen isn't a word, which is why I've linked it.)

And mainly because I loved this blissful look on her face, here is Grey, aka Princess Plumeria, groggy in the monkey grass where she has a nest. She can sleep in the warm sun on the cool leaves and be quite content.
And Scooter, you may ask. He's fading. I hate to say the end is imminent as he has come back from the brink too many times to mention this past year, but it does get closer each day. He seems to be sleeping even more, if that's possible, and eating less. He still has quite the appetite, but he's getting into the kitchen fewer times in the past few days. I'll keep you posted, and I do want to thank you all for your kind notes. He has lived a very long time for a cat, and honestly, we've done what we can to spoil him all of it.

2 comments:

Kim said...

I love the kitty picture. I also send many more hugs. *squeeze*

Teresa said...

Both my girls are origami experts (well, maybe not experts, but darn good at it). If you would like to borrow one (or more) of their many books, just let me know. They have so many books that they'd never miss 2 or 3 or 5 or 8 of them at a time. Plus, they know most of the things that they like by heart so rarely look at the books anymore.

We need to have a get together anyway and this is just a nice excuse to do that . . . you borrow books but come to play with me for a while first!