I wasn’t done with the prickly pears. Here is the 3rd for the series.
Now I have to organise frames. I took measurements of matboards I need for the ready-made frames I bought for some of my paintings, but these long narrow ones won’t fit into standard frames, so I’ll ask my friend to make me some frames for them.
I really should stop working on that size since I can’t frame them myself with ready-made frames.
I have a good matboard cutter, but I’m not sure I want to get into that either… matboard is very expensive and only comes in huge sheets. I really don’t want to get that involved in framing. I’ve done it before and it’s a hassle.
The weather took a dramatic change – from 22 degrees C yesterday to freezing cold, windy and wet today. Brr.
I’ll post the reno update in a separate post cause I’m trying to be organised. It doesn’t always work, but what the heck.
Back to ‘real life’ and daily art. Another prickly pear, on pink this time.
It was a lovely and very long day today. Would you believe we spent 5 hours in Ikea?
Easy to do. There is so much to see. I spent more money than I’d planned, but I got a few handy things (as you always do) and bought all the handles for the wardrobes and cupboards in the apartment being renovated.
I haven’t seen the apartment yet as the new security door has been put in and I don’t have the key for it yet. However, the crew will be here in the morning, and I asked them to call me soon as they get here (around 7.15am) so I can go up and see how its going.
I know there will still be a lot to do, but I am hoping against hope that its finally close to being finished.
Here’s another painting I prepared earlier… Tomorrow its back to actually painting every day.
I had such great comments about the other ‘doorway into the light’ painting that I thought I’d try another. This one was harder, but I think it works.
Meanwhile we are having a nice time relaxing and enjoying the busy lifestyle of Pasalimani.
Last night we had sushi for dinner and it was wonderful! I think I can say it was the best sushi I’ve had since moving to Greece.
Lainee has been enjoying the park and has made lots of new friends, both human and canine.
Tomorrow is back to our ‘real life’, back home to mom’s place, our not nearly as popular or crowded area, my art supplies and the house renovations.
But before we go back to reality, we’ll be going for a lovely visit to Ikea. I love Ikea. That and Bunnings in Australia are/were my happy places. I could spend days in those stores… and sometimes I did.
I was tidying up stuff on my WordPress drafts folder and found this post I’dnever finished, so I thought I’d share it now, more for the sculptures than anything else.
What do you do with old dishwashing bottles once they’re empty?
Well, if you’re like me and see womenly shapes, you make sculptures of naked ladies out of them.
Each naked lady has her own shape, just like women do. I made these to look like broken greek statues… I mean, when in Greece…
I made these using dishwashing liquid bottles as the base, then built up the shapes using home made papier pulp and air dry clay. They’re all a little rough, with natural looking textures, and they vary in size according to the bottles I started with.
I love my naked ladies. Most of them have been placed in my cousin Zefi’s air b’n’b as decor for the time being. There’s only so much room at home for me to display stuff, and so far I haven’t been able to find the right venue to sell them.
As you know, I’m working on that… whether I should continue trying to open a FB/Instagram shop, or whether I should just try to sell through FB and Instagram in a more casual way – I’m having so much trouble with setting up a shop that I’m seriously leaning towards just starting to post stuff with dimensions, descriptions and a price and see what happens…
Maybe I should have ‘ZefiArt/Junk4Joy parties’ at home and display and sell stuff that way… It would mean I’d have to move almost everything into my bedroom temporarily so that I can display stuff all over the living room and kitchen, on the bookshelves, kitchen table, the couch, coffee tables and side tables… every inch of wall space…
Sharing something different today – a cheerful prickly pear!
It sure was fun doing this one. Maybe I’ll do more… Maybe I’ll do one against a blue (sky) background. And maybe another with another colour so they can be hung together as a series…
I confess I didn’t paint this one today as I’ve been away from home and my paint supplies.
Still, I think it counts cause I’m sharing it today. Some times it’s not possible to paint every single day… not when you’re not at home.
So, I’m in Athens now, staying at a friend’s place for a couple of days in Piraeus near the small port of Pasalimani. It’s an incredibly busy area with loads of cafes and restaurants near a pretty marina. Lainee is enjoying the park and absolutely loves the pigeons… which she chases with glee.
My friend and I have been having a great time just spending time together. We had a great lunch at a new Indian restaurant just up the road from her place, the food was good, and the quinoa salad was amazing. I could live on that salad.
And then we had ice cream. Sugar free ice cream.
I feel healthy today, though all the exercise we got was walking to taxi cab which took us to Ikea and back… in a single trip.
Did I mention today is a public holiday in Greece? Independence Day. And Ikea was closed. Though the internet said it was open.
I sure wish people would update their work hours online.
The door isn’t as crooked at it looks in the photo! The photo is crooked. But hey, what’s a crooked photo between friends?
So, I’m on the ferry on the way back to Athens.
Its two weeks till Greek Easter apparently. I was thinking I’d be in Athens for 1-2 weeks, make sure the house is FINISHED… (wishful thinking?) and then return to Paros for Easter.
I mean, staying in Athens over Easter would be a waste of time They won’t work over Easter. Heck, I’m lucky if they work on regular week days!
But what are the chances they’ll be finished by the end of next week? Or halfway through the other? And how easy will it be to get a ticket to Paros in the rush for everyone to get there for Easter?
So, I go to Athens now, to see how it’s going and ‘motivate’ the crew… Then return to Paros for Easter… then most likely have to go back AGAIN after Easter cause, no doubt, they won’t have finished!
sigh.
I feel like I have no control over my life right now.
Almost didn’t have time to do today’s painting, but here it is!
I do love pink walls…
Anyway, its been a pretty busy day and tomorrow is shaping up to be as well. However, once I’m in Athens things will be less hectic.
I hear the crew has been working, so I hope to see some progress once I get there. I sure hope they’ve moved along cause I can’t face staying in Athens too long or going back one more time! I want to be able to settle into my own routines at home – more painting, home maintenance, grooming.
That’s all for today. Gotta get onto packing and some dinner before quiz night tonight!
This window is falling apart in front of our eyes…
I’m slipping back into old habits with more detail in my work… I have to try loosen up again.
I still have a stack of these tall narrow cards so there’ll be more of this size over the next few days.
After that, I’ll start working in more traditional shapes – that fit into ready made frames. And I have tons of photos of doors and windows and stairs and alleys and all kinds of things I can paint.
Meanwhile, I ordered a stack of frames, so I hoped to frame some more work, but I doubt I’ll have time cause Aunt #1 is unwell so I’m going to see her tomorrow morning, then I have a ton of other stuff to do before returning to Athens.
I’m going back on Friday, so I have to organise everything and pack.
Luckily I have paints and brushes in Athens so I know I can do more work while I’m there!
Then, before you know it, it’ll be the end of the month and I won’t have to do any more daily art… Though I’ve really enjoyed doing it and don’t want to stop. When I get into the zone I forget the time entirely. Today I missed an appointment cause by the time I looked at the clock it was 45min past the time I was supposed to be there. Oops.
Once the month is up I might change things up a bit – some small paintings, some work on larger paintings, some framing of existing work, maybe something else… a bit of daily creativity instead of just painting.
Who said that art is just painting anyway? Hm… I guess that was me that implied it.
Anyway, here is today’s offering. Wonder what I’ll feel like doing tomorrow…
Turns out stairs are really hard to do. Somewhere between the beginning of a step and the end of the step I get lost.
Anyway, here is today’s offering. I went back to doors and windows cause I couldn’t find my cloud photos. I will find them however.
It was a strange day today. The sea and sky were both grey, no wind, totally still. And kinda warm too. Strange but also nice. Lainee and I had a short walk on the beach and I collected a ton of sea glass. More than on any other single walk. All the waves lately have obviously brought it out.
Lainee is once again having bursts of diarrhea. One night she woke me up 5 times to go out… that was after I gave her leftover rice from the chicken korma I made. I didn’t give her any korma itself, but she licked the plate and that might have caused it. I don’t know. She’d never been so sensitive before. She used to be able to eat anything I gave her without any trouble.
She is better again now, but it looks like its gastrointestinal dry food for the foreseeable future. Poor Lainee. And poor me. Ugh.
I’ve always loved the idea of painting clouds, but had never tried it.
So today I thought it was time to give it a go.
This is how this painting started:
And this, of course, is it finished:
I am actually quite pleased with it.
I even started searching for other photos I’ve taken of cloudy skies but couldn’t find them. Hopefully I’ll find them tomorrow so I can try another one.
Its been a really busy day, and a very frustrating one at that.
I hate technology… I’m one of those people who hate getting a new phone/computer etc cause I have to set it up.
Computers and smart phones are meant to make our life easier, but things keep changing and every update and upgrade seems to make things more complicated.
It might be my age speaking here, but I remember this being an issue when I was much younger and working as a graphic designer. You’d just get used to a program and they’d upgrade it and things which worked fine didn’t work any more, things got moved to different places, new things (which were usually good) appeared and you had to re-learn everything again.
Or they stopped making a program you knew off by heart and you had to learn a new one.
I kept up. I did my job. Then.
Now, it seems every time my computer or phone runs an update things are different. Facebook keeps changing. And everything is somehow connected – which you’d THINK would make life easier, but it doesn’t.
Today I spent time trying to set up a Facebook/Instagram shop.
Its not the first time I’ve tried. I’ve spent hours on this in the last year or two. I did set up my Junk4Joy page as a shop initially but never did anything with it, then they changed their shops and added Meta and now its so much more complicated.
People keep saying ‘read this’ or ‘here’s a link’ etc. I’ve done all that. I’ve read stuff, I’ve watched Youtube videos. They’ll say ‘click on xxx and then select xxx’ etc but nothing on my computer, in the app or on my browser, is in the same place where theirs is!!! Even the wording is different sometimes.
Please tell me I’m not crazy.
All I want to do is streamline my FB accounts/pages, match up my Instagram account names, and have a shop where I can sell my stuff. Is that too much to ask?
Maybe I should just go open a Shopify shop, pay for it, maybe they’ll make more sense.
Mind you, that doesn’t solve my different accounts.
I need a fairy god-IT-person. Or a 10 year old.
Whatever.
I’m tired.
What I did manage to do today was close my Etsy shop for good. It did well when I first opened it, but kinda died.
Even that was a nightmare. In order to close the shop I had to first pay the AU$1.98 I owed them. Which I tried to do using Paypal… But Paypal won’t let me log in without sending a text to a phone I haven’t had since leaving Australia. There is no other way to log in. I can answer my security questions, which I did, but then they want to send me a text to the old phone and they don’t even give you the option to say “Hey dudes! I no longer have that phone so I can’t receive any texts! Is there another way, like, say, for instance… send me an email?”
No. That would make too much sense.
And unless I want to call Australia, I can’t get in touch with them. There is no ‘chat’ on their site and no way to email them with a problem. I can do a search for an answer in ‘the community’ but I can’t ask a question without logging in!
Can you say ‘vicious circle’?
I managed to close the shop by adding a new credit card to my account. How does that make sense?
I still have my CafePress shop, but I’ve barely added anything new to it in years, so its barely selling. I should close that too, but eh, it doesn’t cost me anything since they’re a print on demand company.
Remember when I wondered how you can be an artist and have an online shop/commerce site and manage all the posts and ads etc? Well… this is where I’m at. About ready to give up.
I swear, if Greece allowed street markets, I’d just sell my stuff at a stall. But there are no street markets in Greece. Only the farmer markets (laiki) in the cities and those are not for art and craft and handmade items.
junk4joy 