Tamarak's Table: Christmas is fast approaching…

As I work away on my Christmas projects…I am quickly becoming aware of how soon Christmas will be here! I’m not sure how, every year, it seems to be able to sneak up on me…every year! You would think I would learn!!! But, you know, some of my fondest memories are of late pre-Christmas nights spent creating…especially when the kids were little and with my Mom or a girlfriend (my younger’s second mother) and I would stay up into the wee hours painting and creating…even many nights I have spent alone doing last minute gifts…all are good memories!

As I was sort of saying the other day…these ideas of mine take way longer to actually do than the nano-seconds they take to come to me! I am getting near the final stages on two gifts…then I think there might only be one more to do…I’m not very organized this year! I really should sit down for a few minutes and write out what I have for whom…some of my gifts are pieces of pottery that I have done, some are paintings…

Cariño picked up the back support for me a couple days ago…so I had to get it painted…actually we painted the first coat together with some house paint I had bought ages ago but never used…it was purple and originally to be used for my younger’s room (which you won't be surprised to hear is painted bubble gum pink!)…a very pinky purple…so it will go nicely as a backing for the very purple and very pink canvases…the colours don’t show up very well in the photos…

Ok…so once I got that backboard all painted and set the letter canvases on to see how it all looked…there was way too much ‘white space’ (pinky-purple space in this case!)…so I set on three more canvases to fill the spaces and get a feel for how that would look…much better…back to the store for three more canvases…gallery wrapped this time (1 1/2" thick) to give some depth to the whole piece…a 5”x7”, 8”x10” and a 14”x18”…

Last night my elder came over (she had also come to the art show with us) and she sat up and talked with me as we drank red wine and I painted…so the three new canvases are double base coated…tonight I splattered the backboard and am going to splatter the three canvases as well. Then I still have to cut out some hearts for the big canvas, stars for the medium one and spirals for the small one…I will paint them and do some ink line drawings on them I think…

I am typing this as I wait for things to dry…I think I will get this posted and then start a new post about the art show…which was lots of fun…an adventure - since we went to it in the middle of a snow storm!

Here are some progress pictures from Live, Love, Laugh - that has become a much bigger project than I fist thought it would be!

Getting there...