Back to the old drawing board

  I've been happily working on a sugar skull painting project for a lovely Finnish couple I met at Biketoberfest. They were hoping to have three paintings of sugar skulls on orangey red, black and white backgrounds.
  It sounded like a fun project so I jumped at the chance. I have to say that I felt a bit rusty at first. When I was very young I would draw constantly, sitting in my room filling paper after paper with doodles and portraits, but in my teens the focus shifted to music and I stopped drawing for years, save a short stint I did in art school.
  To dust off the cobwebs I did a series of postcard sized Tikis with acrylics and crayons which I ransacked from my kids' crayon bucket.

  After that I began sketching the skulls. For two of the skulls on the sides meant to face each other, I drew a template so they'd match. The middle one I just drew straight on the paper, stylizing the lines (I love the shapes and curves on the flames and clouds on Tibetan thangka paintings, so there's a tiny nod to that direction in there).

 

I used some sepia watercolor for shading the skulls and worked several layers of color on the backgrounds. The skulls themselves got some watercolor and acrylic for the bottom layers, after which I pencilled in the lines and added more color. I wanted each skull to have a flower on it and be tattoo inspired.

 

                                  For the middle skull I decided to add some metallic details.

I finished the paintings with two layers of gloss varnish. During the whole duration of the project my kids were little angels and didn't add any details behind my back nor did they leave fingermarks on any drying surfaces, which I'm really grateful for! Thank you sweethearts. 

The finished result:

The skulls left the house yesterday to travel to their new home with the lovely Finnish couple. I was very happy they loved the paintings. I definitely had fun getting back to painting and drawing. Seeing me work on the skulls one night in the kitchen my father in law had a great idea and suggested I'd make murals for the house with some leftover paint they had in storage. That may well be the next project I'll tackle. 

Resurrecting Fairlane

  When my husband and I met it was one of those crazy love at first sight kind of moments that happen more frequently in cheap gas station romance novels than in real life. Still, they do happen at times, and when they do the certainty and conviction springing from that moment are compelling enough for two people to be willing to turn their lives as they know it upside down, ignore all reason and well meant warnings, risk being thought of as complete lunatics, and ultimately it is enough for a man to drop everything and take a flight across the ocean to another continent to marry a woman he's only just met. And that, my friend, is pretty much what happened. Now as the said man travelled across the world for love, he left another, much older love behind. His car.

   My husband's old flame, his 55 Fairlane, faithfully sat for seven years behind my in-laws' house, in the elements waiting for his return. Every once in a while there would be a knock on the door and a cash offer by some hopeful passer by, but to no avail.

                                      

   Now the time for waiting has ended for the trusty Ford. My husband has returned home with plans to restore his beloved car to it's former glory! His ambitious goal is to get it running in time for the Zephyr Hills car show. A deadline not very far off in the near future. This is the official kickstart for project resurrecting Fairlane!

                                     

I found a teeny tiny squatter.

 

Vintage roadside Americana

  Driving down New Tampa Highway we've passed some beautiful old motel signs. I've always had a soft spot for vintage americana and yesterday we made a quick stop to take a few photos.

I love the faded colors and texture. They're just hauntingly beautiful.

There is also a still operating Drive Inn theater close by. We'll definitely go out for a movie some night.

...maybe not the Lego movie though.

It's a great little stretch of highway, visually.  In addition to the signs and drive inn, I also spotted the fabled mythical land of Shangri-La! Unlike fabled it's not in the Himalayas. It's on New Tampa Highway!

"Shangri-La has become synonymous with any earthly paradise, and particularly a mythical Himalayan utopia — a permanently happy land, isolated from the outside world. In the novel Lost Horizon, the people who live at Shangri-La are almost immortal, living years beyond the normal lifespan and only very slowly aging in appearance."

source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shangri-La 

  I didn't meet any of the almost immortal inhabitants of this mythical utopia, nor did I dare go investigate further as there was a no trespassing sign ...which is probably the reason Shangri-La  continues to remain shrouded in mystery.


  There was a cheerfully colored vintage mobile home by the entrance.




 I really like these old trailers for some reason. They have a kind of a charm to them (...and they go well with plastic lawn flamingos. See previous post.).
  I remembered seeing a great looking peach colored one, but as per usual I couldn't exactly remember where... My husband decided we could go drive around a bit to see if we'd come across it.

  We headed toward Plant City, which is one of our favorite destinations for sunday drives, in case I had spotted it on the side of the road in that direction.  We kept our eyes peeled for the mobile home but couldn't find it. We did pass an old motel with a really haunting look to it.

There were some nice vintage cars on a near by lot.  My husband snapped a few shots of them.

We decided to cease quest and pop by my husband's parents, abandoning the search for the elusive peach colored trailer for the time being. 

Day trip to Webster

  My husband and I spent the previous week's saturday morning darting around Zephyr Hills in search of a great flea market he remembered was there (last time he lived back home was years ago). We ended up driving around in search of said market for a good few hours and came back empty handed after discovering it was not open on saturdays. What a bummer.
  After talking to a friend we got a tip there was a great flea market in Webster, so come saturday we packed ourselves in the car and headed out to do some perusing. As luck would have it we did find the flea market only to discover it's open on tuesdays! We're definitely not having luck with flea markets, that's for sure.
  Luckily we did stumble upon an interesting looking little garden statue shop, aptly named El Curiosities.

The quaint little shop was packed with wrought iron work, statuettes, talaveras pots and such, along with some quirkier things.

My husband spotted these awesome Madonna statues

...and a tiki

  To my delight I found lots of plastic yard flamingos! When we were living in Finland we occasionally discussed wether we should relocate to Florida. I conceded I would be willing to, but on the strict condition I could have one of those awesome super tacky lawn flamingos! ...I still haven't found one that's perfect, but I'm working on it!

I also found a flirtatious bunny statue I thought was funny.

"Hey Sailor!"

...and a suitable match! 

I should play cupid and get these lovebirds together! Next year the shop would be full of tiny bunny statues.

Some hedge hawk door stoppers...

Twin cats...

I didn't get any garden statues, but I did make a find. There was a discount cup shelf in the back corner where I saw an old porcelain coffee jar. 

Gevalia! Swedish coffee. With a price tag of 2 dollars it was definitely coming with us! Now it's in my "Premature granny" collection of granny things I love.

When I was cleaning the jar I found a little surprise inside.

It's definitely been in there a while!