adirondack antiques & taxidermy

After a nonstop weekend with friends, we took a many stops trip home to the city. First, for iced coffee, and second, to a ramshackle antique store on Tongue Mountain. The dusty shop was full of many treasures—we all went home with something—but I was quite enamored with the amount of wildlife trophies scattered around the place. My love for animals extends to those passed and I appreciate them utterly in their preserved form. Although I wouldn't hunt and be proud to mount what I've slaughtered, I have considered cherishing roadkill forever for sure. Funny the person who discovered taxidermy was also vegetarian. Enjoy some of the creatures that were creeping in the aisles of this musty store that once roamed the paths of upstate New York.

I just love animals to death.

Here are a few blogs I follow that seem to like dead animals as well:

crappy taxidermy

finder maker

melissa dixson

morbid anatomy

reid peppard

Ticonderoga

Sometimes all you need is a long weekend with great friends, a little fresh water up your nose, red wine when the sun is going down, an uncontrollable laughing fit, a hard bed to sleep on and the great outdoors. Our annual few days in Lake George does it for me every time. A bonus this year was coming home to internet access and finding out I had 500 followers on my blog—the royal icing on the cake! Thanks guys!!!

oxox

living

The living pavilion on Governors Island in NYC—a perfect shelter from the unbearable summer city heat that is earthy, green, fresh and whimsical. I enjoyed it last week.

Happy 4th

Hope everyone enjoyed the long weekend!

feather printing with Pico

I've been saving all the feathers Pico sheds in two jars—one for body feathers and the other for tail and wing feathers. After working on 2 feather printing projects at work, I decided to try one with Pico's feathers. So I picked out a couple different sizes from my collection to experiment with.

It turns out the tail and wing feathers work much better than the softer, fluffier body feathers.

The process for printing onto paper is fairly simple. All you need is a brayer, an ink pad, scrap paper, tweezers and of course the paper or stationary you are printing on. Here's how you do it:

1. Place a feather face down on an ink pad. Cover the feather and entire ink pad with a scrap piece of paper. Use the brayer to press and roll over the scrap paper, evenly distributing the ink.

2. Remove the paper and lift the feather up with tweezers by the feather's shaft.

3. Place the feather ink side down on a piece of paper and cover it with a clean piece of scrap paper. Use the brayer to transfer the feather ink to paper by rolling over it a couple times.

note: I find you get better results when you print with the same feather a couple times before printing on your final paper. You can use the same feather a dozen times and get good results, so practice before you print on stationary or whatnot.

4. Remove the paper and feather carefully and you should have a lovely transfer!

5. Let the ink completely dry and add stamped words to personalize it.

I finally completely all my birthday thank you cards. I am embarrassed to say that my birthday was about 3 months ago! oops!

I am about to stuff all the envelopes with the thank you cards and some photos of Pico and off in the mail they go!

neon nails

I rarely get my nails done, maybe 3 times a year. It is impossible to keep them nice when I work with my hands all day, you know? They are already chipped one day later! Anyway, I decided to treat myself and went for a mani/pedi. I always go for the neon orange in the summer, it glows and I love it. It even matches the button lights in the elevator too. ;)

T for touch.

Machotaildrop

When can I see the full feature? This looks hilarious and totally bizarre...a must see.

doggy do do.

I am taking care of our family dogs for a couple weeks while the folks are traveling. They were in desperate need of a summer shave, especially in this awful heat wave that has been torturing New York City recently. Kai, our 7-year-old Yorkshire terrier, was first at bat. He has thin hair and is so small so it was easier to trim him with scissors. Kai is content being dirty and it's a struggle sometimes to groom and bathe him—he's a squirmer.

I left a little mohawk on his head so his ears don't look bigger than they already do. Not the best picture—like I said, Kai hates sitting still.

Merlot is a 12-year-old Chinese Crested Powder Puff—he is a very strange little man with a distinct personality. He has a really thick coat of hair with dozens of cowlicks. I used a buzzer on him and it took about 2 hours to completely shave him. He is pretty good and sits there with his eyes closed slightly but the minute you take a break, he darts. I got so caught up in trying to get both the dogs done that I forgot to photograph Merlot before. Here he is 2 days later with Pico on his back.

That's it for doggy do do.

artist admiration: Anu Tuominen

A full spectrum of color...

or a single color's different values...

colors all jumbled together...

or just one color alone...

two colors make another...

or fade into each other...

colors blended together can also make shades...

grey, black and white...

or no color at all.

Anu Tuominen's artwork just wrote a children's book!