Today I am doing laundry. For so long, I have had a very difficult time keeping up with my housework, my son, and my art. For obvious reasons, the housework was the ball I dropped. I thought I was just lazy because I could only work for about 30 minutes before totally pooping out. Now I understand that I was just exhausted from lack of real restful sleep due to the apnea. I have now had almost a week of real sleep and the difference is tremendous.
Next week, Memaw and Pawpaw are coming to keep Adam while Matt whisks me away to Grand Cayman for our 10th anniversary. I have never gone anywhere tropical, so I am very excited. We plan to snorkel, and walk the 7 mile beach, and who knows what else.
But, I must clean and pack. So, today I am washing all the towels and sheets.

So, for the art stuff.
In the Embellished Circus, we are doing an art journal round robin. I am the first to receive Nici's journal, and have been fretting a bit about what to do in it. I always love everything that Nici does, so I was truthfully a bit intimidated. I decided to try a technique I liked in "Cloth, Paper, Scissors" magazine. True to form though, I had to do it my own way.
I made a base paper by coating craft tissue paper with gesso. I swiped Jaquard Lumiere paints on in the colors metallic gold, pearl turquoise, pearl violet, and metallic olive green. I did it in that order from lightest to darkest, and blotted with a paper towel to let the layers show. I stamped over this with a text stamp in black ink, and a decorative column stamp in silver. I sprinkled on sparkley gold embossing powder and spot heated it. Then I adhered some inkjet images. Some are copyright free vintage images, and some are from my own vinatge family photos. I also adhered some skeleton leaves and real snake shed. All of this stuff was adhered with liquitex matte medium, and then coated over the top with the matte medium as well. I added some more lumiere paint over top of the collage elements randomly and loosely, and blotted some more. Voila! I am very pleased with the way these turned out. What do you think?