OUT WITH THE OLD, IN WITH THE NEW

It was kind of sad seeing this precious little rock building sitting all sad and empty yesterday. The old Lowery House has been home to The Leaning Pear -- the cafe that raised the bar on dining out here in Wimberley, giving all the other restaurants a run for their money -- ever since they opened their doors in 2006, but last week they turned off the lights and locked the doors. Hopefully, they won't stay that way for too long. In the meantime, welcome to the NEW Leaning Pear!

It won't be open for business until Wednesday, but yesterday they invited the whole town to a sneak preview open house, and I think just about all of them showed up. We arrived right as the doors were supposed to open, and already the parking lot was packed!

First stop, the outdoor bar, where we were offered a selection of complimentary beverages.

The Back Terrace

Love this screened in porch!

Muse Julie and her painting "New Beginnings"

All of the artists from Wimberley Fine Arts Center, including our own muse Julie Underriner, had created pear-themed art which was displayed throughout the property. We met Phil and Julie about twenty years ago when we were living in Indonesia, so imagine our surprise when they ended up living just down the road from us here in little ol' Wimberley! We're still working on coming up with a proper Muse name for Julie. She doesn't use any brushes to make her paintings, instead draping the loose canvas over chairs and such, then pouring the paint onto it. However, for some reason, "Pouring Paint Woman" just doesn't sound quite right.

Outdoor Woman and friends pose in front of the new wood-burning pizza oven.

Cozy Seating By The Fireplace

We got to enjoy little shot glasses of corn chowder, meat loaf sliders, and samples of their new pizza offerings. Then, as a parting gift, there were actual pears from the original "leaning pear."

Kudos to Matt and Rachel. The leaning pair does it again!
 

HAVE YOU SEEN IT?

We watched another one of "those" movies this week -- the kind where you can't decide whether you loved it or hated it. It was one of those movies that was almost painful to watch, but which you're still thinking about, days, weeks, months later. They stick with you a long, long time because, even though your brain keeps telling you "It was just a movie!", your heart insists on reminding you "That doesn't mean it isn't true."

 
It's called Beast of the Southern Wild, and it's about poor families living somewhere along the Mississippi delta -- on the wrong side of the levee that protects the city from storm surge, in an area known as "The Bathtub." It's about people who would much rather be dirt poor, living off nature's bounty, than to be stuck in a smoggy city, working in some factory. Who'd rather face a hurricane in a shanty of a house, than be packed into a shelter like a bunch of sardines. Who'd much rather be dead, than in a hospital, plugged into machines. If you've ever lived along the Gulf Coast, you've probably known people like this. Heck, you may even be related to a few.

I don't really know what to tell you about Beasts. All I can say for sure is that, though I'm not 100% certain I enjoyed watching it, I'm 100% glad I did, for it's absolutely unforgettable. And that little heroine? Well, she'll turn you every which way but loose.

SATURDAY STUDIO: JUST DO IT

Well, I finally did it. I finally got the nerve to paint in someone else's art journal, and I even lived to tell about it!

After doing three or four "practice" pages in my own journal, none of which was truly satisfactory, I finally had to tell myself "just DO it, for pity's sake!"

Know what? I like it. I really like it!

Now all I have to do is decorate a manilla tag, add a picture and a description of myself to it, tuck it into the envelope at the back, then this baby can be on it's way to the next artist in the circle. There's just one snag. I have never been any good at describing myself. Perhaps you can help me out there. If you had to choose 3 - 5 words to describe me, what would they be? Don't sugar coat it. Be honest. Especially those of you who have known me for a long time -- in the flesh, and not just on-line. Ha! Come to think of it, it might be kind of interesting to compare how on-line friends describe me, as compared to in-person friends. I might just have to make a "Becky's Both Sides" tag, huh?

LOCAL TRAILER MAKES GOOD

Kome' Sushi Kitchen

One reason I often refer to my hubby as "Adventure Boy" is that he is willing to drive all over tarnation looking for some interesting new thing to try. Me, not so much. Not that I don't like trying new things. It's the driving all over tarnation bit that I'm none too crazy about. When I'm hungry, I'm hungry. Plus, I have no sense of direction, and if I'm alone, I need to have my route plotted out ahead of time. Hubby can always find his way home. So, when I stumbled across an issue of Austin Monthly recently, I decided it might be worth my time to peruse the restaurant listings. That way I could have several names, along with their exact locations, ready to go, next time Adventure Boy was in the mood to try something new. This listing in particular caught my eye: "Lovers of sushi trailer Sushi-A-Go-Go have an intimate new restaurant off Airport Boulevard to get their fix. Chef Take' Asazu, formerly of Uchi, and his wife, Kayo, have painstakingly crafted a menu that features unbeatable ramen noodle soup with pork, spinach, corn and a boiled egg, and knockout rolls like the Love For Sale, packed with veggies and mango. Lunch and dinner Mon-Sat. 4917 Airport Blvd."

Boy, was my hubby ever surprised this week, when he suggested that we go to a movie plus lunch at our standby Asian place, Mama Fu's, and I came back with, "Nah, I think we should try something new for a change."

Sashimi Lunch Special, which came with Miso soup and pickled vegetables

Ramen Noodle Soup

You can call me Adventure Girl.

THE MAGIC OF MERCHANDISING

As I stare at the shelving unit in my bedroom -- the one that used to hold books, but which is now overflowing with art supplies -- I have to wonder. How did this happen? With all the years I spent being a merchandiser, you'd think I would be immune to their wiles, but I was like putty in their hands...blinded by their brilliance. It got me to thinkin', about a master magician that I met at the Atlanta gift market years ago.

I wasn't the buyer for our garden center, just the visual merchandiser, but the owner was kind enough to let me tag along with her and Nicki on their buying trips -- I guess to help them keep an eye on "the big picture", and on how we could pull lots of items from different vendors together to form attractive groupings that would make you want to buy the whole shebang.

Anyhoo, one year I stumbled across the booth of a company called The Round Top Collection, and it absolutely blew me away. If you've ever bought any darling metal pumpkins, snowmen, Easter eggs or Santas, chances are, they came from RTC. However, at that time, I'd never heard of them.

Now, my boss did not believe in buying "holiday" merchandise, since we had no place to store it if it didn't sell, but somehow I managed to convince she and Nicki to let me place a small order from RTC. Fortunately, there was nothing left to store at the end of the season. In fact, it was all gone in a few weeks. Next season, after much angst and a sleepless night, I placed a much larger order. Then the owner of RTC did something that was absolutely brilliant. He invited all their customers within driving distance (we were practically in the same neighborhood!) to come to their warehouse for an all-day workshop and catered luncheon, where he shared all his secrets for making his merchandise look fabulous, and making all his booths so magnetic. He even had a gorgeous assortment of ribbons available to purchase, and taught us to make bows just like his! Thanks to his tips, that huge-to-me order of RTC holiday decor literally blew out of the doors that season. So, next season we doubled our order again.

Now then, take a business like Ranger, which manufactures art supplies.They could go to market and set up a booth full of paints and inks and stuff. But what would differentiate them from all the other booths full of paints and inks and stuff? Well, what if they first went to the "internets" and found a few charismatic crafters with blogs that had gathered a huge following -- crafters like Tim Holtz and Dyan Reaveley? What if they gave these crafters some of their cool supplies to play with, and these crafters then made awesome stuff with them, and talked about it on their blogs? What if they allowed those same crafters to design their very own product lines, helped them to make videos showing how to use them, and took them to market with them to do demos that would stop people in their tracks and draw them into the Ranger booth? What if they even created something called Ranger U., and invited all the shop owners who had placed big orders to come to Ranger U. to have some fun, and learn all kinds of groovy stuff to do with those products, so they could yak them up with their customers? Best of all, what if you then sent those charismatic blogging crafters, with their very own product lines, out to tour the world and teach classes, live and in person, at lots of the shops that sell your products? That, my friends, is the magic of merchandising -- the reason why I now have shelves full of art supplies...

and why, every fall, I get a big ol' grin on my face when I see all those giant orange metal pumpkins lining the Wimberley streets and sidewalks!

MAD SCIENTIST IN THE COLOR LAB

Well, I finally came up with a good idea for what I wanted to do in Denita's circle journal. I decided to do something involving my new poppy stamp and Dyan Reaveley's bleach out technique. That's the one where you first stamp an openwork pattern onto a background that has been sprayed with a dark-colored Dylusions ink spray...

brush water into the open spaces and "bleach" the color out by blotting with paper towels...

then fill a water brush with a bright-colored ink and paint that into the bleached out spaces.

Works fantastic on the super-smooth cardstock and manilla papers that come in the journal Dyan designed herself. However, I had no idea how it would work in an altered book journal, so I decided I'd better experiment in one of my own journals first, before attempting this project in one belonging to someone else.

First I tried it on plain book paper.

The colors remained bright and true, but soaked through the paper so quickly they didn't have a chance to blend, and no matter how much wetting and blotting I did, I could NOT get that green to bleach out of the flower petals.

Next I tried it on gessoed book paper.

I did manage to bleach most of the color out of the flowers this time, and fill them in with orange. But, as you can see, though I used the very same vivid colors here as in the first one, once they hit the gesso, they immediately morphed into namby-pamby pastels. Vehddy in-ter-resting, albeit somewhat disappointing. Ah well. Back to the drawing board!

NOW FOR THE SCARY PART

Well, it was pretty exciting when the first Wild Girls Circle Journal arrived in my mailbox over a week ago. I couldn't wait to see what was inside the package!

Front Cover

My name was No.2 on the list, so Denita -- the originator of this project, who has lots and lots of experience with stuff like this -- mailed her journal to me. She chose to do an "altered book" journal, meaning she took an actual book and turned it into a journal by decorating the covers, gluing some pages together to make them strong enough for paint, and removing other pages to make the journal less bulky.

Back Cover

  I placed it on my art table, and I go over to it several times a day, to just stand there, admiring it.

Inside Front Cover

What I haven't done so far, and cannot seem to make myself do, is to get started on the two-page spread that I am supposed to paint in her book.

Instructions, tags, and sheets of protective deli paper that she tucked into the back of her journal.

I mean, it's one thing to mess something up inside your own journal. No one else ever has to see it, right? It's a whole 'nuther ball of wax to mess something up in someone else's journal -- especially a Circle Journal, which is going to make the rounds from one person to another before finally making its way back home!

Denita's little bio tag she made.

Since I must finish up with my spread in this journal, and have it packed up and on it's way to the next person in line by the 22nd, I guess it's time to put on my brave girl boots and get busy, huh? I have an idea of what I want to do, so maybe I'll just test the idea out in one of my own journals first, to see if my plan will even work. Yeah, that's the ticket!

On the plus side, Denita's bio says she's 100% kind, so even if it doesn't turn out just as I had imagined? I'm pretty sure she will forgive me!