Illustration Friday - Expired

I'm so literal minded sometimes. All I could think of was an expired parking meter...which was tedious and boring to draw. Oh well...I hope I can do better next week.

Papier Maché Chinese Lion Head

Okay....this isn't a tutorial. I get too distracted when I do those. This is just something I wanted to do because my daughter really wanted a Chinese New Year Lion puppet. I still have to work on the body....but this is how I started the head.

Then I built up the forms with masking tape.

Added a layer of papier maché. I guess I should mention the real FIRST step is collecting photo reference.....and I noticed they had a shiny mirror thing in their foreheads. So I found a dome button and covered it in tinfoil.

Second layer of papier maché....and the bottom jaw....made of thin card and painted with acrylics.

The next steps were painting the paper maché once it was dry, and once the paint was dry, gluing on fake fur and sparkly fabric. Oh yeah, and making separate ears and pom pom nose decorations.

Pazyryk Tattoo Stuff

I'm collecting the old encyclopedia set, Man, Myth and Magic by Richard Cavendish printed in about 1970, and I was surprised to come across the following image in the Tattoo chapter!
Not much was written about it, except that it was from a "Siberian chief who lived in the 5th century BC."

I already had this National Geographic from 1994 which had this recent find of a mummified woman dug up in Siberia....now known as The Ice Maiden......who had this beautiful design tattooed on her arm. I was confused because I thought "How can a book from the '70s have this photo in it when they said they just found this woman in the '90s?" (I know the above photo is a very different tattoo...I just meant I didn't know that there had been other finds with tattoos prior to hers.)



After a bit of Internet research, I discovered that the original Pazyryk tattooed body was found back in 1948 on the Ukok Plateau also. The Plateau is located in Siberia, near the borders of Khazakstan, China and Russia.
I have some Northern European blood (Polish...but close enough) in my background, so I always like to think I have a connection to the Ukok Plateau

I modified the design because my left arm already had a tattoo, and I'm happy to discover that mine is facing the same way as the 1948 find. Here's how my tattoo looked when it was new...and I was a lot younger. 1995 or '96.

Me And My Shadow

I don't know what it is about cats, but they seem to know when you're sick or in need of comfort. I got hit by a car yesterday afternoon crossing at an intersection. Thank God I was minimally hurt.


It was one of those cases where the driver was turning right on a red light, other pedestrians were jay walking (because of an advanced green for the other drivers) and it was a pleasant day, weatherwise, so more people were out and about than usual.
I was the only pedestrian to wait for the proper walk signal, yet I was the one who got hit! I saw the van starting to turn right, but he hesitated, leading me to believe he saw me and was going to allow me to cross. But no. He kept on coming. His bumper hit my left hip and I turned, facing the vehicle. By now both my hands were on the front hood of his van and I was being pushed backwards! All I could think of was ,"He's not stopping! He's not stopping!"
I shouted , "STOP! STOP!" and suddenly he braked, sending me flying backwards onto the road. I thought, "I can't stay here on the ground! Someone might run me over!" and so I leapt up to my feet. I yelled at the driver, "J____ C______ didn't you see the signal!?" Bystanders
came to my aid immediately, standing in the van's way so he couldn't take off and one person flagged down a police car.
Well, to make a long story short, I ended up with only a bruised knee (from hitting the ground) and some weird pains in my feet that are fading now. It could have been a lot worse! The driver was charged with "Failure to Yeild".
But Shadow has been climbing up on my lap since it happened, and I think she might sense that she could have lost her "Mommy". I don't know, but it sure makes you realize how quickly one's life could be snuffed out.

Bunny Slippers

I made a pair of bunny slippers for my daughter!



And here she is wearing them:

Cookieeeeees!

I made these this afternoon. I used a recipe called "Mexican Wedding Cakes", but shaped them like Greek Almond Cookies. They're similar to Shortbread, but they contain ground almonds.
You roll them in Icing Sugar while thye're still warm....then once they've cooled, you can roll them again, or just dust them generously shaking the sugar through a sieve.

100 % Homemade Lemon Meringue Pie

I haven't made one of these for years, so today I thought I'd treat my fianceé and I to a homemade Lemon Meringue Pie. I always have trouble with meringue, but today it seemed to turn out well.

I made a graham cracker crumb crust, click here for a recipe.
Then I made the filling from :
1 cup white sugar
3 tblsp flour
3 tblsp corn starch
1 and a half cups cold water
Mix all those in a pot and heat, stirring constantly
Have ready 2 egg yolks
the juice of 2 small lemons or 1 large lemon
1 tblsp of butter
Once your cornstarch and sugar mixture thickens, remove from the heat
and stir in the egg yolks
Add the lemon juice, continuing to stir
then finally, add the butter
Stir until the butter is completely melted
Spoon this mixture into the already baked pie shell
Now for the meringue:
Use 3 egg whites, room temperature is best
add 1/4 teaspoon of Cream of Tartar
Have 6 Tablespoons of white sugar ready
Also have 1/2 Teaspoon of vanilla extract on hand
Mix those egg whites with the Cream of Tartar with a high speed electric mixer
Keep it on high speed as you gradually add the sugar
Keep beating, adding sugar...then, when almost all your sugar is added,
pour in the vanilla extract
Keep beating until the mixture is shiny and white and thick.
Mine ended up looking like melted marshmallows...sort of.
Anyway, then I spooned the meringue onto the lemon filling without
letting the two get mixed together. I didn't spread the meringue until
it covered the whole top of the pie, and then it was more like just
giving it a bit of shape with a non-serrated knife.
Pop this in a 350 degree F oven for 8-10 minutes until the peaks are
lightly browned.