The West Is Best For Encaustics

As I mentioned in a previous post, I realize now why encaustic artists live out west. The temperature and humidity are perfect for the wax, and also perfect for the person standing over a hot grill. Not like sweltering Georgia! What a miserable swamp!!

My neighbor is an artist, so I told her I would drag her outside one day and let her play with all my encaustic stuff. She contributed a few boxes of jewelry and other items to embed in the wax, and we had a blast.

The Cowboy's ex-girlfriend/BFF wanted to come over, but then failed to mention it was also her birthday. No one gets away with that on my watch:

It's not much, but I only had like two days' notice. I did what I could.

I have a few complaints about that griddle, one of which is the cord is only about 2 feet long. Thus the power strip resting on the table right next to a major heat source. It's my fault because I went super cheap and that thing was like 12 bucks. I need to upgrade. I also have to snake an extension cord out of the back window of the house because there do not appear to be any outlets out there. I plan to look harder and then ask my landlord. Anyway, we managed. I made these:

More of the muskrat bones. They come in handy!

This poor dude is tripping ballz.

The next one involves some copper leaf, Japanese paper, and one of my neighbor's jewelry findings:

This one went to a weird place so I jammed some heart beads into it:

This one was slightly more successful:

My neighbor holding up the two pieces she made:

Ex-girlfriend/BFF is an art teacher, so she took to the medium like a fish to water:

We need to do this again. It was too much fun. I like to have the whole weekend though because it's a whore to set up. It's good to work out the bugs on Day One, let everything cool down and throw a tarp over it for the night, then go back out and resume the next day. This works out great because IT DOESN'T RAIN IN UTAH. The concept of leaving ANYTHING AT ALL OUTSIDE OVERNIGHT is completely foreign to me. Hahahah! Takes some getting used to.

Actually I need to keep Utah a secret....what I meant to say is that the weather is completely horrible all the time, please no one else ever move here. It's terrible and I hate it. Stay where you are. Thanks.