Art Journal Page

The other day I received an amazing swap package that included items wrapped in sewing pattern bits.  Never one to waste such valuable arting material (and eager to find a place to store it) I decided to just get busy and I whipped out an art journal.  You see, my journals have been collecting dust for quite a while; The Muse gets quite distracted by making ATCs.  I shooshed her though and having no clue where I was going just glued down the sewing pattern tissue onto the page.  She quickly got on board with the whole journaling thing and I ended up with this:

 I did lots of stuff to add layers.  I gesso'd the sewing pattern tissue after it was dry and then added yellow, pink and orange acrylic paint.  After that came stenciling and stamping and scribbles (white charcoal pencil).  I finished up the background with black paint splatters and a watercolor crayon border

I can always find some Daniel Torrente images to use.  Here are some of my faves with their grungy halos.  (I added some gold Liquid Pearls to the 'clean' spots).  They're standing on some stenciled and grunged up book text.

I found the saying on my Pinterest 'Well Said' board.  I always go there for a handy saying or quote.  After I painted the words I really tried to dirty up 'DIRTY' with scribbles and charcoal pencil.

The blue squares are from book text and I colored them with watercolor crayons, black and white charcoal pencil and black pen.  When all was said and done I scribbled some ideas for dirtying halos in each box.  :)

My own halo is often askew, dirtied up or missing completely.  I think life is more fun that way.  :)

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by!

Mixed Media Inspiration Deck Challenge

It's not really an official challenge, but I've challenged myself to make my own inspiration deck of mixed media techniques.

You see, odd as it is since I have older kids, there doesn't seem to be a deck of cards in the house that is intact.  This perplexes me to no end and drives me a little nuts quite honestly (I'm one of those types who can't stand it when a game piece or puzzle piece is missing.  Very challenging as a preschool teacher.)  I decided to gather up the remains of several card decks and get creative with them. Oddly enough, I have 51 cards...figures.

I finished up a swap last week that was SO fun.  The hostess made a list of techniques, prompts, etc. and randomly assigned us 3 numbers to use on each card.  I borrowed many of her ideas for my inspiration deck list.  I also found many of them in a book I have Surface Treatment Workshop: Mixed Media Techniques.  Cool book.

The first card was finished last night.  It didn't really turn out as I had envisioned - can't say I love it - but perhaps it will offer some inspiration down the road.

Inspiration Deck Checklist: 

#1: Layers of holes

#32: Use a gelli print

#47: Make it dimensional (add foam dots, etc.)

I really just started out with #1 but the second two fell into place.  9 more cards are on my desk all gesso'd and ready to go.  :)

Have a great weekend!

SDC 232: Spots and Stripes

Just like Sam over at SDC I love spots and stripes!  As luck would have it I've been having some gelli plate fun lately and have a collection of spotty and stripey papers sitting on my desk.  I grabbed and turned it into an ATC for the challenge this week.

In addition to the acrylic paint from the gelli prints I used book page strips, white pen, Copics, dye ink, white pencil and charcoal pencil.

Have a great week!

Crayons!

...and not fancy schmancy artist crayons.  We're talking Crayola, yellow and green box, type crayons.

This is the challenge for a swap I've joined.  NO other media allowed.  I've gotta tell ya, my studio smells so yummy right now.  Talk about a trip down memory lane...

Many, many years ago, when dinosaurs roamed the earth (and I was in elementary school) some smart art teacher had us create scratch art using crayons.  I remember thinking it was THE COOLEST THING EVER!  No clue why this made such an impact on me, but it is, truthfully, the one thing I remember from art as a wee lass.  I revisited this technique in junior high and recall hearing a few snickers as my fellow students wondered why I was pulling out crayons.  Years went by and when my babes were little I pulled this out of my hat again.  They weren't as impressed.  Not to be deterred, the moment I saw this swap pop up I joined.  Hooray!  Another opportunity to pull out crayons!  

Super easy.  Pull out some brightly colored crayons and cover the surface (cardstock in this case) with them.  Proceed to cover them up with black crayon. Finally, use a toothpick to scratch designs over the top.

Do it!

Some VLVS ATC Fun

"Art" is the ATC theme over in the VLVS facebook trade this round.  Strange as it sounds, that is a tricky theme.  I have some fun, quirky VLVS stamps but none of them are remotely artsy.  Stretching my imagination to the limit I decided to use my housedress dog stamp envisioning her tired of dreary housework and deciding to throw all caution to the wind and painting the floor with her broom.  I know.  A stretch.  But work with me people.  :)

The red one was the first one I did.  The hubs said it looked like a murder scene (that's what I get for asking...) so I switched out the others to purple.  ;)  I think the Picasso quote fits quite nicely, don't you?

Cheerio for now!

Rubber Dance Feb. Challenge: Red, White & Kraft

Still reeling with all the Valentine love, I created this ATC for Rubber Dance's Feb. challenge.

I used these stamps (I use the Envelope stamps ALL the time.  Love them!)

Just for fun I'm entering this in the Wicked Wednesday challenge (Seeing Red) too.  Mwah!

Love Is In The Air...

...well, it was yesterday.  Yes, I should have posted these yesterday, but it didn't even occur to me.  Let's just think of this as Love Month, shall we?  Or Valentines' Week?

I made these ATCs for a 'love' themed challenge.  The group I'm swapping with has a mixed media bent so I did my best to comply and whip out some of the stuff in my stash that I don't use often enough.

Okay, I don't know if this is going to sound weird, but I need to say it anyway.  My son saw the following card and raised an eyebrow (which blew me away BTWs).  He thought it was some kind of dis on gay rights.  Holy moly, dude. NO.  I have bros-in-law whom I adore who happen to be married to each other.  They are awesome.  I love them.  Really none of my beeswax what they do behind closed doors any more than it's their beeswax what I do behind my closed doors.  But I"m not married to a girl, I'm married to a dude.  Yowza.  A good discussion followed about art being from the artist's perspective, soul, heart, experience, etc.

Shall we contiue?  Yes let's.

 I really like the way the heart turned out so here's a close-up

It seems like my artsy bent has been a little less mixed media of late, or at least using the same ol' mediums, so it was fun to take a baby step outside the zone so to speak.

Happy Valentines Week!

CHNC Challenge: Blue

The other day I stumbled upon a Christmas card challenge blog.  Now I don't know about y'all, but I always find myself scrambling for Christmas cards around the early part of December.  The last several years I haven't even sent any out.  Yikes.  I like the idea of creating a card a week (I have some catching up to do, I see!) so that by the time December rolls around I have a nice, little collection of handmade cards ready to go.  Join me?

To play along follow THIS LINK to Craftyhzelnut's Christmas Challenge blog.  Here is my card for this week's challenge to use blue.

Cheers!

Shabby Chic ATCs

It's been a while since I"ve wandered into the world of shabby chic.  It is the theme of one of my swapping groups this month though so here goes...

I started by covering the bases with a dictionary page.  Next came some modeling paste, die cut swirls and a doily.  I covered everything with some watered down white acrylic paint.  From that point they diverged.

This first one came together quickly.  The green leafy piece had been sitting on my desk for several weeks and I thought it looked nice against the pink background.  I must have stamped the ruler piece on white paper months ago.  It was also in a pile.  First I just rubbed on some brown ink (the same as is on the edges) and then I thought of vintagey measuring tape and decided I should add some yellow to it.  I like the way it turned out.  I always forget I've got the Tim Holtz rub-ons but I happened to glance over at them and they were perfect to balance out the bottom part.

The second one I struggled with a bit.  I love the laurel wreath die and thought I would be using it with the bee that comes with it.  It just wasn't working for me though. I sprinkled on dots of Perfect Pearl Mist and some white paint and then let it sit there for a while so I could figure out what to do next. Tim Holtz products to the rescue again.  I remembered I had the silhouettes tucked away...somewhere (took me a while to track them down.  Time for a studio cleaning spree!).

One of the cool things about these cards is that they came about organically.  I mostly used stuff that had been sitting on my desk for a while.

The dictionary pages were leftovers from some gelli printing the night before.  The ruler, die cut swirls and leafy sprig were sitting in a pile on the desk for weeks.  I almost threw them away so many times.  (See, honey.  There's a good reason for me to 'hoard' all this stuff!).

Successful day.  :)