Just Practice Work

 I was practicing dewdrops for a class I am taking with Laure Ferlita.  This one is a Trip to the Garden and she might have a second one coming up.  These seemed pretty hard at first but are fun once you get the hang of it.  I resorted to a magnifying glass when I tried the teensy tiny ones on the flower you see at the bottom of the Dewdrops page!

The other page was simply boredom last night and a desire to do a bit of practice with my Pentel Pocket Brush Pen.  I played it loose and fast both with the pen and the subsequent watercolor.  This is in a Strathmore journal filled with drawing paper so it's not really made for the watercolor.  I think it worked fine as I got in some drawing practice and painting practice but I also found out this ink doesn't dry quickly on this paper.  I had several minutes between drawing and painting but my ink still smeared.  It didn't matter so much with this page but it could on others.

Since I am always wondering how large a page people are working

on I thought I would mention the top pic is on a 5.5 x 7.5 inch page  and the bottom pic is on a 9 x 12 inch page.

Hope you have a wonderful, creative day.

Wall Decorating

I have been busy painting a wall in my bedroom/craftroom. I moved the bookcases that you can see here to another wall and that left a brown and yellow wall - ugly! It took me months to get to it but I finally went and bought the paint and did it.

First, I used the paint that is on my furniture for a sample so I could match it at the store. Knowing it was a large area to be done, I lightened the sample a bit so it would read right. Well, I didn't lighten it enough and after getting it on the wall I had to lighten up some of the paint and recoat it. Then I added the squiggly pink lines one at a time till I finally covered the wall in a diamond pattern. I finished by adding blue paint to the top edges where the wallboard had a frame already and painted some really sloppy green leaves on the blue strips to match what I had done on the furniture. I either need new brushes or get back to practicing strokework but overall it turned out. This wall took me four days to do - painting those lines is hard on the wrist. As you can see it matches the furniture I painted several years ago. I think my room is done now. Well, until I need to rearrange my art supplies again anyhow!

Knitting

I was over at Sheep Rustler where I saw some very pretty handknit socks and it reminded me that I am knitting a pair myself just now. Since I have so little to share lately I thought I'd show where I am in my knitting. Exciting isn't it?

What is exciting is that the yarn is 51% bamboo! Can you believe they are using bamboo in yarn? It feels very nice too. I'm using a lacy stitch for these to dress them up a bit and when they are done, I'll be giving them to one of my sisters. In fact I'll be giving them to the sister who makes these lovely bird houses. She paints a few different ones. I was lucky enough to get one as a gift. Everyone else gets to pay $35 dollars for one. It's fun to share with someone who can appreciate the work put into something handmade.

I am trying to get myself into doing more work in my sketchbook and I really want to get back to doing some beading. Hopefully I'll have more to post soon.

Want to Sketch?

Have you wanted to sketch but didn't know what to draw? Didn't think you were good enough of a drawer? There is a new challenge starting up in January where some artists got together and will be posting an idea to sketch each month. They will have pointers for us, share what they draw and even have some give-aways. Sound interesting? Check it out by clicking on the Sketchbook Challenge button on the right or going to it righ here. I am going to follow along; hope to see you doing it also.

Free Calendar!

Robin Kohli (E-junkie) and Adi C (Fish & Web) have developed an art calendar with owl pictures submitted by many different people. You get to pick the pics you want and for which month. Then you can download and save it for printing. Check it out by clicking here or on the owl to the right on the sidebar. Just a little something for fun!

C is for Color

I got the new book The Journal Junkies Workshop. Using a few of their ideas I made this page. I've previously done a page for the letter A and have started (barely) one for B so I decided to do C here. Since this uses mixed media I decided to post it on this blog even though it is also on my drawing blog.

I used watered down acrylic for the watercolor looking background hoping it would somewhat seal the page. This is done on drawing paper and the paint was watery enough to soak the paper and bleed through to the other side almost ruining my page there. Adding watercolor pencil lines, I had to rewet the paper to blue them out. Then I let it dry and stuck with drier stuff like a photo I took of a flower in my daughter's yard and some butterflies from gift wrap. A little inkwork and I called it done at least for now.

I think my next journal will only have watercolor paper in it. I like painting on the 140# but it's so thick you can't get so many pages in a single journal. Could any of you tell me how 90# paper works for doing wet backgrounds concerning bleedthrough to the other side? I don't mind buckling as it flattens some when the book is pressed close.

Fake Journal Page Six

I have found out that a line drawn to show the shape is not really there on the object in reality. I actually knew this but hadn't seen it put into words really until I saw a blog post on Drawn2Life where Jennifer talks about why she draws as she does. Very interesting and I suggest you go take a look at the post if you haven't already. So anyhow, it led me to my current take on "fake".

I drew a continuous line drawing of my lamp I painted several years ago (it was a $5 lamp from a dollar store and I hated it till I painted it to match the furniture I'd painted). It was harder than I thought as I find I have to hold the Pitt pens so vertical to get them to draw that my hand started to hurt. I need to find a pen that will write at a slant which may better suit my left-handed curled grip. I colored it in this time with markers. Hope you enjoy it.

Have Some Fun

I saw a post on Laure Ferlita's blog about making a photocopy
of some pictures after turning them to a grayscale version. I think this is a fun way to change and personalize a photo to fit wherever you might want something a bit different. It is recommended that you use watercolor paper but my printer wouldn't take anything heavier than a drawing paper so I tried that. I think I made mine too light a version of gray so be careful not to make it too light. The pink daisy is my result. As you can see it's quite a bit different than the original shown in the other color picture.

This is fun. Give it a try. Thanks for the idea Laure.

A Trip to the Beach

I just recently took A Trip to the Beach, a class with Laure Ferlita. I've posted all the pictures I painted and journaled in this trip. I've put them all on my other blog here. I hope you'll go see them. This has been a wonderful experience and I think everyone should take at least one of the trips she offers. There is a trip to the beach, England and Paris right now and all are getting ready to take off so hurry and sign up! I can't tell you enough how wonderful taking a class with her is. You have to try it to see for yourself. I had not really used watercolors up to this point and look at what I did. If you can draw basic shapes you can do it!

Mandala Done

Well I made my mandala following the direction of that video I posted here. Now I realize they did it a bit differently. Oh boy, that shows how well I follow instructions! They changed pen color as they went along. I'll have to try that on the next one. This one is made with a Pitt pen and watercolor pencil. It was fun. Have you tried one yet?

New Journal Cover

I'm taking a class with Mary Ann called Remains of the Day.
We make a journal cover and fill it with papers in her style. It's outside of my box as it is much more free-form than I usually am. Why don't you take a look here for the class as I believe it's ongoing although she'll be on vacation and won't allow more signups till she comes back on the 16th. You will enjoy it so do check it out.

This is my journal cover. I've still got to fill it which I am finally able to do. I wasn't going to prepare any till I finished the cover! The square of lace in the middle is from my wedding veil as it some gauzy fabric just above and to the left of that square as shown in the picture at right.
I added a pink poodle because I love poodles and want a teensy tine pink one someday when all my current fur babies are gone.
Later I'll show the full journal when it's done.

Hi everyone. Hope you had lots of fun and will have some great

memories from Christmas. I had fun with my grandkids. I made a

page in my journal before heading out for the visit to show some crafts we could make. They looked at them and wanted to make the glittered stars. We had fun and it was a great way to show them the idea rather than just telling them about the crafts. I used Pitt pens and watercolor pencils to make the page. The second picture is a photo of what we all came up with.

The third photo was a way to procrastinate in my knitting. I thought I'd stop and draw the process before I finished the socks. I am not good at drawing from memory so needed them in front of me while I drew. This page was done on MiTientes paper with colored pencils.

My new year is starting off with lots of new classes. Hopefully I'll remember to share some of what I do in them here on my blog. I tend to get overwhelmed and forget to post things when I take on too much and I've gone and signed up for classes that overlap and

add up to about 9 of them at once for a little while! They just sound like so much fun I can't help but sign up and join in!

Saved Stuff

I was working on a page in my journal and needed to put a protective sheet under it to protect from runover. I didn't realize it had something sticky on it which ended up transferring to my journal. Thank goodness it wasn't a finished page but I couldn't shut my journal like that so I ended up sealing the sticky with acrylic paint layers. I added a couple of strips of paper to tie two sketches I wanted to save together and glued the sketches on top. I ended up saving my old sketches and my journal with a page I am quite happy with. I added the hearts and flowers just because I WAS happy about saving the page.

I'm a Winner!

A little while ago (time seems to have lost it's meaning lately - it's just go, going, gone) I won a giveaway on Lisa's blog Pursuing Art...Life and Dreams and then time got away from me and I didn't post it when it came in the mail. Now Lisa has written asking if I got it. I didn't realize it'd been THAT long but it has. I am so sorry Lisa. I usually make a post (usually only a little late) and then let the person know I got it and share the post link. I am sooo sorry. It was totally rude of me. Lisa gave me some wonderful stuff too. I thought I'd just won the doll and face but she sent me vintage and other beads and everything came tied up so

I could use the packaging in future projects.

Lisa is the type who remembers little details such as a poppy I'd asked if I could draw from her blog months ago. She sent me the photo of it. And no Lisa, I haven't done that yet either. No more classes for me for a while. I evidently need a breather to clear my head so I stop forgetting so much.

Swap

When Karen of Missy K blog said she'd give away some of her
extra bird inchies just for the asking I jumped right in and asked
for one. I told her I'd trade her one I made. Unfortunately my computer acted up on me and just before it wouldn't start up one day, it must have eaten my photo - actually the whole last day of photos I'd uploaded.

So anyhow, I sent her a quilted inchy with a shell bird attached that I'd dabbed Ranger's alcohol inks on. I also sent her a couple of the extra shell birds I made. In return she sent me this wonderful packet of goodies and two of her bird inchies - one of them with some of the foil on it which she sent me. Aren't they pretty? I am so very lucky.

Thankyou very much Karen. I really like the inchies and the goodies!

I'm Gifted!

Ha! You were thinking maybe I got some special
letter from Mensa or something huh? No way!




Instead I got lucky when I visited Riley Coyote Creations and saw a drawing being offered. I signed up and didn't win. That's right, I didn't have my name picked by Riley (that's the weimeraner). But, there were only two of us who signed up for the drawing so Deirdre sent me
one of her domino pendants also.

Isn't it pretty? I can't believe the glass-like finish she got on her piece. It's cute that she uses a decorated card (and clever too, I might add) for her pendant holder.

Anyhow, I want to say thank you very much. It's wonderful.

Newest Inchy

My newest inchy is for the theme "faces". I really
need to work these under my magnifying lamp sometimes. I might have seen the sand paper scratching to far into the face. Ah, well. Life goes on! Kids are so full of life we'd do well to have some around or go to a place where you can see them play and wonder. Then we can reabsorb some of that energy that we lose as we get older.

Please try an inchy or two yourself. You can join in at Inchybyinch for one inchy or lots of them. They are a tiny bit of fun between bigger projects.

Getting Busy

I'm getting back to trying to do a little of
everything.

I am still working on my BJP page. Nothing like being so far behind and then deciding to add size 18 beads to the piece! I love those teensy tiny little things though and love it when I can add them to something.

I tried to do the inchies for the week. The theme this week at Inchy by Inch was to use triple embossing as the technique for the squares. First, I didn't know what triple embossing was so I googled it and found the explanation here . I ran into a small problem when I tried to make my inchies though as my heat gun quit on me while I was just partway through the process. Living outside of town, I won't be replacing it in the immediate future so this week's inchies just went out the window. Sorry everyone. To see some pretty ones go to the link above.

I am also working on my kitchen still. I started by painting it yellow as you can see here in this post. I have since finished the painting. I've bought new rugs I'll put down when everything is done. I am now painting my utensil rack for the wall. I painted it for my dad over 15 years ago and so am now making it match my canisters. I've got it sanded and base-coated with white. The canisters have a transparent glaze on them so I will do the same with my rack. I want it to really match so I am doing my best to use the same techniques even if my piece is wood rather than ceramic. I'll be sure to post the finished picture with the canisters so you can all see how I do.

Besides working on a pair of socks, that's about
where I stand at present. I wonder if I'm forgetting to do something....

Inchy Once More

I am back everyone - hopefully for good. I have done the inchy for the week for the group on the blog Inchy by Inch. The theme for this week was buttons. This is my humorous take on the subject. I fully intended to raid my button box but this is what turned up instead. Done with prismacolor colored pencils. Hope it made you smile!


For those who have left me messages wondering where I was, I truly feel blessed that you were interested enough to wonder about me. I just was so busy leading up to Christmas and then visited so long with family that I guess I was worn out. I wasn't feeling like art or blogging - just resting. Thankyou so much for your concern; it helped, really, to get me back into the loop again.

Now, that I am back to doing inchies, I hope to get caught up on my Bead Journal Pages also. I have actually been sewing down some beads in the last couple of days. Not only that but I ripped out some knitted socks, relaxed the yarn and rewound it ready to knit some socks that will match up in size this time. I am on the move!

Christmas Cards

I've got my cards done and mailed. I took part in a card exchange this year and sent the original of this colored pencil drawn card to the person I was trading with (it was a group trade but each person was given one person in the group for which to make a card. That way we could go to their blog to see what they might like and make a card accordingly - a neat way to do a trade. No one knew who would be making theirs).

I liked the card so much that I decided to make prints of the kitty and glue them onto cards I made with Elements which I am learning how to use. Originally these were all going to be red cards with green envelopes but I goofed so many times on my layout of the words I ran out of red cardstock. So now I have red cards with green envelopes and green cards with red envelopes and the recipients won't know it was due to mistakes. The envelopes are handmade out of Dick Blick construction paper. It is actually a nice 80 pound weight craft paper and I don't think they call it construction paper anymore. The colors and feel of it are great. I recommend everyone try it for crafting. I think you'll like it.


Hope you are all busy getting ready for your holidays be they Christmas, Hannukah or Kwanzaa. It's good to celebrate something especially when times are not so good.