More Pear

Second stage of my pear! So far so good but I'm worrying I've added too much color now for the next stage. I might have filled the tooth of the paper. We'll see. Stay tuned!

As always, check out Ann's Bluebird Hill blog for the tutorial and some wonderful art!

Rainy Day!

This pear has nothing to do with the title. I just wanted to show it as I am happy with how it turned out. It's done in an old journal I made for a class so the page had white spatters on it and in another spot some really ugly bleedthroughs. First I drew a graphite pencil sketch and then used colored pencil to color it in. I made the pear in response to a green challenge and now have the challenge of finishing my journal page to work around the ugly spots or to incorporate them.

Mostly I just want to shout out "it's raining, it's raining"! Not a deluge by any means but over 1/4 inch to be sure and maybe 1/2 inch. That's a big deal for us here in the desert. Of course it also means all the little weeds are going to grow and then make stickers that attach to my dogs, gets transferred to the carpet and maybe my bed or bathrobe and that part is no fun at all but still, it's raining!

Valentine Class

I just finished a mini class with Laure Ferlita which was about making cards for Valentine's Day. These are what I came up with. The one with the cupcake was finished in PS Elements but first I made the cupcake painting. All the rest were made as watercolor originals. It was fun and if you want to join in check out Imaginary Trips. A new tour is leaving very 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.

Mail Day!

Aren't I the lucky one? Helena of Creating a Likeness blog from England sent me these things for my birthday which is coming up very soon. She makes some very nice cards which she sells but I didn't have to buy mine! The booklet is so cute too. I have to show it to my granddaughters as I bet they'd love to try to make one like it. I don't have butterflies as pretty as these but they'll make do.

I am lucky to have Helena as a blog friend. There have been a couple of times in the past couple of years when I thought of giving up blogging when I was in a blue funk and then out of the blue, she'd send me an email asking how I was. That got me going again. She sent these photo corners because she remembered me making some once for a project because I didn't have any from the store. Thank you for the birthday gift Helena and for "being there" when I needed it.

Friendship Journal

I took part in a travelling friendship journal for a yahoo group I am in Blissfully Art Journaling. These are the three spreads I made for it. One was to be about me and the other two something about friendship.

The picture I painted was with gouache. The paint lifts very easily when it gets wet so I was going to spray it with fixative. I tried the fixative first on a different gouache page and it worked fine except the spray wouldn't quit spraying until the can was empty. So for this tea time painting I was goint to use some UV acrylic finishing spray from Krylon that I had. Hmmm, three big blobs hit my page before I could stop them. This time I got no spray; the stuff just bubbled out of the can till it was empty. I don't know if my cans were too old, too cold (the house was between 66 and 68 degrees) or what but I even went and found my spray bottle of hairspray I've had for a few years but couldn't get it to do anything but shoot a heave stream rather than a fine mist. So, the page is going to go as is, with three horrid blobs on it. Thank goodness they didn't blur the paint under them.

Do any of you ever seal a gouache or watercolor page in your journal? I have only done it as a trial effort and on a painted cover to a journal. I figure they don't usually get wet but when the journal is going to someone I don't know, I just wanted to be safe.

Wow, Another Page!

I got a new bird yesterday. Actually I got him a little over a week ago but when he didn't eat for 4 days and was sitting on the bottom of the cage, not even on his feet, I took him back. I was so happy to hear they'd take him straight to the vet. We hear such awful stories about the treatment of animals in stores and mills. When I called back later the manager told me the vet thought he'd make it and it was mites that were the problem. She said she'd put my name on him when she got him back so I could rebuy him. Then she took ALL the canaries for treatment. This was at PetCo so they really do take care of the animals.

Because I missed him after I took him back to the store I made a Zentangle with him. Now that I've got him back I made a journal page that I had pre-prepped with paint, about him. The zentangle is there rather than his picture. Now that I think about it, I should have had both picture and zentangle. Oh well, I guess I'll have to do another page sometime.

By the way, he is doing great now. He's hopping all over the place, eating the veggies I put in the cage and his seeds. He's even done some chirping. Cross your fingers he stays this way!

Helena ( Creating a Likeness )offered to make me some photo corners and I thank you for the offer Helena. As you can see, I made a couple for this picture and they are much larger than the punch cuts out. I appreciate your offer so much though.

Doves

I've made a new collage page for my journal. I found the feather yesterday. I hesitated in reaching for it in the midst of a few bushes since I've seen two rattlesnakes this year in my garden areas so far but I didn't see any so got it and put it in my journal.

I sure wish I'd known about this kind of journaling back when my kids were little. Back then they had baby books but that meant answering the questions in it and adding pics and that didn't work for me. I didn't like the questions and couldn't afford the pics - that was before digital cameras which I consider to be one of the top inventions of our time. So, many memories are lost from that time but I hope not to lose all of my present days.

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.

Surgery Over

Hi everyone. My husband came through his surgery just fine. No heart attack, no extra blood loss even though it was described as a difficult extraction. Too much info? That's okay 'cause that's all there is. Now we are on to healing and then me getting back to more of my art work!

This page was made with torn paper (and a bit of cutting) collage. I did it while waiting in the waiting room during the 5 hours of surgery. No, it didn't take 5 hours to make the page. That only took about 15 minutes - about the quickest ever. I had to take the photo with my cell phone so it's a bit blurry.

Tucson VA Hospital

My husband is having surgery soon at the Tucson VA hospital so we had to go down for some pre-ops which ended up including a stay overnight for a cardio-catheterization. I took the opportunity to do a couple of sketches from his 3rd floor room window. It is a beautiful old place and they are keeping it up quite well (the room wasn't so great and the food was inedible but the hospital is lovely).

One sketch is on watercolor paper using watercolor and the other is on some Canson MiTientes brown paper so I used gouache on that one.

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.

BJP Off and Running!

Hooray for me! I finally finished the January Bead Journal Project piece!! I know it's March but I am still happy as I wondered if I'd ever get anything done! I took the project more literally this year. I also want to finish each piece as a stand alone item before starting the next. My beadwork piece is
2 1/4 inches square. I made it to complement fabric I chose for a journal.

When I was done I made a book 5 1/2 x 8 inches. I glued the square of beadwork between a cover board with the square cut out of it and a thin piece of card to back it. This way it is flush with the cover and won't snag putting it in a bookcase or stacking other books on it. I filled the book with drawing paper and watercolor paper. I made 4 signatures wrapping each one in a decorative paper to go with the cover. I'm very happy with how it turned out and hope I don't need to do too much changing or adapting for the next book. If I have my math right and wrote the corrections down I'll be okay!

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

I made a new journal for a workshop I am taking over at a yahoo group called A.R.T. I made it with a bisquick box for the cover. Why a bisquick box? Because I like to bake and more, I liked the colors! I used grosgrain ribbon for the spine so it'd be firm enough for sewing the signatures into but that created a small problem in that the book doesn't stay firmly closed. It works fine; it just doesn't stay shut on it's own but stays open about 1/2 inch. Maybe time will help.

I made four signatures using heavy weight drawing paper as the guide for the size of the book and other pages. The paper was 9x12" so I just folded it in half. I added some MiTientes pages, watercolor and a floral petal paper. I encased each signature in a smaller paper that matched the cover colors and then sewed them into the spine with red pearl cotton. I am happy with it and can't wait to start using it.

Journal Page

I made a new page in my journal celebrating sea glass. Have you ever found any? One beach by my sister's seems to get quite a bit. (The beach is in Oxnard, CA). Several years ago I would walk the beach with her as she walked off the hurt of her husband of 18 years leaving her. I found mostly brown (guess there are lots of brown bottle beer drinkers), some green and on a rare occasion a bit of blue. I also found some white but that wasn't very exciting. So I made an ocean page with some sea glass on it. I really intended to make the sea glass more dominant but it works this way as you have to look for the sea glass just as in real life! Hint: if you click on the page it will enlarge and you can see it easier.

The picture was made with Pan Pastels mostly. I added a bit of sharpie poster pen and white gel pen for the foam, waves and birds (I wish the birds showed up better too). A touch of colored pencil for shading and Pitt Pen for writing.

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.

Inchy

I got my inchie done early this week! The theme from InchybyInch this week is leaves. I looked through my stamps but didn't find anything to fit so I decided to do a leaftangle. It sure looks better when it's just one inch rather than blown up like here.

Back to My Inchies

Over at Inchy by Inch this week the theme is "asia" so I took a stamp from Japan and cut it to fit and collaged on the part that was trimmed off. I added a little fuschia color to the edges and voila! I haven't done any for a few weeks; this ended up being almost instant gratification. Hey, if you need a quick project just try one yourself.

Journal Page

I have made a new journal page in which I added some folk art painting. I haven't done any of that kind of painting in several years so it was quite a stretch for me. I like how it turned out and hope to do some more of it. My journal gives me a place to use this painting now that I don't have furniture or other things I want to paint on.