Bi-Monthly Report

Shall we try for a Quarterly Report next time?  Semi-annual?  Heck, let’s just jump right to Annual!  Or . . . maybe not.  I don’t really want to lose all my readers – all three of you that are left, anyway!

I’m going to skip the excuses (there are many) and get right to showing what I’ve done recently – of which there are many as well!

Quilts:

This was a kit from the local quilt shop.  I’ve had it for awhile, but it went together pretty fast once I decided to work on it.

This is from a pattern called “Take Five On-point”.  The package says you take 5 minutes to choose 5 fabrics and in 5 hours you’ll have a finished top.  Well, it took more like 10 hours, but that included coffee breaks and gossip time, so I’m thinking that’s about right!

This table runner was a quick project after a friend showed us how to layout charm squares for a simple runner.  I wanted something for Fall and I happen to have this charm pack from a Shop Hop – who knows when!  For awhile I was buying charm packs a lot, until I realized I didn’t know what to do with them!  I’m getting more ideas now.

Art Journal Emporium:

August was pretty busy, but things slowed down in September somewhat.  At least in my Art journal!  Here’s a couple of exercises from Pam Carricker’s “Creating Art at the Speed of Life”

Digital Scrapping:

Dolls & Other Things:

A couple of projects from my doll club’s August and September meetings.  Top picture is my box “totem”.  We collaged and embellished boxes or square cubes with symbolism that had a personal meaning.  I made mine so there are three storage compartments.  You know – for secrets.  Ha!

The bottom picture is two cone dolls.  These are literally cardboard cones that I’ve collaged onto.  We had a selection of clay faces to choose from, and multiple face molds.  I used several of the molds and I have a couple more cones, so I can do more dolls.  These are too much fun!

That’s about it.  Two months gone by in a rush – but fun projects got done anyway!

Want to see what I’m working on next?

It involves this fabric.  The fuchsia flowers match the trim in my sewing room.  Sarge was sooo nice to paint it since he really dislikes fuchsia! 

Now to get back to sewing and scrapping!

A Peek at my Worktable

You might look at this and call it a mess.  I call it multi-tasking!

Let’s see . . . I have files being unzipped and imported on the laptop, an Art Journal Emporium Book Club lesson, raffia being made into bows for a future project, my art journal open to an in-progress page, and some polymer clay being conditioned. 

 

Here is my finished journal page.  Yep.  Actually finished one.  I also finished importing files, but I can’t really show that.  Not nearly as interesting.  The jury is still out on the raffia bows – not sure if I’ll use them yet or not.

As for the polymer clay – what I’ve got to show so far is red hands!  Red is the worst color for rubbing off on skin and other clays.  Black is pretty close, now that I think about it.  Not working with black today -– that would really look bad on the hands! 

So . . . how was your day?

10 of 10

Maybe I should start with a little background.  Last year I was a member of the Art Journal Caravan, led by Tangie Baxter.  Sadly 2014 was the last year for that journey (the badge in the side panel still works, but you can’t get into anything at that URL now).  BUT – this year Tangie has a new website and a new adventure called Art Journal Emporium and, of course, I am a member there.  Someday I will remember to add that badge to my side panel!

So . . . one of the projects for AJE was to do a series of ten artworks about the same subject.  I chose Houses.

Looking through my journaling scrapbooks and inspiration files, I found tons of pictures I had cut out, sketched, and saved of houses of all kinds – victorian houses, run-down houses, fairy houses, cottages, and hillsides filled with houses.  Hmmm.  Perhaps I have a thing about houses, huh?
Alright, let’s see what I came up with:






House 1 of 10
First I had a rummage through my stamp collection.  Can you believe I only had ONE house stamp?  Well, the only solution is to use it a lot on this spread in my journal.

House 2 of 10

I love Victorian style houses with their “gingerbread” and shutters.  I drew this one from my imagination, but there are some “Painted Ladies” in my town that I need to get photographed and sketched some day.

 

 

 

  House 3 of 10

This one is a little different.  I collaged this house using magazine pictures.  The house itself is from an article on handbags!  It was a lot of fun cutting out random shapes and figuring how they would become parts of a house.

House 4 of 10

There was a crooked little man who lived in a crooked little house.  I went a little wild with some of the crooked-ness.  I seriously doubt anyone wants to stand on that balcony!  I used Copic markers and Sharpie for this drawing.

 

 

House 5 of 10

This little fairy house was from an old catalog.  I scanned it into my computer and did a digital layout.  I used elements from Tangie Baxter and Rebecca McMeen (Tangie’s talented mom).

 

House 6 of 10

Another digital layout.  I have had these cool houses since I first started playing with digital art, but never got around to finding a use for them.  Well, I can’t say that anymore!  The collection is called Cosmopolitan by Maya.

House 7 of 10

I think this was the most fun to do!  Another idea I had cut out and saved, these houses are based on the legend of Baba Yaga.  She lived in a house with chicken feet.  I grabbed some felt scraps and started playing.  It actually stands by itself – amazing!

 

 

House 8 of 10

Another place I have been collecting houses is the designs for my Silhouette Cameo cutter.  Time to choose one and actually use it!  The details (shadows, grass, etc.) is done with Copic markers.

House 9 of 10

Almost done.  This time I made an Artist Trading Card (ATC).  Partly because the houses are pretty small, and partly because I was saving time for the Big Finish!  The image is from a needlework catalog.  I’d love to stitch this pattern, but I doubt I’ll get to it in this lifetime!

House 10 of 10

TaDa!  Last, but certainly not the least.  When I realized I had only one house stamp I did the only sensible thing – buy more!  Fortunately,  Barbara at Joggles.com has just released some new stamps, including some houses.  So now I can do houses whenever I want to!  I stamped them onto multi-media paper and colored them in using copic markers (I really love those markers!) and watercolor pencils.  I put Scor double-sided tape on the back before cutting them out.  It was pretty easy to just stick them down on a prepared background and – bingo – ten house artworks!



This was the first time I’ve tried working in a series.  Not my usual style, given my scatter-shot approach to most things.  I had fun – and I hope you’ve enjoyed seeing the results.

Dear Little Blog,

So, here we are – more than a month since my last post!  I’ve thought of you, dear little blog, but there doesn’t seem to be a lot of excitement about writing.  You see, people change and little blogs need to change sometimes, too.  It’s my fault, really.  My interests have been moving into new areas.  This isn’t a bad thing.  In fact, I’ve been having a lot of fun learning new things, making messes, and so on.

When I started writing, this little blog was all about making dolls and sewing and happy crafty endeavors.  Then we shifted into quilting and sewing little bits of fabric together to make bigger bits.

And now, I am moving into a more artistic phase.  I am doing an awful lot of work on my computer, as well as on paper.  And I find myself “scrapping” photos – something I swore I would never do!   OK, I think we’ve established that change happens!

So, in the future there will be more posts of the Art Journal variety.  Oh, don’t worry – there will still be dolls and the occasional quilty post.  But, if I am going to keep you alive, little blog, we will have to make room for the news things, too.

In that spirit, here are some Artist Trading Cards (ATCs) I’ve been working on this month.  An online group (Tangie’s Art Journal Emporium) gives us a one-word prompt for each day to do our Daily Art Dose.  Some people draw pictures, one is working on lettering – I am making ATCs.

These have been a lot of fun to create.  I’m sure there will be more to show you as the months go by.  I have a few other things coming up, too, so stay tuned.

So, I’m sorry you’ve been lonely, little blog.  Let’s start over and see what new things we can discover together.  OK?

Adventures in Art Journaling

I uploaded photos from my camera today – and found a lot of pix of my journaling explorations!  Guess I should upload more often!

I started in a new sketchbook/journal with a plain black cover.  That just won’t do!  So I used a couple of stencils, some molding paste, an oil pastel stick, and voila!  I love it, but next time I won’t use molding paste on something that is moved around a lot.  I’m finding little white pastey things all over the place!

Here’s a couple of the pages I’ve done so far.  One thing I want to do this year is use my Silhouette Cameo more often.  I have been collecting TONS of shapes, but not doing very much with them.  So, I’m trying to cut at least one shape a week and do something with it.  I experimented with cutting some stamps (the ‘January’, ‘create’, arrow, and figure) with mixed results.  It seems to be better with large stamped areas.  I love the arrow stamp, though.  Definitely worth the hassle!

I decided I needed another, smaller, journal for an online class I’m taking.  For this one, I cut up a large “doodle” page for the cover and bound some watercolor paper and drawing paper as the pages.

It’s simple, but colorful!  Just the right size (9”x6”, give or take) and I keep it next to my easy chair, handy for the class exercises and other doodling.  A small bit of Velcro keeps it neatly closed.  What would we ever do without DeMestral’s invention?

And the first thing I did was doodle a mandala!  I used a box of crayons I picked up some time ago, but had never opened.  I love playing with new crayons!!  You can see I also made a list of 10 things that inspire me . . . still working on number 10!  It’ll come to me.

And that page I cut up for the cover?  There’s a lot left, so I cut some of it into ATC sizes.  Ready made backgrounds for when the Muse strikes.  And there’s still some of the page left for future projects.  Yes, it was a Large page!

So that’s one of the things I’ve been doing lately.  Maybe I’ll remember to take pictures of my other projects some day.  Oh yeah – and upload from the camera!

Something a Little Different

Lately I’ve been exploring more paper arts, including journaling techniques.  Strathmore is offering some free on-line classes and I signed up for one called “Doodles Unleashed” taught by Traci Bautista.

We spent the first couple of weeks exploring ways to make interesting backgrounds and trying different mark making tools.

I enjoyed playing with watercolors and really like the effect of “salting” the wet drawing to get a mottled look.

Then we layered doodles and more paint, and more doodles!  I’m not sure about this as a whole piece, but I can foresee cutting it up for collage later.  I really like the two leaves at lower left.

This is from the last lesson and I am pretty happy with it.  Of course, I love drawing faces . . . and I love purple!  So how could I not love this?

Then, while waiting for paint to dry (ho hum!) I watched a different video about carving your own stamps.  So I got busy and produced this pelican stamp.  I’ve been thinking about using the pelican in some art work anyway, and there was all that blue paint left over!

It’s good to take a break from fabric and stretch some of my other skills.  And it sure is fun to make a big ole mess!  LOL!!!!!