Artful Journeys - Week 13

This weeks prompt was damn near the death of me!!!  For our prompt at Artful Journeys we had - Northern Lights/Stars.  Now I love the Northern Lights.  Would love to go see them!  Painting them however, proved too much for my limited talents and abilities, so I dropped back to the Stars part of our prompt.  I must have tried painting the Northern Lights at least 30 times, and every time my paintbrush went flying across the room in frustration.  My dog could have done a better job trying to paint them, and she is NOT a smart dog...doesn't possess any real talent, and gives no indication, on most days, that there is even a working brain in her head (much like me after a day of teenagers fighting).  So I did what I always do when I need some inspiration and a kick start.....I went to Google!  I started by searching for "nebulas"...and found a SUPER cool infra red pic of the Eagle Nebula...and I got to work!  Here is the picture I used for my inspiration....Gorgeous, isn't it?  And of course, it's just my color scheme!

 So, I started with Liquitex Basics in Mars Black and covered both pages in my small Dylusions journal.  Then, I flicked some watered down Basics in Titanium White all over before adding anything else.

 Here, I've gone in with Amsterdam in Turquoise, using my large round brush by Dina Wakley and began slowly adding my colors...this was by no means a quick spread.  All  told it took almost 3 hours from start to finish...that's a lot of painting time for me...lol

Here it is with most of the turquoise done....

The turquoise is done, and now I went back in with Diox purple (Basics) and began the process all over with that.

As is par for the course, I got caught up in what I was doing and forgot to take pictures as I started each new color, but I also added Basics Med. Magenta, Quin Magenta, and Bright Aqua Green.

Then I came back with some pearlescent acrylic ink and some watered down Titanium White and flicked it at the spread again.

I discovered, during the flicking process, that I suck at flicking...lol.    I got more paint on me, the laptop and the dining room table than I did the damn spread, but I did finally get what I felt was an adequate amount of "stars" onto the paper.

Then last, but not least, using a black water based Sharpie paint marker, I added a quote that just made me smile....

I was informed that I don't use my own writing enough, so I did....lol.

And there you have it!  My take on Week 13's prompt!  I hope you enjoyed it, and thanks for stopping by to look.  Please share some blog love and tell your friends to come on by, too!

Later, y'all!

Artful Journeys Week 12 and more

So, this week we have the prompt "Spring"!  BUT...there's a catch!  NO FLOWERS!!!  Yup, you read that right...No flowers...the idea being to think outside of the box for this week's prompt...and so I did...I didn't just think outside the box, tho, I thought higher...

Here's what I used:

• Liquitex Basics in Titanium white, Mars Black, Burnt Umber and Light Blue Permanent
• Underpaper
• 1" flat brush and a No. 1 round for details
• Uhu glue stick
• Dina Wakley Scribbly Birds stamps
• Archival ink pad in Jet Black

I started in a large book that I have turned into an altered book...I wanted a BIG spread for this one, and this book (an old discarded Conservatory coffee table book was just the ticket) I found at my local library for CHEAP.   I grabbed a stack of underpapers and got busy stamping birds all over the parts I really liked, then cut them all out...I didn't get too fussy with my cutting, as I honestly just didn't want to, plus fussy cutting all those feet would have gotten somebody stabbed with my good scissors.

My stack of underpaper birdies!

So, in the book, I painted my background using my 1" flat brush by Dina Wakley, using Light Blue Permanent and Titanium White.  I wanted the sky behind the birds to look soft and fluffy and "spring"y!  Two of the things I love about spring are the skies and the birds and I love that I got to combine them in this spread.

My sky for my birdies!  Loved how this one turned out.

Next I used burnt umber and mars black for the poles and lines for the birds...

I even made sure to add some detail to the poles...something I would have neglected just 6 months ago.

With that done, I could focus on my beautiful little birds, and getting them put down....this is where my glue stick came in....tho when I do this for my daughter on a canvas, I will be using gel medium instead of  a glue stick.

Aren't they just adorable?!?!!??  And check out this little guy close up!

I absolutely love making my own collage elements from my underpaper and will most certainly do it every chance I get.  Feel free to send me yours! lol

Now, here's a pic of a spread I'm currently working on in my large Dylusions journal....

Dylusions paints, Liquitex paints, Dina Wakley stamps and pieces of happy mail under it all.  I don't really know where it's going just yet, but I'm loving it so far.

And there you have it!  My take on the week 12 prompt and my background...there is some other stuff, but since it's swaps....you don't get to see yet....
Thanks for stopping by and please, leave me some blog love to let me know you were here and what you think!

Saran Wrap???

Yes, Saran Wrap!  I remember a LONG time ago, I got to repaint the kitchen in our first house...our house...And I did the walls (there weren't a lot, and most of it was cabinets...using a wad of painters plastic to apply my lighter color over my darker color. I loved how it turned out!!  This prompt reminded me of that, and I had a LOT of fun creating my background...then I had some more fun throwing stuff down on top of it...so let's get to it, shall we???

I opened up my journal to a pair of pages that I had just glued map scraps and strips down on....that was it....just map pieces...covering all of the two pages!  Then I pulled out my Dylusions paints in Fresh Lime and Mowed Grass and got busy...I balled up some saran wrap and started getting messy, putting Fresh Lime down first....my thinking being, that Lime is pretty bright, and my overcoat of Mowed Grass will temper it a bit....and it did!

As usual, I got caught up in creating, and forgot to take pics until I had the background itself finished, but you get the idea....lol

I had to work fast and still make sure not to get too much in any one place.  Here are a couple of closeups....

I came back at it with some Liquitex Basics in Titanium White and Brilliant Yellow Green and just used my fingers to smudge some around...Just to break things up a bit...So, while I waited for that to dry, I ran the steam cleaner, fixed myself a snack, and pondered what to do next....lol.

Texture!  It needed more texture....so I grabbed a piece of plastic canvas and the Vibrant Turquoise and went to work...

Visible, but not overpowering...then I grabbed my roll of drywall mesh tape and laid a piece out onto my craft mat and used a makeup sponge to paint it with the Mowed grass...then I just picked a random spot, using the "hover it over the page" method, moving it around until it "fit", and put it down.

I loved how it gave some added dimension without being too bulky...so glad I got me a roll of that awesome stuff...it'll be getting used again soon!

So next, I used my Vibrant Turquoise and a brayer to roll some paint out over a piece of patterned paper, then cut out 3 circles which I glued down.  

One of my circles before I did "more".

So, I went around the circles with china marker and smudged the hell out of it with my fingers....I did NOT realized getting a china marker to smudge when you WANT IT TO was so damn hard!!!  Gah! Talk about an awesome arm workout!  But after a little work and a lot of elbow grease, I got it smudged to my satisfaction!  But now I was stuck again...so I had a smoke, played a game on my phone, then came back in and stared at it for a minute...marks!  Stamps!  More turquoise!So, I grabbed some paint and put down a couple more circles...just freehand, or should I say free-finger, since I only used one finger to paint the extra circles?  While one of the circles was still wet, I used the handle of a palette knife to "write" in it.  The other circle was dry so I "wrote" on it with a pen.

this is the one I used the palette knife on....I like how it turned out!

Then I dug out some script stamps and stamped all over, although part of the stamps are hard to see head on, and here's why.......

A pale, shimmery blue Brilliance stamp pad...I love sneaking that in there, so that it is only seen from certain angles....like a hidden treasure.  I then used my black archival pad for some more script, but sparingly....I didn't want it to take over my page.

Next I dug out my handcarved stamp bucket and started pulling out stamps...then went to town with them....but still, it looked nekked....lol...So I added the "Laugh, Live and Love" to my circles, and BAM!!!!!!!  it was done!

Here's a shot of the finished spread!

And there you have it...my take on Paint it Green using a paper bag or saran wrap!

But, while I've got you here, lemme show you what else I did this week!

This spread was created using a brayer to lay down Dylusions blendable acrylics in Lemon Zest, Squeezed orange and Bubblegum Pink...I then did a tip in using the cover of the Anthropologie catalog I got in the mail.

Dylusions ink sprays in Polished Jade, Mowed Grass, Vibrant Turquoise and Calypso Teal...I splattered water on it before and AFTER it was dry, then did a little ghosting with the Dylusions Bubbles stencil...I do good splatter, but my ghosting needs work, I think...lol.

Dylusions inks in Squeezed Orange, Tangerine, Bubblegum Pink and Funky Fuchsia...Ghosting done with my new Dylusions small flower stencil

Same color combo as the spread above, with water splatters before and after the spread was dry.
But on this one, I used modeling paste thru my Bubbles stencil in the corners for a little added
texture.  

And then there's this spread....I love this spread!  It's great!  Almost!
See, I did a lot of scraps underneath the paint, including glossy magazine pages.  Normally this isn't an issue for me, because the papers I use aren't too glossy but these were, and now the paint sticks and peels away from the magazine scraps when I open it...I had to stick a piece of parchment paper between the pages to keep it from getting totally ruined :(.  Note to self...if that under paper is slick put some gesso on that shit before you paint it!)

Here are a closeups of each side of the spread.....

So there you have it...my week in a nutshell (almost...but some stuff has to stay a secret until it reaches it's partner...lol)

Thanks for stopping by and taking a look...leave me a little love, would you please, so I know you were here?  Thanks, y'all!

Week 10 - Clocks

This week's prompt is "Clocks" - since Daylight Savings Time starts now, and I thought it was kind of a neat way to celebrate it....Who doesn't love longer days?  More daylight?  The promise of warmer weather?  And so in honor of that, I came up with this spread....

I started with a background I created using the Dylusions Blendable Acrylics in Fresh Lime, Vibrant Turquoise and Crushed Grape, using a brayer to spread those luscious colors all over a pair of pages in my large Dylusions journal.  

Looks kinda wonky, I know....but this is the only pic I have of it before I started working on it and the lighting is weird...it did NOT look that horrendous before I attacked it again...lol.

So, I dug out some "text" stamps...one is just a background stamp by Stampabilities, and the other is a Dina Wakley Mixed Media stamp on loan to me from my dear friend, Lynn, and using my black archival stamp pad, got to stamping all over the page.  I did this because when I started I wasn't too sure where I was going to use the stencil, and I wanted to make sure there was text peeking thru....

So, using one of my trusty make-up sponges, I got busy with my stencil....Ya know, one of the things I love about the new Dylusions paints is not just how well they go down, or how smooth they are when I'm finished, but also how fast they dry and how little is actually needed to get the job done!  It's fantastic!  So, I started moving my stencil around the outer edges of the pages until I had this!

But, there was just something off to me about how this looked...I couldn't figure it out right away, so I set it off to the side to give my brain a chance to step away.  A few minutes later, it hit me!  Those edges!  The one drawback to the Tim Holtz Stencils is the fact that they are skinny...so all the clocks have a hard edge on the inside of the spread that I didn't like...so time for more Black Marble and my sponge....a few minutes later and I had this!

I just took the paint "into" the stencil and "roughed up" the edges a bit....Ah!  MUCH better!  But, stuck again!  What to do now?  Set it to the side, ask a group of dear friends what they think, and wait...

After a lot of searching, I found a quote that KIND OF matches what I wanted to convey...and with my trusty Uniball Signo white broad point pen, I wrote it out and call it finished....

Now, to share with you some other things that I have completed/started this week:

First is an altered CD that I sent out in a swap....

I had a lot of fun putting it together, tho I have to say that getting the flowers to cooperate was a real pain in the ass...lol.

Then there were some backgrounds that I worked on in my journal as well:

This was made using some Tim Holtz tissue, Quin Magenta by
Liquitex Basics, Dylusions Blendable Acrylic in White Linen
Prima Damask Stencil and a makeup sponge.

This background was created with Liquitex Basics in Quin Magenta
and Titanium White, Amsterdam acrylics in Cad Red Light Hue, a
1" flat brush, and 3 different stencils...one Dyan Reaveley, one
Crafters' Workshop and one Heidi Swapp.

This background was done with the new Dylusions blendable acrylics
in Fresh Lime, Squeezed Orange, Vibrant Turquoise, Crushed Grape,
Bubblegum Pink and Black Marble for the stencil (can't remember
the brand of the stencil, but it was a 12x12).

Dylusions paint in Vibrant Turquoise and White Linen for the
stencils, the butterflies by Crafter's Workshop and the
Damask by Prima.

Dylusions in Fresh Lime and Vibrant Turquoise. 

This one might be one of my absolute favorites...Dylusions paints
in Squeezed Orange, Crushed Grape, Bubblegum Pink and Black
Marble...Prima stencil.  The paints were applied with a brayer.

So, there you go...a brief rundown of my week as a whole...sort of...lol. 

I hope you enjoyed it all and thanks for looking!

AJ Week #9 - Your favorite quote

This week's prompt should have been easier for me to complete, but it wasn't.  In fact, it was downright hard.  Namely because there are so many quotes that really speak to me.  However, as many of you know, life isn't always butterflies, rainbows and fluffy puppies....no, sometimes, life is absolutely shitty and ugly.  

Most of you know me as one who's always got a funny line, or a happy, cheerful disposition, but that's not actually always the case.  We all wear masks, and often times, they are the exact opposite of what is really going on in our lives/minds.  Now, that's not to say, that this quote reflects how I always feel, but the last couple of weeks have been a battle of memories, pain and anger.  So, when this week's prompt came around, I couldn't ignore the war raging inside me.  I had to get it out on paper and put it out there for the world to see.

As a survivor of mental, physical and emotional abuse, combined with a family history of depression and bi-polar disorder, there are days when I wake up in a total, all-encompassing red haze of anger, bordering on rage.  Days when the sound of my children breathing, my husband snoring, gets on my last, badly frayed nerve.  Those are the days when I have to work especially hard not to do or say things that I will later regret.  Those are the days when I have to eat it all and work at being the good wife and mother that I want to be most other days.  Sometimes it's just a day...other times, there are days, even weeks, when I have to eat the pain, the hurt, the anger, the rage, and move with slow and deliberate effort thru my day, to ensure that I am the only one who has to deal with it. 

So, here is my response to this week's prompt:  Your Favorite Quote

This week I pulled the following supplies out of my cart:

Soft rubber brayer

Liquitex Basics in: Cadmium Red Deep, Alzarin Red and Mars Black

Dylusions Blendable Acrylic in Black Marble

Large Dylusions journal

Moleskine graphed paper

Sharpie Med. point pen

Uhu glue stick

Scraps of various papers

Washi tape

Various rubber stamps - purchased and hand carved

I started with a previously painted background that I was NOT happy with and began gluing down my paper scraps to cover it up and give myself a fresh "canvas" to work on.  Then I began laying down paint using a brayer technique (a photo tutorial of this can be found on the Artful Chicks blog under the "Artful Tactics" heading).  To get the coverage I wanted, and the balance of color, I had to do a LOT of layers of color.  Then, for extra effect, I grabbed my black and used my fingers to add some extra smears of black.  Then I laid down some pieces of washi, and using red and black paint, pulled out my stamps, and stamped a few images for textural effect.  

While my paint was drying, I got out my sharpie pen and graphed paper and wrote out my quote, drawing rectangles around each individual word to make them pop just a little more.  Once I had the words torn out, I began shuffling them around my spread until I had them where I wanted them, then I glued them down onto the spread.

Here are some pics - I got caught up in the creating and forgot to take my process pics of my spread as I went....sorry.  

This is the full shot of the entire spread...it's hard to see the red stamps unless you're right on top of it.

And here are some close-up shots:

And there you have it....a peek into my head during a rough week.  Thanks for looking.

Beauty

So this week our prompt is "Things you think are beautiful".  And since we have creative license to interpret these prompts any way we like, I went, what I thought was a different route....I used things I'd received in swaps for my beautiful things....Notes from partners/friends, atcs, tags, various little bits and bobs that get included with the actual art....I love it all...even the envelopes!  So, I dug into my new Dylusions paints, using turquoise, black and white, and just used a fat brush and large swaths of paint to create the background....I didn't want it too busy because I didn't want my goodies to get lost....

Then I began adding all my goodies....a note card from Patty, a little card from Tamie, with a personal note written inside, a die cut pig and a couple of envelope parts from Lynny, and ATC from Andie, tag from Deborah, a circle from a previous swap, but since it was floating around in the bottom of my goodie box, I'm not sure who sent it....a felt cupcake from another member of our mail art group, but as it was also out of it's envelope, I honestly don't know who sent it.  OH!!!  And a paper doily from Martha!  I love this so much, I think I am going to have to make some more pages of just mail goodies!

So, there you have it!  Things like this, are the things I believe are beautiful....little pieces of my friends hearts

Mardi Gras

Seems like every prompt I have done ahead I have ended up tossing into my "shit" pile. And of course this weeks was no exception. But I hated the first one before I was done and time did NOT change my opinion of it. Maybe it was trying to make the purple and green work together in harmony (not sure how the hell I was supposed  do that) but it was hate.  Like of a thousand burning suns kind of hate. So, nothing sparks creativity like a looming deadline and at 6 this morning it hit me. So out came my Inktense pencils and my metallic pens and the baby wipes. 

So I laid down color with the pencils. Just 3,  fuschia, mauve and violet. Then taking a gentle hand with a baby wipe, I smoothed the color all over the page.   Once it was dry, I took my metallic pens to it and just wrote "mardi gras" all over and drew "beads" all over.  Basic, simple but I don't hate it. In fact, I really like it.