I worked on these Valentines today, and I just thought I would keep them simple! I know, this may not be what you would call simple but for me it is! Not too frilly, but I still like them. As a mater of fact, the pink one is my favorite! Big surprise, right! I love pink! Well, I have started on a new header for my blog, so I am going to work on it now. I just can't stand another day of that plain burgandy header!
Yea! It's M day, and my banner is complete. Here is a photo of the whole thing, but it isn't the best photo so I may redo it tomorrow. I love the way the whole thing looks, sort of girly, well really girly, and I love the colors and the glitter! I really want to thank Lisa at Simple Journeys for coming up with this really fun challenge. I enjoyed working on each letter and trying new ideas. I was just at Lisa's blog, and I read that she has agreed to do another one later in February. The next banner will spell out SPRING, and we will finish it up just before it really is! You don't have to do anything special to join in this challenge. Just leave a comment at Lisa's blog when you have your letter finished, and post a scan or photo on your own blog or on Flickr, or where ever you store your photos online. Well, I am still in Valentine mode, so I am going to try to finish a couple more, and then off to bed. I can't wait to see every one's letters tomorrow!
Hello everyone. Thank you for coming by today. Here is my entry for the Mixed Media challenge. The theme is a house, which I really like. I am wanting to start a house AB soon. Once I sit down to do this challenge though, I got really confused. You know, so many possibilities, so little time! Anyway, I decided on the image of the woman first, and then I just built the house around her. Hey, that's sort of the way it is in real life too! I like that! I used the 5 for the house number, because I like 5s. What can I say....do you have a favorite number that you like to use or draw? Well, now you know my little secret. I make them with my finger when I am nervous too! Well, enough about that! And of course, I want a pretty red bird to make it's home where I live. I used background paper behind the house when I scanned the house in. It adds a lot of color to the scan. Well, I am working on some Valentines that I will scan in tomorrow, but bye for now.
Hello everyone out there! Here is my A in the "DREAM" banner challenge that is hosted over at Simple Journeys by sweet Lisa. I have been gone all day and just got back. I can't believe I had my letter finished ahead of time and I still didn't get to post first today! I really love the way this pennant came out. I love to use floral images in my art, and I am a nut about roses. The woman at the rose bush is one of my favorite images too. The other thing that I really like is the style of the A . The D, R, E, A, and M are all the same font (I can't remember the name of it right now), but the A is the most graceful and beautiful of all of the capitals to me. That is part of art to me. I enjoy taking the time to make sure that my pieces all look like they fit together. When I want more harmony in a piece, I use colors from the same color family (like all reds, light to dark) or colors that are next to each other on the color wheel (like red, red-violet, and blue), and to make a piece more exciting you can use complimentary colors (like green/red, blue/orange, and yellow/purple). When I was first learning about color and color theories, I was totally blown away by it. There is nothing else that is so easy to add to a piece as color, and it has a huge impact on the way your art looks and feels. I love to get out my paints and some copy paper and just play, mixing first one color combination and then another. OK, this teacher is finished for today!! Ha ha! I just can't help myself sometimes! Anyway, I hope you like my letter A. Just one more to go! What's next Lisa?
What a fun challenge this is! It is so funny that the theme today was Inchies at Created by Hand because I was just getting ready to make some new ones after adding one to my Childhood piece. I decided to make the Serendipity 1" squares, and this is how I made them. I took a piece of white card stock and using acrylic medium as glue, I randomly added various papers, a few stickers, and some small images to the card stock until it was completely covered. I used my heat gun to dry, and then I added some glitter glues to some areas. At this point you could also add some stamping over the background. Next, I measured and started making one inch wide strips, and then cut the strips into one inch squares. This made way over 100 squares, and I have some of them in the photos. I could come back now and even further embellish individual ones that I like. The squares can be added to a collage whenever you are needing to add a little something extra, or you could even use a strip as a border. Hope you like these!
Hello all. Hope you are having a good day whereever you live. It is cold here in the Ft. Worth area, and has been for a few days. Maybe that will get some of those darn bugs we are plagued with! I was going to whip something out for the Mixed Media Monday challenge yesterday, and Idecided to do a transfer (the bottom photo). WOW, did that go badly! I love the image I chose and I love the green background too, but a couple of things didn't work out with this piece. I was going to add some more ephemera after I did the transfer, but maybe I should have done that first to lighten the area where the image would be. Then,the image and the background were both pretty dark. The second thing that went wrong was I lost a big piece of the girls face while cleaning up the image after the transfer. I did not let it get dry enough before I started removing the paper that was left over the image. This was an image printed on matt photo paper, and transferred using gel medium. I may try something else with this piece, or I may just chunk it and learn my lesson! The first photo is my entry for the challenge. I found the 5 in my bag of inchies and decided to use it with this charming little girl's face. I have really been into the bright colors lately, and I'm not sure what that is about! Maybe, just wanting some brightness in these gray days we have been having. Anyway, I like this piece okey. I am trying some new compositions out too, and I can really see their strengths and weaknesses so much more clearly when they are on the computer monitor. Isn't that a strange phenonomon? Well, anyway I hope you enjoy my entry and learn from my mistakes!
Today is a beautiful day where I live. It is cool, but the sun is shining, and it is so clear outside and everything still looks so inspiring of the spring that will be here before we know it! Just wish I could get warm inside! I am just cleaning up in my workroom, and catching up on my emails. I love to have the time to do this....well, basically just doing nothing! I had to get a book ready for a new round robin that we started yesterday with my local art group: North Texas Mixed Media. Here is a photo of my book which is about vintage Paris. I have added more photos of my new book to my slide show so please take a look and let me know what you think. Also, if you are reading this and you can't wait to see the next letter in my "Dream" banner, there are more photos of that in my slide show, including a couple of "how to" photos.
I am going to be adding some new images of some Valentine art to my blog soon. I admit I am a hopeless romantic and I know that my artwork reflects that, but making Valentine art is one of my favorite things to do. I was discussing my new RR AB (round robin altered book) with Lisa Vollrath and Livia Hajovsky yesterday, and how happy I was with it that it because 1) it isn't pink and 2) it isn't covered in flowers! I am just stretching my wings a little, and you can too. You don't have to make a major change to what you do, just little changes can make a big difference. Maybe it is that favorite color that you always reach for, or a layout that you overuse. Just let yourself go....ha ha! That is so funny, because I so can not do that, but I will tell you that it really helps me to loosen up the more art I make. I can see a difference in my art since I have been doing more of the challenges. So maybe that would work for you too.
I wanted to send a big ol' Texas thank you to Jeri from The Artful Gathering, and to Linda at The Art Sook, for meeting up with my friend Livia and I on Friday. We met at the Macaroni Grill in Grapevine, and I can tell you I cleaned my plate! WOW that chicken fetachinni was so good. Jeri and Linda were in town for the Rubber Stamp Convention in Grapevine, and Jeri is putting the finishing touches on her Artful Gathering meet up that is planned for July in Grapevine. There will be members from Jeri's group flying in from all over for 3 and a half days of fun, fun, fun with a western theme! I know those girls are going to have a ball!
Here is my second letter in my "DREAM" banner. These banners, or pennants, are fun and easy to make. You can choose any word that has meaning to you and you can use up those scraps of paper and images that you have been saving. I decided to do my letters in glitter to make them pop out a little more from my background. You could use a less busy background for a letter that would stand out even more. I hope you will try one of these banners. I think you will really enjoy making one, and seeing it on display in your space. The easiest way to make the banner shape is to cut a rectangle in the size that you would like, fold it lengthwise. From a top corner draw a straight line to the bottom middle. Do the same thing from the other top corner, and you have a pennant pattern! This one is 6 inches across the top, and about 7 and a half down the sides. One more thing, be sure to put a back on your pennant to add strength to it before you cut holes in the top to run the ribbon through.
Here is my entry for the Mixed Media Monday challenge. The theme this week is Time. I looked around my art room and saw some lovely floral tissue sticking out of the top of a bag, and knew I had my background. I already had the image of the girl printed out and in my stash ready to use. I printed the quote and the butterfly wings, and I was done in just a few minutes. I printed my time quote on pale yellow tissue paper. It is so fun to print on things other than just printer paper! I hope you enjoy! Can you tell that I am pushing for an early spring? I am looking forward to Friday and Saturday this week because I will be meeting up with friends that I have met online through my local art group and through blogging. Life is good today!
Well, I finally did it! Here is my letter "D" for the "Dream" Banner of the Month that Lisa is hosting at Simple Journeys. I love the whole idea of the banner, and I can't wait to see mine finished. I just used some papers and images that I had on hand to complete this letter. The size is 6 " across the top and 71/2 " down the sides. The banner idea has really been catching on especially since there were some beautiful ones created by Pam Garrison and featured in the July/August 2006 Sumerset Studio. I have decided to host a banner letter swap with one of my Yahoo groups. I know they will be beautiful, and I look forward to seeing all of them. Well back to the worktable. I am going to get started on my "R" today!
