Inspirational Reading

I thought tonight I 'd put up some books that I've been reading for art inspiration.
The First is Collage Unleashed. This has got some amazing techniques and Traci's hand-drawn sketches are enough to inspire me to try my hand at doodling again.
The next is the Creative Liscence by Danny Greggory. While I am not a draw everything girl, I do find his attitude and approach to be inspiring. I agree with his underlying philosophy that you have to make art every day and learn to quiet that inner critic.
For you altered book fans here is a new little collection of books all house shaped. This book is a bounty of lovely images that are sure to get your creative mojo going. I keep thinking about Mike's set of wood shaped house books over at Coffee Break Designs. I think there's a house shaped book in my future.

Lastly, is the Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. I've always loved poetry, but my love affair with Emily was something that came about in my adulthood. I read her when I was younger and thought "ehhh." But then a few years ago I found a poem by her and fell head over heels for her. There is something about her words that just work for inspiring me. You should try reading her sometime and if you do, be sure to let me know which of her poems you love!
I'll be back with more art tomorrow.

Book Cover and a little Music

I spent part of the day yesterday creating a cover for my new art journal. I used alcohol inks to color the washers. You should have seen the look the clerk at the hardware store gave me when I told him what I needed the washers for. He must have blinked about ten times and then said "A book??" Anyway, I used a square punch to get the little colored back grounds behind them and then glued them down. The swirl stamp is by Rhonna Ferrar, which I colored in with gel pens.

In other news, I finally figured out how to embed a music player in my blog. It's set up so that you have to click on it to get it to play. I'm planning on changing my music selection about once a month--so have a listen!
:)

10 Day Journal Project

Exactly 10 days before we were set to move I went to the mailbox to discover a package waiting for me. I was confused because I knew I hadn't ordered anything and didn't recognize the sender's address. But low and behold it was the 10 day journal project. Serendipity is running this on-going art project where she sends you a journal for 10 days and you work in it and send it back. At the end of this year all the journals are going on display in a gallery show. She has a sign-up on her website but the catch is that you have no idea when the journal is going to come--you just sign -up and wait. Well, you can imagine my reaction when I got it. There was a lot of swearing involved. I'd planned on packing up my art supplies first so that there would be no distractions. So I revised my plan and started working on the journal. Since we were preparing to move I decided to do work about that. Here are the pictures of my completed work. I did five pages in total. One every two days--which wasn't bad considering that I was packing and cleaning and calling utilities and all that other nonsense that has to be done, in between my art. So after you're done looking at my stuff you should take a look at Serendipity's site and think about signing-up yourself. Just beware that the it'll probably arrive at the worst possible time--like while you're giving birth or in the middle of a hurricane or negotiating peace in the middle-east. Or all three all at once.

Last of the Faerie Pages

We've had family in from out of town and things here have been crazy between that and looking for a new house. But I managed to get all my design team work finished and have the last two pages from my faerie book to post tonight. I cut off the scan of the last page and didn't realize it until I went to load the photo tonight.
Ah well. You will still be able to see it well enough.

Another Page

I am plodding along in my effort to get my little fairy book done. Here is another page that I did this weekend. The background is a piece of scrapbook paper and I stamped the little "Make a wish" phrase and went over it with glitter pens. Hopefully I'll have several more pages to post tomorrow. It's my goal to have it all done by Friday so I need to get to work!

Journal Page and some photos

Here is a spread from my art journal. It took me forever to get this page right. I must have painted over and wiped paint off six different times. But I am pleased with the results. The evidence stamp is by Cat's Life Press. Here are some pics from our ATC meeting. Here are the ladies swapping.

And here we all are.

Monoprinting

You are going to be so jealous of me, you're not even going to be able to see straight for all the green envy! I learned a couple of new monoprinting techniques today. And it was the most fun I've had at an art class in a long while!
So here is the lovely and incredibly talented Ariane, showing off all the different types of monoprinting that she knows how to do.



Here we are starting out, putting our stuff onto the transparency sheets. I love how bright and cheerful all the drops of color look.

And here we have a finished product. What you can't tell from the photo, is that it looks EXACTLY the same on the front as it does on the back. It really is such a fun technique.

Here is a picture of all of our creations laying out to dry.


See, aren't you jealous? You know you are.
You want to learn how to do the technique? Go over to the Indiana Altered Books Group website, I'm putting it up there. So go on over and cure your jealousy.

RA-RA-SISK-OM-BAH!

So my journal prompt (that I've been talking about for a few weeks now here) for this week was titled "An accurate Reflection." It was about doing a self-portrait that reflected your inner state more than what you really look like. So, I drew this. It's an image of me as a cheerleader. Mostly, because I've been feeling like everyone in my life is unhappy and I wind up being their cheering squad. And when I sketched this out, I was feeling fed-up with my role. Hence, the cheesy smile and horns. I accidentally cut off my one foot while I was trimming this down, which irritated me in the moment, but now I find it incredibly funny.
The background of this was done with spray paint. You can see I wrote my cheers in all around my portrait, to finish it off.

Working in Sections.

So I've been working with the art journal prompts that I mentioned here, and the prompt for this week was working with lines. The prompt was to draw lines, or create lines to divide up the space in your art journal. Well I started working and came up with this:
Obviously, there are no lines, but I did wind-up dividing the page really differently than I usually do. I started out working with masks to create the boxes and then layered spray-paint. When I was done, I discovered that both pages had three distinct sections, so when I wrote, I used the three narrow sections, and multiple colors of ink. I really like the way that the division of the sections allowed me division of different thoughts. I am off on my trip, so I will be back in a few days with some photographs.

Finished it up

So just a quick post tonight. I was out late with my hubby and I have a ton of things to get done for my art meeting tomorow. I finished up that journal page that I did yesterday and wanted to post the finished porduct minus my writing...this is sort of me poking fun at myself, because when I was kid I was told over and over again what lovely bone structure I had...

A quick post

Here is a little page I created on a whim about why is it that life feels more manageable after I've had a pedicure. I used some spray paint and cut out the little foot. I attached my receipt at the top and was done. So why is it my life feels more manageable after a pedicure? I still have no idea. it just must be one of life's little truths.

A little D.H. Lawrence

So the challenge for this week's artwords is poetry and I chose a poem by D.H. Lawrence. The background page I had made on a whim--I had a page that I didn't like the look of, so I used my square punch and punched it into a bunch of little squares and then thought they would look good on a gold background so that's what I did. Once I was done with it I had no idea what I wanted to put on it. I liked the look so much I didn't want to disrupt the overall feel And then I saw the challenge for this week and thought it would be fun to do it on transparencies. I used a bird stamp from invoke arts. I stamped it on each side of the transparency so that it would face both left and right. The rest is hand drawn with a sharpie.
The poem reads "I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself. A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough, without ever feeling sorry for itself."

Playing with texture

One of the things that I really love about keeping an art journal is that it's a space where I feel free to just play around with stuff. Most of the time I have no plan whatsoever! I've stumbled upon some of my favorite techniques using this process. This spread was created using my haphazard method. I knew I wanted to use old phone book pages, and I wanted a space for my golden girl, and I wanted to test the twinkling h2o's to see if they would stamp onto acrylics. And this is what I wound up with. I love working with phone book pages because of their thin texture, and how the text still shows through after paint has been applied. (If you click on the picture for a close up, you can still see the listings for lawnmowers!) After I crinkled the pages up, I glued them down using gel medium and then dry brushed them with acrylic paints. Once they were dry, I stamped on them a Latin text stamp using twinkling h2os. I think that they took to the acrylic really nicely. The golden girl is attached to the page using a pull-out tab (think pop-up book) so that she can be pulled-up for journaling space. Another one of my creative solutions so that I can have space to write.

Alpha-Jumble

One of the things that I have really been struggling with is the size of my current art journal. It's a lot smaller than my old one--and it's forced me to reevaluate how I attach my photos and drawings. In my old journal there was plenty of room for my embellishments and my writing, but in this one I find myself faced with the same problem over and over again--not enough space to write. After two weeks of messing with it, I have to confess, I was ready to abandon this book and head back to half-price to find something a better size. But I must have some hidden anal-retentive streak (shudder) because I found that I hated the discontinuity of starting a new book and leaving the old one unfinished. So I have been trying to adjust how I attach things, so that they are movable and allow for the maximum of journaling, hence the paperclip.
Anyway, long rambling aside, this page was created using a bunch of layered acrylics, some stencils, and some colorbox chalk inks for stamping. The $500 queen was made using the magazine technique I talked about a few days ago. I think my favorite part of this whole spread is the little bit of text at the bottom of her chin that reads "you have stolen my heart."

Nosy!

So I do like to draw--mostly abstract people. Most of the time they start out as doodles while I'm on the phone or killing time and if I like it, I keep it. So here is one I did, that's in my art journal. It's my representation of a nosy person. The background is a red acrylic dry brushed with copper--although I don't think the metallic shows up much in this scan. The words nosy have been coated with UTEE--I am really loving how it looks wet or glass like when heated. :)

Monthly Challenge+ATC

So I belong to a yahoo altered books group and every month there is a challenge to try out new techniques. This month it was to use fun foam. I cut out the shape, heated it with a heat gun and then while it was still hot, I stamped into it with an alphabet stamp. When it was cool I painted it, rubbed some glitter and a little bit of brown ink onto it, to give it some dimension. I really don't know how I'm going to use it in a spread yet--but I'm sure it'll be one of those things that sits on my table and then one day I see the perfect use for it.

This is an atc I made messing around with UTEE. I've never really used it before--but after seeing how many different uses it has, I'm kind of excited to start playing with it. I painted a pink background, stamped and embossed UTEE, and then washed black paint over it. The guy in the middle is from a Lost Cost Design stamp and the text and paper is from an organic chemistry text book.

Bad Bird

So I absolutely love birds. They are an obsession of mine and it seems that I'm always using them in my work. Here is a spread from my art journal. The background I made using acrylic paints and a monoprinting technique. When it was dry I washed it with a blue metalic paint.
In other news, I'm going to be messing with the template of my blog over the next week or so--so please be patient with my while I make my changes. :)

Altered Tarot Card

Here is a little altered tarot card I made as part of an altered book spread I'm working on. Once I get it into the spread I'll try and put up a picture of the whole thing.