I think I have a problem!

One of the side trades in our group was to do a 6" x 6" mixed media piece which included hand stitching. The inspiration came from the challenge posted in Cloth, Paper, Scissors magazine. If we love what we made, then we could in turn, enter it into the challenge.

I was not prepared for how much I would love the size! I have finished four and have another four more in the works!

This one was inspired by all the rain we have had. At the end of my driveway is a small hole that fills with water whenever it rains. I noticed a leaf at the bottom and was intrigued to recreate it. I drew the shape of the puddle first and using tissue paper and gel medium, I created a rock texture around the hole. After it was dry, I used various acrylic paint colors to get the color I wanted. The bottom of the water was painted in dark blue with a wash of brown over it. The leaf was created from a cotton face pad. Did you know you can dye them?!! I have a bunch so cut out a leaf shape and using my sewing machine, I sewed veins. I actually hated the top side and flipped it over. This was much better. A few beads and then dimensional magic by Modge Podge created the water. I love this stuff! I hand sewed a few leaf shape beads on top for the complete finish.

Was playing around with sketching on canvas for this one. Then I was coloring it with oil pastels. You know that point where you hate what you are doing so you cover it up?! Don't lie. OK go ahead. Well I hated it and painted over it with white acrylic paint. Don't you love crazy things like that? I loved the look because some of what I had was still peeking through! So back in with pencil and oil pastels. I loved how it looked! Yes her eyes look cross eyed and one is bigger than the other, but the technique was very cool. I will be trying it again.

So my sister thinks this is creepy because she is green. Well that's because she is a mermaid! In my world, mermaids are green! I sketched her out on the canvas and well yes she is disproportionate too. Try drawing on untreated canvas. Not so easy. I painted her with fabric paints and then sewed in details on my machine. Her eyebrows look like small caterpillars but I still like them. In face reading, big eyebrows indicate intelligence! So she's smart! I added more details with fabric markers and then added dimensional magic all the way around her face. When it dried, I added in rings of the dimensional magic. After that was dried, I used interference blue paint on top and dark blue markers around the edges to create ripples of water. Is she looking up from the water or down at her reflection?

This was actually the first one I made. It was a bit like my ATC I created. This is actually canvas, thin batting and then brown fabric on top. I free motion quilted the rocks and sand. Then using sheer fabrics in brown and blue, I sewed them down to make waves. Using fabric paint, I added details into the rocks and created a sandy section using sand gel medium. Fabric paints finished off the sand. The waves were touched with the interference blue. I wanted to created water sloshing up onto the shore and used, you guessed it, dimensional magic! Interfence paint was applied to the edges of the water waves.

So those are my first four attempts. Stay tuned as more are coming!

June Side Trade - gift tags

Have you ever seen something really cool and think you want to try it. So you go to the store and buy all the materials to make it and then chicken out or just forget about it? No? Me either! Well that's not true. Digging through my supplies, I found packages of different sized gift tags. Whoops. Good thing this challenge came along! So we had to make two different styles to trade. Easy enough. Uh no. It's something new so I have to suffer anxiety over it.

Time to just count out what I need and plow in with materials!

This first set evolved over my dismay at not having achieved a summer day yet! I mean it's almost the end of June and we are barely above 70 this summer! Well my card worked. The projected temps for the next week are in the 90's! 
The sand is from the liquitex sand medium, then dye painted over it. The sky is ink and clouds painted in with acrylic. A hand carved bird stamp and grass stamp complete the look.

Now this tag was a technique driven design. I had some metallic paint from my faux finishing days. It was a sage green color and I troweled it on and stamped into it. That part kind of disappeared. I painted a sunflower yellow ink over the top. Still boring, so I used a stencil in dark purple along the edge, then splattered white acrylic paint with a toothbrush. Next a rubber stamp in sunflower yellow on the opposite side. Dragonfly kept running through my head the entire time I worked on this piece. On a separate piece of paper, I stamped a bunch of dragonflies and used embossing powder in black. When dry, I heat set then colored with markers. I trimmed around the outside edges and glued them to each tag. Still needed just one more element. Black glitter glue to bring out the stenciled dots. That was it. Add a decorative string and ta da!

Gustavo, Georgie and Fib

I finally finished this piece and named it after my daughters three African fighting frogs. This piece has been in the works for over two years. I would get excited about it, work diligently and then hate it. So it would be put away until I would find it again while looking for something else. Up on the design wall, critique and then figure out what was going wrong with it. The last round was the fact I needed something in my underwater landscape. Enter the frogs.

Closeup of one frog

Here is another closeup

Final finished piece

I really love how this finally turned out. There are so many design techniques and materials that went into this that my hand would go numb typing them up for this post. Let's just say I am extremely happy with the results! Maybe I will enter it into the Celebrate Spring call for entries.

On to my next adventures. My one goal for 2013 is to finally put together a website. Another goal is to start entering my pieces into shows. I need to get back to art again.

If April Showers . .

bring May Flowers, what do May Flowers bring? The pilgrims! I still remember that joke from my childhood! Corny but cute. So our latest trade was Rain. Rain as a color really stumped me for quite a while. Well until I realized that it really is clear and picks up the colors it lands on. So I used the idea of a driving rain against a window.

I used a hand dyed fabric I made a long time ago in blues, whites and a pale pink. Details were added with watercolor crayons and water. Once dry, more details were added with fabric markers and then free motion stitching in metallic blue. For the highlights and sparkle I used a scrapbooking product called Stickles in star dust (fancy term for off white!) That had to dry overnight. Additional dimension was created with markers in blues and some pinks. I knew it would be impossible to get the sparkle into the photograph but gave it the old college try. This was as good as it gets unfortunately.

Grateful ATC Challenge

Wow have I been busy! I forgot to post this to my blog (and the trading card blog! Whoops!)
Our theme for November was Grateful which is appropriate for the Thanksgiving season. I struggled trying to find a way to incorporate all that I was grateful for into a small space. When I thought about what I was most grateful, the idea snapped into place. I am grateful for each and everyday that I have to spend with family and friends! (Insert smacking of forehead here) Here is the link to all the grateful ATC entries: http://artsinthecards.blogspot.com

I used cardstock and colored the background with sharpie markers to create sunrise/sunset and mountains. More details were added with colored pencils and then a pine tree was stamped in dark brown. The final detail was the birds drawn in with a black pigma pen.

Our next trade is a Flat Santa exchange! The pieces so far have been so cute and adorable. I unfortunately had to sit this one out as I had quite a bit going on. They should be going up in the next week or so. Stayed tuned!

Hanging On - Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

Finished my next set of ATC's and I am way ahead of schedule on this one but still not first one done! LOL What can I say, life is throwing me some serious curve balls this month!

Our theme of reduce, reuse and recycle is pretty self explanatory. I blogged about my process on the group blog is you want to know more! http://artsinthecards.blogspot.com/

Check out everyone else's interpretations! They are really cool!

The sketchbook challenge

I have been sketching, I just haven't been taking pictures and uploading. I have to do things when I have a moment of free time here and there. So I am doing uploads and such at the moment with this free time. I have posted these to the Highly Prized flickr group already. Not sure if the tag worked but will see!

I posted two sketches already and here are the rest. I decided to try a zentangle. Wasn't sure what it was so I goggled it and found some examples and a quick tutorial which I can't find again. Sorry. This was great fun to do since I had time to kill while waiting for the kids at swim practice. Putting them on the swim team has forced me to have to find things to do to fill my time while waiting and I have found more time for art so this is a definite bonus. Anyway, this one was the theme of peacock of course:



The rest were sketches of some underwater sponges, corals etc. Not exact but for shape and color. I have this piece that I have been working slowly on for over a year and these will make great reference photos.

Strathmore Online Sketchbook

Well I signed up to do the sketchbook project with Strathmore because I just have so much free time on my hands! LOL. My thinking was that I would do this while the kids are doing swim practice. Yeah that is not happening because I have to go chat with everyone. In my defense, it is my only chance to speak to adults! I work with preschoolers all day so adult interaction is precious! I did manage to do a couple for this and one somewhat in the works.
We were supposed to take old sketches and make copies. Then cut, rip or tear them up to create another composition. Seemed simple enough. Part two has been posted and I haven't checked it out yet. So here are my two starting pieces:

Trashin' the Mailman ATC

Our latest trade was to use the junk mail that we receive and create some ATC's. This gave me a chance to try out a cool new technique for image transfer. Take a color brochure and place packing tape over the image. Overlap if you need to. Then rub the whole image to make sure you get a good print. Once that is done, flip over to the backside, run some sandpaper over it to rough up the surface, then use water to remove the paper backing. This will leave you with a print of the image on the packing tape.
I glued this to watercolor paper that had been painted in pinks, blues and purples to match the colors from the brochures. I used gel medium to adhere it. I then pounced some interference blue over the fronts, then stamped with tiny snowflakes in dark blue. Once that was dry, I added another stamp in white in a random pattern and outlined in dark blue marker.
For the big snowflake, I cut out 2 snowflakes from the brochure and then made photocopies in a larger size. I made extras in case I screwed up ; )
I used glitter glue on top of the snowflakes to make them sparkle then cut each one out when the glue dried. I glued one to each card and added Holiday 2010 from another brochure.
Finally I added eyelets and funky yarn to frame the entire piece. They were hard to photograph as they are very shiney.

Check out our ATC blog to see all the other pieces for this challenge:
http://artsinthecards.blogspot.com/

Favorite Quote ATC

I am ahead of schedule for once. Maybe it is because my children went back to school and I have a moment to breathe. I almost feel guilty working on my art. I keep thinking that I should be doing projects around the house. But this two week break is my only time to myself for a very long time. So guilt be gone!!! LOL

So our next challenge was to create something about our favorite quote. Technically it isn't a quote but a line from a song by Jewel "Life Uncommon". Something about this line really struck a cord with me and so I went with it.


This is the first ATC created on paper. I used watercolor paper and added ink in yellow, pink and green. Then I added some gel medium to create some texture and when dry used a deep rose to tone down the colors. I fused a fabric heart onto the paper and added threads using the gel medium. I wanted the viewer to get the sense of emotions tying us up and keeping us from moving forward. I hand wrote the quote in and at the very last minute, I carved a little bird and stamped it onto each card. I seem to have a very yellowy looking card but it isn't quite that color - more golden. But a better representation than cards past!

Art In the Cards Trading Group

I was invited to join an ATC group a few months back and you have seen the pieces that I have done. Well now we are doing a blog so that you can see what the whole group is doing. Some pretty amazing pieces are coming out of such a tiny group! We will be starting with our All Cracked Up theme and going forward from there. I am thinking we should post our other pieces too because they are amazing!! Anyway, here is the link if you want to check it out!

http://artsinthecards.blogspot.com/

Rust/Metal ATC Trade

I did these in half the time as last. Some designs take time and others just flow out quickly. Our challenge was to incorporate something rust or metal. I used rusted fabric. I was inspired by my visit to the Field Museum in Chicago and took a bunch of photos of the fossils. The fish grabbed my attention so that was my inspiration. I made 8 up on a page and printed out on my color ink jet printer. Then I photocopied it on a copier. Each fish is printed on the card using the citra-solv method. I found the lavendar version at the IQA show in Jane Davila's booth. I wanted to make them look like they do in the museum - saved in the rock they found them. Didn't quite work so I added black puffy paint to add dimensionality to them. I stitched around each and then FMQ the background to make it look like a rock. Didn't really work but I do like the fishes!

Warped Challenge

Finally finished my ATC's for the latest challenge and I am about 10 days behind schedule. What can I say. Life.

Anyway, I was inspired by the meteor that flew over Illinois and landed in Wisconsin, as well as time warp and the images of the volcano from above. So I was thinking "What if a meteor ripped through the fabric of time?"

I painted white fabric with black puffy paint, let it dry and then puffed with heat gun. I then painted the "islands brown and green and the water around in various shades of blue. I painted a thin lutrador with midnight blue acrylic paint and smeared a glitter glue in areas across it to simulate space and stars.

When dry, I sewed to the top of each card and hit it with a heat gun to "Tear" through the sky. I added some small silver beads to create little meteors and then a silver washer - hand numbered to make a clock and had a small white cardboard circle behind it. I edged each with black/blue thread.

ATC Challenge - Red

I was invited to join a small Artist Trading Group and we just finished our first trade. The challenge was the color red. Originally I was thinking Valentine's Day but that was so obvious. But then I ran across some Chinese envelopes I had in a drawer and the inspiration took hold. This year, Chinese New Year lands on Valentine's Day! So I created ATC's based on the year of the Metal Tiger which is this year's animal.

First I used a red fabric background and stamped a chinese character in dark blue. Then stamped some other oriental motifs in cold and a darker red. I then used a puffy paint to paint individual tigers on each card. When dry, I used a heat gun to puff them up and then painted them copper using H20 watercolor paints. When that dried, I added in details and stripes with a dye pen. The pen with the H20 paint trashed two of my black pens. Apparently they don't play nice together. So note to self, don't do that again. I sewed a Chinese coin onto each and finished the edges with a satin stitch in black.

I made 8 so that I could pick the best of the bunch for my trade which included only 5 people. So I have 3 left but need to do some adjustments to the faces.

Charms that missed the swap!

As usual, I didn't get something in on time. Partly because I didn't think they were good enough and partly because my life runs on a hamster wheel! So here they are:


Had to do a peacock

This was done on Stambord with embossed black ink. My sister carved the stamp for me and it is way too cool! So I stamped it and then hit it with the heat gun to emboss. When cool, I painted it with Twinkling H20's. Really cute.



Purple and green fairy or angel.



Pink fairy or angel




Definitely an angel


These were goddess type beads made out of fimo clay but they had a little kick to the side for a sassy look. After they were baked, I wrapped them in eyelash yarns and added wings. The purple wings were made out of ribbon and the other two were made from angelina film.

Creative Prompts Project-Kindness 3/13

Boy am I behind on this! I needed to get a bunch of things off my camera in order to take a pic of this prompt and now it's almost a month later! Sorry about that. I will work to get caught up!
Meanwhile here is my prompt for week of 3/13. The word was kindness and I had been playing around with doodles.




First I started with a sketchbook page that had been painted in reds and yellows with acrylic paint. Then I started doodling and this design came out using black fine line markers. I used Twinkling H2O's to add colors and definition to the hearts. I wrote around the heart but screwed up so you can't read the word heart at the beginning. Sorry about that. It says A Heart grows with love.

Creative Prompts Project

I cannot tell you how I found this site! Sometimes we just find things and we are glad we did. I may have heard of it through a friend or read about it on another blog - I can't remember! The cow on the sidebar will link you right to the blog that is hosting this. She will put in a word as a "prompt" to kickstart the creative juices. You have to create something that symbolizes the prompt or word. I am now behind a prompt as they just posted a new one.

I finally had room on my camera again so I could take pictures of my doodling. The creative prompt is BUBBLES. I love bubbles. I was inspired to do three versions!


So this one was kind of lame but I was playing with the Twinkling H20's and they are so much fun I had to include the picture.






Now after working on the first one, I remembered my hand carved stamp and decided to get it and play. I stamped it around the page - trying to connect them like tissues or nerves. Then I outlined the stamped images in black marker and filled in the spaces around the stamps with bubbles!





Same idea but stamped in two layers rather than one to get some dimension. I keep doodling along these lines so I think I will need to create something from these ideas.

If you are stuck and need to just play, I highly recommend this project. Have fun, I did.

FFAC Final Pieces

OK. I finally finished my pieces for Fiberart For A Cause hosted by Virginia Spiegel and coordinated by Karen Stiehl Osborn.

I mounted the postcards to heavy board backing that had been painted to extend the designs of the postcards. I am pretty happy with the results. The backgrounds were painted with acrylics and details were added with colored pencils and watercolor pencils to add fine details.

An Honorable Mention Award!

Cyber Fyber opened on January 8th. Ellen Kochansky juried the CYBER FYBER traded fiber ATCs and fiber Postcards and I received an honorable mention! I am so excited!

Like Mother, like Daughter . . .

My daughter loves to create. She is an artist but completely opposite of me. I love detail and my projects take so long to complete. Madelyn gets an idea and starts collecting all the items she needs to put it all together. She really is going to be quite the mixed media artist!! I have to share her latest creation because it is so darned cool!!

For a little background, it all started from a couple of marbles that my next door neighbor Mary gave her. She ran into the house all excited and started rummaging around for her "supplies." I gave her a couple of cabinets in the kitchen and loaded it up with all kinds of art stuff so she can create when the mood strikes. This was in reaction to the numerous scribbles on walls and floor.



So I sat back and watched her go. First she cut strips of different colors of construction paper and then glued them together. Next came the plate (leftover from Halloween obviously). She found a plastic spoon and glued that on and colored it with a red marker in the spoon part. Then she glued the marbles onto the plate. When she was done, she just ran off to play leaving her masterpiece behind. I was amazed! The cobweb looked like spaghetti noodles! How clever was that??

I have to find the "turkey" she made from moon shoes, empty envelopes and her blanket and the dollhouse she had to have (even though she doesn't play with dolls!) I walked by to find the dolls hanging upside down, by their feet!! from the roof of the house - kind of like bats!! She never ceases to surprise me!!