Assorted Friday Art

 Hi everyone. Today I have some assorted art to share as we start to wrap up the month of February.

I have another page for Valerie's Heavy metal challenge at Art Journal Journey.

This is also my page for February 7 with Cheiron Brandon at Creative Jumpstart. In this lesson we were creating a story with TH relatives and a created background. 

I decided I was in the mood to collage so I went my own way and used up a few scraps which is how my page came to be what it is.

I made my background by first doodling one night while watching tv. I wanted to do something with this background pattern so I  collaged some printed tissue paper and some left over wrapping paper.  I added a few pieces of  ruler printed tape, a piece of sanded down gold paper (it was too shiny if you can believe that), some word circle stickers as well as these ladies with their apple. This page still needed some more pop and the ladies needed something to sit on so I added the brown metal paper trim as well as the copper medallion. This is the first time I tried out this die and some metallic paper, and I must say I love the results.

I think background is still looking like individual pieces not a complete finished background, but it is what it is going to be, at least for now. Smile!

 My story is about these 2 ladies, Eleanor and Gloria, who are teachers. Eleanor on the left was given an apple by her students. I don't know if that is a worldwide idea or not, but giving an apple to your teacher is a way to show appreciation. She must really be loved because she got one giant apple! Gloria doesn't seem to mind not getting one, but being that big, Eleanor's could be easily shared .

And I have a little more art to share today.

Last Friday I showed you the little frivolous spring book I made (post here if you are interested: Watercolor Book #2)  There were still a few empty pages that I've now completed  from this project, and I thought I would share those today also.

After reviewing my post I noticed how light these last pages feel compared to the my first piece. I guess it's much like this month has been. Cold days and then for a few days earlier this week, some beautiful spring like weather. Now we're back to some colder temperatures.

That's all for me. Have a great start to your weekend.

Watercolor Book, First Version

 Hi everyone. 

Today I am sharing a lot of photos from one of my creations for Creative Jumpstart day 21 class.  Andrea Chebeleu was the instructor. 

Andrea asked us to to freehand paint designs with watercolor onto both the front and back of some watercolor paper. She recommended a limited palate so no one would end up with muddy colors.

I have only a small set of watercolors, so I chose the blues and greens in my set.  For me this activity started out with learning a lot about getting various shades and tones with those colors (since I am not  very practiced with watercolors).

After the pages were dry, Andrea  had us cut and then fold out papers. Along with some tape, she showed us how to create little booklets.  

I always want to add details, as you can see on the right front of my little book.

Here's a few of my undetailed pages and also some pages where Andrea asked us to use a pen and add some markings.

Back to this detail thing I previously mentioned. To me this was now a book ready and waiting to be turned into it's own project. As I made this last week, with Valentine's Day still ahead, I decided it needed a love letter theme. I also decided I would only add shades of red paint to contrast with the blue and green, just to keep a limited color palette.

I should also point out that this might be partially why I am not moving along with Creative Jumpstart as fast as I could be. Smile!

My cover is finished above. Here's the pages in my little book.

I went a little over board with daisies. Also please ignore by not so straight pages. It is hard to keep the book flat and photographic straight.

There you have it. I enjoyed pulling out some old stamps as well as drawing hearts.  I had so much fun with this project  I have made a second book. More about that one in another post.

Thanks for visiting.

Creative JumpStart and More

 Hi everyone.

 Today's post starts with my sample I made for Day 19 of Creative JumpStart.  (Yes, I am really behind!) The instructor today was Marlene Meijer-van Niekerk, and you may be familiar with her Art By Marlene line of supplies from Studio Light.

I like her colorful and playful style so it was fun to actually have a class from her. 

Step one was to use watercolors to make a colorful background. I went with very watered down acrylics instead. The new trick for me was to put a blob of wet color on the paper and then use a straw to make these amoeba like creations.  I made 3 background pages, and this was the best of the lot. The page above is not the page I used for my  piece today, but it was part of the class.

The page I did use needed a little more contrast so I added some bright green and some black ink sprays.

I have a few of Marlene's punch out image books. I like her playful images. These punch outs aren't expensive, and there are lots of images. I have never used them to make a complete collage before this one. In the class, Marlene did make  clear  you could collage any type of images you happened to have.

I definitely have some February blahs this year, especially since it is rather wintery in New Hampshire. Add to that the Covid precautions, and I am feeling a bit restless right now (like so many of you also I'd guess.) Thank goodness for art escapes. 

I did go back and use a black Stabilo All pencil around my images, and I also added the white paper trim so the houses and the globe holding girl wouldn't be floating in the air.

I also made a tag for Valerie's black and white plus 1 extra color  challenge at Tag Tuesday.

I used black watercolor paper, some white ink and rubber stamps, a pink ombre heart as well as some white metal metallic paper and a bit of black paint to finish that part.

Before I sign off I wanted to show you some of the yearbook where I got the photo I used in my last post. Several of you commented about  the book itself.

The cover is a beauty.

I picked it up because I thought it was a fascinating look back at time gone by. There are no notes or best wishes or any writing at all in the book beyond the print on the pages. Yet there are some wonderful photos. You might enjoy them so I'll share a few of the most interesting ones.

And here's the page I copied and used yesterday. You can see I did not cut it out of the book.

Each of these people would now be well into their 90's or even older. The photos make me think about these people's lives and everything that happened to them. Yearbooks are full of hope, aren't they? Like everyone is going on to have a rosy future. Hopefully they all did or are.

If anyone is interested, I can show you more.

Happy Friday. Happy Lunar New Year. 

Waxed Paper Inspiration

Happy first Friday of February everyone. 

I am here today with another page for Valerie's Heavy Metal challenge at Art Journal Journey. This is also my page I made for Creative Jumpstart for January 16. 

This day's class was presented by Tania Ahmed. She made a journal cover. I ended up making a journal page using some of her cool techniques.

I started with a piece of watercolor paper that I used to clean up a brush with some orange paint on it. I then added my acetate image of this vintage lady and also some flower images  from a magazine cover. (I took both of these off an old journal page I deconstructed.)

  This part of my page was already completed when I went to work on some techniques  learned in Tania's class.

I normally use wax paper to paint on and put it in between still slightly damp pages in journals to keep them from sticking together.  I use sheets several times and usually have a few laying around. I had a sheet with 3 blue circles on it.  There was also some bits of the same blue elsewhere on the sheet, and I like how  those  bits of blue connected the color to the circles.

Tania also painted wax paper and doodled on it. Then she crumpled it to get a fantastic wrinkled design. I used some gold metallic paint and also some black Sharpie to make marks on the bare spots of this piece of wax paper. I wrinkled and then tore my wax paper into little pieces and created my page's background

.

 

I also thought I could make one of the flowers into a clock, so I used some metal clock hands and a gemstone brad (all from my stash) to do that. 

I finished by stamping the quote (an vintage one from Stampers Anonymous) on some paper.

I just read about Creative Artiste's  More Mixed Media newest challenge, and first for 2021. Anything Goes is the theme, so I shall be linking up to here also.

There's my page. Hope you liked it.

Have a great start to your weekend!

Little Books

 Hi everyone. 

The other day I went through 2 lessons of Creative Jumpstart. Today I thought I would show you my creations from January 20, where  Amanda Trought was our teacher.

This lesson was all about making mini-books.

I had lots of fun with this class.  I remember learning to make these books eons ago in another class I took, but the change of pace and refresher video was good on a snowy day.  I ended up making 3 books. The taller one in the back has blank pages still, but the two smaller front ones were made with paper that I had in my in my stack of ready to go sheets.

Here are 2 painted papers I used, one for each book. You can see I had started my folding and cutting before I photographed this first paper photo.

And here's what I did with each book.

The yellow striped book got a painted cover to somewhat match the inner pages.

And here's my other book. I took a different route with this one.

The punched out circles and their left over squares were truly a moment of spontaneity because  while I was looking for a few small packs of 6x6 paper I had to make  the book covers,  a whole stack of paper squares fell onto the floor.  They were just asking to be used.

That's all for me. Hope your week is going well. 

Thanks for visiting.

More From Creative Jumpstart

 Hi everyone. 

 I am really behind with my Creative Jumpstart class. I'm hoping tomorrow when it turns bitterly cold and windy again  (and I can't get outside)  that maybe I will sit myself down on the computer and catch up on some of my lessons. Then make some art. Smile.

Let me head back to January 14th's lesson with  Sarah Matthews.  We were making paper quilts that day, starting with cutting random pieces from scrap paper to make a background. You can see mine above with only one stamped image.

After that we were to hand carve a stamp. You can see my hand carved stamp above also, and then stamped here across the paper quilt in this next photo.

Sarah Matthews used multiple colors to stamp her images, but I kept mine black and created this linear pattern on my page.

I found cutting paper squares and gluing them down with a glue stick very relaxing. I may have to make a few more backgrounds like this. It was also a great way to use up some scraps of paper. 

I am linking my page to Art Journal Journey as making art  and relaxing are both favorite things of mine.

And anytime I get to walk, I love that too.

This past Tuesday one of my walker friends texted me and asked if I wanted to take an afternoon beach walk.  Oh yes I did. Although it was just around 32 degrees F or O degrees C, there was no wind, making it a relatively warm walk.  And Mr. Pete loved it. ( Maddie missed out being at Doggie Daycare. )

The beach was basically empty so Pete got to run. That wore him out. I am grateful for having a beach to walk at during the winter when the trails are snowy, and also for having friends who will walk so we can actually see each other.  It will be nice when we can actually get together and sit down someplace-smile.

Hope your week is going well.