Just Keep Swimming

One last piece for The Sea/Das Meer over at Art Journal Journey as the topic changes next week with the new month starting. 

All the fish!

I started with a piece of watercolor paper with a Gelli print on it.  I drew in the fish all over the page with a black Sharpie. The ones outside of the Gelli print I used some SILKS to paint. Then I took dark blue acrylic and painted around them all, letting the fish over the Gelli print retain the cool look of the print. It was still a little needing at that point, so I used my soft molding paste and a stencil to make all the little dots, which once dry I used some SILKS to paint over.  Then I added some torn pieces of a Gelli print on deli wrap, and repainted the whole blue area with the same darker blue acrylic paint as I did earlier. Finally, I added a little stamp that says just keep swimming.

So my long weekend is over and its back to work today. But it was a really nice weekend!  Now its the  last leg at school until June 19th when the kids are off for the summer! I have 3 more workdays after that so I'm there until the 24th, but time is going to fly right by. (And once the kids are gone the workdays kind of roll right by...mentally at that point you are just cleaning up and rolling out for a bit.)

This week I am hoping to get the last coat of paint on my screen porch floor so I can move my furniture back in (its all in the house right now-what a mess) and start to use it. I also bought some annuals to do a few pots on my deck, and I'd love to get the rest of them planted. Let's see what I accomplish and what has to wait for the weekend! I might find more interesting things to do with paint and flowers, and I don't mean having to work to do those things either.
Ha-ha!

Have a great day and thanks for visiting my post!

My Friday Tags

Hi everyone. Its another Friday already.

Been  a busy  and speedy week here. I've been playing in the studio and also doing some de-cluttering after work each day. We started off really cold this week but are back to cool but more spring like temperatures right now.  I will take those. Anything to get this snow to melt some more.

So here's some tags I've played with during the week. This top one started with a single stamp, this great tea pot and bird by Magenta, which I then decided to turn into a mini painting.

I like it enough I might actually turn it into a full painting. Feels kind of tropical and exotic to me. I like that.

And roughs seas here. I painted the background and then added the birds.

And a little romantic tag. The colors are really a little brighter than the photo shows but not much.

And this last tag is different from the others, not quite me but I have been trying to push myself. Time to try new things to expand my standard techniques.

I had to add the skirt on the cut out. She looks so much more finished. Ha-ha.

I also finally found the right book to hold my tags.  I removed the original pages and painted the outside and inside covers this past week. Now I need to add new  pages so I can adhere my tags.

And thought I'd show you what's left for snow in my backyard.

We've got mud too! 

Eeks!

It has gone down a lot! But with the cold temperatures during March snow didn't disappear as fast as I'd like.

But what can you do about that?

I am linking this to Paint Party Friday. Thanks to Eva and Kristen for hosting. Stop by and check out all the great art posted.

Thanks to you all for stopping by blog. Have a great weekend.