Week #4 - Artful Journeys

Wow!  The whole month of January has just flown by!  We are already to week #4 and our prompts this week are:  "Favorite Sports Team" and/or "Under The Sea".

 When we came up with the initial prompt, we were thinking about the Super Bowl, the Pro Bowl and all the fun things that happen with sports in the winter time.

We aren't big sports fans in my house, unless you count the hubs' total fascination with Nascar.  Not my cup of tea (either one).  Now, if the Dallas Cowboys were playing in the Super Bowl, I would so be right in front of the television cheering them on.  But since they literally dropped the ball during championship game, the fizz went out of my brewski.  No fun for me if the hometown team isn't playing, so it is easy to get involved with something else.

I racked my brain for ideas.  No mojo.  I let it rest and went on to something else.  Tick tock. The clock was ticking and time was running short.  So just a short 3 days ago, I struck upon this idea to run with the "no sports" thing.  I finished it last night.  Nothing like waiting to the last minute, right? A deadline is a great motivator!


SUPPLY LIST

• Liquitex Heavy Body Acrylic Paint - Chromium Oxide Green, Brilliant Yellow Green
• Craft acrylic paint - White, Bright Yellow, Spring Green, Caterpillar
• NeoColor II watersoluble crayons - black, cadmium red, dark blue, pink, green, orange, bright yellow
• Watercolor paint
• Black China marker
• Copic Marker in Leather
• Chipboard letter "N"
• EK Success 1-1/4" circle punch
• EK Success small oval punch
• Sakura Gelly pens in black, red, dark brown & white
• Bold Uniball Signo pens in Black & White
• Faber Castell black Calligraphy nib pen
• Corrugated cardboard as a stencil
• Green tinted sisal twine
• Alene's Tacky Glue
• Credit card for sraping
• Medium flat sable brush & #4 filbert brush
• Vintage lady image found on Pinterest

When I initially started the background in greens, I was thinking about turf grass.  If I had it to do over, I might choose another base color. But there it was, and I just kept letting it unfold organically.  I added 3 different greens and scraped them all on this way and that with the edge of a credit card.  Then I added some stencil marks all over it with a dark Pine Needle craft paint with the inside "corrugated" part off a coffee sleeve I salvaged from Starbucks that I just painted with the acrylic paint and stamped away here and there all over the page.  I find tools and inspiration everywhere.....especially when drinking coffee!

I kept looking at that page. Now what?  I knew I had printed off some vintage ladies and began rummaging through my vintage ladies box to find one that suited my mood and attitude. There she was.  I snatched her up, fussy cut her out (she was on slick cardstock).  I used some NeoColor II's to add color highlights to her to make her stand out a little more on the page.  I adhered with Alene's Tacky glue that I spread on very thin, and used the edge of a clean gift card to spread it out and smooth it down.

How to tie in the sports?  I'm not loving this prompt at all and still wasn't much enthused about it.  Then it hit me.....what about some floating balls like my lady was thinking about all those sports and how much she detested them.  So, punch out some circles and an oval.  Baseball, basketball, soccer ball & football.  Researched Google for some images.  I found drawing the soccer ball the hardest of all.  You wouldn't think it would be so difficult until you put that pencil down.  But I managed to get something that sort of resembled a soccer ball.  I chose these because their images are so iconic and easily recognized...as opposed to a ping pong ball or golf ball, which I knew I would never get to look like a real golf ball.  LOL So I got all that going and done and affixed to the page again with Alene's Tacky Glue, smoothing out so there would be no wrinkles.

I didn't like all that dark green, so I mixed up some white and added a dot of Chromium Oxide Green and Brilliant Yellow Green together and brushed it on in broad, loose strokes sort of down the center left of the page.  I needed a place to do some slow journaling.

There.  That was better, but I pretty much covered up all of the corrugated stenciling.  Oh well.  Such is art journaling!

Still boring.  I dipped my finger in some of the leftover mixed-up paint and made some dots around the page with my index finger. Dried with the trusty heat gun.  Remember I am in a hurry now... whipped out the trusty white and black Uniball Signos and went around some of those dots with some circles and made some more.  Better.

What to say?  I wanted whatever she said to be a little snarky, a little sassy and a whole lot of me.  I don't like to sweat.  I am not good at sports that require sweating.  (I do excel at water sports!) So, I just started, thinking of a sweet southern belle sitting on the veranda on a crisp, cool evening sipping a little mint julep.  Ahhhhhh, that is heaven.  So I just started with her talking, "No, sports for me, darlin' -- I don't DO "sweat."   That was pretty snarky and sassy, right?  Can't you just visualize her sipping away and laughing at the boys playing tag football on the lawn??  I surely can.  She tires of watching all that activity and asks "Pass the mint juleps please".  There.  That's it.  That's enough, and it says it all, at least to me.

I had a big blank space left at the bottom so I doodled up some quirky little flowers and colored them in with NeoColor II's to represent her lovely garden, just a step off that veranda.  The smell of blooming flowers wafting in the air against the crisp, cool evening.  Heaven on earth.

Should I doodle a border?  No border?  Paint it?  <sigh>  Back to the stash.  Digging. Rummaging. Aha!  There's a big spool of green dyed sisal twine.  Dark green.  Perfect contrast.  Since I love swirly, swoopy lines, I made some squiggly glue lines with Alene's Tacky Glue and began to cover that with the sisal twine.  Perfect. Great contrast on the page. Texture.  A little more visual interest.

All in all, it turned out rather well, considering my disdain for participating in or watching organized sports that require sweating or large crowds (I don't suffer those well, either).

As an alternate prompt - in the event YOU don't do sports either, we give you "Under the Sea" to work with.  I have previously done some journal pages with this theme, so decided to pass on doing another.  Here's a peek at a collaborative journal page with this theme that I did much earlier this year.  The page owner, Martika Patton did the watercolor background, and I added all the fishes and creatures from stamped images I had received in Happy Mail, coloring with Copic Marker and then fussy cutting them all out and applying to the watercolor page.  I then sent it along to the next person to add their "touch"

As an alternate prompt - in the event YOU don't do sports either, we give you "Under the Sea" to work with.  I have previously done some journal pages with this theme, so decided to pass on doing another.  Here's a peek at a collaborative journal page with this theme that I did much earlier this year.  The page owner, Martika Patton did the watercolor background, and I added mermaid, the fishes, & creatures from stamped images I had received in Happy Mail, coloring with Copic Marker and then fussy cutting them all out and applying to the watercolor page.  I then sent it along to the next person to add their "touch"

Here is a padded mailer I did with an "Under the Sea" theme in acrylics with a cute (and el cheapo) little fishy foam stamp and a Uniball Signo pen in white.

Have a look at what Melody Elzy, Tamie Wilson & Lynn Jackson contributed to this week's prompts on our blog:  Artful Chicks

Can't wait to see what you all come up with this week.  Be sure and share your images on the group feed at Artful Journeys~!!

ICAD WEEK 1

I am behind on posting pictures from the fun we are having over at the Daisy Yellow ICAD Challenge, and am running behind on completing week #2.  We are only in week 2 and yes, I'm already behind.

Week 1's "theme" was "Text" and purely optional on our cards.  I used it some, depending on the daily prompt.  I like to follow along with the prompts for the most part. Sometimes I go off on a tangent, but so far, not yet.  

Our prompts for week one were:
1.  Prism
2.  Circus Tent
3. Hello my name is
4. Puzzle
5. Galaxy
6. Nail Polish
7. Yellow

If you look at them collectively, you think you could never do it. But that isn't the challenge. The challenge is to create something on an index card EVERYDAY.  You know, life happens and some days you maybe do 2 or more.  Some people fly through all 7 prompts so quickly it makes my head spin.  I like to think about what I'm going to do and occasionally I do skip over one until some kind of inspiration hits me.  But I always finish the week and do all 7 cards.

Here are my cards, in order, for week 1.























1. PRISM -- Copic markers

2. CIRCUS TENT - Copic markers, Sakura Gelly pen, Sharpie, Uniball Signo

3. HELLO MY NAME IS -- I found a neat drawing on Pinterest that was my inspiration for this and tried to emulate the shape and perspective. Drawn first in pencil and then with Sakura Gelly Pen in Black.  I then scanned it and digitally added what I believed to be more positive attributes (my goal this year has been to focus more on the positive things in my life) and realized that without some of my less-than-stellar qualities, it wouldn't be an honest assessment in this snapshot of who I am.

4.  PUZZLE.  Just deciding what to do for this one was challenging for me. My first idea was to do a crossword using art buzz words.  That was a fiasco.  So, for this piece, I glued a piece of graph paper to a 4x6 index card and colored in random boxes with Copic markers, added the puzzle piece and the quote with Sakura Gelly pen.

5.  GALAXY.  The first problem I found with this prompt was how on earth (pun intended!) would I interpret this??  The wallpapers on my desktop are some rotating NASA images from the Hubble telescope, so I drew inspiration from one of these images which is a Nebula, in the process of "exploding" for lack of a better term.   This is also on a 4x6 index card, done in Acrylic craft paint in Admiralty Blue, Kings Gold, Pale Daffodil & White.  I added some gold acrylic glitter paint to the enter of the nebula in my galaxy.  Sadly, after scanning it doesn't show up that well, but the effect in person is, well....... shiny.

6.  NAIL POLISH.  Last year I purchased a bunch of wild nail polish colors so that I could color code a bunch of keys, including a bright neon yellow, neon pink, neon orange, and electric blue.  Traditionally when I was getting my nails done, I almost always wore red or raspberry colors.  I drew the outlines in pencil first, then with Sakura Gelly pen, then painted each section with these various colors of polish.  In my stash, I also found a glittery gold top coat which I painted onto the yellow colors and a heavy metal flake in silver that I painted on top of the electric blue.

7.  YELLOW.  My love of sunflowers runs long and constant. They make me happy.  I draw them a lot. I send them to people, both real and artisically.  This piece is also 4x6 to which I mounted a piece of a vintage agricultural book page, then hand drew the sunflower with Sakura Gelly Pen.  I colored it in with Copic markers in Yellow Ochre,  Africano, Light Camel, Atoli, Maize, Cadmium Yellow & Lemon Yellow.  Additional highlights added with a black china marker, smudged with a pencil eraser dedicated solely for this purpose (keeps from getting the fingers so dirty!).  The found poetry  and edges were embellished with my trusty Scarlet Lime pen.

So, week one has come and gone, and week 2 is almost over.  I'm still finishing up this week's prompts and will share all my little creations for you in a few days.

~~bgr

DLP Week 14 Challenge

Our challenge in the Documented Life Project for week 14 was to draw your name and then embellish it.  I did mine on some white card stock I had on hand that was cut to print out cards. I find that I use this precut card stock for lots of projects and I have it in 4 different colors. These are nice vellum papers and the finish is quite tactile.  I trimmed the paper to size to fit my planner and rounded the corners.

So anyway, the decision was how to write it, what style, how big (or small) and still have room to write on my tip-in.  I normally use the reverse side of my tip-ins to record mail art and happy mail that I send out each week, leaving the adjacent page in my planner for journaling, notes for the week and so forth, but this week there is plenty of room for note taking and mail recording right on the front!

So this is what I came up with.  Large and in-charge.  I pulled up a font I liked on the internet and then just emulated the style, drawing it first in pencil then outlining with my Faber-Castell Pitt marker in "F" point. I used this same pen for all the doodles.  Page was colored with Copic markers with BG05 Holiday Blue, Y35 Maize, E57 Light Walnut,  R27 Cadmium Red, YG00 Mimosa Yellow.  I rather like how it turned out. Bright, cherry and spring-like. How about you?

You Can Dress Her Up ...

I am enamored with making these little mini-dresses.  This one is in my mixed media journal. Sketched & some highlightswith Sakura Gelly pen and Copic marker.  I have in the back of my mind "you can dress her up but you can't take her anywhere..."  Sort of reminds me of a prom dress I had one time that my father wouldn't let me wear because it was too revealing.  Oh if he could see what the girls are wearing today!