November 10th Weekly Post

 Happy Sunday!

My good news is that my eyelid is slowly but consistantly getting better, which I'm grateful for because it's been a busy news week what with our elections in the USA and I'm still not used to the 1 hour time change. Eighteen days until our Thanksgiving holiday, and then it will be time to address and mail holiday cards and decorate for Christmas. I've barely managed to get Halloween decor up and need to add the Thanksgiving ones. And clean the house as we are hosting dear daughter and son-in-love.

The year just seems to have sped by...again!

😵

This week's theme at SPA is Travel, hosted by Sandie.

I wanted to use Tim Holtz's Cityscape stamps because I've had them forever and never inked them up.

I stamped them on watercolor paper and used my Koi half pan set to do some loose watercoloring.

But then I was at a loss as to how to use them, until I remembered a tag that Tim had done for his Twelve Tags series using 3 images. I looked it up and decided that would work fine. It's the July 2015 tag, if you are interested. I did not follow his tutorial completely at all, but still appreciate the idea as it motivated me to create a 4x6 piece that I really like. The stamped sentiment is from Inkadinkado and the card base was wrapped with a map page of Europe. I used the cityscapes of London, Paris and Rome (which was also the order of our 2004 vacay itenerary). Tim tore his 3 images with a ruler, but I used some deco scissors and then ink-distressed with Frayed Burlap DI.

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I also have an art journal spread to share, made to remember my Eastern Philosophies college class from 1975. 

I began with the pages looking like this.

I'd been playing with a Balzerbits flower stencil and acrylic paints on a gesso'd base.

It sat there like that for years as I hadn't a clue how to transform it.

Then I got to thinking about that class which was a fave of mine and I thought I'd try something Asian.

 

I cleaned up the center of the spread, making it a large circle. Then I began to cover the background with white acrylic and I liked how the dark underneath sort of still shown through.

For the center circle focals, I stamped the Divinity Designs lotus flower and Paper Artsy quotes and heat-embossed them with clear powder. I also die cut the branch and blossoms.

I used my purple Posca to outline the circle and I added a bit more purple inside the circle. Then I colored my stamping and die cutting and adhered the arrangement. I added some diluted pink and purple acrylic to the edges and ran a black Big Artist Brush Pen around the edges, smudging with my finger.

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Here's a birthday card using a tulip stamp and die set I bought last Spring. I'm trying to remember what I used to color them, maybe watercolor markers. The paper is Prima Amelia Rose DP and that's a My Favorite Things stamped sentiment. Sequins to finish.

And another nephew card. I used my last soccer ball die cut and paired it up with a Papertrey Ink hexagon background die cut and a sentiment shadow die cut. The DCWV grass paper was cut with a very old 12x12 QuicKutz border die. I punched the stars.

 

And these are the sketches I used.

👌

That's it for me this time.

Thanks for the visit and have a great week ahead.

XOX