Creative Spring cleaning time

"Flowers of Sulphur" ATC

Supplies: collage sheet images and ephemera from Collage Stuff; inked background collaged with paper stash bits; roses sticker from Current.

Sittin' here on this early Saturday morning listening to the radio playing old school rock. Gettin' up every 15 mintues or so to work on the quick random chore and think about what to write next...this post could take the entire morning to write, winkwink.

You may recall me mentioning that I needed to reassess where my creative time's going...that's I would stew on it and see what solutions I could cook up. Well, been there and done it, finally. All that's left to do is the doing of it.

I weeded out my membership in my Yahoo and Ning groups last week. I left about half of them. I left one because I was just irritated with it more and more. The mutual back-scratching, the encroaching commercial marketing posts rub me the wrong way sometimes. Since I'm not into this hobby to be published or seek design teaming, it detracts from my available time and energy. To each his own, it's nothing personal. I'll miss some nice swaps and artwork being shared, but there are only about 50 bazillion other sources out there when I need inspiration.

I'm thinking I also need to temporarily limit my existing involvement in the groups that remain, more specifically in the 3 groups I most actively participate in. Since these have my heart and I would never want to leave them for good, I want to disrupt my space there as little as possible, so I'm going to first try to change my email preferences. I've always chosen to have every message emailed to me as soon as it's posted to the group. That makes for a huge inbox at times and is a time taker. So, I will try getting a daily digest instead. That may be all I have to do.

I also want to keep a presence in the swaps albeit a minimum one. In my stamping group, I've committed to making birthday cards for the RAK list and will continue that. I will also keep doing one card of the month and one ATC. In my altered design group, I will continue the weekly ATC mingle and the monthly lottery. And in my paper trader group, I will keep doing that monthly lottery and the occasional swap. There is a spring cleaning recycling swap coming up to stuff a 9x12 bubble mailer full of goodies that should be easy to do and good for me.

I don't think I have mentioned it, but I signed up for and paid $120 for two classes back in January that I have not done one thing in. One is a Remains of the Day journal-making class taught by Mary Ann Moss, and the other is Kelly Kilmer's A Life Made by Hand journaling class. Thankfully I have 3 more months in Kelly's and even longer than that in Mary Ann's, and I didn't sign up for either to participate daily in, so both are saveable if I act now. I also have subscribed to Vamp Stamp News and Rubber Stamp Madness, and I need to devote some time to trying out the techniques and ideas they have. And then there is my year-long subscription to Technique Junkies, which is probably the biggest treasure trove of educational goodness. While I have done a few labs, there are a zillion more waiting.

I had bought all of these with Christmas money and hadn't really paid attention to the cumulative effect. They were all things I really wanted, so now's the time to take advantage. I'm actually looking forward to the change of scenery, but that's me. I'm a fickle little winch sometimes.

The biggest behavior change is going to be my stopping all the challenges and sketches, and that will not be easy. I figure I'll first employ the Don't Ask, Don't Tell rule, which means I'll check out the sketches and use them but I won't tell anyone. It's like dating someone hot and heavy but not committing. It also lessens the time it takes to be involved in yet more communities of people. I hate it when people post and run in a group, so if I'm gonna post my work I try to praise others'. If I don't post my work there, I avoid that altogether, yet I still get the design foundation I might need on a card or other art.

I've been in the mood lately to be more free creatively, so I am hoping these changes to my daily art goals and activities will let me do my own thing more. This will either work, or not, but it's my plan and I'm sticking to it, winkwink.

Oh, Poo! Flu Redux :-((

redux: adjective meaning "brought back, restored" (from the Latin reducere - bring back)

Sweet Mother of Mercy, have you none for moi? Yes, the flu just will not leave our house! Of course, I could have just never gotten over it the first time, but at any rate I have had a relapse. The Hubster swears he's gonna kill me if he gets hit with it again, so please pray for me cuz it doesn't look good for him, either.


Actually, I'm not dying or anything, but I thought I was going to have to spend my entire waking hours yesterday sitting in the bathroom (you get my drift, right?). And my fever won't completely go away. And did I mention that I'm reeeaaalllyyyy tired of all this? LOL, sounds like a good excuse to change the subject, so without further ado, a little art...

I made this 4x6 art card for a cigar band label swap that went up in smoke got cancelled, but it caught the eye of Jodi from The Creative Jar flickr group, and

http://www.thecreativejar.com/

By the way, I learned about it from Google Alerts. Remember when Marah Johnson saw my atc? I signed up for it once Linda explained it to me. That thing is pretty cool. Anyway, thanks again, Jodi! If you have your art on flickr, then join her group by the same name.

xxx

Here's the next page in my *Almost Daily* art journal, from March:

It has been so long since I did this one that I can't even remember what supplies I used, but I do remember that I had a lot of fun making it!

xxx

I also had lots of vintage fun creating this Christmas-themed 4x6 card:

Okay, true story: I was trying to come up with a title and text to use for this Victorian scrap Santa. I measured the space where the button letters are on the left and thought Kris Kringle would go perfectly, but I didn't know much about him except he was in Miracle on 34th Street. So I looked him up online and learned quite a lot about the different Christmas traditions in other countries.

And in some kind of synchronicity moment, I read that in the northern European countries Kris was supposed to visit homes with a tree and he climbed through an open window. And as you can see, my Kris is holding a tree! So of course, I could not name it anything else. I just love when stuff like that happens...

xxx

Finally, I want to share my progress on my Taking Flight Whispers journal.

In this photo, you can see my original sketch, and then the re-sketch onto the front of the journal. No, I did not trace it on there. I re-sketched it, so the journal face looks a bit different. I almost had a cow while doing this, for fear the journal face would suck, but I think I lucked out. Different but good as well. I am pleased with both faces.

The whiteness of the hair is a coat of gesso, and you can barely see that I've colored in her complexion with Shiva oil paint stix. Very creamy. I do not care much for working in oils, so my Shivas may not get used often. But it was an adventure and it does do a good job on skin. Let's see, that's gesso on the bottom, then re-sketched, then white Shiva, then yellow ochre and burnt sienna dotted on and blended with my finger and a small lip brush, then raw umber dotted on and blended in for shadowing. I was timid and didn't use as much as I should. Something stopped me for fear of screwing up. Or else, I saw I was on the verge of creating something lovely and was afraid I'd screw up.

I do that a lot, do you? Seriously, I do it A LOT.

No, still not finished, but you know what? It will be done when it's done. Not gonna stress. Not like I'm sitting around eating bon-bons otherwise. Oh, gawd, I WISH. Anyway, in case something falls on it and ruins it, I did want to capture the loveliness while it still exists, lolol.

Truly a work in progress...

So, I had to make dividers for my altered tin that I made in my class, and then I decided I really didn't need dividers for this tin. So, what to do with them?

Make a mini wall calendar for 2010 - which I soon found out is a lot like making a mini album. And maybe it's just me, but it seems like one either needs to have a mini album planned down to the inch OR just add stuff as you go and pray it looks good and take forever and a day.

Strangely enough, I've chosen the latter method and I am enjoying it but I have even more of a respect for a good mini album creator's skills and talent. My calendar is still in process, but I thought I would share a few photos with you because I think it will be fun to compare these with the finished project. Plus, I have an ulterior motive -- I would love to get advice or suggests from you about what more I can add or what process you follow.

Here's what I have so far. I am showing the closed cover of the calendar next to the tin it will go into (part of a package I'm making for a family Christmas present), so you can see the coordinated papers. I've got all 7 4x6 chipboard pages covered with paper. I have my edges cornered-rounded and I've got my Bind-It-All holes punched. I'm holding it together temporarily with ribbon so that I keep my page orders and will bind the coil on last.

I've also got a few of the page elements adhered. Remember, I have no master plan, other than every page has a calendar month on it, and printed out paper strips of family birthdays (haven't printed those yet). So, I'm basically cutting elements out of the papers and / or using scrap bits that look like they go well. The border-punched vellum on the left side of the Feb. page (above) was a scrap laying in my box, so I had to use it. Then I used the rest of the sheet it was attached to as a base for a few of the monthly calendar sheets that I found on the internet and printed out.

Here's a pristinely blank page spread with nothing on it yet, just to show the pretty paper, lol.

And the last two pages for November and December that I have started on. I'm doing a little something different on each page and trying to use up my paper scraps, too. I think I may pull out the old blue Quickutz tool and dies and punch out some little doodads and flourishes and whatnot.

I'm not concentrating on how bad this looks, because there are many flaws if you look carefully. Instead, I am focussing on how good it looks without me having a design gameplan and it being my very first mini in a long while. (I did make my Focus mini-album a couple of years ago that was for a round robin, but I only made a few pages in it myself and they were carefully planned out.)

I think that once I get to feeling like I'm about finished decorating the pages, I will look at distressing it a bit by sanding down all the page edges and adding a little paint with a dry brush. I may or may not, depending on how it looks at that point. All I know is, you gotta be prepared, organized and ready to work on one of these babies in order to finish one relatively quickly. The process is rewarding, though, whether ya go fast or slow. I'm having a blast!

A couple of cards

A couple of cards to show today...

I have 2 sets of nephews who are the same age, each from different sides of the family. The two boys turning 13 this month are the nephews for which I've made these cards.

I made this card for the nephew who is not really defined by his scholastics. He's more socially mature, which at his age means if it's not cool, he's not that into it. So I decided to go for an uncluttered look without any cuteness. The background paper (more Urban Lilly from 2005) is a textual assortment of advice or abstract things to wish for in life and he will *get* that message and like it. Here is the outside
       
and the inside
         

My other nephew is quite set in his ways already. He wouldn't value advice so much. He's much more of a bookish guy, whose favorite TV shows are NCIS and Lie to Me (perhaps forensics or psychological science is in his future?) . But he does like parties and bright colors, so this is what I put together for him (and I forgot to photog the inside of this card, it was a rub-on phrase):

 
Both of these are cards I'm making in my Altered Tin class, using my scraps, of course, and sketches provided in the course, which I am utilizing as great inspirational starting points. When I'm using my scraps, I rarely get to follow a sketch literally, but they definitely help me get started.

It's BOO Month!

It never fails. When I have a calendar collage ready to show on the first of the month, I forget! So it is here, but I'm grateful I remembered on October 2nd. This month, I practice my colored wax pencil layering. All the orange bordering you see is really a few different colors and about 6 layers.

Did you know that when you color with pencils, you should lay down multiples so lightly and thin that you can barely see the first one? (I'm talking the regular pencils, not watercolor, although I'm guessing it wouldn't hurt to layer those either.) If you use good waxy ones like Prismacolors, the wax will move the color around the paper, and on each subsequent layer the wax will help the color to fill in where it skipped on the prior layer. I learned this back in the stone age when I was taking art classes as a college undergraduate. My instructor would say, "A light hand lets the wax work."

It's true. Most people apply too much pressure on the first layer and/or give up way too soon when coloring. The first layer of color should be hard to see, in fact. Although this is tres difficult for me to do as well, I've had my best luck doing it by pretending to be testing the color to see if I like it and that helps me apply it lightly. Something else I do is to wipe each layer with a tissue occasionally in between layers. Some people do not do that. They like to keep the bits of color dust on the surface. It all depends on personal preference.

Anyway, we shade and color our dolls with Prismacolors in Suziblu's class, so that means this is another technique I need to do decently. Practice makes perfect, ya know! LOL

My collage for this month's calendar page was simply done, as the Karen Foster paper is very busy on its own. The skull is a rub-on from Marah Johnson's Skull & X-bone Designs booklet, and the pumpkins and witch are from my stash. I made the calendar grid masthead with a strip of scrapbook paper (Theresa Collins for Junkitz) and various stash alphabet stickers which I then outlined with black gel pen. I added a digital frame around the photo in my PSP Pro Photo X2 software.

Back to making greeting cards! Happy World Card-Making Day, by the way. Today is also the start of my second workshop class over at A.R.T. (a study of techniques in Lynne Perella's awesome book, Artists Journals & Sketchbooks (we use the acronym AJS). I will be having a crafty weekend and hope you will, too.

School Recap and 5 Minutes of Fame!

Altered tin goodness - My first one:

I'm in my last week of Altered Tin class over at My Creative Classroom and masterfully taught by my dear friend Linda.

So far, I've decorated this tin, made dividers and decorated them for the inside (and then decided right before finishing to bind them with my Bind-It-All and make a little hanging calendar out of them instead, so they are not finished yet). And I have also started decorating 2 other tins for presents.

I purposefully kept this tin ribbon-free and without a front labeling for now, because I haven't quite decided if I'm gonna keep it or give it to Missy for Christmas. Also, the ancient (2005, seriously) Urban Lily paper I used pleasantly surprised me by how cool it ended up looking all by itself. I did put a thin paper strip around the lid lip, but so far I haven't wanted to mess up the clean lines and modern look of it by adding another thing.

xx

Linda is the best teacher. Very thorough and patient. This week we are making cards, and I've gotten my instructions and sketches printed out, along with my scraps and card bases. Now to make some cards!

xx
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In my other classes, my Kelly Kilmer class is done today. As I said before, though, I will continue to journal the rest of the September prompts I did not get to. I have already begun painting some pages.
xx
Suziblu's Les Petit Doll class is slowly moving along, but it needs to move slowly, because there is so much to think about because there are many decisions I must make about my final art piece. I do a lot of sketching of different faces and bodies, different poses, clothes, etc., in her style, which is such that it's not really hard (no detail to hands and feet, no ears, mainly just a circle for the head and very detailed large eyes and flowing hair). I have to constantly work on body part proportion, that's hard for me, and to think ahead so it will all fit on the paper, lol. Baby steps forward. I'll get there.
xx
In Kelly Rae class I re-read Chapter 1 - Unearthing Buried Dreams, what upset me so much yesterday. I now see that I went through basically what she did in my younger adulthood. I wanted to be a writer and succumbed to my parents' desires for me to have a sensible education that paid the rent, so I switched to accounting. Did that for 30 years until the sight of one more tax return or deadline was going to send me screaming and running. Then, I got sick and all those dreams I had became null and void. Only tiny ones now that I can do under the circumstances. I still get really angry realizing all of that. More later on that.

xx

In Serendipity News, I got the surprise of my life this afternoon. I checked my email and there was one from Marah Johnson! She loved my Heartbreaker ATC and wanted to link it on her blog. She had seen it on something called I love google alerts. Huh????? I've never heard of that. I'll have to learn about it. Linda, thanks for emailing me and maybe you can help me learn what the google alert thing is?

xx

So, anyway, it's featured HERE, along with an art journal page where I also used her rub-ons, and I'm still getting over the shock. What a thrill! Even though I do not submit for publication, it's still an amazing feeling to have a favorite famous artist whose art supplies I love to use tell me she loves something I made. Pretty sweet - I'm definitely savoring this flavor. :-)

Bad Hair Day Life and Art School Update

I made this page with my hair affliction in mind, which is that I just have bad hair. Period. And, when I have the supreme luck to have my hair look good, it's all gravy, baby. Looking on the bright side.

I used collage sheet images from Nancy Baumiller's Collage Play with Crowabout challenge group. And my painted background is another page in my Kelly Kilmer monthly ning class A Prompt A Day.

So, a little art school update: I have winded down on doing art journal pages, as I am worn out from it. I pushed my envelope, enjoyed it, challenged myself and kicked my art up a notch due to it. But I had to just stop this past weekend, enough being enough. I needed a break and I did nothing artistic. That behavior bled into this week, and last night I realized I could keep it up even longer, which will really blow my schedule all to hell because I am already behind in multiple classes. Time to get a grip.

My adjusted gameplan is that since I created 12 journal pages in 24 days and that is an average of one every 2 days, I plan to continue output at that speed or maybe 1 every 3 days. Yes, 1 every 3 is the plan. This means I will continue to do September prompts throughout October and that is more my style. Since each page usually takes me 3-4 hours start to finish, you can see I was doing little else when I was churning them out.  I would dearly love to do a page a day, but I like my pages to be just right how I like them and mean something, like collages in a book, so they do take longer. That's just the way it is and is going to be. I'm embracing reality with a smile. We won't even factor in my physical restraints.

I should be on Lesson 3 in my Suziblu class; instead, I've barely finished Lesson 1. Suzi cleared me to go to Lesson 2, but I really don't feel she should have (how is that for confidence?). I shall advance anyway, and if it bites me in the butt I will start over, no problem. She recently extended our stay in our class until the end of December, so that means we have a lot more time to do the course. Was that a prayer of mine being answered? No, she has a book deal and magazine and all kinds of famousness brewing, and has to juggle that and her classes. Whatever the reason, I'm happy. Another reason I am happy is that I realize now that I can draw those doll faces. I have Suzi's pdf's and videos that teach how, so I have accomplished my biggest goal, which was to discover the secret to it and find out if I could do it. Again, the quality wil be mine and not hers but I never ever expected to have her quality. I actually enjoy her method as there is a surprising amount of geometry involved, and I'm always up for a good game of math, you know. ;-) (Sorry, I cannot divulge any more technique secrets as she will have me killed if I do -- proprietary info and all.)

I haven't even begun my friend Linda's altered tin and cards class and we are in the 2nd week. {Hanging my head in shame, but I know she forgives me...that's what friends are for...let's not forget I didn't really need the class, but I wanted to support my friend, plus I am taking it for the motivation to make Christmas presents, and it'll probably be one of my more enjoyable classes, too.}

I hope to concentrate today and catch up quickly, so all will be perfect. Since we are to do only one tin in there and I am going to do a minimum of 3 (and since I basically knew how to do it -- I am emphatically not saying they'll look great, but I do know how to alter a tin), I think I'll be caught up by Sunday. I have to cover my tins and then do my dividers that go inside. I wasn't motivated to do it before, but now I am actually looking forward to it.

I wish I could say the same thing for my Paint Shop Pro classes. I just cannot seem to get past my fear and my lack of desire combined. I'm going to do a few lessons this morning before altering my tins, and if the feeling continues, I'm dropping them. I am so unmotivated to learn so many of the things PSP does that I'll never do, just in order to learn the few things I do want to know, ya know?

The free Taking Flight book study began again over on On the Wing ning, and since I blew my first chance to study Kelly Rae Roberts' awesome book, I really have to do it this time. My lovely friend Teri has decided to lead it again, but probably not 3 times. My realization about being able to draw petit doll faces will only help me with Kelly Rae's faces, which I love equally, so strike while the iron is hot, I say. I should mention, this was not on my original class load, so it's an Add. Dang, I'm an art glutton.

While we are on Adds, I had counted the Lynn Perella Artists' Journals and Sketchbooks book study group over at Artists Round Table (where I did the Gwen Diehn class), but now I have finally decided to audit this, if only for the section on decorating slidemounts, which is my favorite part of the book. We will see how it goes, but I've decided to sign up today.

Well, I'm worn out talking about what I'm gonna do and now need to rest in order to actually do something. Doncha love it? Onward Christian Soldier! LOL Here's to Don Quixote and Windmills! Laterz!

Art school

Guess what? I'm a full-time student now! At 53, I've gone back to school.

As promised, here's my additional post on Back to School for the GPP Street Team Crusade #33: Back to School, where I nitty-gritty the details about my new student status.

All without leaving my home. :-) I am taking a bunch of online art classes, it seems, in September and October.

It all started with deciding to take Kelly Kilmer's A Prompt A Day monthly class...again. I signed up for January's and did a few pages. Didn't like it cuz I didn't like getting dirty with paints. It's similar to my feelings about camping. Hate the thought of it and the first few days of it, until I'm really dirty. Then, I love it (and by then, it's usually time to head back home. I cannot win.)

At any rate, I did not finish that class and always regretted it. Meanwhile, I began painting in my composition books because I took Eliece's class and in there we just used one or two colors at a time. So I got used to painting. And keeping the brushes and paints wet. And cleaning the brushes. And cleaning up the mess.

Now I like it and I'm getting pretty good at it.

(Here's my first September page in Kelly's class... "The Life Aquatic". This was done in my Wake Me When It's Over Journal.)

Guess I'm feeling my oats here, because once I signed up for Kelly's September class, I took the plunge and signed up for SuziBlu's Let Petit Doll Beginner class, too. Wow, I thought. My September's gonna be ker-razy:

1. A journal page a day Sept. 1-30.
2. A 5-week class Sept. 5 - Oct. 8 learning to draw shabby dolls.
Well, wait, there's more.

The other day, somehow I found myself surfed over to this amazing place called My Creative Classroom. Omg, let me just say I wanted one of every course they give. There's like 5 I want to take and had to just refuse. But when I saw that my friend Linda was teaching how to decorate altered tins, well, I had to sign up!

I figured, learn from the Mastress how to decorate those, make some cards and voila, Christmas present! Since I have like 6 tins sitting around, it sounded like a Plan and it will be a great one. Then, I saw a Bind-It-All 101 class. This is just the shove I need to get jiggy with my machine (so I can try to fulfill my dream of being like my friend Tina, the mini-book Queen), so I signed up for that one as well. Then, I ran screaming from there, well, screaming YAY and MORE LATER, but at least I left before doing more damage.

So, let's subtotal:

1. A journal page a day Sept. 1-30.

2. A 5-week class Sept. 5 - Oct. 8 learning to draw shabby dolls.
3. A 3-week class on altering tins and making greeting cards Sept. 14-Oct. 4.
4. A Bind-It-All 101 class for 4 weeks from Oct. 6 - Nov. 3.

Let's see, is that all? Well, no. Still have 4 more Creative Lettering lessons to do to finish that course, and then I have a free one to choose. I finally decided on Doodling. But that's self-paced, whenever, so I can always fit that in. There is the A.R.T. class coming up in October on Lynn Perella's book Artists Journals and Sketchbooks. I wanted to take that, but I don't. That Decorated Page class was a killer! They work your butt off over there, lol. So, it's great, but be prepared.

1. A journal page a day Sept. 1-30.
2. A 5-week class Sept. 5 - Oct. 8 learning to draw shabby dolls.
3. A 3-week class on altering tins and making greeting cards Sept. 14-Oct. 4.
4. A Bind-It-All 101 class for 4 weeks from Oct. 6 - Nov. 3.
5. A Doodling class - self-paced, no deadline.

It has been awhile since I was in collage (the last time was in 1992-ish working on my Masters and teacher certification), but that looks like a full load to me.

Actually, 18 hours at least, because Suzi's doll class is like a adding a lab and is worth 2 classes timewise to any of the others.

And then there is running the 4x6 yahoo group. And I didn't even count taking my Paint Shop Pro classes! Oops! Make that 21-22 hours. Wow, the blood is coarsing the old veins now! I'd better stock up right this minute on midnite oil!

Things should be hairy-crazy-busy, but I'm looking forward to it.

Art overdose, bebe! :-)

Until next time,