Over the Flu Hump

I'm doing better, finally. Since I last posted, The Hubster came down with it, too. He even took a day off work, which is shocking in itself if you know him. I think he had perfect attendance grades 4 through 12 (grades 1-3 had a few days of absence due to mumps, measles and chicken pox, or he'd have had perfect attendance there, too). Anyway, he's back at it and recovering slowly but surely as well.

Oh, where to start catching up? Ah, oldest first. Here's my next art journal page, back in March (looks Halloween-ish, doesn't it? It's the Marah Johnson skull rub-ons):

The rest of today's photos are creations made last month. Here is a 4x6 artist postcard. I do not know what came over me to draw this...acute bravery, I guess (my courage isn't cute, just strong hehe). I guess it was time for me to play with the shabby whimsical portraits I've been learning to draw in Suziblu's class.

I call it Jane's New Dress because it looks like she's modeling it a little shyly. I used a charcoal pencil rubbed in with rubbing alcohol (it earned its name) and watersoluble oil pastels using watercolors as the wetting medium:

After it was finished, I realized I'd used Halloween colors, and she would have made a great Good Witch with the addition of a black hat or broom. Oh well, next time.

Next, how about an artist trading card?

The weekly mingle theme was purple power, so this is titled Purple Marie. I took a dusty mauve purple card base and rubbed in some w/s oil pastels. Then I stamped in purple around three corners and heat embossed in sparkly clear powder before adhering the images, from a collage sheet by Collage Visions.

Finally, a greeting card, made for another one of my nephews for his birthday:

I used sketch #160 from my yahoo group Stampers Corner and some ancient Scrapworks papers and diecut.

Halloween Haunt Down: Day 2 of 3

Here are a couple of atc's I've made this Halloween season. I used rub-ons from my Marah Johnson Skull and X-bones collection, a background paper and flowers from a RAK, an Elsie label, jewel brads and a little stamped heat embossing. The red one has several layers of Diamond Glaze as a top coat and gives it its glossy grunge look :

and

Join me tomorrow for Day 3 of the Halloween HauntDown...

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.

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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!

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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.
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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.
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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.

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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?

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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. :-)

Bookmark Tutorial

Here is a classy and easy way to mark your place in that hot book you are reading. I made a couple of these bookmarks today and decided to snap a few pics during the process for you and do a little tutorial. First, you need to get this:

Next, turn the paper over and:

Then:

Now, do this:

Then:

Next:

Finally:

Here is the other bookmark I made, for my homework in my Taking Flight class:

I used rub-ons from Marah Johnson's Travel Designs and Love Struck booklets (Creative Imaginations).