Finishing projects

Today was the day to finish working on some projects---I have two custom wedding albums to make & I wanted to clear some things off my desk. 

My dear friend, Kathie, owns a publishing company & they moved in to their new offices recently. She raved about one of the curio boxes I had made & told me she loved anything having to do with books. Needless to say, I didn't need any more encouragement than that! LOL 

It's not a very good photo since I took it with my phone......and you can't see the "books" on the top of the box along with a child's letter block that has a pair of glasses on it. But you get the idea........  It has her logo inserted into a metal piece used to label the old, big binders (I remember those!!), glitter cuz she's a crafter, a heart to remind her of me, and "books" to represent her business. Plus I love the bordello coin in the corner---she teases her hubby that they painted one of the walls in a bordello red!

Here's my latest She Art girl----although not quite finished. She still needs a good quote on her---any ideas?  I'm so loving these girls but I have no place to put them! Hmm......

While I was cleaning out, the UPS guy came to the house delivering my Dick Blick order (like I need more stuff!). I had ordered some of the hand barrier cream so paint & glue wouldn't stick to me....I pick it off for days! So far I'm really liking it!! Plus it's keeping my horrible dry Scleroderma hands a little less dry!  But the best part of the order are these paints......

What a perfect size!! It's the same size bottle as Stickles and the paints inside are AWESOME!  I dabbed a little bit of each on some white paper........OMG.......the colors & shine are fabulous! Now I'm trying to find a distributor that I can get more!!  Have you used these?? What do you think???



A better tomorrow

Week 2 of Christy's She Art Workshop had us making a scene with our girl. We could either paint or paper the sky & grass.  On my canvas, I used strips of green papers for the grass then mixed blue paint in with modeling paste to make the sky. Using a palette knife, I spread it like frosting so there's some really interesting texture but it's kind of hard to see in the photo.

After that, it was making the girl---can you see the raffia as her belt? Add a chipboard branch & some birds for the "scene" and some rubons and it's on its way! I love messing around with the different "textures" from punchinella, bubble wrap, and stamps. It's so cool how individually they don't make a huge impact, but all together they are so much fun!

I have another canvas started with paint as the sky & grass but that's as far as I've gotten.....  Even though I set my alarm at 3:30 every day to do some art, it doesn't always happen.  :(  Hopefully tomorrow!!



She Art

This month I'm taking a fun e-course called She Art Workshop by Christy Tomlinson.  This is what she says....

"... learn how to create unique and detailed  she Art girls, as seen in my art and mixed projects! I will also teach you how to create backgrounds, textures, and layering styles on canvases and other surfaces! You will walk away from this class feeling confident in creating your own personalized" She Art" pieces as well as having learned  new art techniques you can use in other mixed media projects!" 

Christy does some great artwork with her She Girl. The way she combines colors and textures is totally awesome. The first week there was 8 or 9 videos showing us what supplies she uses and how to use them. Personally, I've never used modeling paste or glass beads before. LOVE, LOVE, LOVE the texture they create!

For this lesson we were supposed to make our own backgrounds with papers, paint, or anything else she covered in the videos. Then we are to add the She Girl from the template pieces Christy supplied. Add some stamps and some rub-ons and you have your very own She Girl!!

For the first girl I put down some tissue paper from a McCalls pattern and some old book pages. Then came some acrylic paints. In the corners, I mixed modeling paint with acrylic liquid (specifically the color from a dropper) and just kind of stippled it on--that's the blue portions.Then I stamped some letters and some lines before adding my girl. I actually painted the hair on---that was very scary!! LOL Afterward I added some more stamps and some rub-ons then sprayed it with some Glimmer Mist.

For my second She Girl I started the same way but after adding some paint, I mixed the acrylic liquid with some of the glass beads (tiny beads in a glue medium that dries clear) and spread it over a diamond shaped template. You can't really see the depth of it here, but I added some white paint to the peaks of the dried beads. Basically it was all the same process as before but it made such a different canvas. I think I'm going to send this one to my friend in IL---she will love it.

So far the art has been really fun---it pushes the creativity a little further than what I'm accustomed to. But because of the style, it doesn't have to be matchy-matchy or be very precise. The only problem I've had is that you have to let everything dry between the layers......and I'm not very patient!! :)  At least here in the Arizona dry & sunny climate, I can just put it on the patio table & it dries pretty quickly.

Tomorrow we have our second lesson and it's all about layering--the background and the clothing--and doing some creative writing tips for the phrases. I'm very excited & can't wait to see what Christy has in store for us!!



When the cat's away.......

The husband left on Saturday for IL for the next week. As soon as he was gone, a friend came over and we played for a bunch of hours on our art journals. She's even newer to the art journal world than I am but she's doing a great job so far! I wish I had some photos of her book---I didn't want to put her on the spot, though.

 

This is one of the pages I did while she was here. I think about this a lot so when I saw this fun little card, I knew I had to have it. Since I am no longer working, I'm having difficulty defining who I am & what I'm meant to do and this card says it perfectly.

I had some leftover gesso & water in a dish and didn't want it to go to waste so I added some acrylic paint to it to use as the base on the page. I love the texture of it---it's really smooth but has almost a shimmer to it. Is it from the gesso? I'm not sure.......

This is another page I did while my friend was here. The girl is from a Christy Tomlinson .jpg and I just loved her! Christy is doing a "She Art" online workshop on background techniques & stuff. Of course I had to sign up for it!

I think this is one of my favorite pages! The wings are cut out from some DCWV paper & they are all glittery & embossed. Good thing we had big, fold out pages in this book from Kelly Kilmer's class!!

And because hubby is gone, all the goodies are still all over the kitchen from when my friend was here.......they may just have to stay there until the housekeeper comes later this week!! :)