Signing Back In

It has been a very busy couple of weeks!  A weeklong stay in the mountains, four days at Merlefest, a house full of company, and then a sinus headache that has lasted for 13 days have kept me occupied.  

We finally got the propane gas heater installed in the basement of our mountain cabin.  Just in time for summer!  Doesn't matter, I am looking forward to being able to quilt in the colder months.  One of these days, we will also have a ceiling, sheet rock walls, and a floor!

Here is another journal page on the Amazing Race Facebook challenge...next stop Italy.  Of course I thought of the great wines of Italy, and decided to try to paint wine glasses/bottles.  For this I looked once again to the free Bob Burridge videos on You-Tube and on his website.  He gives such insight into how light is reflected and bounced around in glass and liquids.

Both of these paintings are in acrylic, and are blatant copies of Bob's paintings as I try to learn his methods.

Then...off to Germany.  I decided to try to paint like Wassily Kandinsky, who although a Russian, spent a great amount of time in Germany.  Here is my impression of his painting Houses in Munich (1908).

I love the bright colors of his palette and the freedom of his brushstrokes.  I painted this freehand with no drawing ahead of time.

I am also working on two paintings of flowers inspired by Bob's videos.  They involve painting bright splotches of color, and then forming the shapes of the flowers and vase by negative painting around the original colors.  Mine are both works in progress on top of some old unsuccessful journal pages.

You would never believe what these two pages once looked like.  I like being able to paint over some bad attempts.  These are both done in acrylic paint. It is much easier to do the negative painting with a more opaque paint than watercolor.

Next up are some more Bible art journaling pages.

In the first one, I used Bob Burridge's techniques again to apply the light pastel colors of the angel, and then use darks to negative paint the shape of the angel and wings.  This one is done in watercolor. I like that you can still see some of the original bright colors under the dark blues and purples of the background.

Judges 6:12

Here are some other recent pages.

Psalm 145

Hebrews 4:10-11

Romans 5:8

Jeremiah 31:3

On Wednesday, I babysat for my three-year-old granddaughter, Charlie.  I used to keep her two days a week until last summer, and I still enjoy having her stay with me when possible.  We did lots of painting together, and I used her paintings to make a Mothers' Day gift for her mommy.

We painted the butterfly and bubbles together, and she painted some vast expanses of paper with colorful glitter paint that were cut up and used in the flowers. 

And here is a beautiful bouquet of my own from my South Carolina family.  Inspiration for a future painting?

We are lucky enough to live close to our other son and his family.  This morning it was church and brunch.  Here is Charlie with the balloon from her Mack-Mack that did not get away or get popped all through breakfast.  I am looking forward to my luxurious pedicure with which they gifted me!

That's it for now.  I went to my quilt bee meeting last week and have a few photos from that meeting.  

Happy Mothers' Day to all of you beautiful mothers out there!

Nice Surprise in the Mail

The mail brought a nice surprise...the return of three of my silk journals that were used as samples by C&T Publishing Company.

I really did not know if they would be returned.  Now I have three pretty journals to use or give as gifts.

You can see more about these handmade journals on my blog here.

Tomorrow we leave for the mountains for the long Fourth of July weekend.  We will be joined by our whole family.  Plans are in the works for a new sun deck in the back yard.  Photos to come!

Junk Mail Journal- Finished!

I have been showing some of the pages in progress for this painted junk mail journal.  Last weekend, we stayed home...and I finished it, along with several other projects!

I made a cloth cover, sewed on a piece of needle-felted fibers in rainbow colors,  a bit of beading, and lots of ribbons.

When you open it up, all the colorful pages and ribbons and fibers come into view.

Although the outside fabric looks a little gaudy, the inside covers are a dark hand-dyed fabric.  I added a pocket on the front inside cover for bookmarks and a big post-it notepad.  The pocket is made from one of my sun-printed fabrics.

I added lots of bookmarks, clip-on tabs, and binder clips.

I had a few watercolor painting scraps and bits that I added in to some of the pages.  (Now why is Blogger turning the image upside down?)

This was a fun project, easy to work on in small doses if you don't have a lot of time.  Just paint a few pages at a time.  Most of the pages in this journal actually came from an American Quilter magazine.

Going out today to babysit for my little Charlotte.  Can't wait!

More Painted Pages

Yesterday I started working some more on the Junk Mail journal.  Here is one signature, not sewn yet but with added tabs, some fibers added, etc.

 

 

 

I can't wait to have enough pages to put the journal together.

 

Here are a few watercolor backgrounds for a different journal.  I use cheap watercolor paper from tablets for these.

 

After watching Beryl Taylor's DVD with my art quilt bee Monday, I decided to start some fabric paper.  Just take muslin, and dilute some white glue with water.  Glue down some white tissue onto the muslin, and coat it with the glue mixture.  I had a piece of muslin with some painting on it, so I used that.

 

When it is dry you can add more layers of collage, paint, or whatever you want.

I also covered some card stock with painted dryer sheets or "wet wipes", using gel medium.

 

These will all end up in something, some day!

Yesterday I got my grandmother fix by babysitting for baby Charlotte.  Love, love, love!

At four weeks, she is really focusing on her toys, faces, and paintings in the room.  And smiling!

Tonight I am hostess again, this time for my local quilt bee, The Whacky Ladies.  Since I'm not sure how long I will have a house, thought I better sign up for both bees this month.  I made a strawberry cake and some brownies this morning.

 

I'm afraid it is going to be a downpour when everyone is traveling.  We are supposed to get an inch of rain tonight.  Hope everyone arrives safely!

 

Shoveling out the Sewing Room

If you have been reading this blog lately, you know that we are trying to get our house ready to put on the market.  De-cluttering, re-organizing...and some of it is looking fabulous.  The kitchen cabinets, for example.

Have you been waiting for the part where I cleaned out the third floor, which is my sewing/painting/craft area?

Ha-ha-ha-ha!

The word clean usually does not apply to that area.  But I have been valiantly trying to find the floor.  Actually, the sewing room is not too bad, because I re-organized it a couple years ago.  I just need to get all the projects I have worked on since then off the floor!

Below is a storage area for fat quarters in the cubbies, hand-dyed fabric in the drawers, little cut pieces in the fabric boxes, and some miscellaneous stuff that needs to be organized better.

I probably need to take down the design wall with this unfinished scary lady's face! She got started during a Pamela Allen class when some of us decided to make a fearless woman portrait in honor of Pamela.  But... don't want to frighten any possible future occupants of this room!

It always makes me happy to see this belt hanger on the back of the door with colorful fibers hanging there, ready to embellish some postcard or journal.  It's a little sparse right now, since I have been trying to buy less and use up more.

I probably will have to paint over the stenciled hearts on the door to the other upstairs room.  I will wait until the meeting with our realtor to see if it has to go. 

Behind the cheerful door is a terrible mess.  I hate to show it to you!  I never cleared off my cutting table, and it is a repository of many sewing, painting, and crafting projects.  Somewhere under there is a jacket that I partially completed in a Karen Eckmeier class several years ago.

And my art table somehow works for me, as I can totally ignore clutter, such as all the jars and tubes of various paints and media, but I need to hide most of it away.  I really can't put my feet under the table because of all the stuff down there.  Really, how could anything pretty come out of this mess?

I am feeling a terrible need to do something creative.  As I have been carrying things back and forth between the two upstairs rooms, I have allowed myself to do a little journaling.  I always have lots of different journals in progress. 

This one is a tiny sketchbook.  My granddaughter Lily scribbled lots of the pages with crayons when she was about three.  I then tried to make some of the scribbles into pictures.  On this one I used colored pencil over the crayon, and then applied a layer of Quinacridone Gold watercolor paint.

I purchased the book Stash & Smash: Art Journal Ideas by Cindy Shephard recently. 

One of her ideas is to take paper from your junk mail, paint it, and use it to make a colorful journal.

So, between picking up projects off the sewing room floor, I have been painting some magazine pages and junk mail to make a scrap paper journal.  This page is one of Helen Kelley's quilting diagrams from Quilters Newletter Magazine with some watercolor paints on top.

This painting project is lots of fun, and super quick.  You can take window envelopes from your junk mail, add some paint, and then use them in your journal to highlight something from the next page.

Don't know when the journal will ever get put together, but at least I am splashing some paint around!

Well, you can see I still have a ton of work to do.  But I am still trying to exercise at the Wellness Center and walk the dog each day.  Kasey got her summer shave while we were at the beach.  None too soon, because like the rest of the east coast we are experiencing a terrible heat wave. 



Tomorrow is my birthday, and we are heading for the hills.  We have some things to do before we can get our building permit for the addition to the mountain cabin.  But mainly, I want to get away from the heat and sit by the creek!  (And get away from that mess on the third floor!)  And celebrate that I am old enough to start getting Social Security after five decades of paying in to Uncle Sam!

Fun With Doodles on a Rainy Day

This is what it looked like on our greenway walk today.  Gray, beige, and wet.

Kasey and I were the only idiots out there.  Hope SHE enjoyed it! 

I decided it was a good day to work on fun, colorful journal pages.  First, I got out my hardcover watercolor journal and turned to a page that I had previously painted with some orange/pink watercolors.  This month's theme for The Sketchbook Challenge is DOODLES.  So, I used two widths of Sharpies to add some doodle designs.

Doodling is also the theme of the first of this year's Strathmore Online Workshops.  If you have any interest in mixed media or art journaling, you should sign up for this free series of online classes with well-known artists.  The first series of videos is by Traci Bautista.  In the first lesson, you make marks with a variety of paints, markers, and stencils.  Then you use India ink and white-out marker to add more marks.

Here is my first lesson.  I hear the Seventies are calling, and they want their Flower Power back!

Since I had an extra sheet of watercolor paper handy, I made another one to use up the extra paint.

It is my understanding that these are to be cropped and cut up in future lessons for use as journal covers or other mixed media creations.

I also started Lesson 2 with Traci, which involves painting big shapes with watercolor paint, then adding stamps.  When this is all dry, I will write all over it with transparent ink colors- probably my Tsukineko inks.

I highly recommend color therapy for a dismal winter afternoon!

Not What I Should Have Been Doing Today

My little granddaughter, Lily, is learning to write, and loves to draw.  I always take a little notebook when we go out to eat for the kids to draw in.  I got each of them their own little spiral notebook, but wanted to make a journal for Lily.  Then I remembered the Doodlicious Daybook that she helped me make last year.  I decided to revise it to make it Five-Year-Old Friendly.

First I swapped out the chrome-colored metal binder rings for pretty colored ones, and added some fiber and ribbon wraps.  The front cover is a transparency printed on the computer with my doodles.

The whole journal was inspired by the online 21 Secrets journaling class with Tracie Hanson.  We created the painted pages by taking big sheets of brown craft paper and white drawing paper and painting with acrylic paints.  Then we cut those up into journal-size pages, often sewing them back to back with other papers.  In the photo below, the left side page is one of the painted brown papers outlined with marker.  The other side is cardstock painted and stamped.  I started a few doodled faces.

Here is a pocket page containing some raw materials to cut up and glue.

I like pocket pages and included several.

I made the pocket from a page with Zentangle doodles.

This page has a mini-book attached, as well as a quilted fabric bookmark.  The bird is a glitter transfer.  I have given her a few journal start ideas.

On the right is another painted paper from last fall.  On the left is a calendar page decorated with a duct tape flower.  Don't you love those printed duct tapes?

I never throw anything out, it seems.  When I have extra paint left on my palette, I often just spread it around on card stock.  I made a tag out of the blue painted flower.  There is a message on the back.

Here's another glitter bird transfer perched on the L from Lily's name.

The back cover is watercolor paper with a design stencilled on.

I hope Lily will have fun making art in this journal...and I hope she invites Gigi to do some pages along with her!