Fun With Lettering

I knew I would have some "sitting-around time" in Sarasota last week, so I downloaded two Joanne Sharpe videos from Interweave to play with.  I had brought along a small journal, some watercolor pencils, an Aquarelle water pen, a small watercolor palette, and a few black markers

Volume 1 deals with the elements of art.  Here are my attempts to work on the lessons.

Volume 2 deals with making coloring-book style letters that can be colored in with crayons, markers, pencils, paints, or whatever you like.

I like the floral doodles of my letter A.

The B is for Beach is probably my favorite.

 Butterflies used to form a letter C.

I have another one started but not colored yet.  It was fun to have something new, quick and not too hard to work on while playing the waiting game in Florida.

Two Little Watercolors

  

 I did two little paintings to thank my kids for my Mothers' Day surprises.

You can buy ready-made watercolor paper cards and postcards.  Usually I use a color photocopy on card stock of one of my paintings, but I made originals for these.

I also did a page for Week 3 of the Strathmore Online Workshop with the Journal Junkies.  This one was about incorporating text onto the page.  

And here is a picture of my littlest grandchild, Charlie, looking cute as a bug!  We have been enjoying playing outside this week.

This is Memorial Day weekend in the USA, and all our kids and grandkids will be joining us at our new mountain cabin.  It is supposed to be very warm and sunny.  We are hoping to do some creek sitting while they are here!

Painted Papers

After I finished the last two watercolor paintings, I just wanted to have some fun in the studio and do some easy splashing around of color.  I am working on pages for a watercolor paper journal and a Trash-to-Treasure journal.  The last is inspired by the book Stash and Smash by Cindy Shepherd.

It is really fun to take magazine pages and junk mail and turn them into colorful journal pages.

Mostly I use watered-down acrylic paints and just spread it on the page to cover any parts I don't want.  Sometimes I like to leave some of the pictures or text visible. 

It's also fun to collage some napkins or tissue paper on top of the painted papers.

We had a big family gathering last weekend.  All of our kids and grandkids came to visit.  It was the first time Bryson and Melissa's children had met their new cousin Charlotte.  Here are my two granddaughters.

And here is the whole family (including our dogs) gathered on our front porch.

For some reason, it seems very quiet around the house today!

Sort of Quilty Gifts

Today was the annual Christmas brunch of the Whacky Ladies Quilt Bee.  We met at our usual restaurant, Brig's in Wake Forest, which has always offered us plenty of space for all our gift bags and show-and-tell (plus generous portions of delicious food.)

We actually only had one show-and-tell quilt this time, a red and white beauty by Caroline Ormond.  Unfortunately, my photo is out of focus.
(No, we were not drinking Bloody Marys or Mimosas!)

 

She made the blocks from Block-of-the-Month kits from Wish Upon a Quilt.  This one will be quilted by our bee member Donna Sontag of Whatever's Quilted.

 

We traditionally exchange small gifts for each person.  What a lovely selection of candy, ornaments, soap to take home!  Okay, this picture's upside down.  (No, I didn't come home and start drinking Bloody Mary's!)

 

 

Donna made these cool silvery quilted ornaments on her computerized longarm.

 

In addition to the small favors that we exchange, we each bring a larger gift to go to one person in the "Dirty Santa" exchange.  You know, you pick a number, then choose a gift.  The next person can either steal your gift, or choose one that's not opened yet.  This year no one stole any one's gift.  I guess we were all on our good behavior today.

I made a journal with a needle-felted cover and hand-painted pages.

 

Here is the back. (I swear the folks at Blogger must be doing handstands today.)

 

 

Here is the hand-dyed inside cover and some of the pages.

 

 

Here is when it is very handy to have a stash of painted papers lying around in your studio.  I just chose some that sort of coordinated with the rainbow colors of the cover.  They are sewn in by machine in three signatures.

 

 

The cover itself has silk fibers and ribbons needle felted to a piece of wool felt, then quilted on my sewing machine with a decorative stitch.  The lining is fused to the back.

 

 

For my small gifts, I made yet another round of watercolor ATC's.  This time it went much faster, because I fused the whole sheet of watercolor paper to the backing paper, and then cut out the ATC's. 

 

 

I don't think I showed the backs last time.  I made large color photocopy of a painting I did in the free Strathmore online class with Traci Bautista,

 

 

and sections of it became the colorful backs of the ATC's.

 

 

I also only went around the outside once with zigzag stitch, which makes a neater appearance on the backs especially.

 

Here are some of the ones I especially liked.

 

 

 

 

 

Since I collaged some printed words this time, I applied a coat of matte varnish to the front of each card.

 

Recently one of the members of my art quilt bee lost her husband.  Our bee each made an ATC to send her.  All together, they made quite a lovely showing of love and support.  I found another piece of painted, doodled paper in my stash and used it to wrap around the ATC's before mailing.

 

 

 

So, moral of the story, keep painting and doodling and you might find the perfect items in your stash the next time you need to make a gift.

 

Now I must get ready to have the whole family of kids and grand kids arrive for the weekend.

 

But first, I may just need to drink a Bloody Mary!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What to do on a Gloomy Winter Weekend

From last weekend's beautiful snows and blue skies in the mountains, we have transitioned to a cold, rainy, gloomy weekend at home.  We have seen a few movies (War Horse in the theater, Great; the new Planet of the Apes on DVD, Not bad; and Charlie's pick of DVD, Cowboys vs. Aliens, so bad and loud that I retreated to my third floor craft room to work on journal pages.

Nothing like getting absorbed in a riot of color to improve the mood on a wintry day!

I usually subscribe to the "Pages in Stages" method of journaling.  You paint a background and add collage elements, then later go back and add text or artwork.

Here is a previously painted background on watercolor paper.

I added a beautiful little watercolor that I found in print, added some doodled lace and text, and am imaging a nice cheerful summer day on the porch!

Here's a funny little scene that I made from a Trader Joe's package.  When the newspaper did an article on apples, it worked out perfectly!

I liked the photo of this little girl in my husband's old college French textbook.  Also inside the book was a ticket stub from a 1970 basketball game, NCSU vs. UNC!  I had to stick that on there, too.  I tried to use paint colors that were similar to the colors in the photo. The blossoms behind the little girl are formed by throwing salt on wet watercolor paint.  The white doodles are done with a Bic White-out marker.

The next one was made with paint plus collaged napkins and tissue paper.  I added marks with India ink and Speedball pen.  I am growing fond of using the India ink, even though it can be a bit messy. 

The text does not refer to the Creek Indians, but rather to the community  along Peak Creek in Ashe County.  I like being part of the Creek People!

The next page is all doodles, inspired by Sandy Steen Bartholomew's book, Totally Tangled.

I created a few new backgrounds

and started a new lady who will later be adorned. She is done in colored pencil that I smudged with a little water on my finger.  She needs a little work.

Today is the last day to get in the running for the Georgia Bonesteel quilting book that I am giving away. There are only three comments so far, making your odds pretty good if you are interested in winning this classic book.