Empire State Building

My first attempt at drawing a building from the city that I love.

: b

Happy journaling!

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Melt Down Maybe Fixed?

Here's what I came up with. SOMEONE give me some ideas. It's in need of help. Lol

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First Time Using My New ZIGs.

Well a few weeks ago Joanne's had a massive sale and I got a pack of 48 ZIG markers for somewhere around 25 bucks. Today was the first time I decided to use them.

I just started a new class called A Whole New Doodle and the teacher gives you a few print outs for you to color on. I printed one out and decided to draw it into my journal instead of just coloring. I actually think I found the picture on her blog somewhere. Her name is Stephanie Ackerman and she is a doll. Anyways, here is my pencil drawing and then pen.

           

I tried to use all of my colors - which I couldn't but that's why there are so many random colors. I even messed up on one flower. I am not sure if I am going to add any writing but for right now, I am finished.

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Little Bird - BIG Problems.

I found this cute little birdy on Geninne's Art Blog and I thought I would try to re-create him. Of course, I can not do as well at Geninne but I thought that would just try. I washed the back ground out with a light purple. 

I've never really drawn a bird but I think I did okay. 

Then the painting began, and apparently I can not control my water colors. I messed up a little and then a little turned into a lot. 

For those of you who don't know me, I am a perfectionist. It is already a huge feat for me to draw and it not be perfect but to just got with the flow - but to paint, and mess up like I did - I had to fight every bone in my body to know crumble this little birdy up and make him into a paper air plane. None the less - I confided in some of my art journal buddies - who gave me some great ideas - and marched on. I finished painting him and I used a bit of gesso to cover up the purple. That didn't turn out so well...and to make matters worse I got water on the rear end and smeared those colors.

EPIC DISASTER. I wanted to stop right then! But...I decided to try a sky blue acrylic wash. That was a fail in and of its self.

Then a light bulb came on - I can cut him out! Silly that I didn't think of that to begin with. So I tore the page out (which I hate to do in journals) and carefully cut my colorful birdy out. I then used some other watercolors besides my Peerless and did a color combination. (While playing with the epic disaster page, I figured out that bleach works really well with my Peerless Watercolors.) I also added a paint swatch that I got from Wal-Mart. 

While gluing and cutting I devised a quote. I knew what I wanted to write but I wasn't exactly sure how I wanted to word it....I used my "cursive" and then I traced over and made the letters thicker - which is a trick I learned in my Letter Loving Class by Joanne Sharpe. 

I was upset because I wanted to use a flower, and I have all of these cute little felt flowers but I didn't want it to be a color - I wanted it to be white. Well, while I was playing in bleach - I just threw a little flower in there and what do you know? A white flower. I traced it and put a black spot in the middle and I think that it pulls the entire page together!

Here is a close up of my bird:

He isn't perfect, but I think I've done well for my first almost disaster and bird drawing. :)

Happy Journaling! 

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Knitted Baby Blanket

I had a blast making this baby blanket but I will think harder the next time I want to knit a blanket. Scarves are a piece of cake but the blankets are a bit harder!


Of course the picture is just a portion of the blanket. It is smaller then I would have liked it, but it's for a new born.

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Crayon Melting Melt-Down.

Everyone on Pinterest is talking about the crayon melting on a canvas. I thought I would try something different and try to melt over a quote on the canvas. My idea was to pick out a really nice quote, and I took my time picking out the size of the canvas and the colors that I wanted to use.

                    

The quote that I found was beautiful; "Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or to usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky," by Rabindranath Tagore. I shortened it up a bit to, "Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky." I added a few clouds and the color would be the melted crayons. I PAINSTAKINGLY cut out each letter and cloud in some clear masking tape and I STRATEGICALLY laid them on the canvas - mind you every time I moved a letter sometimes they ripped and tore and I had to REDO them. Several times. 

Non the less I kept pushing through, excited for the final product. 

Once completely on the canvas, I got the crayons ready to be melted. This part was fun because I am in loved with all colors. Me and Crayola go WAY back. I used a Exact-o knife to cut the wrappers off the crayons so I could use them for a later project - I have to do something with them I can't just throw them away. That and, I love the names that they pick out for each color. My favorite growing up is Robin's Egg Blue - and I remember my first pack that had it in the 96 count tin cans.

ANYWAYS, I decided to use a hot glue gun to melt them instead of gluing and a hair dryer. Crayon wax is not as hot as regular wax but it still stings non the same. And it is messy and difficult to get through with out the crayons breaking or the crayon moving through on it's own. My fingers and palm were quite sore. 

This project is messy but on my coffee table the dried crayon wax just came right up. I tried to keep everything on a page but it didn't work. I was very irritated at the end of the crayon melting but I did it. When the wax dried I couldn't really see where the tape underneath it was. When I found it, THAT tore and broke the wax and it did NOT come up the way I wanted it to.

I got one cloud off and tried to get the C off but it didn't work. I didn't even take pictures of it I was so disgusted. What I think that I am going to do is use a hair dryer to re-melt the wax and see if I can get the tape up any easier.

Pray for me.

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Forever Young.

I found a few cute little cut outs from a magazine I had and a clip of an advertisement caught my eye. "Focus on forever young." This seemed very fitting because I have been wound up in the fact that I am getting older and I am still single and I feel like I haven't really gone anywhere in my life. Anyways, I cut out the girl and the flower from some other add and the windows reminded me of New York so I cut them out. I ended up not using them, however.


Since I was at work, I used only my Peerless Watercolors, a quarter, one of my Pigma 0.4mm pens and of course my mini mister and some clear gesso. I didn't really have an idea of what I wanted but it seems that I always drift to blues and greens. I threw in a shade of purple to off-set the blue & green. 

I just wanted a few dots and I colored those in with a yellow orange. I then turned the dots into flowers. I also used the "salt method" for the first time. For those of you who don't know, it's when you sprinkle some salt onto a wet page and let it sit for a bit. The salt soaks up the moister around each flake and it gives it an almost a ripely look.

I glued and pasted and here is my final product:

I like my choices and I might add some doodles or something but for now I love it. 

Also, I redid my Peerless Watercolor pallet since I added all of the original colors.

These are bad pictures but I love this new set up. In time I will go back and put a name beside each color.

                                            
                 




                                       

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