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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First Attempt At People.

I have been wanting to be able to draw for a very long time.

I thought that I couldn't draw "correctly" if I didn't have ALL the supplies. Now that I have ALL the supplies, I can't draw because I don't have the right atmosphere. The other day I just had to tell myself to STOP IT. If drawing is something that I want to do, I need to bite the bullet and do it. 


SO, I was browsing blogs and I came across a very simple drawing of a girl smelling a flower. Here is the blog I got this picture from as well as the picture. Living Creatively.

This is the drawing from Living Creatively.

I absolutely loved this drawing. It is so simple yet speaks volumes of what I have been feeling lately. Everything seems to be rushing past me and I panic. I rarely sit down and just relax and take my surroundings in. So, I drew and painted and stamped and taped and this is the final product. The quote is actually from an episode from True Blood. Anyways, here she is - my first attempt!

Happy Journaling!

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Canvas Re-Do!

I just didn't like the way the letters came out so I went through with a black Sharpie paint pen (my hero for the day!) and traced over the letters. I think the outcome was much better with the way the letters came out then before. 

Happy Journaling!

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Screaming All Week

I have been trying to use more magazine clippings in my art journals. I find all these really interesting and beautiful pieces, but I always forget to use them while I am doodling away. Today, I changed all that. 

I started with a pink from my Peerless Watercolors batch. I sprayed the page with my mini mister and spread the color first with a brush and then mostly with my fingers. That is the thing with Peerless is a very little bit goes a REALLY long way. 

I then dribbled some blue to make it drip to the bottom of the page. For the yellow I wet my clear stamping block and put a little yellow on my brush. After the color was saturated on the block I just stamped it on the paper. I didn't really know what I was aiming for, but I loved the outcome. 

I added my picture, then some black neo color crayon around the outside. I smeared the crayon with my finger and a little water. The black birds on wires is paper tape from Michael's.

This is the finished product - the quote says, "There aren't just days that I feel like screaming, there are weeks. I added some white scallops to the top and didn't really like them so I went over it with a yellow neo-crayon. I added more tape to the top to fill in the space. Also, I didn't like the way my cursive LIKE looked so I cut out some magazine letters. All in all, I love this page.

I was having a hard time deciding a quote to write and the girls in my 21 Secrets group on Facebook told me to write what I was feeling - so I did. It was amazing how exhilarated I felt after I wrote exactly what I was feeling. There was no particular reason for me to be screaming, but I just saw the picture and I knew that is what I wanted to write.

                        Molly was clearly bored with all of my art decisions.

Happy Journaling!

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