The Colors of Fall

I love the colors and coolness of fall.  It didn't feel much like fall today....but it is September 1st and those cool crisp days are right around the corner.  I'm ready!

Here are a couple "fallish" pages in my Pinterest inspired art journal.  I cut the tree out of black card stock and placed the art papers behind. In hindsight I could have done without the gold doodling on the black...there's always next time.












It was loosely inspired by the pin below which can be found here. There are some other very beautiful trees on the site.

For the companion page I cut the leaves out of scrapbook card stock that I distressed a bit with a stamp pad. Then I cut each leaf into pieces along the vein lines...separating the pieces on black paper to give it a stained glass look.











It was inspired by this stained glass piece that can be found here.  

Polyvore...

...creative entertainment!

I had seen interesting collages on Pinterest with lots of textures and patterns....and I wondered how they were done. I noticed that many of them were from "Polyvore" so I finally visited the site to see if I could learn more.

Found on Pinterest

Even when I read the description on their website found here....I didn't really understand what it was. It seemed to be about fashion and product advertising. But when I wandered around I realized it was much more.  The site has lots of images to make your own collage using their templates or a blank page...but the images were mostly commercial products.  What I found was you could also upload your own images to make your own digital collages.  In Pinterest you "pin" images to save them....in Polyvore you "clip" them.

One I created

It reminds me of my son Nate's technical music called "sampling." He imports songs into his computer...then using several different tiny sound bites he manipulates them and puts them back together into a whole new sound, or "beat" as it's called in the hip hop world.

On Polyvore you take pieces and parts from different images and manipulate them to use in a digital collage piece. Below are a couple of pages from my Pinterest inspired art journal with some of my first collages.  On the left I added some embellishment using floss and beads....it's hard to see in this picture.  The bird on the right is not part of the collage...just glued on top for the journal.

This page was done in Ellen's journal....and many of these images were from her Pinterest pages.

Like any other art medium...it takes practice...and I need a lot of practice!  I still tend to overwork and overdo...not knowing when to stop.  But for now it's just creative entertainment...so it works for me!

Here They Are!

This is the companion page for my last post with the pinwheels....and here's where the little bling stickers landed.

This page was inspired by strip quilts I had seen on Pinterest....photos below.

Ellen had given me a box of colored light diffusers a while back from her son,  a professional lighting expert. They are about the size of a label and came in a huge spectrum of colors.  I overlapped them to get some variation in color and stitched them into strips of papers to mimic the quits.




So..."what if being happy is easier than you thought!"

The inspiration pins:

Like Minds!

I have written about the art journals I've traded back and forth with Ellen many times...and one might think I am nearly at the end of it....but here I go again.

While we were working on the Pinterst journals both Ellen and I were inspired by this pin at the same time.

Like Minds!

I punched circles from textured card stock, cut them into quarters, and arranged them into the pinwheels.  I mounted them on punched squares and added the little bling sticker in the middle. 

You can see that I lost a few stickers.

Here is Ellen's page.  I expect she used the same process starting with circles....and I think she used paint chips...but I'm not sure.  I really like the rainbow gradation.  

We joke about the fact that I tend to be very precise and orderly with my art and she is a little more free flowing and loose. Ellen says here that this is her attempt at MA precision.



One of my favorite Ellen lines is "I throw a lot of stuff at the page and sees what sticks."  

The Art of Rex Ray

Have you heard of Rex Ray?  His collage art inspired this spread in my Pinterest journal.

I came across a video of Rex Ray on Pinterest that really struck me...he talked about being frustrated as a graphic designer for a big company. One night he cut up one of his barely recognizable ads and reworked it.  That started a routine of coming home every night and making simple collages from magazine pictures using just scissors, paper and glue. Doing this exercise helped him find his creative voice.  

Here are some examples of his collages...I love the colors and retro shapes.  His website can be found here.

My friend Connie offered me a garden calendar that came free in the mail.  At the time I was working on the Pinterst journal with Ellen and knew I was going to do a Rex Ray inspired collage...I thought the colors and textures in the calendar were just right.

Scissors, paper, and glue....pretty simple!

Thanks Rex!

Paper Cuts

Pinterest inspired paper cuts.

There will be a day when there are no more pages to share from my Pinterest and art journals I traded with Ellen....but that's not the case yet.

And I've been thinking about starting another one.  It's nice to have a place to put that one time experiment....and I do a lot of experimenting.  

These paper cuts caught my eye on Pinterest so I checked out the website.  They were done by Marnie Karger from Minneapolis.  I was drawn to the gradation of colors...and the simple retro shapes.    

I especially love her topographical maps....like the one below of Lake Superior. Paul and I vacationed in Bayfield, WI on Superior last summer and toured The Apostle Islands...the little white dots in the lower left of the map.  It was awesome!

I thought I would give her simple shapes a try.  I've not done much with an x-acto knife...but it was kind of fun and not as hard as I thought and I was pretty pleased with the result. I thought my little personal touch of the machine stitching was a nice addition.  It would be fun to make some cards.  

Laurie Frick

I am completely fascinated by the work of Laurie Frick. She's a data artist who explores "self tracking." She takes extensive data on everything from sleep patterns to the walking or travel you do in a day to how you spend your time, and translates it into art. It seems a bit complicated and I don't fully understand how she does it...but there is something about these graphic collages with the mix of papers and colors that intrigues me.



Since I discovered her on Pinterest....she inspired me to do these couple of pages in my Pinterst Journal.  Rather than "self tracking" I called mine "junk mail tracking."

This collage was made from junk mail and catalogs that came on one particular day.  I wished I would have mixed up the words a bit more so the letters weren't in the right order...but it was my first attempt.  

Except for the bird, this second attempt was made entirely from an Ethan Allen Flyer.  I did mix up some of the words on this page...and it makes it much more interesting.  There were so many great shapes and patterns in the flyer...and the color scheme was very pleasing...mostly yellow, gray, black, gold and silver....and the fun little pop of pink.   

The frame for this page was made from....you probably recognize it...a Bed Bath and Beyond coupon. I shaded in the background with pan pastels.  For the journal...I did some writing and reflection in the middle.

A new Ethan Allen flyer just came the other day and the spring colors are beautiful and there are lots if interesting lines and patterns.  I'm going to try another collage. 

I have to mention that I got a new computer a few days ago...and there are a lot of new features to learn on the "pages" program.  I took these photos of the flyer and did this this layout very quickly...love the new gradient background.  I've got a lot to learn but I know I'm going to have fun with it.  I love digital art! 

While I was on Laurie's website I discovered she has a free app called "FRICKbits"...so I just downloaded it onto my phone. It will track my travels and turn it into an art piece.  Below is a screenshot from her website and it can be found here.  Let's see what happens!

It's ironic that the first day I had the tracking app....I didn't leave the house....so no data yet.  It may take a little while for me to go enough places to create something. I am kind of a homebody.

So stay tuned for my own "data tracking" art and my "junk mail tracking" art courtesy of Ethan Allen.

More Calendar Squares

I had fun with this two page spread I did in my Pinterest Inspired journal using more punched squares from the "Sun Moon and Stars" calendars.  I want to try something similar on a wooden canvas.

These pages were inspired by this pin on my "interesting art" Pinterest board. It was done by another of my favorite artists,  Loretta Grayson and her blog can be found here. I'm going share a little more about Loretta sometime soon. I love her work and own one of her delightful tree prints.

After writing about these calendars I did my research. The artist is Maret Hensick and she lives in Maine...which made me smile!  She designs and paints for several different companies and her work can be found on everything from cards to t-shirts and her website can be found here.

I was quite taken with Maret's statement of inspiration...

 Reprinted from Maret's website

Grids, Squares and Stamps

I love my 1 inch square punch!  It's one of the tools I use most often.

I used it here for these pages for my Pinterest inspired art journal.

    

I made a diamond grid on my computer and filled in with punched watercolor squares. I finished it off with a stamps and embellished it a bit.

For this page I used the same grid but I grayed the squares to give it a shadow effect. Then I filled in with watercolor squares and some handmade paper.  Finally I added the stamp detail around the edge. To get a black edge on the watercolor squares I just traced the edge with a black sharpie.

To get a perfect triangle... you can put your paper in your square punch just 1/2 way...lining up corner to corner.

For this page I folded blue circles around the watercolor squares.  Then I glued them into place and added the little stamp designs.  I traced the edges of the circles with black sharpie before I folded them....I like that black edge.


It reminds me of the cathedral window quilt pattern.

I will use some of these ideas again....There are lots of fun things that you could do.

These pages were somewhat inspired by this pin I found on Pinterest from Fickr.

Order and Chaos

Here is a spread from my Pinterest inspired art journal...I called it Order and Chaos. On the left I played around with doodling in pre-made grids and included a few Pinterest quotes.  On the right I cut up a bunch of random doodle rejects and layered them on the page like shingles.

The pages were inspired by many different pins on my doodle Pinterest boards....
but greatly influenced by these.

I made myself a bunch of very light graph paper sheets with different size squares on my computer. There are so many doodle patterns that this is very helpful for...and the very light lines just disappear.

This was a good way to use up the scraps.....doodling gone wrong.  

There are also a few black and white craft paper scraps.