Rosey's Art

We woke up to 2-3 inches of snow...and it was almost gone by noon. It was lovely for a while in the early morning light.

And it ended up being a beautiful day to be downtown for the protest.

Tracking tells me that Diane got her journal today! Phew! 

She included two coloring sheets that her granddaughter Rosey had done and I tried to think of clever ways to include them. One of them was a snowman that I folded into a zine and tucked it into a pocket. But first...I added a little texture. I placed stencils under the snowman and used the side of crayons to do some rubbings. Such an easy things to do with kids! 

If you use this technique on heavier paper...you can watercolor over it and the crayon acts as a resist giving a wonderful batik-like effect. You can see an example of that on the box top in this post.

I folded it into a zine...and I tucked it in the other side of the cornfield pocket.

It was serendipitous that this page of the zine looks like a landscape! 

Diane and her granddaughter could continue to add things to the zine. Or make another one!

I forgot about the other coloring sheet until after the book was assembled....but I still wanted to do something with it.

This one was a large Christmas ornament...and in the end I trimmed off the hanger and turned the other side into a color wheel using my own catalog images.

Diane and Rosey could add their own images to the wheel and 

do more coloring or glueing to the other side.

The color wheel would have made a fabulous page to include in the journal...but all I could do at the point was fold it and tuck it into the back. Maybe one of the next journals will get a color wheel page....or at least a round page!

One last beautiful downtown cloud photo....Mother Nature's art!

Out Of My Head

Sometimes I can't get something off my mind until I just stop and deal with it.  That's was what happened starting last night and throughout the day today.  It was a busy house day but I sat at my work table for a few minutes here and there so I could get an idea out of my head.

I rip lots of images out of catalogs that catch my eye....and this colorful napkin "wreath" has been sitting on my dining room table for weeks.  There was just something about it that seemed to have potential.

Last night I was watching a YouTube art video that got me thinking about this wreath. I literally had to get out of bed and mount it onto a piece of cardstock so it would be dry and ready to play with it today. I cut it into 4 pieces so I could manage it better.  It still wrinkled a bit...but that didn't matter.

In the video the artist commented  that she was better with a paint pen than a paintbrush....and that would be true for me too. I don't have many supplies left in Lexington...but I did have a white paint pen and I knew immediately what I wanted to try. I covered the napkin wreath in circles and started filling in the negative space. Then I got gack to packing.

I went back to it throughout the day filling in a little more and a little more and ended up using some white wall paint to fill in some of the bigger spaces. I just wanted to get a base coat on and cover all the negative space and didn't want to use up the paint pen.....and I knew I would touch it up and revisit it when I was in my studio.  At this point I thought I might save the fruit...but it really didn't seem to fit in anymore.

So I painted over it and this is where I landed at the end of the day.  It's just a start and I have a few ideas of where I can take it from here...but I'll mull it over for a while. The most important thing is that it's out of my head and on the page so maybe I'll sleep better tonight.  

Words and Phrases

Angie has been cutting out words and phrases from magazines more of her adult life.  Several small boxes came with her and we sat at the kitchen table yesterday sorting through them for a project.

These were a few that struck me.

This one would be true for Angie....she always carried the tools of her trade everywhere she went.

Yup!

Today we again sat at the kitchen table and finished the project. As Angie chose words...I trimmed them up getting them ready to cover this "S" for her friend Susan.  She and her husband Allen live on a farm nearly next door to Angie's home....and have been a source of constant support for a very long time.

We covered every surface.....

...including the back.

And this phrase sums it up. We made a good team.

Circles and Squares

Sometimes you just have to cut stuff up!

I have been saving colorful catalogs and art magazines for years and I've been itching to cut them up. I love the idea of using recycled materials. The paper tube art piece at the top of this blog is made from cut up art magazines.

I cut up circles and squares insprired by a video I saw on Folt Bolt advertising a class by Carla Sonheim. I'm tempted to take Carla's class called Daily Creative Practice....but I have my own ideas for 2018 I want to focus on!

I think there's potential for an interesting collage from all this mess.

I realized after the fact that it's exactly like a magazine collage my sister Marilyn made for a creative exchange we did years ago. I've always loved it. You can read about her collage here which was inspired by Kandinsky's Circles.

I discovered during my cutting how important the negative space was...the lighter pieces and the ones with writing. I can see here in Marilyn's piece how she did the same thing...it helps the colors just pop!

'Instant Art' Bottles Up Close

I thought the bottle pictures from the last post deserved a closer look.

And.....finally the page I didn't have room for.  

Maybe in another house I will have a longer wall.

Again, thank you Martha Stewart!

Instant Art

Several years ago there was an article in Martha Stewart Magazine about bottle collecting.  There were eight pages of beautiful bottles all lined up on the same surface.  I loved them!  I carefully cut out the pages with an x-acto knife, color copied them onto cardstock and put them in these simple 6 x 8 frames.  That's almost five feet of instant art in my upstairs bathroom.  There actually is an 8th page...but my space wasn't long enough.  I have done a set for three other friends.  Thanks Martha!



This is the same set of bottles, reduced on my home printer, carefully cut out in little chunks, and glued back together with spacers so it stands on it's own.  It's about four inches high.