Everyone is a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody.
07/22/2014
Not a big fan of the beer, but love their commercials.
Yes, I know these are beer commercials. But for some reason, they make me happy. Heinecken isn't my favorite beer, but I do love their commercials.
The music is The Golden Age by The Asteroids Galaxy Tour. ( While I might not have any Heinecken, I do have the song.)
The main character reminds me of Eric Balfour. (click to enlarge the photo)
I like this one, too.
Yeah, I know. But, I am totally okay with that.
awakened anew
Main Entry: beginning
Part of Speech: noun
Definition: origin, cause
Synonyms: antecedent, birth, conception, egg, embryo, font,fount, fountain, fountainhead, generation, genesis,germ, heart, principle, resource, root, seed, stem, well
There isn't really anyway to backtrack through my extended absence; I wouldn't even know where to starts. Besides, really, I don't wish to do that anyway. So, I thought I'd consider this a new beginning of sorts. I popped onto the online thesaurus to see what alternative words might be lurking there for the word "beginning". I was so taken with the synonym list that I couldn't really choose the right word to express myself, so I'm simply sharing the list with you. My favorites are in green.
My home art studio is moving into a spare bedroom on the second floor. The very-early-in-the-morning and very-late-at-night truck traffic noise on the busy road that runs in front of our house was disturbing my middle little's sleep night after night, so we moved her up into a room on our third floor. Freshly painted, cheerfully decorated, and most importantly, not located at the front of our home, Miss M has settled into her "new" bedroom nicely. The room she vacated was going to be either a family room or a man cave. But, the floor needed serious refinishing, which is a messy task that neither Joe or I have wanted to take on this winter. So, the room has sat empty since October.
My space in the basement was fine, and proof of this, is that whenever I am working down there, my family comes down to hang out. Many times, all five humans and both dogs are all in my basement space, keeping me company. Running a small oil heater to warm a little space in the basement for my littlest little and I is one thing, but trying to warm a space large enough to warm my whole family in these cold winter months was a bit daunting going to be expensive. So, instead, I am going to create a studio space in the empty bedroom where I can work and my family can hang out. This is seriously a use-what-I-already-have project as there is no money in our budget!
I do have some hopes for the room, though. I don't want the room to be stuffed to the gills. A jam-packed room plays havoc with my ADHD- I'm not good with excess visual "noise." I have ample storage in the basement for materials, tools, and supplies (mainly teaching supplies and fabric) that I need, but don't use regularly. I still need to decide how I will store the supplies and materials I use often. Because of how my brain functions, I'm an out-of-sight = out-of-mind person, so I need my storage to work around that concern without being messy and cluttered. My Thinking Cap is on!
I'm using furniture I already have, but I am being choosey. I want to maximize my storage and to have that storage be visually appealing. I want to create a seating area on the dimmer side of the room, with my drawing/painting space on the side with the most natural light. I think I'll place my vintage Magnavox cabinet stereo right beneath that window. I am also going to use a large maple classroom cabinet/shelf/cupboard that I purchased years ago at an auction. Right now, it lives in the oldest little's room, and he's ready for that behemoth to be relocated. So far, other than my easel and tractor-seat stool, and rugs I'll pull from elsewhere to put on the floor, I haven't completely decided on anything else. I want to really think this space through, so the room will work the way I am hoping.
I have a little scale diagram in my journal, along with little cut-outs that are scaled to various pieces of furniture I could use. I've been playing with them to see what might work out where. It's been helpful, but some of what I need to consider involves more of a sense of volume, of 3-D, than what the paper shows. I think I am going to draw the actual footprint of various pieces directly onto the floor with chalk. I certainly don't want to move furniture up two flights of stairs only to have to carry it back down!
These photos show where the room is as of right now. The walls previously were a light, but really intense, blue. The light that comes in that window is fairly cool/blue in color, making the blue was even bluer. The resulting ultra-cool light in the room didn't really work for me, so I repainted the walls with an assortment of leftover white paint we had in the basement. (The paint was from various painting projects from four different houses over the past seventeen years! Yes, the whites were all different tints, but it worked out okay.)
Tomorrow, I'll start moving furniture into the room. One of my nephews is going to come over at noon to lend a hand, which will please Joe to no end. He hates moving furniture. And, of course, I want to move a sofa up there.... the one I dropped on my hand last spring, breaking my thumb and two fingers. I'm quite glad to have some help!
view looking in from the doorway
view from the corner area you saw above
the floor!!
For those of you who have tried to look at/ click upon/ open the links to my online classes... I finally have those links fixed. (fingers-crossed) When you click on the paypal button, the resulting page is loading very slowly, but it isloading... finally!
I have a link to my workshops page in the navigation bar below the banner image, and a another on the top of the right sidebar.
If you have trouble, just send me an email : [email protected]
Here's a link to my online classes.
a room update and my latest fashion accessory
Here is look at my room after moving in the furniture yesterday afternoon.
The coffee table is going to be painted black. (green & raspberry were great in Maggie's room.)
Isn't my sling a lovely blue and grey?
06/09/2014
Creating with texture
I came across this video on You Tube for creating textured art and really liked what I saw! I decided to give it a try. I'm on this use what I have kick (in part because I am a supply junkie and have ALOT of stuff) and found a jar of spackle so decided to give that a try before I go out and buy joint compound. I used a 5 x 7 canvas board. Once I spread the spackle and let it set up a little I used lids and the stick end of a foam brush to make some circles. And then a square chopstick to add some designs as well as a rubber stamp. Once it had dried overnight I sanded it down to where I wanted it and coated with clear acrylic medium. I had also seen this video by the same artist and painted my piece once the acrylic medium dried using this technique. I used Golden Acrylics - Fluid Green Gold, Heavy Bodied Quinacridone Violet, and Fluid Phtalo Green.
I didn't really like the piece much until I got to the third color - that made all the dif in the world! So, if you don't like what you got just keep adding another layer until you do!
I wish you could see it in person and touch it and feel the texture!
Pretty cool, huh?
Tags for swap and journal page from leftovers
The Yahoo Mini-Books Group I belong to had a swap I participated in with the subject "Things That Fly". Each person was to make a 3x5 tag for all participants and then mail them directly to each participant. I made my tags out of watercolor paper. I coated both sides with gesso, then used acrylics and a spray bottle and painted on an orangish backgound. I then used punchinella/sequin waste as a stencil to add the blue dot design. At that point I cut the paper into 3x5 pieces and made them into tags. Then rubber stamped the image and words. Lastly was to add the blue hole protectors to the hole I had punched (white ones bought at an office supply store and dyed blue with ink pad) and then add the yarn.
Once I got done with the tags I had all these strips of watercolor paper with the orange paint and blue dots on them. I just started playing around with them and kinda started weaving them together. It was looking pretty cool so I though I'd put in in my journal. I had this blue background I had made by rubbing a colored pencil over the page while it was resting on the rough wood of an old picnic table and got a wood grain design. I decided to use that as my background for the weaving. And as long as I was sitting there with all the leftovers from my tags I decided to glue a few of the holes around the edges. Then I decided I should use the little triangles left over from cutting the top corners of the tags off. Those and gluing a few more of the left over holes around the weaving, as well as using a bird paper punch on a scrap and adding those completed the page for me. It was pretty fun to use up my leftovers like that!
What do you do with your leftover pieces from a paper project?
GPP Crusade 42 - Strip Ease
This month the theme for the GPP Crusade is Strip Ease. You can read all about it here.
For my contribution I took some printed papers and tore them into strips. I had these hibiscus flowers I had cut out of a piece of scrapbook paper that I wanted to use for a journal page but I wasn't having any luck figuring out what to use for a background. Then when I was thinking about the Strip Ease idea I thought that might work so picked out some papers, tore them into strips, glued them down and gave it a try. I played around with where I wanted papers torn with a white edge (thinking that went well with the white edge on the flowers) and where I didn't. I like how, just by accident, the words "WIN WIN" ended up showing up so well.
I had the following page in an altered book that I did last month so thought I'd share it also. The theme for this book is color and for this blue page I tore strips from magazine pages and glued them down. I tore these strips so the white edge showed for more contrast between the blues. The middle of the page had part of a fuzzy butterfly body which made me think of big hairy moths which give me the creeps so I had to cover it up! I punched one inch circles out of the magazine pages and covered the partial body with them.
There's still plenty of time this month to check out the Crusade and participate yourself. Go here for all the details. Then see what you can come up with. It's a great way to spark your creativity and move your muse into action mode , plus it's alot of fun!
Thanks for taking a look!
Nurture Nature Journal Page
Here's a collage I made in Carmen Torbus' Spill It Revisited online class. I used Golden Fluid Acrylics and Golden Gel Matte Medium. It was a great class and I learned so much about fun ways to use acrylic paints! You can check out Carmen's class here. I highly recommend it if you like to play with acrylics and want to learn a fun technique for using them. I really enjoyed it!
Once I got the torn paper, mesh and acrylic paint portion of the collage done I did a leaf print using Golden Fluid Acrylics in Phtalo Green and leaves from a Japonica Pierias shrub in my yard. And added the Nurture Nature words which I had printed out on ledger paper. The original collage was 9 x 12 but I cut it down to square to fit into my art journal and glued it to an existing page. I think I'll use some antiqued brads in the corners to add a little interest. Just haven't decided on the color yet. I have some small square brads I think will be just right.
I hope you are staying cool wherever you are! It's been pretty warm here in Oregon.
Thanks for taking a look. Go create something!
Repost of a favorite buried treasure
Seth at The Altered Page is hosting a collaborative project giving readers of his blog a chance to choose their favorite past blog post on their own blog. His project is to list all those with a link on his blog under Buried Treasure. This isn't his first collaborative project and in addition to his wonderful art you can find a whole lot of interesting information by checking them out on his blog.
I wanted to participate and since I'm sort of new to blogging it wasn't too hard to go back through and find my favorite post. It's about INSPIRATION. I do like the journal page alot, but the subject is why I chose this one. I'm always interested in sources for inspiration. And I always hope I'm being observant enough to see or hear inspiration around me. I think, as artists and art enthusiasts we tend to be a pretty observant bunch of people for the most part. Do you agree? Surprises me some of the things that inspire me sometimes.
So, here's the post again - I hope you all enjoy it!
(it was originally posted here)
Lot's of different things inspire my art - nature is a big inspiration, colors also spark many ideas. Something I like to use for inspiration is song lyrics.
I just completed a journal page inspired by the Shinedown song - The Crow & The Butterfly. (lyrics can be found here)
The background is acrylics. I turned the journal on it's side and put the colors of Golden Fluid Acrylics along the binding and sprayed it with water and let them run down. Once dry I wrote the lyrics with a white pen. The crow I drew and cut out of black paper and glued on. The butterfly is a rubber stamp (that I recently got out of the $1 bin at Michaels-pretty nice, huh?). The title I printed on ledger paper and cut out (ledger paper is sort of a unifying theme in this journal. It's along the bound edge of all pages and used somewhere in most of the pages). The dandelion at the top I painted over the top with golden acrylics. I'm really happy with how it turned out. I love the bright colors in the background, and the white writing, and the bird, and well, I guess I like it all! I enjoy the song too...I'm sure you can find it on YouTube if you want to give a listen.
Here's some tags I created in the past using song lyrics for inspiration:
Think about some of your favorite songs or lyrics, look up the lyrics online if you aren't sure of what all they say. What does it make you think about? How can you use that as inpiration for an art project?
It's alot of fun to think about!
What else inspires you? I'm always interested to hear about inspiration...
