n2cre8n

Picasso-style Painting by Alisa Burke

Had to share this post by Alisa Burke.  She shares a video of her doing a painting and does it with her baby girl, Lucy, in a back carrier.  It's adorable.  She's a great example of how one can be a mom AND an artist.

 Video Here

Drawing An Eye

When I used to draw more than paint, I always chose portraits.  Eyes are still my favorite thing to draw.  This is a beautiful and quick video tutorial by Mark Crilley.

 

Sketching Horses

Sketching at the beach . . . ya, that didn't suck! : )

Right behind me is my son's middle school and I had been there doing a photography workshop.  It was my day to carpool, so I had an hour to kill and took my sketchbook.

My daughter is a horse LOVER!  She takes riding lessons once per week and it has become her passion.  We re-painted her bedroom this summer and rearranged the furniture.  She and her dad are off to pick up her new bed as I type.  

So, above her bed, I told her I'd do a painting for her if she wanted one.  She said, "A horse!"  

Naturally.  I knew this was coming, but was kind of intimidated by it also.

So I began with these sketches.  I haven't drawn a horse since high school art class, so I needed some practice.

I printed some pics from online, ripped a page from a magazine, and used a horse coloring book my mom sent to my kids years ago.  

And I drew horses.

Minis: Go Play & Live Simply

I made a couple of smaller canvases recently and loved the fun sizes.  The mini one above that says "Live Simply" is 3x3" size with it's only little easel and the "Go Play" canvas is 8x8".  

For the mini one, it literally took about 5 min.  I spray painted the easel, addes some paint around the edges, stamped a leaf and two words, and it was done.

For the 8x8, I wanted to create lots of warm colors by dripping paint, so I did it in stages.  I knew I would use the words GO PLAY in white when it was done.  I instantly fell in love with these words when I saw them on Pinterest and quickly pinned them to my Words To Live By board

I let the paint dry in between each layer.

Drippage, drippage, and more drippage!

(as Donna Downey would say).

I doodled on some white chipboard letters (not sure if I like it, but it'll do) and attached them to the canvas.  

This little canvas sits in my foyer and I walk by it about 25 times per day.  It's my little reminder to not take life too seriously and to sometimes ignore the to-do list and just do something totally fun - GO PLAY!

 

T-shirt Skirt

 
I often get inspiration from Emily Falconbridge.  She's a free-spirited Aussie that is so tree-hugger-like, I just love her.  She does crafty, nature-inspired projects with her kids and also works with wool, paints, and teaches classes.  Uuugggh, the talent!

One of her many talents is fabric arts.  She sews clothing for her children and they are adorable!  I loved THIS blog post about making skirts out of t-shirts.  Free, recycled fabric - what is better than that?

So I found a pattern online, took some measurements, and cut a pattern from brown paper.

 

Then I gathered some old t-shirts

I cut enough panels to go around me.  Some were a single, solid piece, while others were pieced together.

 

 I then sewed the pieces together.  Some panels were stitched together with right-sides together (usual way) and some I left the stitching show on the outside.

I really like how it turned out and I wear it every time I travel on an airplane.  It's that comfy!

Hello again . . . and Fall table runner

whew, had to dust this thing off!  life has been busy and blogging has been on the back burner, but I do miss it and have lots to share.  I've been doing several art projects and taking hundreds of photos, just haven't posted them all.  So I'll try to do a little catching up!

Here is a leaf table runner I made for the fall season.

Once again, I was inspired by Alisa Burke's blog post, where she made a wreath from paper leaves.  She hand-drew the leaves on old book pages and then cut them out.  I decided to use a die-cutting machine and sew them onto a piece of fabric.  I dusted off my vintage Wizard die-cutting machine (ha-ha) and leaves die. Here is the pretty newer Wizard  and the new big daddy, the Grand Calibur.  My leaves die is no longer available either, but they have this new one: Maple Leaves. 

I cut three layers of old book pages at once, since they are so thin. I did not emboss the leaves, only cut.  I wanted a very simple look.

To add color to the leaves, I used watercolors.  I thought if I put a strip of adhesive onto brown paper, it would hold them nicely in place while I painted.  Well, it did . . . but it was hard to peel them off and I ripped a few.  Since the pages are so thin, I'd recommend just laying them out and using a paper piercer to hold them, if needed.

After the leaves dried, I pulled them off and outlined the edges and leaf veins.

I pulled out some red and purple thread and sewed them to a piece of canvas cotton.

It's not very wide, maybe 4 inches.  Just right for my foyer table.

Happy Fall!

 

Inspired 2010

Back home from the Inspired Artist Workshop ---

Wow . . . what an incredible weekend (again)!  My mom and sister came with me this year, from Wyoming.  We spent two days here in VA sight-seeing, then drove to NC for a 4-day weekend of painting, sculpting, paper-crafting, wax layering, bead-making, journal-junking, apron painting, and more. 

SO MUCH FUN!!!

Lots of catching up to do and photos to upload - but here is a little journal page I made tonight about my weekend.

Stamp Carving

Last May, when I attended Donna Downey's Inspired! event, I took an evening "mini workshop".  Jane Powell, from Random Arts store in NC, taught a stamp carving class.

 

I've had these two carving blocks and set of carving tools (from Hobby Lobby) for . . . oh . . . say . . . 3-4 years.  It's something I always wanted to learn, but just never took the plunge.  I was thrilled to get the chance to have someone show me how.

And it was sooooo easy!  Anyone can do this!  My kids do this!

In the class description, she told us to bring in small images that were very plain and simple - all black and white, no shading.  This made sense to me because my parents both have done sand-blasted art on glass and you use this kind of high-contrast, clip-art looking pattern.  So I pulled some pics from Google images, changed them to black and printed them out to take with me.

To transfer the image onto the carving block, you first trace the square outline of the carving block onto tracing paper.  This gives you your size so you know your image will fit.  Then trace your design in the center of this square. 

The cool part is that a little square carving block has 6 sides you can carve on, so keep turning it and finding images that will fit on these sides.  The little ones I used for this I bought after the class.  They are available at Dick Blick here for only $2/each.  Scroll down to the bottom for the various size options.

Then you simply turn over the tracing paper (pencil drawing side onto the carving block) and rub it with your fingernail. 

Repeat for all the sides - or do one at a time (the pencil will smear a little when handling, but not too bad).

 

Then you start carving.  The blocks are very soft and cut easily.  Most carving sets come with three or more different sized carving blades.  This comes in handy when you need a tiny, fine one for intricate details - or a larger one to carve away excess background.  You get to decide what parts you want to carve - if you carve the lines you drew, you'll get a relief look (negative).  If you leave those, but carve out the background, you get a positive stamp.  You can also leave some carved texture in it for added interest.

One tip Jane mentioned was to stamp your carving block in black ink as you are carving so you can see how you're doing - see if you want to keep carving or stop.  This was helpful for me.  Here are my blocks after they've been carved.  I use Staz On ink most of the time, so my images are now stained (which I like).

I left some background lines on this one because I liked the textured look of it. 

The small size of these blocks makes them easy to take anywhere.  I would throw these and my three carving tools into a ziplock sandwich bag and work on them while my kids were at swim practice. 

Here are some stamped images that were made at Jane's workshop.  All the ladies at my table decided to stamp our images on each others' cards so we could have ideas of what everyone did. 

Jane suggested using our images on the smaller, skinnier sides to make borders (by repeatedly stamping the same image).

It would be fun to make holiday sets!

Bookmarks

I had this idea to create some bookmarks.  I really needed to be creative in some way, but we were about to have packing people in our home to start boxing up everything.  I decided to work with small items that could be completed quickly.  It reminded me of Tim Holtz's tags that he demonstrates on.

I made one to go in the last Harry Potter book I'm reading and the others were just for fun.

This was my favorite, probably because it's my favorite colors.  I love polka dots and I've had a waxy coloring stick that quilters use for a few weeks and wanted to try that.  That is the turquoise color you see.  Quilters use it on fabric with an embossing plate underneath to get a pattern on their fabric.  So I used a Fiskars polka dot texture plate and ran it through my Spellbinders Wizard with the small piece of cardstock.  Then I colored over the embossed texture with the wax stick, added a touch of white acrylic paint, distressed the edges with black ink, and finally this was the background I had. 

This one was for my Harry Potter book.  It is just several stamps and some Stickles glitter.