La Vie En Rose

Collage number 5! It's a 5x7 mixed media collage on canvas. Another lovely image from Itkupilli.

This is the one that I rubbed the face off of while trying to wipe paint off. I had to wait until my new printer ink came, so I could print another photo and finish it.

Finally here she is, in all her pink and brown glory. I do like this one a lot. It's weird to for me not to make it all bright and colorful, but it's also a challenge to explore new color combos. So it all works out good. I can't make ultrabright rainbow collages all the time right?

So I'm still working on my purple disaster. In fact I haven't really touched it since that first night, but I did make a run to Michael's today and grabbed some new purple paints and a few other lovely items, so maybe I'll be able to finish it this weekend.

In other news, I set up a new art station upstairs in my writing room. I'm beyond excited about this, because truthfully, I really don't like going downstairs to the real studio. I have a very nice space set up there, and it does look out on some beautiful nature, but I can't stand the mustiness. It stinks to high heaven, of dirt and mold. Our house is on stilts on a mountain side, so part of the downstairs is underground and all I can say is peee ew!

Originally I wanted to set up the whole shebang upstairs in my little room. I measured everything, and though a very tight squeeze, it all would fit. When I told the Mr. about this new plan, he was somewhat bent of out shape. You see he likes to be able to do art together (this is some dream of his) , and we have desks that sit side by side. He likes the fact that we go and create together, and feels that if I move upstairs that would be too much separation.

It's pretty sweet, but I still don't like going down there much. So I compromised. I kept all major stuff, for painting and collage making downstairs, and upstairs I moved an old art desk and very minimal supplies. I plan to use this space mostly for art journaling, drawing and stamping. Stuff that wouldn't be too crazy messy, but I can still go to, and create if I/we don't feel like breathing mold spores. Plus it's close to the kitchen. Never a bad thing.

Wonderland

This is one of my newer collages. Just finished it the other day. I really like how this turned out. Once again it was a complete accident.

I knew I was going to use the window and originally I was thinking of a theme along the lines of something deep, such as the window to my soul kinda thing.

I pretty much had this collage done (or so I thought), when I ran across the Alice in Wonderland stickers.

Seeing how the Cheshire Cat matched the decor, I put him at the top of the window. Well I liked what I saw, but he didn't really fit with my theme so I took him off. I was still hunting around for a couple more pieces, but couldn't really find anything.

Just for giggles I stuck Alice on. As soon as I did that, I knew it would be a Wonderland theme. Besides the mushrooms totally matched too. How could I not do it? As a fan of the movie and the story, it just seemed right. In fact the decorating of our house was very much influenced by it. It's sort of Alice in Wonderland, meets Tim Burton, and they go to Disneyland.

After the stickers were in place, I went crazy embellishing. The little square blocks with letters on them spell out "curiouser and curiouser". I have to say, the cat dangling the clock on a string was my husbands idea (he always comes up with good ideas) I wish I could take credit for it .

I can take credit for the window though. It is a picture I took in San Francisco a few weeks ago. I enhanced the color in Photoshop. I have a slight obsession with windows and doors now, so you may start seeing them in more of my art.

In the meantime though I'm working on a disaster. I don't know what's happening, but it just isn't working out. Part of the problem is I don't have the right colors. For some weird unexplainable reason I don't have much of anything with purple in it. And I really like that color! I can't figure it out. Obviously I will have to remedy that problem, but for now, I'm trying to use what I have, and it is giving me a ton of problems.

I think I'll stop for the night, because only time will fix this collage. I did however make a really cool one tonight, that won't be ready for public viewing for another few days (it needs to dry). Plus I still need to finish showing you the last 3 of the six I made that one night. I'm really behind on getting pictures taken and up on the web.

The good news is I now have 2 weeks worth of blog material. I should probably post more frequently huh?

Pretty In Pink

This is collage number 4! It's another 5x7. Image once again from Itkupilli, and scraps of paper from K&Company.

There are going to be at least 6 of these 5x7's as I'm using images from a collage sheet I bought. There are 8 ladies altogether, and I will most likely do them all, but I'm not sure yet.

This one was interesting to do. Like the black and white one I did, I was a little daunted at first with the all pink image. I'm so used to many colors, that this was a bit of a challenge for me.

It was actually fun to do though, and I like how it turned out. It's very "soft". Naturally, this one is titled "Pretty In Pink".

Girls Just Want To Have Fun!

Alright here's the 3rd collage out of the 6 from my very productive art day last week.

This is an 8x10 mixed media collage on canvas. The picture once again is from Itkupilli, and the papers and some stickers are from K&Company. They have the best papers don't they? I know they are for scrap booking, but I find so many cool ones, that I just buy those big books. I love them!

This one is called "Girls Just Want To Have Fun", because for some weird reason the girl reminds me of Cyndi Lauper, and all the bright colors make me think of fun and happy times, so naturally I thought of her song, which in turn reminds me of my childhood, and this collage is very childlike to me. Strange how thoughts go round in your head isn't it?

That's it for now. Right now I'm taking a break from painting to eat dinner. I've got 3 collages finished today, and a fourth one waiting to be finished. Not bad. Those 5x7's go fast though and I made two of those tonight.

Just when I thought I was in a slump too. All this week I've been sort eh about creating anything. It was fine to roam around everyone else's blogs and look at their art, but me? Nah. Didn't feel like it.

So, inspired by a show that's coming up at our local gallery I wandered downstairs and picked up an image I wanted to use in a collage. The next thing I knew I had completed three of them! Love it when that happens!!

Some Like it Hot (This one's for you Tony!!)

This piece is one of the 6 collages I did the other day. Maybe I made enough for the week, because the last two days I haven't been all that inspired. Weird. Tomorrow is my Friday, so hopefully my creative juices will start flowing again on my days off.

Anyway, this piece is inspired by the movie Some Like it Hot. My all time favorite film. I had this image from...can you guess? Yes that's right Itkupilli. It came on one of the collage sheets I purchased. I always loved the photo, but the fact that it was in black in white threw me a bit.

At first I was thinking what the heck can I do with this? Is has no color! Ahhhh... then a light turned on over my head. Let's make it a black and white collage! That will be something different!

In fact I always thought it looked just a bit like Jack Lemmon's character in Some Like it Hot. The face does anyway. :)

I am a HUGE fan of classic Hollywood. All the old films, the actors and actresses, the era, everything! This piece reminds me of that, and the whole time I was making it, thoughts from Some Like it Hot and Tony Curtis's recent illness (did you know he's an artist) were "Running Wild" in my head. So even though there are no actual images from the movie, it was definitely my muse for this collage. Hope you get better soon Tony!!

Joyful!

So yesterday I had a seriously productive day! This doesn't happen often. Believe me. I was lucky enough to be able to spend pretty much the whole day in my studio, and I finished 6 collages!! I have one more that partially done, so that will be a total of 7. Not too shabby.

Before you think I'm some kind of artistic/creative genius (snicker), I must admit that the canvases in question were pretty small. 3 5x7's and 4 8x10's. So it wasn't that hard to finish them. I kind of got on a roll and just kept pumping them out.

It helped that I had a ton of cool images from Itkupilli who does an amazing job manipulating images and then lets people use them! How can I not love that? You'll be seeing her name a lot as I've used her images in almost everything I've done lately. Except for today's picture actually. The image of the dancing lady is from Lisa Kettell who has a very fun blog over here. If you don't already know her, check her out, you could get lost in her magical world.

This painting came about in a funny way. I had the image forever, and never got around to using it. Well one day I finally fooled around with it in photoshop to change some colors and decided I would use it in my next collage.

Well! Those darn colors! Believe it or not, I didn't have the right shades. I tried so many different things to create those colors, mixing paint, pretty papers, beads, etc. Nothing worked. I was so disgusted, that I gessoed over almost the entire collage.

What I created totally grossed me out. I let it sit for a few days, and in the meantime made sure to purchase the correct color paints.

What a difference that muted yellow makes! Man, when I started again, the collage just flew together. I just kept adding piece after piece. All of a sudden so many things went with it, where before I couldn't find anything to complement it.

Long story short, it is now one of my favorite pieces. It reminds me of Christmas! I guess it's the colors. I just really like this one a lot. It sure came a long way from the disgusting mess I made earlier!

Goth Lady

Please excuse the really bad photography. I am not and probably never will claim to be a photographer. I know what button to push to take a picture and how to turn off the flash. That's about it.

Anyhoo, this is my newest. 5x7 mixed media on canvas. Image credit goes once again to Itkupilli

Love her stuff so much! Also the background papers are mostly from K&Company. Love them too!

This one was fun, as it is the tiniest piece I've ever done. I bought a collage sheet from Itkupilli and it had 8 ladies on it and I plan to do a series of these 5x7's with those images.

Since it is so small it sure is quick to make, I think I'll bust out a few today. If I ever get downstairs. I keep lolligagging on everyone else's art blogs, now the afternoon is almost gone, and I've yet to put paint to canvas.

Oh and I'm so excited because I just recieved my shimpment of canvases I ordered online. Yea! It's like Christmas in August. Plus a few days ago I hit up Michael's and Joann Fabrics and they are having huge sales right now and I got even more canvas, paints, and fun papers to use! I can't wait to create.

I better get my butt downstairs.

Que Sera Sera

My latest creation. Yet another mixed media collage on canvas. This one is named Que Sera Sera and is 10x10. I'm slowly working my way towards smaller and smaller surfaces. This is the smallest I've done so far ever! I really do like the smaller sizes right now.

I've named this one Que Sera Sera, because I like the meaning. Whatever will be will be. Something I need to remember on a daily basis, as I have a propensity to worry about unnecessary things. Especially the future.

The girls are images from Itkupulli and I chose them to hopefully convey a fun and carefree attitude. Basically worry free.

The rest is made up of various scraps of paper, stickers (some from K&Company), acrylic paint, buttons, glitter, and colored fibers.

Anne of Cleves

Oy! I spent too much money today. I went to the scrapbook expo, and oh my goodness, did they have loads of good stuff.

Now I don't actually scrapbook, but I do use a lot of the supplies, like paper, stickers, glitter etc. So I still managed to do a fair amount of damage to the 'ol pocketbook.

It was fun though, and I got tons of cool things to use in future collages. I would take a photo of all my loot, but seriously, I couldn't fit it all in one picture, so you'll just have to see in worked into each collage.

Anyhoo, today's painting is a collage based on Anne of Cleves, Henry the Eighth's 4th wife. I'm not sure those are the colors she would have used, but the rest is all her.

In fact the alll the written words are copies of her signature, her motto, and a letter she wrote to Henry agreeing to their divorce. Pretty cool.

I don't know why but I totally took to Anne and Katherine Howard. I guess it's because I feel sorry for them. Well I suppose you could feel sorry for all of Henry's wives, but Katherine and Anne really got to me for some reason.

I did a Katherine Howard collage last year, and I really don't care for it, so I think I'll redo it more in the manner of Anne's.

As you can see, I tried using the same technique as the last one. It didn't come out nearly as involved as the Fear collage, but I still think it's alright. I especially like the beads and glitter I added at the end.

The rest is acrylic paint, heavy gel medium, gesso, beaded medium (for texture), fabric, string and images copied from the internet pertaining to Anne of Cleves.

I put that string gel on it, and for some reason the painting seems to be a bit glare-y. Which bums me out, but in certain lights it's not so bad.

I really like this kind of collage, it's a lot of fun to make a big mess, and see what come of it. Plus it's pretty easy to cover up mistakes! I think I'll be doing a lot more of these. I'm still trying to find my groove, but I'm slowly getting there.

Now tonight I get to play with all my loot!

Face Your Fears

And now for something a little different. This is a collage I did last night. Another happy accident! For a long time, I have been wanting to play around with this kind of collage, but no matter how I tried, the backgrounds always came out "pretty" and not very well blended.

With this one however, I told myself I would concentrate on building up the background with layers and textures, and not worry about "ruining" the picture. This seemed to work well for me, probably because I didnt' even have a picture to ruin! I had no idea what was going to go in the collage, ahead of time. It was a great experience, and pretty soon, I was lost in the process of creating, and amazingly not worrying about messing up. If I didn't like something I just covered it with more paint!

The way I did this was, first I slapped some gesso on the canvas with a palette knife. I didn't spread it everywhere, and left it in big chunks. Then I stamped some images into the gesso, which you can't reallysee now, but I'm cool with that. I drizzled some red paint on, and smeared that around a bit, and then just started adding papers, stamps, tissue, dyed paper towels etc.

I used a lot of the heavy gloss gel and that beaded gel too for more texture. I don't think I used a paint brush at all, except at the end when I spread on the string gel, which is like honey and apparetnly is great for this kind of collage. It brought it all together and glued everything down that might have been sticking up. While the string gel was still wet, I stuck on the thicker embellishments and dumped glitter in some sections.

I wish the picture was better, but after about 20 different attempts this was the best I could get. Obviously it doesn't show the detail real well, and there is a bit of glare. It's not a sunny day today, so the light in the house isn't great. Oh well. You get the idea right?

Overall, i'm pretty happy with the results. In fact I think I'll go try to do another one today!

Dancing Queen

My newest collage on canvas, which I actually gave to my grandmother today for her birthday. This one is done in the same manner as the last one I made, and I'm really liking the whole sketch the subject on paper and then pasting it on canvas thing better.

I actually had a really tough time with this one as opposed to the last one which was done quite by accident. I guess I was expecting the same thing to happen, and boy it sure didn't!

The collage backgrounds are mostly fabric, some decorative papers and stickers from K & C company, the crown is a generic google image, and the "queen" is drawn by me, and painted in acrylic paint. The face is colored pencil and pen, which is probably why it doesn't really show up well, but in case you are wondering, yes, it is colored!

Anyhoo, after all that hard work, I'm actually gonna miss her. I sure hope she likes her new home!

I wonder if all artists feel this way after giving away their artwork?

Betty Buttons

Well, here is my latest collage. I did this one last night, totally by accident. It's true, I wasn't planning to do art at all last night, as I was overstuffed and lazy from a gigantic burrito I had for dinner. All I felt capable of doing was sitting around and checking out everyone else's art blogs.

Somehow around 11 pm I happened to waddle downstairs to the studio, purely for the exercise of course, and within seconds I started fooling with a drawing I had made, and before I knew it, I had made this collage! I love it when happy accidents like that happen.

As you can see I have tried a different technique. It's not perfected yet, and now I wonder if I should have blended the background better. I keep trying to master the layering/blending background technique but so far I haven't figured it out. I think this is the closest I have come. The problem is if I were to blend the background better, it wouldn't be as colorful, and we all know how much I like my color. Oh well, I'll get around to trying it someday. If I'm brave enough.

So like I said, I used different techniques. For this painting, I did an acrylic wash of teal all over the canvas. Once that was dry, I started gluing random scraps of paper, magazine cutouts, ribbons etc. everywhere. For the first time ever I didn't think about what the images were! I didn't try to make them fit into any theme, I just grabbed and glued. Though, I did try to find scraps with my color theme, but that was it. It was so much fun!

Then when I thought there was enough junk on the page, I added the drawing of the girl, which I had already sketched and cut out. This is new. It never ever occurred to me before, to draw the subject on another piece of paper, cut them out and paste on top of the background.

I always would paint the subject and then piece the background pieces around it. It never really worked out the way I wanted and always looked choppy. Pasting the picture of the girl on later, was a much better idea.

I have to say I stole that idea from a few other artists, who I noticed did the same thing. It was like a light bulb went off above my head. I should try this! And I did, and I really like how it worked out. I'll definitely be doing this more in the future.

After she was pasted and painted, I dabbed a little lime green paint around (my attempt at blending), sewed on embellishments and viola! Betty Buttons (husband named her)- not to be confused with belly buttons which is what I keep seeing every time I look at the title,- was born!

Marie Antoinette Gothic Arch

This is my really late entry for the Gothic Arch challenge this week. I wish I could have finished this sooner, but I had a really hard time with it.

Once I saw the theme was Marie Antoinette I knew I would do something whimsical. Well actually when don't I huh?

It just so happened that I had gone to a museum a few weeks ago and saw a painting there of a lady of some importance wearing the widest dress I ever saw in my life. Seriously I'm not sure how she would have gotten in and out of doorways with that thing.

Since it was so outrageously huge, I remember thinking, gosh it's like she's wearing a sofa. I swear that's what it looked like.

So when I saw the Gothic Arch challenge this week, naturally I had to use a sofa as her dress. The problem with the sofa however, was what to do about her appendages. Hmmm...well, wouldn't it be kinda cool if she had some arms? And maybe little feet? No not feet....How about... Roller Skates! Why not? Let's have fun with this.

So she got her arms and skates, but then it occurred to me, wouldn't it be even better if she were holding a cake in one hand a fork in the other? After all one of her famous quotes is, "Let them eat cake" right?

Just so you know, the arms are me, the fork is mine, and the cake is our wedding cake. After spending way to long looking for the just the right picture of people's hands and cakes, I decided to do it myself. Much faster that way.

So after adding all that, I felt the inside of the arch was way too serious and plain. It was really bugging me, and just the other day, I read on Lemoncholy's blog, something about when in doubt add polka dots! I couldn't agree more. I added the words and the dots inside and I think it gave it the final whimsical touch it needed.

My husband liked the more serious version better without the red hair and polka dots, and birthday party look as he calls it, but sheesh, a girl's gotta have fun right?

P.S. Please excuse the photograph, I took it tonight despite what I learned the other day, and it's just not as bright as it should be. I know I should have waited til daytime, but I just couldn't wait to get it posted. I will take another picture in the daylight and update it later.

Yippee!! My teapot is done! I have been working on this for over a month. I am super slow, but it's not like I've been doing it everyday. It took about seven visits to Petroglyph, until it was finished.

Speaking of slow, my husband is still working on his bowl, which means that I got to purchase a latte mug to paint while he finishes. Hee-hee. Now I'll have two pieces. *Smile*

I cannot wait til his bowl is done! When it is, I'm totally showing it here, because it will blow you away. I'm not kidding, it's like the best bowl ever. Too cool.

Anyway the picture at the top is the front of the teapot. The designs are doodles I did while at work. Yes I was working at the time, just that I was on the phone, and isn't it like the law to doodle while talking on the phone?

I did the insides and back to, which if I remember how to add more pictures I'll show you right now....


This is the back. And...



These are the insides.

What a project that was!! It takes forever and a year to paint, because you have to add 3 or 4 coats of paint to make it smooth, and when you do something detailed it's that much slower.

It's also distracting because when the colors are painted on they are so light, it's really difficult to know what it's going to look like. For instance I'm not at all happy about blue top. It so doesn't go with the dark purple background of the rest of the pot. I wish I painted the top purple too, but it was done first, and when I was painting the body, it went well with the blue on top. Well! Now I know. I will not make that mistake again!

Mushroom Queen

Okay here is a mixed media canvas I did tonight. It's my first real completed collage on canvas. Well, one that came out decent anyway. ( Don't get me started on my Katherine Howard one).

Anyhoo, I'm going to do three of these little 11x14 canvases. Each with a different character. This is the first.

Images are from my personal stash of magazine cutouts and papers from K&C company.

I like this girl, but something is missing I think. I'll work on the other two tonight, and hopefully it will come to me, what to do to make it better.

It's not as busy as I usually do, so maybe that's it. Then again, maybe less is more?

If they turn out okay, I might continue with this idea. I really like this size canvas too, it's so easy to work with.

I'm also working on a large piece right now, that was supposed to be entered in a couple of last week's challenges, but it's not coming together and it's driving me crazy. The size is very awkward for doing collage, at least for me it is. I'm used to my art journal which is a tiny bit smaller than this canvas. I guess it just takes practice, practice, practice.

Okay, back to the studio today, hopefully I'll get something accomplished!

Thanks for the memories...

No this isn't a painting I've done recently. In fact it's pretty darn old. Probably 8 or 9 years old actually. But the reason I'm putting it up today, is because last week I had the extreme pleasure to see the original Monet painting at the Legion of Arts Museum in San Francisco.

I know! Imagine my surprise. I had no idea it was there, and the crazy thing is I almost missed it. It was the very last room we went in, and it we had almost skipped that section earlier by accident. Thank goodness we didn't.!

Now I have to admit, that most of the artwork at the museum didn't ring any bells for me. I know. I'm supposed to appreciate all that fine art, and I do! I totally appreciate all the work and details they put into each painting. How they are able to make them so realistic looking is beyond me. I will never be able to do that. It's just that the subject matter is not my cup of tea. Loads of dead animals, and religious paintings. Plus everything is in browns, blacks and grey. Um. I love color. So yeah it was a teensy bit drab for me.

The truth is, I don't really start digging Fine Art until we start getting into the impressionistic period. That's more up my ally. Something about not being too detailed, the use of color, and more interesting subject matter.

Anyhoo, Monet is my favorite artist from that period, and back when I was just venturing into the painting world, I used a lot of his paintings as subject matter. Like I said the painting above is one of my favorites. It really caught my eye, and I set out to duplicate it.

Well, as you can see, I didn't exactly make it identical to his. Obviously my love for bright color came through loud and clear, (the original is very pastel) plus I don't do the whole little brushstroke/dot things that impressionists did.

However, I do like this painting a lot, even though it's not at all my style anymore. I probably wouldn't make anything like this again, but at the time I thought it was the bees knees. I like it so much I made an oil pastel of it too, which actually came out better I think, but unfortunately I don't have a picture of it.

So, since I don't have any recent artwork finished other than a ton of backgrounds I made for my art journal, (playing with water crayons and gesso, so much fun!), I thought I would pay a tribute to the artist that started it all, and show you guys this painting from way back when.

Fairy Of Secrets

This is my entry for this week's Created Byhand Challenge. The theme is fairies.

Right away I knew I wasn't going to do a typical fairy. I had the Mona Lisa face, and saw the cabinet in a magazine, and thought wow that would make a cool body. Let's put the face on it and add some wings and voila! The Fairy of Secrets was born. Though honestly I never knew until now, how masculine Mona Lisa's face is. No matter what I did, she still looks like a man dressed like a girl to me. Strange.

Anyhoo, I thought the cabinet for a body, indicted that she had things locked inside her, hence the secret idea. Then I found the lips, and thought oh boy a zipper would be good here, but totally forgot that idea, until my husband saw it and said he had a zipper I could use. He actually drilled holes into it, so it could be sewed onto the canvas.

See, I would have glued it, and then it probably would have fallen off. It's a good thing I have him around to make sure my artwork is stable. :)

Oh yeah, I totally stole the words Fairy Tale and the butterfly from Nancy's Crowabout Challenge pages. Thanks Nancy!

UPDATE: I have since gone back to the Created byhand Challenge website, and realized that you are supposed to use images from them for your challenge. Oops!

I also have uploaded the a new version of the picture, since the first one was wrong. I took the picture at night, and the colorswere way off. The background wasn't supposed to be all orange. It has been bothering me ever since I posted it, and today I decided to try to fix it. The picture now reflects the true colors of the painting, *smile*, unfortunately the resolution is terrible. Oh well. One thing at a time.

Parlor Queen

Here is my journal page for this weeks College Play with Crowabout. It's a wee bit late, but oh well. It's still so much fun to create these collages that I decided to finish it and post it anyway.

I really love this group, and it is very cool to see what other people do with the same images. The hard part is not peaking until you are done with your own collage, since I don't want to let anyone's pictures, influence me.

Oh yeah, I just want to say that some of the colors are off. So whatever looks to be grey or blah looking is actually flourescent pink or orange. I don't know why but the scanner won't scan those colors.

My First Mosaic

Well here it is, 7 months later, and I'm finally writing the post for this picture.
I swear I have no idea what happened to me after Christmas. I was busting out art left and right, and then come Thanksgiving, I put all my effort into the mosiac you see in the picture.

This was my mom's Christmas present. It took a month and a half to make, and for some reason that was the last bit of art I did until recently. On my husbands birthday, we went to Petroglyph. You know, that place where you paint your own ceramics. It's a pretty cool place, and right on our way home, so we gave it a shot.

For the past 5 weeks (yes we are reallllly sloooow), we have been working on our pieces (I'm doing a teapot, he's doing a bowl), and after painting there for a few hours, we are inspired to do more art when we get home. Of course that meant I had to check out all my favorite art blogs again, which totally fired me up even more, and then I found a whole slew of new artists that I have to follow which means that I spent a large amount of time looking at wonderful, and inspirational art work. Oh and don't get me started on the art challenges, I've been missing. What was I thinking?

Obviously It was time for me to re-enter the art world. I have started working on challenges again to give me a jump start. Right now I'm working on a challenge for the Three Muses, and Collage Play with Crowabout, which reminds me I need to finish my piece tonight!!

I also as you can see, revamped the look of my blog, and I have to admit, that I totally stole the idea from Nancy Baumiller once I saw her site. Sorry Nancy, but it was too cool to pass up, and I tried a load of other cool Wallpapers from Itkupilli (where I got my background) but as cool as they were, they were too busy once my art pictures come on board.

Alright, now I'm ready to go, and hopefully I won't stop creating for such a long period again.

Which reminds me, I want to talk about that mosaic.

Now that project started thanks to Laurie Mika. Oh my gosh I love her stuff! I grabbed her book in an art store one day, and fell in love. I have always wanted to do mosaics, and I just had to try it now that I saw what could be done.

It was so much fun, but seriously time consuming. Like I said it took a month and a half, and honestly when I was done, I wanted to keep it for myself! Don't worry I didn't. I gave it to my mom, and the shriek of delight upon opening her present was worth every second.

I still really need to do one for myself though and I will, but I want to get some canvases and journal pages done first. I'm really trying to incorporate my collages onto canvas, and for some reason it's a lot harder! I'm hoping to get the hang of it soon, and my goal is to get enough pieces that I can finagle my way into our local gallery. Wish me luck!

Water Lily

Honestly, I have been doing art! I just haven't really finished anything, therefore I haven't posted.

Right now I have 5 pieces I'm working on. Three are almost done. Why in the world I don't finish them I don't know, but I am close, so soon I should be bombarding the blog world with my latest creations.

This Water Lily piece however, I did manage to finish. It was a present for my mom's birthday, which is why it actually got done. ;)

I knew I wanted to make something handmade/artsy for her, but I just couldn't figure out what. You know all those artists out there who have a string of ideas running through their head and they can't create fast enough before new ideas pop in? Yeah that's not me.

Ideas do not flow freely for some reason. I think my brain is cluttered up with a lot of useless day to day worries, which blocks my creative juices. It's a crying shame, and someday I hope to be able to roto rooter around and find my muse, but until then, I have to take my chances with inspiration randomly striking. If it doesn't, I turn to magazines, other art blogs, books, etc. to find ideas.

This is what happened with my mom's present. As I was flipping through a craft magazine, I found an article on an artist, who created pictures with tiny bits of fabric. Hmmm.....That got me thinking. I have fabric. I like fabric. Fabric is pretty. I can make a fabric picture too!

I started out really ambitious. I was going to do most of the picture in fabric. I sketched out a scene with a lily pond, mountains, trees, and sky. I bought the canvas. I organized my supplies.

Then I went to the fabric store.

Oh the choices!! I was like Robin Williams in that movie Moscow on the Hudson where he passes out in the grocery store, because the choices of coffee to choose from is just too overwhelming. The fabric store was the same way.

I knew I wanted each item in the picture to be made up of different fabrics and colors of various hues. This meant the trees would have their own set of brown and green fabrics, water, blues and greens and so on.

45 minutes and a pile of fabric later, I realized it was too big of a task for an amateur like me. Not to mention expensive. I had to scale this down, especially if I wanted to finish it in the three days that I had.

So I nixed the mountain scene and went for a more Monet lily pond look. Though at the time, I honestly didn't intend to do that. Monet was a big influence on my early art, so I guess it just seeped through unconsciously.

This time only the flower was to made up of fabric. At first I wanted to do a bunch of different purple and pinks to make up the flower, but as I surveyed my options, I couldn't help but be drawn to brightly colored patterned prints. Pinks and purples never seemed to make into the cart. Ah well, I can't fight inspiration.

The background also changed throughout the flower creating process. The first background was painted with light and dark blues. It turned out really good. However, my original plan was to create something in my mom's favorite colors pinks and purples. Since I wasn't doing the flower in those colors anymore, I thought I better find a way to incorporate them into the background. So I painted over the blues with pinks for a more abstract water look. This turned out beautiful. However, as the flower became more and more evolved, I realized the background had to go.

The flower was completely lost in the sea of pink. At last I finally decided to go back to the original blue, but add some purples to it. The flower stood out a lot more this way, so I'm glad I changed it.

I also tried something new for the lily pads. They are actually dyed/painted paper towels. One thing I found out, is that paper towels are super durable! They certainly can stand a lot of liquid. I learned this tip from Tracy Bautista. Those paper towels you wipe your paintbrushes on? Are perfect for this! As is old paint water. That combination plus a few randomly placed drops of dye, created my lily pads.

The last bit of this picture I did was the middle of the flower. Although you can' t really tell, it is made up tiny beads and glitter. I love using beads, but I tell you, it sure is a challenge placing each one in the right place. Tweezers definitely come in handy! Plus it's super time consuming. Luckily I didn't need too many, so it went relatively fast.

I have to say the whole fabric thing was definitely an adventure. Honestly, I almost canned the project about 4 different times when I didn't think the flower was coming together right. As usual the art creating process taught me a valuable lesson.

Finish an idea to completion, because you really don't know how it will come out until it's done. I can't tell you how many times, I thought it was coming out all wrong, and the colors weren't right etc, only to finish the project, and see it turned out much much better than I imagined the original.

Hopefully some day I'll actually learn this lesson and not get so frustrated when things don't go exactly as planned. After all there are no mistakes in art. Right?

Or if there are they can at least be covered up!