Lookin' Up

I made this page today for all my friends and myself - for anyone who's been down and needing a reminder that springtime, whether mood related, weather related or health related, WILL come again. Hope it brightens your day a little bit! I made this in an older journal that I made with business envelopes (you know, from when we had bills come in paper form to the house?) in a spiral binding. I don't recommend this paper even though it is recycling as it is lousy to work on. Once done with this journal I won't make another! But in the meantime, I occasionally make a page and today was one of those times. I used liquid acrylic for the background, cut-out daisies from a magazine (I don't get those anymore either although I am waiting for the mags to come up with an android version so I can get them on my Xoom), and marking pens for the decoration. I goofed and used a green pen that wasn't drying for the leaves. It turned out to be a pigment ink so I got out my clear embossing powder and took care of that problem. Happy Sunday everyone!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Happy Valentine's Day everyone. Hope you all have a great day with someone you love!

My hubby and I made each other a valentine this year unbeknownst to each other. He says I walked in on him as he was working on mine (for which he has to use Windows XP version to access his old card generating program) and he startled me by walking in on me as I worked on mine but my back was to him so he didn't see what I was doing. He is taking me to lunch today to a Chinese buffet. I didn't take a picture but the mountains around us got a dusting of snow last night while we got a little rain. Hopefully we got a quarter inch as my birdbath shows a little water in the bottom of it. We need it as we haven't had rain since November I think! Sorry I didn't take the "how I did it" pics of my project. I simply forgot as I got into it. I started by pulling papers out of the drawer and then making some heart templates. THEN I came up with what I was going to make; it was not pre-planned. I am a bit too chaotic to do something planned out from the beginning, lol!

Getting Unstuck

Sorry I've seemed to disappear from blogland!  I got a bit down and wasn't doing much blog checking, art or anything at all really.  Oh, I wasted a lot of time playing silly internet games where you really don't win but you can keep playing without thinking much and figure it is passing for living but finally you realize with the help of some friends that you really aren't living at all and it's time to wake up and smell the coffee! 

So here is what I have done since my last post.  Yes, it was a while ago and this is a pretty poor showing of items.  I haven't even finished the Christmas page yet!  I used real Christmas scraps for the background and added the annual family pic in front of the Christmas tree but have not added any titles, lists or commentary.  Hopefully I'll feel like adding some soon.

A couple of weeks ago I got tired of chewing on my nails till they hurt so I went out and bought some new, fun polishes.  First I wore the green and now I am wearing the pink.  It really helps to keep me from chewing as the polish smooths the rough edges and feels silky and I don't want to chew the polish!  I did have fun making the page and started to feel the funk I was in lessen a bit.

Now, the next two pics are the making of my husband's birthday card.  I don't usually like the cards for sale and time is running out so I finally grabbed my paints and brushes and got busy.  He loves pie over cake any day so he will be getting a cherry pie on his birthday and I figured why not put one on his card too?  So I did.  Boy was I rusty.  I have blooms starting up because I didn't wait long enough for the "pie tin" to dry before doing the shadow and I had to hurry and blot the "cherries" as they were bleeding out into the crust.  I set it aside to dry and went over it all again with the final result in the last picture here.  Art requires constant practice if you want to keep your skills up, that's for sure!

Speaking of skills and practice, Laure Ferlita of Imaginary Trips fame is starting up this years schedule of classes with a visit to the beach.  It starts soon so if you want to join in hurry and sign up!

Merry Christmas everyone!  Hope you are enjoying family and friends, treats and finding much to be happy and grateful for.  I am and my blogger pals are truly one of the blessings I count.

I was trying to upload a picture but the internet or blogger or my lack of knowing how to use my Xoom is interfering so I'll have to try again later.

Catching Up for Now

My husband had an appointment at the VA dental office. It is in Prescott AZ, about 80 miles away so I packed candy and journal stuff to go along with me while I waited for him. The first picture is what I did while I waited. It's in the style of Alisa Burke who offers an ongoing class here.

I made a little travel palette to go in my journal in my purse. It takes up no room. In fact it sits inside my journal. It's made by cutting a piece of Sheer Heaven, a special plastic which can be used multiple ways as you can see here. I made it per the instructions found here. It worked really well as you can see.

And these are my latest pictures from Jane Davenport's class SuppliesMe. I plan on signing up for her next class!

Question For You

Hi everyone. First, this is a picture I made for Jane Davenport's class Supplies Me
. I enjoyed drawing this as she represents my granddaughter who is really skinny like this, loves purple and is taking ballet. (Her mother told me in LB's saturday class they were told to kick their legs behind them and try to reach the back of their head. When she saw LB she exclaimed "OMG (long version), she's really doing it"! And my LB said she kicked her head pretty hard with her right leg but only touched it lightly with her left. Now can you do that? I can't even kick past knee-height!

The second thing and the point of this post is a question. Do you have an Ipad or an Android tablet? I am looking at these and have read that on the Android tablets some of the web sites come up in cellphone version rather than a PC version and some find that annoying. Since I don't get sites on my cellphone I don't know how annoying that would be so I am hoping someone can tell me! If you have an Ipad, do the sites come up regular version or cellular version on it? Maybe this is the real reason people love the Ipad over the Android tablets?

Happy Sunday

I'm taking a class with Jane Davenport from Australia. The second picture here is my interpretation of her in a teaching video she made from Bali. She's teaching how to use various tools from colored pencil to watercolors and markers. We are also learning how to draw faces and some basic figures. I'm learning quite a bit. The other picture here is one of my lessons in putting it together in my journal.

The picture of Jane was done with regular graphite pencil on a gesso covered puzzle page in a re-purposed journal. I went over the pencil with watercolor pencils and then water.

The girl with kite was done with no drawing for the background. I just took gouache (opaque watercolor) and started in. Then I drew the girl on a separate piece of paper, colored it in with colored pencil, cut her out and glued her on the page. I'm really happy with her and my whole page!

I hope these pictures add some color to your day. Hope you have a great Fall Sunday!

If you are interested in Jane's classes check out this link: http://www.janedavenport.com/workshops/ . You'll learn a lot and have fun too. This is the beginning workshop; she's planning more to help us with drawing people!