Concrete Angel

I am still working on Round Robin Journals- this one is for Susan. Her theme is How Great Thou Art, and is to create a page that showcases our own personal style.

I actually found this a little challenging, because I am not sure that I have a particular style. I think I am kind of "all over the place" with my art, and am inspired by so many different artists and artistic styles.

I have been striving to increase my sketching skills lately, and I have not been very comfortable in sharing them, because I don't feel they are all that "good." Then I realized that I am not doing art to "impress" other people, but to "express" what is in me.

So here is what I created for Susan. It was inspired by the song Concrete Angel by Martina McBride. It is a very sad song about child abuse, and I am not sure what it is about the song that draws me to it, but it has such a powerful and deep message.

The girl is done with several layers of different weights of pencil. I used my fingers for blending- I am sure there are better techniques, but this is working for me at the moment.

(If you want to see her details-you can click on the picture to see her larger.)

The wings started as a white handmade paper with a silver swirl pattern. I used gesso, and several weights of charcoals, pencils, and lots and lots of blending, to achieve the worn look.

The background paper was also altered with gesso washes, stamped images, distress inks, more color wash and then another coat of distress inks. I printed the words from the song onto tracing paper. I have not done this before, but all the vellum I have, is really heavy weight and I wanted it to be really light, so the images would show through. I had to spray it with fixative, because I used an inkjet printer, but I love the transparentness that it has.

I think it exudes a sense of peace.

Gypsy Women

Well, Finally I finished these Tip-In pages for Susan. I hope she will forgive me for my tardiness. She is such a lovely artist. With having been sick, and then the holidays, I just could not bring myself to throwing something together just to get it done. In all of this, every time I tried to do the transfers, they would not work out correctly. I can not count the number of times that I tried and failed, but I was determined to make this work.
There are times when the vision you have in your head is what is going to come out on paper no matter how you have to get it there. This was one of those times!

I have hand beaded the outfit on the gypsy on the right page, and added copper punchinella to the left side and red punchinella to the right side. The words are also transfers, and then painted with white pen. I have also added a plethora of luscious fibers. My favorite. The whole things is distressed with walnut stain- along with my hands, and clothes. (oops-perks of the job)

White Rabbit

I have finished Teri's Round Robin Journal pages. Her topic was the journey of the White Rabbit. I am not terribly familiar with the story of Alice in Wonderland, other than that Alice is lost and wants help getting home, runs across the white rabbit who can't help her because he is always running late for something or another.

Well, I twisted it around a bit, and made a little play on the words of him being late for a very important date, and he is now late for his important date with Alice!

I had this "great" idea to make this little love birds page, and I found the cutest papers and embellishments, that all coordinated, but they were pink, hot pink, silver, black, gray, totally modern if you know what I mean. Not vintage at all, which is what Teri's journal is. But they were all coordinating, and they had the "feel" that I was after. So I was trying to think of a way to make them work and I was throwing ideas around with my mom, and we decided that a bit of gesso and some distress ink would do the trick. What do you know- It worked! Would you ever guess those background papers were hot pink, black and silver???

These are the close-ups of the pages, and the right page with the door open to show Alice. The pages are painted over the gesso and distress ink treatment with both watercolor crayons and watercolor pencils. The path is mostly crayon, and the weeds are mostly pencil. The mushroom is done with the watercolor pencils.

I have then added some paper flowers that were actually a gift from Teri herself, and then added some seed beads for centers and set them with crystal lacquer. The White Rabbit is carrying a bouquet of peach flowers for his "sweety". The teacup is the sign-in that we were asked to put our name and email on.

Slowly Getting There

I have been working on getting my Paper Traders Round Robin Journal ready to go out for more than a month now, and it just has not been coming together as I had planned, but that is just how things work for me. When I am down to the wire, and I don't have enough time for the paint to dry, then that is when my muse shows up, and it all falls into place.

My Round Robin book is titled:

Monochromatic Me

The gist of it is for each person to create a two page spread in a color scheme that best describes who they are, or that they best relate to. If they don't FEEL a specific color, then to pick their favorite color or to just go to the paint store and grab a paint chip and design a page around that paint chip. It should be interesting to see what colors show up!

I have my cover finished and I finished my sample pages today-whew!

(I am green- and Chunky- tee-hee)

I love green, I always have, and I absolutely love, love, love a ton of junky, chunky stuff all over my pages. The more junk and ribbons the better. I seriously don't think you can have too much. I hope that everyone working in my book will enjoy junking it up as much as I have.

(If you click on the picture above which is the left page or the picture below which is the right page, it will get bigger and you can see the detail much better)

:0)

Super Hero

In an effort to try and catch up, I have finished the pages for Fred's RR Journal from last year. This is one of the journals that was lost somewhere in transit, and has finally shown up. Now if the other 3 would just get here, we could get them finished and back to the rightful owners.

Fred's topic was super heroes. This was a really hard subject for me, because I never watched tv cartoons about super heroes, or read comic books, I never even saw the Spider Man movies! I know I am probably strange, but it is just not my thing, and my husband really doesn't know much about super heroes either... so I was a little blocked but I did the best I could think of.

The best super hero I could think of was my little man- Kota... He is my 7 lb. Shih Tzu. He is a tiny little thing, but mighty. He wears his bowtie with pride. He will bound several feet in the air if he smells a french fry, and will talk to you plain as day "nummy, nummy" if you have his green jar of "nacker begger" treats.

He has some very special tools of power- his fruity & sketti spiders, (they are actually kitty toys, but the cat had NO interest- so Kota, "Bubby" claimed them as his own) woven potholders that my girls have made- great teathing toys I might add & of course his shop towel that he wears as a cape, that has been worn out and has holes in it so it has now been named "Holey Shop Towel".

His favorite place to sleep is definitely under the bed covers. I think that comes from when he was a puppy and I was trying to potty train him and he would not stay in his little box next to the side of my bed. He would jump out of it and onto my bed and under my blanket. When I would force him to stay in it he would just cry. He has been sleeping under my blankets ever since.

First try at Zetti

Sorry I haven't posted for awhile. I actually wrote something on the 16th, but I just couldn't post it. I just figured noone wanted to hear me rant and rave about my mundane life crap, so I deleted it before I posted it, and yes, everything worked itself out like it normally does, and I am over it for now.

Anywho-
Here are the pages that I have made for Marion's Tip-In Round Robin Journal. I will be mailing them out to her today, so I thought I should post them for you all to see. This is the first time I have ever done anything with Zetti. It was interesting to say the least, but was really fun. At first I planned everything out, and decided basically how I wanted everything to look, then as I started to put it all together, I started changing things. Now that is how I think Zetti is supposed to work. At least that is how I think it will work for me, because I had so much fun letting it just take it's own shape, and boy did it come out weird, and in a good way I think.























I love the way the rock/egg eye with the face turned out- that was probably the hardest part. It took several trys to get that right, but the final result is exactly what I was after. I wanted that eye to look like it was coming right out of her lips, and the rock/egg eye, is cut out of cardstock and adhered to the background paper, but the stamp of the face with the ribbon hair is over the top of the rock/egg eye, and onto the background. Then another partial image (just the face part) is cut out of another piece of cardstock and adhered on top of the original stamped image, so it would be a perfectly clear image with none of the rock image showing through. It was pretty involved, for as simple of a look as you get, but when you see it in person, you can see that it is not just a simple process. The background is done with watercolor crayons and a wet paper towel, and the border is a Zetti stamp block of eyes. I stamped it several times and cut each image out, so that I could place all the faces with the noses pointing in wrapping around the pages.























One of the things that Marion asked was that we include a number somewhere on the pages, so I used 7 and 13. They are my two favorite numbers. So these pages are titled appropriately 7 & 13!
This was so fun! I can see how this can be addicting- I will definitely be making more Zetti art.

Fairy Tip In Pages

Finally Finished! Well, I guess stewing over things seems to be a regular for me lately. I guess my muse is on VACATION!
I am so frustrated that I can't get things together like I have planned. I have a picture in my head, but I go to get it out on the paper and it turns out like crap. I can tell you I have printed the base image at least 6 times, because when I went to paint the wings, I messed them up so many times I couldn't fix it, I had to start over, then I got the wings right, and messed up the leaves on the tree! What a nightmare!
That is just the way things have been going for me lately. I just can't seem to get my art to come together the way I want it to.
Now that it is finished I am happy with it, but getting there was rediculous.

Anyway, the wings are painted with shimmer paint, VERY thin! I won't go into detail- LOL.
The leaves are individually painted with metalic green watercolor, and then I streaked metalic copper watercolor into the water, to give it that dimmensional shimmer that you see when the sun hits water as it is going down. (if you know what I mean)
The quote and the flourishes are printed on transparency and layered over the top of everything else. I think the transparency makes it hard to see the sparkle of the metalic paint, but it is there, and I think Linda will really like it. (I hope so anyway) ;0)