60th Birthday Surprises!

My girlfriend Krys and I became friends a long time ago, having met through our shared love of Victoriana.  Krys has shared her artistic designs and style through her skill with Jasc's PSP software, creating amazing digital designs, while I have toddled along with my outdated Microsoft's PhotoDraw II, intially creating digital designs but then taking my art into decorative painting, oil painting and now of course, the mixed media and art journaling.  Naturally, I had to haul her along into this latest adventure with me!  LOL 

Krys has continually amazed and delighted me with her beautiful creations and for my birthday, she surprised me with the following box, filled with goodies!  The box itself is beautiful decorated with rose tissue paper, green mirrored butterflies, hearts & bling, quotes and words of friendship.  The little placard is evidence of our history today and shared love of Victoriana.  The candles, hand frosted and tinted!

I love my Friendship Journal!!  Its absolutely beautifully filled with gorgeous images, embellishments and thoughts -- all again, reflecting our love of Victoriana, roses and friendship together.

And finally, I was gifted two beautiful ATC's that she had made (and I had drooled over! lol) using her personal bits of no-longer worn or broken jewelry to adorn the rest of the designs which incorporate the ATC Backgrounds she offers digitally through her ETSY shop, Fey Arte of Faeries. 

What is even more amazing and heart-warming to me is that Krys' is on a horrendously limited budget for her creative supplies and finds the most fantastic values to make a tight craft budget go a long way!  I'm SO proud of her for showing me (all of us!) that being awesomely creative doesn't require a big studio full of stuff!

Krys' 60th Birthday is late next month.  Boy! - I'm going to have to work hard to match the fun for hers!!  LOL

Seashells remind us ...

Another group challenge this week was to use a seashell as our inspiration.  I initially went to my favourite place for images, The Graphics Fairy, and found some lovely vintage images!  But, after attempting to colour them first with watercolours, next with coloured pencils and finally with alcohol markers - I realized I wasn't happy with the look I wanted.  Those coloured bits of shells were neatly stored for some future project.  :-)

So there I was, looking at my small box of mixed media odds and ends bits and spotted a little grouping of items I'd gotten on a recent adventure with my motorized wheelchair (I rode it all the way up to Tuesday Morning and Joann's and back home again! lol) -->  Batik Sun Stones Disks, Cowrie Shells, and small wooden disk beads.  AHAH!!!

A tag was begun.  This is a large tag, approximately the size of a saltine cracker box side (which is, in fact, what its made upon).  :-)

seashells remind us ...

The background was a free image of Batik Textiles resourced through my membership with RGB Stock Photos.   I loved the movement and patterns of texture amongst those beautiful colours! 

The Cowrie Shells and wood beads at the bottom were layered atop a small bedding of cheesecloth that was stained with a Victorian Rose colour.  I used a little bag of dried potporri bits to add texture.

The little shells postage stamp was cut from a 12x12 sheet of scrapbook paper.  I placed it atop a little rectangular tag coloured in a golden mustard brown, trimed with a zigzag scissors and added little bits of glitter.  It says:  Live Learn Discover.

Another Cowrie Shell grounds the unknown author's quote, in a spray layout, which says:

seashells remind us
that every passing life
leaves something
beautiful behind

LOVE that!

Its finished at the top with more stained cheesecloth and a paper butterfly, embellished with a little more glitter.

Youth and Roses

Sometimes, you just need to create BIG and so I did over the weekend.   Not awfully big, mind you ... just sorta-kinda-maybe-big with an 11 x 14 canvas.

Youth and Roses

The inspiration came from the rose images on a napkin.  The background started with drywall patching tape, Crafter's Workshop Doodling Stencil and Liquitex Modeling Paste, a wallpaper fabric sheet (a 4x6 pad of 50+ variety sheets found for $2.97 in the clearance section at Joann's), and then acrylic paint (in several pink as well as green values) and gesso blended over all.  The napkin tissue was decoupaged next.  The birdcage was diecut with my Cuttlebug and then gesso'd and painted light pink, then glittered with a soft pink glitter.  The bird was a store-bought embellishment that came on a sheet of 8.  I printed on cardstock my butterfly embellishments (images from the Graphics Fairy, linked at the right) and printed the quote box which I did in my graphics program.  Finishing touches include the decorative sticky trim, stamping ink, Prima flowers and pearl flatback gems.

I loved this quote from Thomas More:

"What though youth gave love and roses,
Age still leaves us friends and wine."

By the way ... persistence paid off on this one.  My first canvas was either a bad canvas cloth or bad gesso - my acrylic paint wouldn't stick for anything!  lol  I had a big mess on my hands - literally!  lol  Thank goodness for a stockpile of canvases!  Even then THIS background went through four very different variations!  Next time, I shall make a note to take photos and show you the process ... it took, me days!  lol  :-)

Group Challenges

I am so blessed to be part of several artistic communities which encourage me as a newcomer to art journaling, mixed media and papercrafting to create a piece of art based on a weekly Challenge.  What makes it even more fun for me is that sometimes I can combine the challenges, which is what I did today.  :-)

Challenge 1 - use an apple as your inspiration
Challenge 2 - make a card without using any cardstock or scrapbook paper

Get Well Soon!

The base card is a sheet of "Kid Made Modern" watercolour paper from a $2.99 pad found at Target. The apple was done on a small section of a piece of paper from a Royal Langnickel "Essentials Watercolor Artist Pad" found in the $1.00 bins at Joanns.

Mixed Media included:

• watercolours for the background card colour washes
• watercolour pencils for the apple and its surrounding colour washes
• Versa Mark Gingerbread Chalk Ink Pad daubed through a Crafters Workshop basket weave stencil,
• a Sharpie marker for the handwritten text,
• a corner punch on the apple paper corners,
• and a little bit of gold ribbon.

If you're not part of a collected group of artists, I encourage you to find one.  The rewards of sharing your artistic endeavours with others like you, just can't be beat!

Love Thoughts

In complement of colour and style to the "Best of Everything" design shared in my posting of August 27th, I did another 8x10 canvas board design - "Love Thoughts"

Love Thoughts

This was done with a combination of acrylic paints, watercolours, distress inks, Spectrum Noir, Prismacolour pencils, paper punch, store embellishments/die cuts.  The lady image is from The Graphic Fairy and background image is from Astrid's Artistic Efforts (those image resource links are also linked in my Fave's, to the right).

I hope you enjoy!