Sun Kissed

It has certainly been a minute since I last posted!!!  Between my mom being in the hospital for a week (she just can't kick that bug that's been hangin around for a couple months now) and becoming obsessed with various digital scrapbooking challenges, I've been neglecting my friends in blogland!! In fact, I was in the middle of creating this post when I had to drop everything and head to the ER. I should just keep a bag packed....

Up until a few weeks ago, the only digital scrapbooking challenges I've done have been twice a year during the Club Scrap PSL gatherings. A good friend of mine, however, introduced me to the variety of monthly challenges available on several digital scrapbooking sites! It's been dangerous!!! These are a few of the layouts I've completed in the last two weeks....

Prior to my digi diversion, I had stumbled across another artsy challenge blog, Inspiration Avenue, and was immediately "inspired" by her theme "Sun Kissed." Below is my very late entry for the "Sun Kissed" challenge and my addition to this week's Paint Party Friday.

Now I'm off on an overnight road trip with a friend--i'm told there will be alpacas involved!!  

Have a lovely weekend and thanks for stopping by!!

Maria

Sunday Sketches

A quiet and easy Sunday morning to all!  I have several sketches to share today, some from (way) back in the day, and some newer.


Back in my college days (almost 20 years ago), I had enough fashion and costume design courses under my belt that I should have declared it a second major--oh well--One of the last classes I took was fashion illustration and I just recently put the only two remaining sketches, up on the wall in the studio. 

The next three sketches are from my "rough draft and practice" sketch book. When I worked for one of the Big Four accounting firms, we would go through quite a bit of letter head quality paper and when some issue was found with the letters printed on it, I would take a bunch and bind them for a sketch book--it is lovely paper for that! The fact that it is re-purposed paper and printed on one side makes it less scary to start sketching!! 

A mermaid from a few years ago:

Practice poppies from a few weeks ago:

And when you find yourself with a craving for a bbq sandwich and no one to go to the Patio with you, you take your sketch book and see what happens. This was from this past Friday, and I've subtitled them "Patio Pencils" ---lol!

A fabulous week of art-ing to you! And don't forget to click the buttons on the right to visit the fantastic artists for Sunday Sketches as well as all the challenges listed!!

Thanks for visiting!

Maria

Crusade 54--Mind Games

Well here is something that never happens. I read about Michelle's August Crusade yesterday, and I have a finished product to share today! As a twist on last month's challenge of creating new colors and naming them, this month we were to choose words or phrases and make colors to represent them. As I was reading about the challenge, I happened to be listening to a playlist on my iTunes that is a mix of songs from my life twelve years ago and songs in my life now. I chose four from each time that mean the most to me to create a 2-page layout of colors.

I could put you to sleep with a long convo about colors, emotions and the psyche, but I don't think that was Michelle's intent...lol...i will say this, the one i struggled with at first, "Spoiled" turned out to be my favorite. I listed to each song and only gave myself its length to complete each color block--no time to over-think--

If you are familiar with any of these songs, I would love to hear what colors they make you think of!! How fun!

Happy art-ing to my fellow Crusaders and my paint party peeps!!

Maria