In desperate need of artisitic diversion

Packing, moving, unpacking, organizing---certainly NOT artistic endeavors! But they are necessary evils that balance out the awesomeness of making our new house home!  Even though my art studio looks like Dorothy's cyclone has passed through, I still enjoy being in it--even if it is only to drop more stuff on the floor!

My muse is patiently waiting--living vicariously through the blogs of my kindred spirits and eagerly absorbing all the articles in my latest magazines...

maybe i should do some 60 second sketches/doodles....hmmmm....

Progressive

art journal pages +

Hidey Cat =

the beginning of my first attempt at digital collage!

Feeling Zen

Creativity has mostly been put on hold the last two weeks as my life revolves around the acquisition of our new home.  Today we have our inspection and we move one step closer to the American Dream. I guess creativity hasn't truly been put on hold, it is just taking a slightly different guise...such as picking out cabinets and designing the space for my new art studio!!

You may have noticed the new look of my blog as well! Creativity has cropped up there as well as i spent the better part of the week learning how to tweek the css and html to make my blog more "magickal."  I photo-shopped my Samhain BJP images to create the banner and background, added some buttons, blogroll and a nifty moon phase widget (did you see the witch fly by??) and voila! Let me know what you think of the new look!

And finally, i finished up two zen doodles--one that includes "x"s and "o"s for my second contribution to the Street Team and one that reflects my longing to get back to my garden!!

Hugs and Kisses

GPP Street Team challenge this month is to create "love letters"--to be exact, the letters "x" and "o"

---inspired by some of Michelle's hand carved stamps, i cut out some stencil letters in a "gothic" sort of font and used black ink on red cardstock to create both positive and negative images.  i outlined some of the letters and then stamped text here and there...

Whole lotta creative goin on....

While i didn't work on any of my "home" themed projects last week (well, not directly, but I have been researching the techniques I want to use on my Hearts at Home art quilt and we did go see a few more houses this weekend), I have been creatively busy.

With Valentine's Day less than a week away, I am scrambling to complete several of each of my two designs for this year.

Being a BIG BIG fan of Tim Holtz and all of his products, I just had to create a log book to keep track of all that I have and all that I want! It's still i a work in progress, but I like the way is turning out! More to come---

Cover showing tabs....                                                                                 ....page showing stamp pads etc.

And my latest obsession--"zentangles"--if you haven't tried them, you should! There are lots of examples and tutorials out there! The are so simple and so relaxing! I have so many ideas for this artform!! Definitely more to come!

Body Beautiful

I knew when I decided to do a "Creative Everyday" challenge for myself, that the idea was neither mine nor was it new. I'd heard the phrase many times in the past couple of years. For the hell of it, I decided to google the phrase and see where it would take me.  To my sheer delight, it led me to Leah Piken Kolidas blog Creative Everyday. She IS the creator of this challenge and provides encouraging and motivating space for others to be creative everyday--in whatever way being "creative" means to you.

With only a few days left in January (my head is still spinning from this fact), I signed up to be part of this community. Leah offers themes each month that you can use or ignore at your will--with this month's being "body." I chose to interpret this theme through visual representations of plays on words...

fairly self-explanatory...

"Body Language"

This page started as an idea to do "Body of Text" but subconsciously changed to "Body Language" after I stumbled across several old books in various languages that I had purchased ages ago to use for backgrounds.  When I put the books under my art table to be packed up, I didn't realize they would find their way into today's art---

 

"Body Type"

ok--so I am mildly obsessed with the written word as a design element. I can't help it--it just looks cool. 

in the same way that the universe directed me to my multi-language books, the measuring tape background paper just happened to be in the mess of stuff on top of my art table and i couldnt resist the symbolism it added--after all, how is it that we harshly judge our body types than with a tape measure??

The rest of the numbers game

Well, here we are, on the last day of the month (OMG!! Really? a whole month of the new year is already gone?? Where did it go??) and I am happy to say that I completed   a page for every day--sometimes they were two-page spreads, and a few times i did several pages at once to catch up--but I did it!  Will I be doing this again for February?? um....well...no...lol....but there will be more in posts to come on February's goals!

For now, here are the remaining three pages inspired by my facebook peeps and the numbers they chose---

Miss Emma chose 114--completely random, just like her.  I chose a fabulous "dark" photo of her and used black and red to reflect her style.

I'm sure you can figure out the Krisha's number for yourself....I helped myself to her facebook profile photo for a "yin-yang" effect...

and my buddy Kraig (who I haven't seen in almost three years! We really need to get together!) offered up 647. At some point, back in the day, I called him K-dog--so it had to become part of the page...while Kraig is as far from urban or grunge as you can get, I do like the feel of that in this page.

Thanks to everyone who inspired me with a number! You helped keep me motivated!

Part II....

Day 4 was 420 provided by Muse Angie...

Day 5 from my scrapbooking buddy, Cassandra. Her number was 352:

and day 6 was from my good buddy Jen, who knows me quite well and chose a number I would have chosen for myself--the magickal number 13!

I still think the edititor is jacked up, even with the "upgrades"--curse you blogspot! LOL!

Number Inspirations

I am very much enjoying my "CED" book, but after just 11 days, I was already tiring of "theme-less" pages. I took my need to my facebook peeps and requested seven "random" numbers to be the inspiration for the next week's worth of pages--and they did not let me down! I

have only one number left to do (tomorrow), but below are pages inspired by my honorary muses and the numbers they provided.

(The first and second pages of the week will have to be posted later as they are on a memory card I left at work--

DOH!)

So day three's number was provided by my wonderful girlfriend, who a year and a half ago celebrated her birthday on 8/8/08----888 was her muse number:

(UGG! I am remembering why blogging annoyed me so much!!! I will have to have a separate post for each image as I have now lost images and text three times and this tiny format for creating posts is starting to grate on my nerves. WTF.)

Houses

**************January 17 update

Thank to everyone for the wonderful comments on these pages!! The color scheme is a result of a very limited color pallet--my "mini studio" only has 12 bottles of paint, and the only primary is yellow! I used magenta, violet and purple for my houses, and the magenta and yellow created some orange--

It's been a long time since I've had color theory and design classes, but i have discovered that a 4-color analogous color scheme is quite dynamic because it also includes a complimentary color scheme--try it out with yellow, orange, red and violet (which is what mine is with the magenta representing the red) or maybe green, blue, violet and red....

*************

And two pages for the GPP Street Team Crusade 36:

http://michelleward.typepad.com/how_cool_is_that/

Do Something Creative Everyday

So the new year is under way, and my goal of doing something creative everyday is in full swing! On today, the 11th, i successfully have 11 simple collages! they certainly aren't great works of art, but the keep the creativity flowing for all of my other projects! Here are a few pages--see a theme emerging??

The Making of a Mol

When your 15-year-old calls you up and says "I have to make a stuffed mole for school" this is what happens:



First: you are a bit confused for a while wondering why a sophomore in high school has to make a stuffed mole...and even moreso when she says it is for chemistry...Turns out she is making a Mol rather than a mole--but it looks like a mole--but is supposed to represent a mol of some element--so it is really a Mol mole....do you follow?



After looking through all the elements on the periodic table, she chose to do an arsenic Mol mole(being the goth-ish and morbid teen that she is).

Emma did not have the pattern provided by the teacher, so it's a good thing mom knows how to make such things---after discussing what the teacher's Mol mole and pattern looked like, and several sketches later, we had a pattern to test on blue fabric.

A few minor adjustments to the original pattern and voila! an Arsenic Mol mole is born--complete with poison warning on his back! (I wanted to stitch a tiny piece of old lace to his paw, but emma said no--she's no fun!).

the joys of the season

Ah. Autumn. My most favorite season of all! Fall means....pumpkin patches(no, we don't have fall in March in Chicago...)....

and corn mazes (both of which were extremely muddy...the hayride trip to the pumpkin patch turned into a rescue mission--a second haywagon lost it's tire in foot-deep mud....needless to say, we never even ventured off our wagon into the patch...)....

and of course, the making of Halloween costumes...new witch's attire for me this year!!

it's been a while...

So now that I found some really, really cool backgrounds and updated the look of my blog...I feel inspired to actually start posting again--but of course, you know how I am, so we will see what happens.....