By The Sea

I love vintage beach images! Those risque bathing costumes! And the wonderful umbrellas!

I decided to combine my love of these images with my love of sea green and turquoise.

Below is the progression of my collage. I began by painting the page with turquoise, brown and white acrylic paints. I then tore up strips of papers in my chosen color family of sea green. I used Mod Podge to glue these down adding in vintage photos among the papers. All of these images came from the LunaGirl panorama CD (I was working on my beach themed ATCs from my last post at the same time lol)

After staring at it for a while, I decided I needed another color, maybe a bit of red. So I added the strip down the center....and while applying the glue to the back, saw this wonderful text filled side (I really should remember to check the backs of my papers more often lol) Not wanting to miss out of this fun side, I took another strip, flipped it over and added the text along the right border.
I wanted the layers to sort of meld into each other so I used a palatte knife and swiped white acrylics all over the page.

Next came rubber stamps! My Fred Mullett 'Menpachi' fish stamp using a rusty red ink. I really do need to go get some more Fred Mullett stamps! I just love this fish! And the seashell stamp with text comes from Stampington and Company (Postal Shell) stamped in brown.

Now for doodling! I used black Prismacolor, Sacura Micron and Sharpie pens (why all different brands? Because I have different size tips in each lol) And I used a white Marvy gel pen and Wite-Out pen.

Here are a couple close ups. I outlined this girl with the white pens.

Here I colored the center girl and her umbrella with Prismacolor pencils. I wrote my text by hand (obviously) which I hate to do because my handwriting is so horrible lol But, unless I want to paint or collage over it, there is stays lol

I am still not sure if this is done. I keep thinking it needs something. Maybe some pearlized old buttons... we shall see.

Gardening, Doodling and ATCs, Oh My!

Am I the only one that finds it facinating the way peas with grap hold of something to balance themselves?

Below are some macro photos of my sugar snap peas.

A recent lesson in my Creative Doodles class had us finding our signature character doodle.

I am still doodling Mignonette (Minnie) Here she is using Prismacolor pencils on black paper.

I call this Urban Minnie. lol

And ATCs!

I am still in the monthly ATC swap at BadBabies. This month we have a challenge. Use the postcard below in your ATC(s). This card is a hotel at Cannon Beach, OR. I cut it down and made 2 cards.

I sanded the postcard to get rid of the slick finish and then rubbed Distress Ink all over. The 'bathing beauties' are from the LunaGirl panorama images CD.

Same treatment of the postcard. Here I stamped the girl with umbrella (Tin Can Mail) on white cardstock then cut her out and glued her to the card.

Gardens and Doodles

I told you I would share my garden with you. Here is my AeroGarden. I started my tomatoes, basil, petunias and impatiens in it. I managed to get the tomatoes out into the garden about a month ago but then it got cold again and everything else had to wait.

As you can see, it became very jungle-like lol I have to say though, it was nice having petunias blooming in the diningroom. :-)
Here are some of the tomato plants (they have grown at least another 8 inches since I took this last weekend. And we have garlic that is about ready to pick! Yippee!

I planted these sugar snap peas way back in March per instructions from the co-op. They didn't even come up until May! But now are growing about 6 inches a day. I just hope we get peas before the weather gets too hot and kills them off.

And I managed to get a bit of doodling done over the weekend as well. Our class assignment was to find our signature doodle. Something that we enjoy and can sort of get lost in...something we can doodle at anytime and just enjoy.

I used to use Tucker a my subject in lots of art projects. His distinctive markings made him fun to draw. Now we have Minnie. Being a tuxedo cat, black and white, although quite striking to view, can be a bit boring to draw at times. So, I instead am being inspired by her personality. She is such a diva! And I have never seen a more happy go lucky being on the face of the earth. She is just always happy and loves everyone and everything.

So Minnie is now my doodle inspiration (with bits of Tucker thrown in)

Minnie's full name is Mignonette so that is what I am calling these doodles. Here she is enjoying the flowers.

And my little diva just loves getting new toys (or in this case, a new hat).

Wishing for less work and more art!

I am still working on my Creative Doodles class....just not as often as I would like. I am averaging about 2 sessions a week. :-( But this is better than none....right? :-)

Here is a progressive photo of a collage and doodle piece. (I spared you the boredom of seeing each layer of paint and paper lol) We were supposed to be asymetrical...as if I am normally balanced! haha

The black swirls and 'leaves' were done in acrylic paint. Then I doodled all over with black pens and finally white gel pen.
Here we were supposed to draw with a eye dropper....now, I bought one to use for this class but darned if I can find it! So, for now I just used Chinese ink and a paint brush. Gotta find that dropper this weekend! I then added some watercolors and finally doodles with pens.

And in case you thought I had totally abandoned it, I did a page for my journal....using a papers and painted collage background. The woman is from the Stage Beauties image cd from Enchanted Mercantile. Lastly, I doodled the butterfly and added the text "On the wings of a Butterfly, My Dreams take flight".

It has been a very dreary, rainy spring here in the Pacific Northwest. So much so that our gardens are pretty much non-existant! My tomato plants are just teeny things! And my flowers are still in the seed pods inside the house and spilling out all over in hopes that it will warm up and dry out just enough that I can transplant them outside....and hope that summer actually arrives. I should take a picture of my poor flowers before I transplant them...my Aerogrow looks like a jungle! lol

Back on track

Not that I was ever really off track :-) We went on vacation. And although I did take materials and supplies along so that I could draw and doodle, I was so pooped at the end of each day that it just didn't happen lol

We did spend 1 day at the Jennifer Sears Glass Studio. I made this paperweight (which is about the size of a softball!) and Hubby blew a float.

If you are ever in Lincoln City, OR you should check it out! You can create your own piece of glass art...a great, personal souvenier. :-)
But, now I am back home and playing catch up with my class. We are now painting backgrounds so that we can doodle on them.

I have found that I really like watercolors because they run together and blend so nicely.

To save space (and not have to upload 50 pictures on one post---slight exaggeration--but not much lol) I have combined the background with the finished doodle. Here, the black lines on the background were made by dipping a pine branch in black ink.

I love swirls! But I hate the color yellow so I am not sure why I keep throwing it into all my backgrounds!

This one is acrylics, 2 colors, a turquoise and a blue-green. I then ground some chinese ink (but didn't grind long enough, my arm got tired lol) to squiggle over top and finally stamped some fish (Fred Mullett) using Colorbox chalk inks.

Here is the final piece. I doodled around the fish with a fine point sharpie and then doodled all over with a white gel pen (which I swore I would never buy again but found one for a good price while on vacation)

A close-up of some of the fishies.

More doodling!

Days 6 and 7 of my Creative Doodling class are for getting caught up. I wasn't behind so I am using the time to just play.

First, using color on black, I went with our alphabet practice and did my initial (C).
Then, that not being enough, I did my whole name lol I decided to shade everything with a black pencil...along the lines of zentangle. I can't decide which side is up, I just keep flipping it around and around.

We are also supposed to be gathering images, photos, words...that inspire us. This is one of my inspiration photos. These are the tulips that are blooming right now in my back yard. I love their gorgeous red color and something about the shape of tulips is very inspiring to me.

And here is the doodle they inspired. :-) I just couldn't stop working on it...and may not be done even yet! lol I am thinking I might make some photocopies of this one so that I can play with color on it.

Day 4 & 5

We played some more with doodling over colored pages which is a lot of fun! But then we added more color! WooHoooo!

I chose to work on the page I previously turned in the scared child and monster....just to make sure I really am not nuts lol

I doodled with various black pens. And once done, I added more color with pencils. This page was VERY bright so I used my pencils to actually tone down a lot of the areas....not that you can tell lol

Although bright colors are not usually my thing, I really like this! Hubby says I am still nuts. HaHa
And today we doodled the alphabet on black paper. So, here is my alphabet before I added color.

And now.....ta da! Color!!!!

I have to say, normally you stick a pen or brush in my hand and I am a happy camper but this is beyond fun! No one is expecting perfection (well except maybe me lol). Who expects doodles to actually look like anything?! I am hoping this freeness (is that a word) will carry over into my other art projects. :-)

Day 3 continued

I am really having fun with this!

Anyone who knows me, knows that I am a vintage/rustic/antiqued style girl so doodling like this is sooooo outside my box that I can no longer see the box! lol

But I am having a blast!
I added a white Prismacolor pencil over the black background (because I don't own any white pens.....they always seem to dry up and frustrate me)

Day 3

Day 3 of my Creative Doodles class!

I won't bore you with my random doodling exercises lol

I tackled yesterday's "What do you see?" challenge again. I just sat back, squinted my eyes and waited. Slowly a mermaid tail appeared so, not to be unkind, I gave her a body lol And then the bottom of a treasure chest so of course, I had to add the top. :-)

Then, just like seeing images in clouds, fish began appearing everywhere. And then columns, as if she lived in Atlantis!
We have 4 more pages of 'what do you see?' today. I have only completed 2 so far but figured, since I was diddling around on the computer, I would go ahead and share.

My first was pretty straight forward. The images were blatantly obvious...flowers. I tried to doodle them up a bit and then I came back in with my trusty black pencil to add a bit of depth.

This next one called out to me as soon as I saw it.....I saw a poor little girl, just awakened by a horrible monster! So, what would a psychiatrist read into this? Probably that I spend way too much time alone, I have a warped sense of humor (because I find this picture very funny) or I am nuts....or maybe all three! lol But I like it!

I'm taking a class!

But before I get to that....here is the last of my 3 ATCs for April. I know the colors don't seem very spring-like but it depicts spring for me...at least this year! lol It is has been rainy and dreary since Feb 1! I think we have only seen the sun a total of 5 days since then!!!!!
And now, for the class. I am taking Traci Bautista's Creative Doodles class! It is an online, work at your own pace deal....which is what I need with my crazy work hours and back pain issues lol

Not only is this the first online class I have ever taken but I decided to move way outside my comfort zone and go big (well big for me). I am using an 8.5 x 11 journal. I normally work very small....I used to drive my teachers and professors up a wall! lol They wanted 36" or 48" canvases and I was working at around 8"-10". haha

So, here is Day 1. We have 'prompts' like 'draw circles' and we doodle. Being a real control freak, it is hard for me to just let go....my doodling has always been very controlled lol As you can see, nothing wild and crazy here! haha And I have to say, it drives me nuts that my squares are not perfectly square! lol

Day 2....More prompts. I tried to be freer, not sure I succeeded...how to do you force yourself to let go and not be your normal, tense, uptight self? lol Notice, no squares so no distress about that issue. Ha!

We also had to do this "what do you see" page. Obviously, I see a mess lol I made another print of the page so I will try this again tomorrow....and the day after... until I see something I like. :-)

You can check out Traci's classes here. And there is still time to join! Classes continue until July.

Spring has Sprung!

I work from home which is great except when the sun is shining and I can see the trees blooming outside my window. Then it becomes very hard to concentrate! Last week I snapped several shots of our flowering plum and this week, some of those shots are doubling as cherry blossoms. :-) I need to get my 3 ATCs done for the monthly swap so first up is Cherry Blossom Time. The woman is from Stone House Stamps. They have the most gorgeous Asian stamps I have ever seen! Next we have April in Paris. The Eiffel Tower stamp is from Postmodern Design and is huge! As you can see, I only used a portion of the stamp. The can-can dancer is one I carved about 15 years ago for a RubberStampMadness submission (and it was published. Yay!)

For both of these ATCs, I colored the women with watercolor pencils.

Even though our temperatures have not been overly warm this past week AND we had some serious snow and hail, the goldfinches are coming into full color. They are just so cute and a beautiful bright flash of color on these cold and dreary days!

This was a slow moment at the feeder. I have actually looked out and not been able to see the mesh at times with so many birds crowded together enjoying the feast. And Minnie loves to watch her birds...she makes sure to let us all know when the feeders are active with her squeals of delight. lol

Isn't he a handsome fellow?! He is almost done molting into his bright yellow feathers!

More than just art!

I thought I would share a bit about my other hobbies for a change! I collect lots of different things but really love old kitchen gadgets and cast iron. This hand mixer fit into both of those catagories! It has such a cool look. I had never seen one made of iron before and just the look of it...well, I couldn't leave it behind! It has a very sculptural look....at least to me. I just love it!

I also love photography. I am snapping pics of just about everything...all the time! And I seem to live in macro mode! LOL The closer the better!

The other day, our work system was down so I grabbed my camera and ran out in the front yard....the ornamental cherry is blooming! And it was the first sunny day we have had in 6 weeks! Definitely a reason to capture this moment!