Recent journal page

Very foggy here today and I have a cold... so a cheery page to make us feel better!

Thank you for all the well wishes from Saturday. And have a great Monday!

I'm excited!

Do you remember these?

Well I bought this magazine

and on page 45- there I was!! With even my name at the bottom of the page!!!!

There is also a page with the ornaments on a Christmas tree- so fun! I guess you could say I'm a "little" excited :) I just had to share my news with all you wonderful friends- have a great day!

Thank you and an art page!

Thank you so much for all your thoughts and prayers! Everthing went fine and I'm feeling good today. I hope this will be the end of these health problems and I will be getting better and better.
Now for some journal pages:

One good thing about using a large journal is you can use larger pictures- I love this one!

Hope you all have a wonderful Friday!

ICAW # 14 and thoughts and prayers

On this I scraped paint twice, then stamped, and then stenciled! A lot of techniques for such a little card.

 Today I go to the hospital to have a procedure and I would appreciate your thoughts and prayers- thanks! Have a great day!

A bright idea?

I hope this brings a smile your way!

Home

Today I thought I'd post an assemblage I made.

This is a leaning assemblage as opposed to a free standing one. I wanted to be able to change the birds to something else if the whim struck me. The sticks are supposed to be in an H shape, the yarn in the nest represents the crafts I like to do for my home and family. This sits on the mantel in our living room and each time I see it throughout the day, I'm reminded of the great blessing of having a family, a home, food to eat, friends and even extras like making art.

Have a great day!

You could call this a leftover page. I put stencils with ink still on it, finished stamping an image, scraped leftover paint on my card, and did the same with the tag at the top. Great way to use leftovers.

Here's another crazy image I found, this time in a Vogue magazine. At our library's book used book sale they offer magazines for free! So I try to pick up some when I go.

I'm really liking having birds on my pages. The perfume bottle actually has a place to sniff- phew!

Hope you all are having a great Monday!

A good day for staying inside

Rain, rain- a good day to stay inside. Unless your dear hubby takes you to breakfast!

Here is a fun page I did the other day- love the image. And here is another:

I'm having fun just doing crazy things on my pages! Here is this closer:

Isn't the bird funny?! I really like this page. I love knitting too so the image cracks me up! Also I used my tissue tape down the center instead of masking tape- I like the look better. Hope this brings a smile to your day!

Thank you and ICAW #13 plus a new journal page!

I just want to thank all of you who take the time to leave me comments- I LOVE comments!!! So please if you visit my blog leave a comment- I like making a new friends :)  Here is my ICAW of the week:

I used real leaves that I collected on my daily walk, then lightly sprayed with color wash ink. I tried to decopauge the leaves on, hoping to preserve them, but they wouldn't stick. So I ended up gluing them on the card. Next is my journal page:

Basically I glued images onto painted paper of growing things. Then I painted with a brush a basic outline of a flower. When it was dry I took my permaball pen and started drawing petals until it looked like a flower. It was a little harder than I thought to get them to look even. Overall I like the way it turned out. I wish you all a wonderful weekend!

Here it is!

I finished this yesterday, I was so excited to use this fabric! It's a very simple pattern I made, so it didn't take long. I still might fill in a few places with some more stencils, but for now I like the way it looks. I do think white would have made the colors pop more, but that's for the next one :)

Here's a journal page I finished too

Very simple, but  fun! Hope you all are having a great week!

another experiment

Something I tried this past weekend was stenciling on fabric. Some of the paint I used was fabric paint and some was acrylic. I'm going to make this into an apron so I will post that when it's finished. I think it will be neat looking! But THEN I'm going to wash it and see what happens- if some of the paint disappears then I will restencil those areas. I did heat set the whole thing after it was dry so it should work. I got the idea from Julie Balzer. I just used some muslin I had since it is an experiment. If it turns out I'd rather invest in some thicker white fabric because the colors would look brighter. AND some stencils! Here's a little closer look.

 Another thing I might do when it's made into an apron is fill in with stenciling if there's any blank spaces. It's hard to tell before it's cut out. Have a wonderful Wednesday!

Sometimes I feel sad or mad, or just plain blah,,,

I was feeling definitely blah this day so I scraped on paint in colors  to express my feelings. Then I let it dry- when I came back to it I was feeling better so I added the yellow cross hatch and started gluing down images. I haven't really done a feelings page before, but it did help with the sorting of them.

I outlined many of the images with a paint marker instead of my usual black and I did eventually write the title on this page. See the hello above the head? That represents the fact that when I try to go to sleep at night, my brain seems to turn on and starts wrestling with ideas... Now why can't it do that in the morning? Note to brain: when it's time for sleep. we ALL sleep (please?) Anybody else have this problem? Hope you all have a terrific Tuesday!

I WON!

I can't believe it! I sent in some b/w ornaments to Cloth Paper Scissors for a challenge they did and I was one of 4 who won an asst of the ornaments! I was sooo surprised! The ornaments are featured in the CPS Gifts magazine- I need to get that issue!

These are the ornaments I sent- b/w was definitely a challenge for me!

These are the ornaments I received:

The star is actually featured on the cover of the magazine.

This one was my favorite! It definitely made my day to get such a neat pkg.

Happy Monday!

ICAW # 12

Have a great weekend!

Do you have the time?

I stamped first then paint. Then I tried a kind of "steam punk" look. Pretty fun :)

This is a little closer look. I used some more goodies from my mystery envelope swaps!

And here I am in my costume I made for our Awana Fair- it's supposed to be  Raggedy Ann. Couldn't find a curly red wig :( but I will be on the lookout for next year! Or I could dye my hair... :)

It was lots of fun and I got to hand out 60 balloons!

Have a great Friday!

I haven't figured out what to write on here yet. I do like the image of the girl.

I scraped paint, stenciled with punchnella, "stamped with corrugated cardboard, and added the images. The bird image is from a wild birds magazine. I think I'll add pink to the cheeks and eventually a title.

But at least I got to work on my art!

This is the cardboard I used for the green lines- it's left over from card making. You can do cross hatching also with paint or ink or even gesso.

Have a great Wednesday!

Last of summer page- it's kind of hard to see, but I used glitter paint on some of the waves.

Isn't she cute? A good page to work on as it rains outside. If I ever find some fish pictures I may add them in the waves. I haven't been working on my art as much this week since I need to get ready got our Awana carnival tomorrow. I guess painting signs could count, right?

Have a great Wednesday!

Another page

Isn't this is cute picture? I love finding funny pictures like this.

This is a tage I tried to distress- got a little wild with the ink I guess...

I also used some painty wax paper as accent- I like the way that looks.

Happy Monday!

Dreams are songs in our hearts

This is the page I practiced painting words- You can barely see them (need more practice :)

I scraped paint over the top and then stenciled a bunch of different things. I love the girl image! She seems to be looking right at you! I added the butterfly and some pink chalk to her cheeks. Here is a little closer look:

I added some jewels to the hearts for dimension. This is the first time I've written words like a title on the page. I think I like it! I used a permaball pen- they work great on paint. I have started another page- Come see on Monday :) Have a great weekend!

ICAW # 11

It's kind of hard to see, but I stamped leaf shapes on the backgroun before I glued the leaf shape on. The little bird house  3-d sticker is from an envelope swap. This month I think I will try to make all Fall ICAWs.

One thing I've found about using a BIG journal is it's hard to get pages finished in one day. I did practice my painting letters, but I'm not too happy with them... Practice I guess :)

More pic tomorrow I hope- Have a great Friday!

Wow! This big journal is...BIG. I'm not used to having so much room to fill. It will definitely take practice. Here are the first few things I tried.

This is what I added to the first page I showed yesterday. I love this picture from a wonderbread ad! Of course I added a flower to her hair :)

One thing I for sure want to practice in this journal is painting words. They never seem to turn out exactly how I see them in my mind... Another thing I may try is painting faces- we'll see. Making friends with a paintbrush and understanding how it works is a good goal. Something that may surprise you is that my Dad was a high school art teacher and an artist. But he would never teach us (his kids) art- I don't really know why. So I am self- taught in what I do and I do enjoy all the inspiration I get from all you bloggers!

Have a great Thursday!

Here is the cover of my journal. The letters are stickers and I haven't decided if I'm going to add an image or not.
Here is another view- it was a lot of fun!

Here is the new journal I've started:

As you can see it's huge! It's actually a sketch book and I think I'll use it just for experimenting in.

And since it's a bound book, I put masking tape down the center and then gessoed just that area, as Julie Balzer suggests. I didn't gesso the whole page and the paper is thick enough I didn't have to glue pages together. I'm excited about this because I will be able to put in larger images and have more room for doodling etc. We'll see if I can really fill these pages :)

Last few pages of THIS journal

This is the inside back cover. The image is from a Smithsonian magazine.

This is the inside front cover. I'll show the outside covers tomorrow and the journal I'm starting next!

One last thing:

This is a garden toad I got at a yard sale. Actually when I got him he was faded blue green color so I brought him home and gave him a makeover! First I sponge painted him white. When that was dry I sponge painted him an olive green color, then some lime green, then some brown randomly sponged on without drying in between colors. It made them blend better. He'll be cute in my flower beds :)

It's raining today- a good day for staying in. Have a great Tuesday!