Challenge #165: UMT – Camelia

Tags

Calaveras, zentangle

This Zentangle Inspired Art is my first step in the Calaveras Reader Challenge for Cloth, Paper, Scissors magazine. I am so, so happy with the way it came out. I’m actually planning to print this on a sheet of acetate and put it on a background of a collage of flower photos! So many things I love all in one piece of art! I really debated about making the skull for the Dia de los muertos, but I’m also working on a larger collage of our trip to New Orleans and wanted to include a picture of a calaveras so it meets the needs of so many calls for art. Thank you to the Diva for another interesting challenge. UMT stands for Use My Tangle and this week’s Tangle is brought to us by Anne Marks. You can find the step outs (instructions) for this lovely pattern on her blog here

http://preciousworker.blogspot.com.au/2012/07/new-tangle-camelia.html

All of you

Tags

altered art book, collage, Earth day, forsythia, gratitude, gratitude journal

Lunanista topped 2000 views this week. I am grateful to all of you for taking the time to see what I’m doing. I have received such positive feedback and many times days it just makes my day. I was doing this before anyone else paid attention, but the feedback really keeps me motivated to challenge myself artistically. Also, look how beautifully my forsythia bloomed on Earth Day!

Bonhomie likes to join me for meditation and yoga. Thursday was a quiet day to prepare for the upcoming weekend full of activity.

Friday I got a Cricut Cuttlebug to make die cuts and stencils with ease. I am really having fun with it as you will see in many of the ensuing entries. Marq sang “Stars” and played piano at the Roots & Wings opening performance. Each performance will include different alumnae of the Beaver Dam Area Community Theater. We are so fortunate to have such a lively arts community for a small town. I also ordered and picked up the corsage for his prom date. It is going to be a busy weekend!

Saturday we hit the ground running, leaving the house by 6:30am to get to University of Wisconsin Oshkosh for Marq’s vocal solo. We picked up one of his friends on the way and met Janine and Scott at the information area. Marq sang, played piano and cello and got 4 first place evaluations before lunch. The friend we picked up had an event at 3:50 – one of the last ones of the day. This gave us time for a leisurely and super yummy lunch full of laughter. We made it back home in time for Marq to get ready for prom. There were a few glitches, but Mike and I had a nice relaxing evening alone at home.

Sunday was a quiet and reflective day to perform routine tasks and get ready for the week. Of course I played with my new art supplies some more, too! Have a beautiful day!

 

Connections & Community

Tags

art journal, Broken Light, community, depression, gratitude, gratitude journal, Inktense, photography, yoga

The photo on the left hand page was featured last Wednesday on the Broken Light Blog http://brokenlightcollective.wordpress.com/2014/04/16/signs-of-spring/ This blog provides a community for people who are living with or otherwise affected by mental illness. I’m not sure if I have explicitly mentioned that part of the impetus behind my gratitude journal is my choice to flourish while managing depression.

The facing page is full of love and joy. Some of the text that didn’t fit on my scanner says that I love to color and that I love to do yoga with Helen. My Thursday mornings usually are wonderful and full of movement, coffee or tea, and friendship. Thursday afternoon was spent drawing and coloring flowers. What a beautiful day!

For me these pictures are worth a thousand words. If you have any questions about the meanings of any images I would love to know what they are. I’m never sure if I’m providing enough information or if anyone is interested or if you just like to look at what strange compilation of stuff I will come up with this week!

Ok, so trying out black gesso on Easter may seem a little odd. This was not the image I had in mind, but now I know that Inktense watercolor pencils don’t really show up on black gesso. Of course my gel pens do! 🙂 In the course of making a flower arrangement for Easter these petals fell out so I pressed them and they impressed me with how gorgeous they look on the black gesso. Playing with art supplies is fun and unexpected. Have a beautiful day.

Rixty Meow

Tags

altered book art, art journal, collage, gratitude, Mother Theresa quote, Zenspirations, zentangle

This is my response to the Weekly Diva Challenge #163. I had some reservations about doing and then about posting the challenge this week and let me tell you about them. The tangle pattern was designed for the 60th birthday of Rick, one of the creators of Zentangle. http://www.zentangle.com/
I was having a hard time figuring out how to incorporate the pattern into a larger design so I browsed some of the other challenge participants’ entries. Katherine http://doodle-patterns.com/rixty-exploration/ showed the steps in a different way and that really clicked for me. Then I saw the design by Sue http://suejacobs.blogspot.com/2014/04/rixty-garden.html and that got me thinking about a pattern that Rixty could “grow” out of. Lady Kate’s tile http://katetangles.blogspot.com/2014/04/weekly-challenge-163.html really made me fall in love with Rixty. I think this is why I am becoming addicted to the weekly challenge. Many weeks I start out feeling a little reluctant or stuck with the challenge, but am so inspired to get creative and explore the creativity that is channeled by the Diva.

Part of the reason I was reluctant to post this to the Diva’s challenge is that the tangles are a rather small part of the overall journal entry. I like to use boxes as a metaphor for days when I am doing a lot of organizing. I really enjoy organizing stuff and this vehicle provides such a wonderful canvas for so many things I am grateful for. Foremost is the Diva challenge – hence the post. I also selected much of the color scheme based on 2 onion skins that I used in central boxes. The texture was kind of lost with the matte medium, but the rich color comes through. I also included some Zenspiration doodles from a new book by Joanne Fink http://www.zenspirations.com/
I think the Meow speaks for itself.
Have a beautiful day.

Seeds of Contentment

Tags

altered art, art journal, collage, contentment, gratitude

I’m really enjoying exploring using different media on different papers. The left hand page is from an old dictionary and I used my Prismacolor markers on it. As you can tell, I am continuing my exploration of lettering. My intention for 2014 is to work with contentment. I really do already have everything I need. It keeps surprising me how difficult it can be to remember that at times. I am so fortunate to be able to make art everyday and have such a wonderful variety of materials to use. Keeping this journal and writing the blog are really helping me stay on track.

Thanks!

These pages didn’t come out quite how I wanted but gesso made them better.

Diva Challenge #162

Tags

zentangle

The challenge for this week was to use your initials to organize the tangles as a “string.” I loved the idea and had a lot of fun finishing it. I used 4 new to me tangle patterns, flowervine, taghpodz, and ‘nzeppel and my second attempt at floatfest. Flux is one of my favorite tangles. Find out more about Zentangle and the weekly challenge at

Family and Friends

Tags

altered art, art journal, coffee, family, friends, gratitude journal, sketch, tulips

Friday I met some new friends of mine at a local coffee shop and we walked from there to the house of one of them. It has been so lovely getting to know them. Spring is coming and it is wonderful to be able to get outside and walk. The air was still a bit nippy, but the company and coffee kept me warm. My nephew and his wife and son came over for dinner on Saturday. My mom joined us. It was a lovely day with simple food and flowers and good company. My son was so great playing with the little guy so the grown-ups could talk. Here is a sketch I did from a photo of the little guy. He was playing piano but here it looks like he is smelling the flowers.

“Spring” is a sketch I did for a card I made for one of my new friends. She is in my yoga class and we have taken to going out for coffee after class. This was an award for her for cleaning up after her 3 dogs now that all the winter snow has exposed an entire winter’s worth of poo. If you look closely you can see that the letter R has a foot stepping in something. This amused my son and I for hours.

 

You may have noticed that I am really grateful for coffee. It is more that I am grateful for the social aspect and the sense of community. However, I really do enjoy a good cup of coffee. My husband is also ubiquitous in my journal. I am so fortunate to have him in my life.

My robin is a little off, but overall I feel pretty good with my increasing sketching. I am also feeling more comfortable with using the Inktense pencils. I’m not entirely happy with the orange of his breast, but I feel like I’m getting better at undertones. I guess I will need to keep practicing! Yeah!

Birds Returning

Tags

altered art, art journal, gratitude journal, Horicon Marsh, lettering, sandhill crane, sketch, zentangle

This week I have really been focusing (when possible) on expanding my lettering styles and drawing in general. I am specifically working on drawing birds. I had been looking for a stamp of a robin and not finding quite what I was looking for. I thought – I should just dedicate this same amount of time to drawing birds and I won’t need a stamp AND I will have drawn a lot of different birds, too. I love spring. The poem, the birds, the fresh air and pasty white legs. The fonts that I copied for these pages were Gigi and Harrington.

Friday was a day without focus. I had my eyes dilated for an eye exam (that went really well) so I had a very restful day. I drew this picture of my dilated eye at a later date. The Zentangled flower on the facing page is from my traveling tangle kit. It was completed in waiting rooms, specifically at the orthodontist while waiting to see if the young man could get his braces off. Not quite yet.

I bought this beautiful bird tissue paper at the Horicon Marsh visitors’ center. This is one of my favorite places in Wisconsin. If you love birds like my family and I do this is such a treasure. My mom and I stopped by to see what we could see. Unfortunately the birds and I needed our down coats. It was too cold for exploration, but I had a nice time with my mom. Then I used one of the birds from the tissue paper for my model for the bird on the next page.

http://dnr.wi.gov/topic/lands/wildlifeareas/horicon/