Mandala 18 of 100 and Some Gratitude

Tags

100 Mandalas, acrylic paint, altered art, art journal, collage, gratitude, gratitude journal, Inktense

This mandala was used to teach a friend how to draw mandalas and how to use Derwent Inktense watercolor pencils. I have been kind of obsessed with little circles in my mandalas as you will see when I finish 19 of 100. I hope you have a beautiful day.

Three years of altered books

Tags

altered art, Altered Art Journal, Altered book, art, art journal, Art Journal Every Day, collage, gratitude, zentangle

I missed Earth Day, but it is close to the 3 year anniversary of the move of my gratitude journals into altered books. I enjoyed looking at them again as I got them ready to put in boxes. They seem like an appropriate homage to Earth Day, even if it is a little late.

Trail of Hearts

Tags

altered art, Altered book, art journal, collage, gratitude, Heart, Journal

The Journal 52 prompt for this week is “The Heart Knows.” I frequently use different papers to represent people and events that I am grateful for and this journal entry is no exception. The music paper if from my Dad’s old hymnal I use that and the old fashioned magazine illustrations (in the heart in the lower right hand corner) to represent time with my Mom. My Dad died almost 20 years ago and my Mom’s health isn’t great. We had a really lovely day together the other day so here she is in my hearts. The red shoe is always Shannon and we had fun together another day. So many wonderful people in my life. Who are you grateful for today?

Say yes to thriving

Tags

altered art, Altered book, art journal, gratitude, gratitude journal, Journal 52, Maya Angelou, quotes

I have been working in my journal, even if I haven’t been posting. Here are 2 page layouts that represent the beginning of the year. I’m also rejoining the Journal 52 community and the prompt to say “yes” to something.

This layout is composed of some of the practice pieces from the new art I made for the exhibit I have been talking about in my recent posts. I’m trying to keep my mission in mind as I am really struggling with depression lately. My gratitude journal is an important piece of my defense against depression. This quote of Maya Angelou has already helped me through some difficult days and I hope to live up to it this year. Thinking about how I can thrive really keeps my mind occupied in a healthy way. Expressing gratitude for my husband and friends, music and books, and the beauty that I can put on a page really help me turn a day around. I’m still having really dark moments, but playing with paint and paper and loved ones keeps helping me say yes to the wonders of life. Having good enough vision to really make all kinds of art is such a marvelous boost!

I am doing well enough, health-wise, to get back to yoga classes and I am SO grateful for that. There are a lot of layers of meaning in these 2 pages and not as much careful design on the left hand page. The most important component is the things that went into the making of my husband’s birthday card. I can not express how grateful I am for his love and kindness. He is the most generous soul I have ever known and I am so lucky to share my path through this life with him.

ABCs of Gratitude

Tags

100 Mandalas, altered art, Altered book, art, art journal, gratitude, gratitude journal, Mandala

I had a whole post here but I accidentally deleted it. I don’t have the energy to redo it. Find me tomorrow on the Driving Art Tour.

I hope you like my journal pages.

Playing With Art Supplies

Tags

altered art, art journal, coloring, gel pens, gratitude, gratitude journal, watercolor

Can you see my “pallet” for my compass rose mandala? I play with combinations of marker colors and which gel pens go well over the top. I really didn’t do much to these book pages except some journaling and attaching the various papers. The ticket is from my visit to the Milwaukee Art Museum. The watercolor landscape is from playing with the Dr. Ph. Martin’s Watercolors that my husband got me for my birthday. I have lots of scraps of watercolor paper from cutting it to make my coloring page sets (I plan to have these for sale in my Etsy store by the end of October.) and I use them to create “journaling boxes” by playing with different watercolor combinations and effects. I have been looking for a watercolor class, but I have not found one in my area. If you know of an online one you recommend I would love for you to share that information!

Here is the cover page for the Coloring Page Sets. There are 5 designs in this Mandalas set and you get 3 copies of each design. Two of the copies are on plain paper and one is on 140 lb cold press watercolor paper. I started making these because I love to color, but I really love to use watercolor pencils and the paper for most coloring books was not making me happy. I kind of think of my mission statement as contributing toward peace and beauty in the world and I think these are moving in the right direction. I hope you have a beautiful day.

Back to the Gratitude Journal

Tags

acrylic paint, altered art, art, art journal, collage, grateful, gratitude, Journal 52, quotes, stencils

I have been writing and arting in my gratitude journal, I have not been very good about posting about it however. Posting does make me a more faithful journalist, too. These pages started as a pallet for my collage and a place to clean off stencils used in the collage. I have a lot of scraps of watercolor paper left over from the cut pages I use to make coloring pages. I am starting to practice with new art supplies in little sketches that I will then write over. It takes the pressure off of making something finished looking when exploring new supplies and is providing me with lots of interesting backgrounds for journaling. Stay tuned for more!

The Journal 52 prompt for this week is Hiding Out and I feel like that is kind of what my journal pages have been doing. Actually, my interpretation of this prompt is about hiding the private thoughts and experiences in my published journal pages. Writing over images and some of my scribble/stream of consciousness handwriting provide me with ways to write about whatever I want without thinking about the publication part of it.

Here is a page full of quotes from the book I made for Jacob and with the city stencil from my most recent collage. Do you like it when I write out the quotes?

I have so much to be grateful for. How about you?

Have a beautiful day!

Let Kindness Ring

Tags

altered art, Altered book, art journal, flag, folk art, kindness, paisley, pig, zentangle

Kindness has been my daily intention most days lately, so when I saw that it was the prompt for Journal 52 it made my day. This last weekend was also the Fourth of July, known as Independence Day here in the USA. As I was creating the juxtaposition of the flag and the word, it made me wonder what our country would have been like if it had been founded on kindness rather than independence. The red stripes of my flag are quotes that are relevant to kindness, my week, and/or things I am grateful for of late. The stars represent states of mind  that I aspire to, rather than states of the union. My flag of kindness, I guess. If I was designing my own flag it would be different, but this is an interesting start. What would your flag look like?

The facing page is an illustrated pig that I’m working on as a gift for a friend and also as a coloring page. The way it is decorated is inspired by a paisley shirt that I have with some Zentangle patterns thrown in for fun. It led me to return to my altered book journal as my watercolor journal is too small to include much in the way of sketches of art that I’m working on. The background of this page represents a significant event that I was able to participate in with my mom.  I was able to perform a kindness for her and it has turned out well for us. It is so satisfying to be able to help someone.

That’s all from my corner for now. Have a beautiful day.

Vivid Idyll Refurb Collage

Tags

100 Mandalas, acrylic paint, altered art, altered art book, Altered book, Buddhist art, collage, Mandala, Mixed Media, Refurbished Art, Sharpies, Tibetan Art, Tree of Life, Upcycle, Watercolor pencils, Zendala

Here is the completed collage! I have been enjoying other people’s process photos and videos, so I’m including some of them for this piece. I really had fun with this.

Oh, the reconstituted collage poem was inspired by my blogging friend Claudia McGill. It reads

This observation is grounded

and

at first did not move her thus

I had a strange feeling

and kept walking.

and drifting among other souls

floating up

That complemented my mandala montage nicely, I thought. The funny thing is that the text is from a book I didn’t like and one I haven’t read. The larger text is from a more than 100-year-old copy of the Pilgrim’s Progress that my mother-in-law gave me for Christmas. She was reluctant to give me a “ratty old book” for a gift and I finally convinced her that I was very sincerely excited about the prospect of getting my hands on that book to use in my art. The other book was The Goldfinch which is printed on lovely paper and that is my favorite thing about the book. I learned the hard way not to do watercolors on the pages because there would be impolite language in the middle of a white flower (for example) and that was not the mood I was going for at all. That book needed some editing and I have enjoyed cutting the pages up for collage fodder.

So… here is the before photograph. I paid $20 to purchase this piece of “art” from a local gallery to enter their Refurbished Art Contest.

I like a challenge.

I really liked the girl walking into the painting on the antithesis of the yellow brick road. So I drew some fun mandalas (with my Pigma Micron pens on hot press watercolor paper) that I thought would make the landscape more interesting for her. I have been drawing them many mornings as part of my morning mandala practice. I decided early on to have a tree of life mandala as the centerpiece.

Then I painted and colored in the mandalas. I have been playing with Prismacolor watercolor pencils in addition to my usual Derwent Inktense pencils and I really like the pallet and effects possible with the different brands. I also used Sharpies for some of the coloring. I also painted some papers of different weights and cut out flowers and leaves for the Tree of Life mandala and decided to use some to decorate the borders.

I cut circles for the collage from the different assembled unpainted papers. I studied languages in college a really long time ago and have my notebooks from language classes (mostly Chinese and Spanish) that I really like to include as well as the aforementioned books. I usually throw in a relevant dictionary page. The page for this piece is “idyl, idyll” and I included that definition right by the girl I left in the picture, because it is her idyl, of course. I also have a page from one of my grandmother’s cookbooks, and a copy of a sheet of music from my son. So I cut circles and arranged them on the circle I traced around my dinner plate onto the print. I used matte medium to attach them.

The next step was inspired by the illustrations by Demi. You may recall my Inspiration Board post from earlier this year. That is where the idea for the background for my tree of life mandala was born! So I painted most of the collaged circles blue and went outside the lines so my clouds would be visible beyond the mandala. I also painted the lower portion with a very thin coat green so the papers showed through a little as the “ground” of the tree of life. When the paint was dry I went in and drew a Wheel of Joy and clouds and rocks inspired by Tibetan Buddhist art (a source of inspiration for Demi as well). The rocks are not visible in the photo, but that’s how gel pens are.

and then I put it all together with gel medium!

Here are all of the supplies I used.

This will be on display at Alter-Ego Studio in lovely Wisconsin. Come to see and/or purchase this piece! Have a beautiful day!

Refurb of Art and I

Tags

100 Mandalas, altered art, botox, coloring, Mandala, moon, prisms, Recycled Art, stars, sun, Tree of Life, upcycling

I have completed the illustration for the next coloring club. It will be on Thursday, June 18th.

Also, I am participating in an art contest that consists of Refurbishing a piece of thrift store art provided by the gallery. There were a few pieces to choose from and here is my selection.

I plan to decorate it with mandalas with a Tree of Life mandala as the centerpiece. There will be flower mandalas and perhaps a partial sun mandala as well. I kind of envision it as a dream that the girl is having. Here is the beginning of those works.

I have also been getting something of a refurb myself. Last week I got new glasses that have prisms ground up in the lenses. They are helping with some of the vision problems I have been having. Overall my eyes are doing ok at this point and big concerns have been put to rest for the present. Yesterday I went my first Botox treatment for my migraines. It is too early to tell if that will be successful, but I am hoping for some pain free days ahead.

My younger son will graduate from high school on Sunday and we have family coming to stay from out of town. Only a few people come to the ceremony, so we will be having a large celebration in a few weeks that lots of people are planning to attend. As you can see, I have been rather busy and will be in the next few weeks as well. I will let you see how the refurbished art turns out – I think this is a really promising method of including recycling into my art. I continue to write in my gratitude journal, but it hasn’t been as artistic as usual lately. Until then, may you find peace and happiness in your days.