For My Niece!

So, my very first niece was born august 29th, 2012.  My brother and sister-in-law have an "under the sea" kind of theme going in her room, which is done in shades of teal. Yesterday, Tena asked me for art for the baby's room! How awesome is THAT?!? So, I sent her pictures of my (finally) finished seahorses!

 

Little things, little bitty things, and that's all it took for these to be finished. I don't know why, but I have a tendency to leave off those little finishing touches for LONG periods of time. I don't put the binding on a quilt for months. I have plenty of paintings that I've never finished and I probably never will finish. Unfinished objects (UFOs) are my specialty. I've decided a goal for 2013 is going to be FINISHING things. I start lots of things. I get almost finished with most of them. But then I don't actually finish. Maybe self-sabotage? I have no idea, but I'm going to TRY and change it. No resolutions to change, that's too much pressure. (Just so you know, when Kelly said today was a good day at 9:17 this morning I told her that was too much pressure for my day.)

 

So. This is four finished pieces for 2013. They're even scanned and saved so I can do other things with them. (Dare I say "make prints"?)

Artful Planner

So, I've sort of let my planner fall by the wayside. (What the hell is a wayside, anyway? Now I have to look it up...The side or edge of a road, way, path, or highway. Anyway, I haven't been keeping up with it for a couple of months and I need to get back to it. I'm thinking of using this journal that I just made:

It's a JD Robb book (my very favorite) and I absolutely adore the colors of the cover. Awesome, right? That black and white along the edge is mustache tape. (I couldn't help it!)

I trimmed the inner pages a little and didn't bother to keep them in order when I punched them, and here's the inside:

Just got to start with some February calendar pages and I'm good to go!

YSM?

Not sure if we're going to keep calling it You Suck Monday. It's got kind of a negative mindset, and last year was negative enough to last a lifetime. It was just a very Indigo year - nothing "happened", nothing specific, it was just a slow, dragging, heavy, mostly art-less year. 2013 is going to be better. It's already better.

I might have already told you guys, but Ajae got herself, me, and Kelly these journals:

And we decided that it would be the MOST fun to work in them together. Monday is a sort of sad/strange/crazy day for a lot of people. With the concept of YSM, we embrace the sucky. Go with the sucky. We started in our new journals together and Ajae declared it to be the worst journal page she'd ever made. I've shown you mine individually, but I want you to see them all together, imagine them as one journal:

 

The second Monday of January, Ajae decided that her page was the worst ever and I reminded her that she'd said that about last week's.This was mine:

Week three and I had ZERO ideas in my head, but I wanted to make wings, so I did. But it was while we were all still sort of getting coffee and settling in. I wanted them to dry so I could keep working on the page, so I glued them down while the others were getting ready and said nothing. Then Ajae said something about wings. Isn't it crazy how you sometimes think exactly the same thing as someone else?

Today I was channeling my inner Jane Davenport and drew this chick with InkTense pencils. A little paint and it was done.

I gotta tell you, the BEST part about this whole thing is having something DONE in the morning before I go to work. Not just stuff that's ALL about someone else - yes, the kid is on the bus in clean clothes, with his lunch box (most of the time), and all of his folders. But this is for me. Selfish or not, I need things that are just for me. This is me time, with my friends, doing something with NO expected outcome. That angle page is fugly. I don't even care. I don't have the urge to paint over her or cover her up. She is what she is. I'm letting go and it feels really good.

Watercolors & Stonehenge

By Stonehenge, I mean the PAPER, of course. So, me and Kelly were at Blick's the other day and walked past these watercolors. She commented that they were pretty expensive and my response was "Ah, let's get a couple and play with them." Now, anyone who's ever met me (or especially been shopping with me), knows this is SO unlike me. I'm the "it's too expensive" queen. But that crown gets heavy, and look how pretty these colors are!

Of course, us being us, we tested them out in a journal to see which colors we actually wanted and settled on these.

Something I've seen Milliande and Jane Davenport both do is put ink in a waterbrush and use it that way - genius, right? So I figured, why not try it with the watercolors? So I did!

Then I played with them on a little chunk of Stonehenge. Here is something interesting about Stonehenge paper. First, this isn't the watercolor paper. I absolutely HATE Stonehenge watercolor paper. It is PRINTMAKING paper. It's 90 pound, but it feels like 140 pound watercolor paper. It's smooth, but not creamy like Arches or Fabriano. And the weirdest thing is - the paper sucks up EVERYTHING. This is watercolor, every bit of it:

Here I'm using a regular brush and water to try and reactivate it. You can SEE the water on the fuschia, and you can also see that it's not moving.

Personally, I think this is FANTASTIC! I like the translucency of the colors, but I hate then stuff reactivates! Happy Goog!!

It Happens Cigar Boxes

My husband used to LOVE smoking cigars. Back in the days when life was more than just work, getting there and back, and hanging out with Liam. Now there's no time to smoke things. He's also a packrat, so he never threw the boxes away. I adopted them and started using them for things like pens when I found out that you're supposed to store pens flat. Who knew? Lots of people apparently, but not me.

So I've had them, just sitting around holding my stuff, but still looking like cigar boxes. Until the other day, when I decided to print out some papers from It Happens and cover them:

They look freakishly awesome in person, it's hard to tell right here :(

I didn't mess with the insides at all. Now I'm wondering if I should?

Lesson Learned

So, Laurel Burch, our January master, ended up being more fun that I thought she would, but I think I'm finished with her. I'm really happy with the way my seahorses, elephants, and giraffes came out. These three are my absolute favorites:

The top one is marker, of course, and the bottom two are watercolor (cheap watercolors). I have zero desire to explore LB's process any farther. Don't get me wrong - this is NOT her process, necessarily, I just mean the silly colors for things, the un-realistic approach to real things. I liked it, but it's relatively simple. There is always satisfaction in finishing something, but I think this is about as far as I'm going to go with it.

Kelly, Ajae, and I are going to attempt the whole "100 canvases" thing, but I think we're not going to be strictly canvases. If I get these framed and hung on the wall, they're totally going to count. I'm a little confused about how to frame watercolors, though. Mats? Fixative first? Will the paint stick to the glass? And, of course, they're an awkward size - 7x10. I was thinking 8.5x11 inch frames. Document frames, they're called, and they're sometimes just glass sandwiches with no real sides. I find that sort of appealing. And do they need backgrounds? Edging? I won't bore you with a zillion more pictures of them, but if I get them on the wall, I'll share. WHEN. When I get them on the wall.

New skart journal page!

Started with wings...