What's on Your Work Desk Wednesday #195

Julia is too funny. Each week she hosts this marvelous event which connects people literally all around the world so we can see what one and other are up to. This week Julia is having a just a wonderful time rolling up her ribbons. Or not. Still every once in a while it must be done. It being the organizing thing. So more power to her and good luck.

What I'm doing is getting ready for a couple of other things. The blue green paper will eventually be my March calendar for the challenge which Kate Crane hosts monthly on her blog. I started last year and found it to be lots of fun. Turns out I have very definite ideas about what colors go with what months. I just got one the new Dylusions Fish Stamps - well actually I got the background seaweed but I'm happy to have that. So I have printed out several on white paper ready to be colored in tomorrow after work. That's what the white piece of paper is. The red page was me trying different inks on the fish stamp to see which one I want to use on the calendar. And lastly among the general paraphernalia on the desk is my small art journal with the first step in Dina Wakely's intuitive painting technique. Don't know what it will turn out to be yet.

Just finished up the February class over at the Stamp Cache where we did tags this month. Here are a couple I made up for the class. I think I might like the name True Bunny Love better than the actual tag!

And then there is the Not So Caged Bird. I cut  a folded piece of manilla with Tim's Tag and Book Plate Die but moved it in a hair so it didn't cut on the left side - and Viola, I got a tag that opens like a card!

We're pretty excited up here in Alaska, the daylight is coming back by leaps and bounds - actually we're gaining almost 6 minutes a day. That means it's almost light in the morning when we go to work and plenty of light in afternoons when we come home. Now if the north wind would shift, we'd have it made. Hope all is well in your world!

Smiles

Lots of things make me smile....this particular picture makes me smile for a lot of reasons. It was a surprise, it was a present (and let's face it who doesn't like a present), it was from a very nice person, and it was all about COLOR.

Over at a Stitch In Time, we're asked to post pictures that make us smile. Seems a worthy cause....

Another Week, Another WOYWW

Number 194 to be exact. And this week I have to admit I am a Slob-o-lee. My goodness what a mess on my desk! Julia at the Stamping Ground hosts a weekly look around...always fun!

Fortunately I have a good excuse. Here in the US we had a three day weekend which means I had lots of time to play in the Fun Room. First off I started on the March project for the Stamp Cache, my local stamp store. This time it's a mini album, but the Bo Bunny paper we're using is pretty cool so I'm enjoying the process. It's in a little mini heap on the upper left side of the desk. All I have left to do is the cover. An art journal page is front and center, and then it's just a bunch of mess.


Somewhere along the weekend though I got side tracked and just had to make this canvas for a friend of mine. To learn more about this, check out this post.

I do have a question for folks this week: how do you store your stencils? I keep mine in a plastic folder for scrapbook paper but they often get caught up in each other. Does anyone have a better solution?

I'm all ears! Hope you have time to play in your Fun Room this week.  

First "Artists in Blogland" Quote

What a fun place that is! They have just started a new challenge Color this Quote where the artist of the month (I guess, I'm kind of new here) gives you a quote and you get to interpret it. The first quote was about friends and quilting and I had just picked up some tiny little canvases which reminded me of quilt blocks and I already had lunch plans with one of my oldest friends tomorrow so I went to work.

I had been wanting to work more on canvas and had just picked up a bunch at Michael's on sale. I started off with Dylusions sprays in totally different colors than the final product...but I've been drawn to red-orange and blue-green lately so that's what I ended up with. 

Once the whole thing was so ugly that I just pulled out the ivory paint and covered most of the canvas. I just chalked it up to creating layers...I think it was Dina Wakely who said, if you want layers, you have to paint layers. One of my paint stencil layers got a little messy so I just did another layer on top in a slightly brighter color (those being ivory and light yellow - lol). 

Once I got the background to a good place, I started working on the small "blocks". I loved the way the  Graphic 45 butterfly came out. Mostly mountain rose and snow cap alcohol inks....colored the body.

In the middle of the body there was a hole - don't know why - I used one of Tim Holtz's flower findings embossed with some pink distress embossing powder and a little "pearl". The flower was a new Prima flower with lots of paint dabs to make it blend a bit better than the lime green it started life as...

Since we were talking about age - I thought a softer way to address that would be a depicting of time...Paint helped tone down the darker elements...and I used some new sprays on the spinners...just happen to have the right colors (back to my new fav colors!!)

I struggled and thought about how to add the quote and thought I had it. I printed it out on vellum which was laced with natural components...little sticks, leaves, etc. Cut it down, and went to adhere it with multi-medium. One problem. I printed on an ink-jet printer and the words started to smudge. So I did it again and then sprayed it with fixative. Even waited the appropriate time. And then affixed it. Only to get the darn *(#&$_#(*& air bubbles. Well...that's how we know it was made by a real live artist....

I think lunch will be fun tomorrow. 

WOYWW #193

Don't you wonder what Julia has planned for 200? My goodness what amazing persistence and good humor our friend Ms. Dunnit has to host our group every week for our look-see into other's creative spaces...for 193 weeks...that well over three and a half years. Yikes.

So here's my desk as of Tuesday night...and actually Sunday night too since I haven't been in the Fun Room since the weekend.

Lots of fun in my journals with these:

Tim Holtz's new distress paint...oh they really and truly are lushious and they blend so nicely as witnessed by this little experiment on the left.

I started blending Salty Ocean, Broken China, Weathered Wood, for a background and before I knew it I was painting or trying to paint the scene outside my window. Small problem tho - the sky was certainly more grey than blue, so let's just say I took a bit of artistic licesnse. In the end I added Chipped Saphire for the trees and Antique Linen. I used a Dylusions stencil for the snow, and as usual should have stopped a bit before I did, but I rather like the effect. And I LOVE my Sharpie Poster Paint pen which is what I used to make the snowflakes.

This was the other piece on the desk which I was much less happy with. I got a FABULOUS book last weekend, Dina Wakely's Art Journal Freedom. Great ideas, challenges and techniques. Really good book. This was my interpretation of one of the techniques - do not think this is what the art in the book looks like....I had to change the size of the grid squares and ended up with entirely too much white space for my taste. But learned a lot, and came away with some great ideas....I highly recommend the book for folks who are into Art Journalling.

So that's my desk for the week....thanks so much for stopping by the Fun Room....do leave a comment or two...I'll pop by as many desks as I can this week. Enjoy!!

WOYWW #192

And time marches on - it's already the middle of the week. Yikes. Time for the snoop around the work desks, hosted by our friend Julia over at the Stamping Ground who provides the structure for all this snooping, not to mention loads of creativity and a great sense of humor.

This is what my desk looked like after FINALLY finishing the tags for this month's class at my local stamp store Stamp Cache. This month we're doing tags, so I made one little one, one BIG one, and one that was just right (tee hee - sorry I couldn't help myself). Any way this is what it looked like at the end:

What a disaster, eh? You can see the bunnies on the lower left that I was playing around. They were easy, but getting the butterfly right? Not so much. The trouble was I made one on just a piece of white paper to try out the colors and it was perfect. So then I set about to  recreate it and it took, well, let's just say several tries. Finally I did it on Speciality Stamping Paper and it was fine.

You can see my tea cup right next to the water container for paint; and yes I have dipped my brush in the tea before. Whoops. Otherwise it's an assortment of TIM products, and wool felt. The felt was much fun to play with - just make sure it's wool felt, not acrylic.

Otherwise this week I was busy with my calendar page and other things and have no journal pages to show you....next week for sure. Hope everyone has a FAB week.