February = More Light

Yee Haw.... more daylight will be wonderful. And just think in 2 1/2 months we might be able to think about Spring. Ah well. In the meantime, I'm finding the preparation of my calendar pages part of the ebb and flow of life...which I like, a lot. Each month over at  The Kathryn Wheel Kate Crane hosts a monthly calendar event, I guess you would call it. I started last year, and love entering a bit of something on every day of the year.

In fact I got so excited I gave myself an extra day in January! I used it to highlight my intent for this year, which is to learn. Try new things, really try new things, work on the basics and see if I can find my own voice....

To that end I am taking some on-line classes and have been pretty successful at getting into the Fun Room 4 or 5 times a week, so hopefully that's a  good start. 

My February page is a real wonder to me. I wonder why there is so much pink, why I used gold instead of silver and why, oh why is it so damn busy? --- seems to be a failing of mine in February -- It's odd to use colors you don't usually use, but I do seem particularly drawn to circles as of late. So much to fun to color in. The page started out as red, and I just kept painting, and painting... I did use one of my current favorites tho - a Sharpie Poster Paint White Pen...what a wonderful little score that was!! Thank you Dina Wakely for turning me on to that.

I wanted to try out new shapes and arrangements this year; this month seemed like a good opportunity for a vertical arrangement. I figured that entitled me to go back to my little 1.5 x 1.5 squares. With the background so busy I went back to my trusty dry brush technique for a bit of color on the days...and then of course I put way too much paint down so I used my finger to "edge" all of the blocks. I do that every month - they seem to stand out a bit better with that extra bit of definition I think. 

So there we have it. Happy month of love and more sun!!

WOYWW 191

Top of the AM to you - which is what my sister says when we wake up together!

It's Wednesday again (well almost in Alaska) and so it's time for What's on Your Workdesk Wednesday, hosted each week by the fabulous, and very patient and kind Julia Dunnit who for the past 191 Wednesday sets this lovely blog up so we can "visit" aka snoop around at other people's work space.

Here's what mine really looks like.

No matter how hard I try I seem to always have stuff on the floor...I prefer to think that I have too small of a space, rather than I might in some way have too much stuff.

I was working on some color collages for my Color Class with Jane Davies and I really enjoyed the combination of blue-green and red-orange but for this exercise we were supposed to stick to one color so I picked blue-green and it wasn't until I was just about done that I realized how flipping' dark it was. I finally couldn't stand it and used glossy accents to glue on some seed beads (note to self, must get a new pair of tweezers that aren't cut off on one side.) One of my bead canisters is sitting front and center on the desk.

This was from my art journal this week and I like the color combination much better here. Plus I wanted to use the Sunflower Perfect Pearls mist I got on Saturday. That's the mist there- on the orange page, under the tag, through the circle stencil.

I have lots to do this week - get my calendar page ready, make the tags for the February class, and catch up on my color class. Oh goody!!

Thanks for stopping by - hope you have a fun, creative week!

Fantastical Flowers

There's a lot of talking about a "word" for the year...I'm not sure I understand what  the word is supposed to represent - your intent, your focus...those sound good to me. For me, it's a goal. I want to LEARN this year. To expand, to try new things, to have fun. I've signed up for a couple of on-line classes including Lifebook 2013. About two weeks ago I did Christy Tomlinson's fabulous project. It was a blast to make.

Guess what the flowers are made of? Give up? Coffee filters and tin foil!! Okay there's a bit of tissue paper and napkin parts too; what a gas. You stamp or stencil the coffee filters, tear them into apart, and then layer them on tin foil with matte medium and then cut out the petals.

Or cut out circles and scrunch them up. Imagine all the shapes and colors and things you could make this way....

It was also really fun to make a LIGHT collage behind the flowers...Christy used alcohol inks for a great pop of color on her collage - you can see my sweep of yellow right next to the flower above.

And to close the circle, what did I learn? When making a collage work vertically and horizontally which helps give the piece structure, and don't be afraid to have a light-light and a dark-dark within your flower petals. The contrast is what make the piece come alive. 

WOYWW #190

Ah yes, it's time for the snoop-a-ram hosted each week by the beautiful Julia Dunnit over at the Stamping Ground. This is what was on my desk at the end of Tuesday night.

I've started covering my desk in brown painters paper and I kind of like it. I don't have to worry about where the over spray is going - unless of course I neglect to actually look at the nozzle and end up spraying myself.

The color wheel and the grids in the window are from a on-class I'm taking from Jane Davies on color. I'm enjoying it a lot. We mixed paints the first week - much harder than I would have thought.

Last week I had a page in my art journal open....sometime in the last week I finished it up. It had looked like a palm tree and an umbrella/palapa and so that's what I made it into!

Other goodies include the usual assortment of tape, scissors, "kitchen roll", and distress ink chart. I had most of the ink colors in my mind before the seasonal inks showed up - this helps me decide what new color combinations might be fun to play with. The Ranger website has the chart  - all you have to do is print it out....very handy.

Have a colorful, fun week fellow WOYWW'ers!

WOYWW 189

Greetings oh fellow WOYWW'ers. Not sure what that is? Every week Ms. Julia Dunnit, she of the Stamping Ground blog invites folks to post a picture of their workspace and then we all go snoop around looking and commenting on them.

Here's what my space looked like this morning

One of my art journals is the lower left hand corner. Started out as scribbles and colors and is waiting to be turned into a palm tree on the beach...thank you Dina Wakley for this fabulous technique. Most of the other stuff has been there since the weekend; I got the flu and am hopeful today is the day I actually have some energy ... The container has some paper beads I made from playing with Tim's marble stains technique on about 50 tags one day....now that was fun!

Lately I have been concentrating on a having a CLEAN space somewhere on my desk. That's what there is a tear of the brown paper painters use (picked up at Lowe's - discount hardware store), then my craft sheet, and then a piece of construction paper. When I was making my canvas last weekend, the mat lived off to the side and I did all the misting on the brown paper. It came front and center when I was finally ready to glue everything together. I seem to turn stuff over and it gets dirty, or I get some type of adhesive on it or something. Happy to report the three levels of working space actually kept it clean this time.

Have a great week!