House of Blues

Here's a collage I made for Red Lead Paperworks Fly Away Home Altered House Swap.  All of the materials used (except the acrylic paint, punchinella stencil for dots, paper punch and glue were from Red Lead, one of my fav places to find COOL art supplies!).  I took one of their chipboard houses and painted it with navy blue craft acrylic paint.  I then painted the bottom half, back, and edges with silver craft acrylic paint., also painted the chipboard bird with the silver paint..  I then stamped the house using a rubber stamp Story Set on the blue chipboard house using the silver acrylic craft paint.  Also stamped it on gray paper using the navy blue acrylic craft paint.  While that was drying I used punchinella as a stencil and brushed the navy blue paint over the bottom half of the house I had painted silver.  I also stamped the bird on the left side of the house using the silver paint.  I had also painted some of the gray paper with the navy blue paint and accented it with silver and used a 1" circle paper punch to punch out the circle I glued the silver bird charm to and glued it on the chipboard house.  I cut out the house I had stamped on gray paper and used the circle punch again to punch a bird image out of a RedLead collage sheet .  And I punched the circles with music out of another RedLead collage sheet.  I then put it all together as shown, and glued the chipboard bird on.  I created the text in MS Word, printed it on blue paper, cut it out and glued it on the bird.

I mailed them off to the great gals at Red Lead and can't wait to see what I get back.

We each made two bird house, one to trade and one to be one display at the store.  Both of mine were the same, just different bird images from that same collage sheet.

I had alot of fun creating it and hope you enjoyed taking a look!

Have a great Memorial Day Weekend! 

new book

I'm a book junkie so, of course, my family gave me books as birthday gifts earlier this month.
One of my choices was Collage Lab by Bee Shay.
It is full of ideas to spark your creativity as well as expand your knowledge.  It has 52 experiments.
They're divided into 12 sections:  Building the Foundation, Texture, Gesso, Color, Surface Design, Line and Form, Papers, Paper Play, Mediums, Imagery, Visual Dictionary, and Unification and Composition.
Each one has a Learning Objective, Materials List, Instructions, Play and Experiment ideas, and Food For Thought for when you are done.
Complete with photos to help inspire even more creativity.
So far I'm just working through some Basic Gesso Surfaces but have paged through the whole book and I'm in for lots of fun!
So - I'd recommend getting your papers and acrylics and gesso out and taking a look at this book and see how many ideas you can come up with!  I think whether you are a beginner or experienced you would enjoy this book - it'll generate ideas I'm sure!
I know I'm going to come up with lots!  I'll share them with you here as I go!

Color inspiration

I love color - all colors - some alot more than others. Green is my fav color. But I really do love anything that is colorful. I am especially intrigued by the names of colors and love to read them whenever I get the chance. I think it's fun to check out the names of colors of paint samples while at the home improvement store. Paint companies get pretty creative when they name colors!

A couple years ago...yes it's been years...I made a color themed book for a swap and had to send it off to my swap partner. I've had the idea to do my own color journal or altered book ever since and have even saved some images here and there for potential color pages. Well I finally started on my color themed altered book yesterday! I'll share a post with you of the page I did as soon as it's completed.

In the meantime, here's the mini book I originally made that has had me thinking about color themed art all these years.

The front cover and the back cover are images I cut out of catalogs. The rest of the images are photographs I took.

Oh, and feel free to share any names of colors you can think of that might interest me!

Enjoy!

Limited online access

I have very limited online access for the next 10 days or so so won't be posting much. But...I'll be back after that!
See ya then!
Kimber

Newest member of the family

My birthday was earlier this month. My brother and family gave me a little aquarium and all the stuff to go with it. Thursday after school I picked up my 10 year old niece, Piper, and we went shopping for a betta.
We found the one pictured below and decided he needed to come home with us - and get out of that 1/2 cup of water and TINY container he was in!
He seems very happy in his new home with ALL that space and water, rocks and live plants.
His name is Molokai.
I have a cat named Maui.
See the theme? Thinking I may need to get a dog and call it "Hawaii, The Big Island". Will have to be a big dog, of course, with that name. I don't know about Oahu and Kauia yet. And what about the Atolls and all the little islands like Lanai, etc.
Hmmmm...
I think I'll stop at two islands for now.
Anyway - I can imagine Molokai inspiring some colorful art!

Tree Journal Page

Here's a journal page I made using a picture from a magazine ad that I had been saving for awhile until I came up with an idea because I love the tree.
I painted the background with acrylic. I tore the picture from the magazine page so it would have the rough edges, then tore a strip of scrapbook paper and glued that all down with gel medium. There were a couple people sitting on the beach. Since I was going for "nature" and since I hardly ever include people in my art (not sure why) I covered them up with the ticket my friend Debbie sent me that has blanks for "who, where, when" so I put "me, here, 4ever" (why not dream!). Page still needed something so I painted some copper fleur de lis brads dark gray to match the stripe I had painted on the background and added them.
Thanks for looking!
Enjoy!

New growth and shadows

It was a beautiful sunshine day here in the NW Oregon Friday. While spending some time at Thompsons Mill State Park I was looking for photo ops for some green pics for a color journal page honoring green.

I found these leaves and really like how the photo turned out. I think they are from a Marionberry or Blackberry bush - berries were still very green so couldn't tell for sure.

Enjoy!

Hope you are having a creative weekend!

More backgrounds

As promised in last night's post, here's some more backgrounds I made using dry wax deli paper.

This one on the left, I applied back ground colors using sponges. Then applied some white paint drops and scribbles direct from the bottle and drug a toothed tool through them. I found an old plastic sheets of stencils that had the fish on it. 1st I tried the fish with dark blue acrylic and a sponge but had too much paint so it made a mess, esp. of the middle one. Wasn't sure what to do but later while driving the Redbox to take dvds back I thought of going over them again with white pigment ink so they would have a blue outline to make up for the mess. I really like how it turned out!

For these 3 purple designs I was playing around with dots. For the largest dots I used a big round sponge. The 2nd size I cut a circle out of a big thick sponge like you buy for washing your car. In both cases I painted a dark purple back ground, let that dry. Then put some of the same purple out on a styro foam tray and added a little white and mixed well and stamped the first color. Then added some more white and stamped the 2nd color of dot. The one with silver is a silver background. Then I layed sequin waste (also called punchinella) over it and brushed on purple paint.

FYI - I get my sequin waste from one of my fav online shops SkyBluePink.

This sheet I put down a dark blue solid back ground. Then played around with a couple dif colors and a foam roller like you get in the paint section at any hardware or home improvement store. The splotchhes of color are where I dipped the edge of the roller in paint and

just got a spot and rolled it on the paper. I esp like how the white triangles look...prob couldn't get a that exact effect again if I tried!

Thanks for taking a look! Hope these inspire you to try some creative ideas! I think I'll go play with ideas for a journal page using the background sheet with the fish on it.

Background papers

As I stated in my profile, I sometimes enjoy the process of making art as much or more than the actual art I create. Lately I've been making background papers and really having fun! I've been using drywax deli paper (holds together when wet and paint doesn't soak through) and was inspired by Marilyn's post on her blog with video . Thanks for the inspiration Marilyn!



The one to the left shows 3 papers, one made by dragging a toothed tool I made by cutting notches in an old credit card and dragging it through we paint. The bright green is over a turquoise color and various techniques then used to scrape some of the bright green off so underneath color shows through. Blue with white is layers of colors for the background then splotches of paints on a foam roller to make the splotches. I used craft acrylic paints for all of these.






These next two were made by putting down a layer of color and letting it dry completely.
Then applied another color over the top. While top layer was wet I applied a dry clean stamp to it and picked up the top layer of color leaving the image in the underneath layer of color. I love how these turned out!





















I have a few more to share but blogger and I are not cooperating with one another with downloading photos tonight so I'll share them another time soon. (sometimes I'm just a low tech gal in a high tech world - lol!)

Thanks so much for taking a look at my blog!

More from the Bird altered book

Here's a two page spread I did in my bird book using birds I drew with colored pencil, scrapbook paper and metal letters.

Free Art Supplies

Recently, while at Home Depot, I decided to pick up some paint sample cards in all the dif shades of white to try out Zentangles on. I usually pick some up whenever I am there but in colors as I love to use them to punch shapes out of as the shapes come out with nice crisp edges and they have such a nice finish and great colors. But this time choose various whites or light colors. I used a Sharpie pen for the following card's Zentangle. I think I'll do a bunch of these and punch a hole in the upper corner and bind them on a ring. I'll use them as a resource when doing more Zentangles as I find it very helpful to look at dif designs to inspire me for what I want to draw in the next space I'm filling in.

And the price is right - free is always good!

Journal pages - tropical leaves

A favorite theme for me, always, is leaves.

Here's some I did for my journal. Having spent quite a bit of time in Hawaii, on Maui, tropical leaves are some of my very fav. Here's a couple I drew on ledger paper with colored pencil, cut out and stuck on journal pages with acrylic gel medium. The backgrounds are acrylic and I was experimenting with light and dark backgrounds with similar subjects. Which do you like better?

Journal and Zentangle

Here's a Zentangle page I did in my journal. I used Pitt brand black pens.

Zentangles

Lately I've been into Zentangling. I find it relaxing and just a little bit addicitng!

I've always doodled. Especially when on the phone. But now I've taken it to a new level after discovering Zentangles. I've never really focused on the overall design of my doodles like this!

Zentangles is a form of doodling. Rick and Maria of Zentangles.com started Zentangle and have made it popular. Check out their website to see alot of Zentangles and info.

Here's a couple of the first Zentangles I did.

And here's an owl I Zentangled. I got the idea from an owl drawing I saw in the Entertainment section of the newspaper.

My Journal

I started a new journal earlier this month.

I made the book using my BindItAll. The covers I made using some fav scrapbook paper I had been hanging onto cuz I liked it so well. Decided I should use it if I like it THAT much! Especially if making something for myself!

I used a tablet of ledger paper for the inside cover, I also cut 1 inch strips and folded them over the edge of the pages before I punched the holes. This give the edge a little more thickness to help allow for the thickness I'll add to the book by working on the pages. Also, then I don't have a stark white edge where the binding is when I paint the background. The journal has 40 pages, so is a big book. I used 10 of lt gray cardstock, 10 lt weight watercolor paper, 10 white cardstock, 10 of India watercolor paper. The working area of the pages is 8 1/2" square.

Once the book was made I started painting backgrounds on various pages. I never start on the first page and work my way through. I randomly pick which page to play with next. And I really like doing backgrounds so go ahead and start there without even always knowing what I'll put on the page. The worse that can happen is I'll have to paint over it if I can't figure out what to do with it! So far I've just used gesso and acrylic paints.

Here's the first page I did. I don't know yet if all the pages will be nature themed but it is a definate possibility. Again I used acrylic paints, and I printed the words on a piece of ledger paper (same time as I printed "journal" for the cover), drew around it with colored pencils and cut it out and glued it to the page with gel medium.

Thanks for looking!

Enjoy!

Another favorite art pal

In addition to my cat, Maui, being my art pal, my 10 year old niece Piper is also alot of fun to make art with.

So, lucky me! I've got two great art pals to keep me company when I'm making art at home!

One of my favorite things about doing art with Piper is her creativity, as a kid she doesn't overthink it! Helps me to do the same sometimes.

We make alot of things - ATCs, Books, altered books (she's working on one about trees), bottle cap magnets, stuff out of clay, and lately Zentangles (more on these in an upcoming post) and sewing.

Here's Piper with a coffee filter she hand colored with water based markers, watercolor paints and a spray bottle of water - she makes beautiful flowers that look like sweet peas with them and we've also used them as background papers. Also, here she is showing some of her ATCs.

My art pal, Maui

Here's my pal, Maui. who is my constant companion when I am creating art at home. She a very loyal and sweet pal and only occasionally a nuisance! Isn't she cute?

New stamps

Here's a page from my bird altered book I made when I got some new rubber stamps.

I prepared the page with white gesso before stamping. And, for the trim, I painted some german gold scrap black to use along the edge.

bird altered book numbers pages

I like playing around with the numbers I find printed on the page so have been using the numbers to decide what to do with some of the pages.

The "4" page are birds I made out of fabric scraps and adhered to muslin scraps I had hand painted. Then sewed to paper and glued that on the "4" page.

The "17" page is 17 of my favorite bird postage stamps I glued to the page with gel medium. I love stamps and love to use them in art.

Bird Altered Book

I've been working on a bird themed altered book for awhile and wanted to share some of what I've done so far. You'll see birds appear in my art quite often.

Here's the covers, front cover, then back cover and spine :

New to blogging

Well, I decided to take a leap and create a blog!
Really quite a big step for me. I'm a very private person plus have a hard time imagining what I have to share with you all.
It's an effort to keep me creating art more often and to share my creations.
Being creative is like my safe harbor and I need to be doing it on a regular basis.
I am a much happier being when I am doing that.
And if one has a way to be happier one must pursue it, right?
So welcome to my little blog...I look forward to sharing my creativity with you!
Kimber