Metallic Sun

"Metallic Sun"

 My entry for July in Nicola's book for the Sisterhood of the Traveling Sketchbooks. Actually part of the entry. I split my month in two this time since Nicola has such a great large book. I discovered a couple things with this painting. One is that I think I adore metallic paint. Oh the shine! I must get more. I tend to like shiny gaudy things. I only had copper, purple, silver and an antique copper that worked. I used metallic markers for other colors with mixed results and I liked using the paint more than the markers. I added black Sharpie marker after the initial coloring was finished and I like the result, kinda reminds me of an Aztec look plus it gave it more detail. I might revisit this Metallic Sun in the form of a canvas when I get some yummy metallic paints. I'm also thinking some distressing in the form of antiquing might be cool.

I listened to blog talk radio (ARt and Soul radio)for the first time last night by Lesley Riley  and she was interviewing New Mexico artist Darlene Olivia McElroy. I went to her website as I listened and explored her site. Her artwork is fabulous and I was drawn in to her techniques. She has videos on her website where she graciously shares techniques. Check it out if you have a chance. She also has books that I'm thinking about looking up. The blog radio can be replayed anytime I think (at least I replayed it after it had broadcasted). Just wanted to share :)

Have a great day!

Paint Party Week 21

Sweet Summer Night

Week 21?! Holy Schzznics! I've missed a few. But I'm back in the saddle again. This is "Sweet Summer Night" another addition to the Sisterhood of the Traveling Sketchbooks project. This went in Kathy's book for the June installment. I just finished it last night, so I'm behind on the project too. Oh, if anyone is interested in seeing a bunch of the sketchbooks in one place, we have a Facebook page called Creative Sistahs. Come on over and like us ;)

School starts next Wednesday yippee!/boohoo - I'm having mixed feelings... Asher, my son, is going to all day Kindergarten but that means I will have more time to get things done. That also means no more snoozing until 10:30ish everyday and staying up until 2:30 am anymore. Ugh, that I won't like. Cause I've grown quite fond of a life of leisure. I can tell you one thing though, I won't be making any of that damn tomato sauce!

Happy PPF! Visit all the Uber-Creative people here ;)

Work in progress - Sistahood of the traveling sketchbooks

I haven't had a chance yet to post this, well actually I was hoping to get more done on it before I posted this but oh well here is some artwork that I've managed to create in the midst of gardening mayhem for the Sisterhood of the Traveling Sketchbooks. Canning jars are cooling behind me as I write this. More beans. And more work is to be done on this tonight (hopefully).

Here is another shot, including my feet... hee hee

This is for a June installment in Kathy's book. I've gotta crank out July as quick as I can... we're a little behind due to the Canadian Post Office strike.

Paint Party Friday Week 12

So, summer has hit here in full swing and I have been slacking big time on the blog. If I didn't get a chance to visit you this last time from PPF (Paint Party Friday), I'm so sorry and I'll be by this week for sure to see both installments.

This PPF, I'm showing my finished painting from last week which was from my May installment of Sisterhood of the Traveling Sketchbooks.

Next week the Farmer's Markets start and I'm seriously considering doing it again to sell some artwork. There are actually 3 in my vicinity of 15 minutes away each way. I'd better get my paintbrush fired up! If you're thinking what does artwork have to do with Farmer's Markets? then you are not aware of it apparently being a trend. To be fair, I am selling plants, too. I'm also trying to stick to artwork that is related to this type of theme this year. Hey, that may be a perfect place for my pastel peppers from a few weeks ago! They invite crafts people and artisans to help generate interest since most of the produce isn't available yet (in our area). Are there any of you that have good luck selling your artwork at a Farmer's Market? I've done it before with limited success. Click here on this Farmer's Market to see my set up for last year and the year before.  I plan to make my booth more attractive for sure cause it looks pretty lame. I'd love to here any of your tips, tricks or stories about Farmer's Markets and sprucing up my booth :) 

Happy Friday Gang!

Paint Party Friday Week 11!

Who was this girl? I have forgotten.

Yahoo! It's Paint Party Friday! I've got a WIP (work in progress) today. This is me as a young bride (back in 1994!). It is a small portion of a Sisterhood of the Traveling Sketchbooks journal page. This is my entry for the month of May in Lori's book. I got her book in the mail earlier this week and it is so colorful and pretty and revealing! hee hee...

Join in the fun, all you need to do is create something, post about it and link up on the PPF blog. Then you go and visit the other artists posts. It's very inspiring and will get your creative juices flowing!

Thanks to everyone visiting from PPF! :)
Have a great weekend my friends!

Self Portrait spread

I finally finished my self portrait page and mailed it yesterday. It was supposed to be mailed the last of April (sorry Brandy!) but better late than never, right?

Over all, I like the look and the colors turned out pretty good. My portrait though really doesn't look too terribly much like me. If I were more brave I'd post the picture I painted this from. I improvised and took my creative license to the max on this... haha. Plus, as I've said I really am just learning to paint so I make it up as I go along. Like I've told a few already, my face isn't a very good Caucasian skin color. I ended up looking more like a pink pig. Now I have rosacea, but even my face isn't this pink ;)

I was going to use this for Paint Party Friday, but I'll either use a quick acrylic painting I made for my girlfriend who just graduated and got her certificate for a new career (hopefully) or I'll be getting busy tomorrow night. My money is on the acrylic. Tomorrow is a busy day.

I finally got my tomatoes planted YAY! and zuchinni, cantaloupe, watermelon and corn. Still need to get out the beans, yellow squash, peppers and jalapeno's. Pumpkins in a month or so. I am loving the warm temps that we have been having. I'm a warm weather girl.

Check out my little man fishing on Monday, how cute is that? Look at that cast... haha!

Also, it seems I have yet another member of the fur family to introduce. I'll post more about him with a picture in a later post. I will tell you he is of the feline persuasion and I've already named him. His name is Buster Brown.

Paint Party Friday Week 8

Good grief time flies! Another week has gone by and it's Paint Party Friday again! I'm sharing another page from my Sisterhood of the Traveling Sketchbooks project. I've been mentioning it for a long time now, but if you've missed it you can catch up on what it is here. We have already mailed off our sketchbooks to our selected sistah and the fun has started!

This is my sign in page and I struggled for a while as to what to put on this page. I was seeing great ideas from all my Creative Sistahs and didn't want to flake out. So, I thought long about what this project is and it came to me that our sketchbooks are like a bunch of gypsies, or travelers as I've read they prefer to be called. (But I have to say I think gypsy has such a romantic notion, especially to North America and it is not seen as a put down.) Anyway, they are like gypsies in that they are traveling the lands and seas! to bring inspiration and creative fellowship to each of the Creative Sistahs. I keep referring to Creative Sistahs and that is just something I call all of us. There are 13 that have joined this 13 month project. It is closed to new sistahs right now, but if you are interested in doing something like this we will probably be doing another project or if you don't want to wait start your own!

So here it is, my Vardo or gypsy wagon sign in page. It is a combination of some pictures I've found on the net and my imagination. I blurred out my exact address to ward off potential kooks. I liked the idea of peering past a gate to the Vardo to give it a little mystery. Yesterday I gave a first look at my self portrait, see it here.

Please take time to visit the talented artists at Paint Party Friday and here's your invitation to join us!

Happy Cinco de Mayo!

 

 

gift from Kim, one of my Creative Sistah's

Woo hoo! It's Cinco de Mayo! Pass a magarita over this way =) There are celebrations here and there in all our delicious Mexican restaurants, which we frequent often :p

Look at what my Creative Sistah Kim, none other than the Queen of ARt, sent me for my birthday! I love the rocks she painted and she'd been hanging on to that sweet and beautiful card for something special and I am honored that she sent it to me, I feel so loved :) Thanks Kim.

My little guy is doing well after his surgery from Monday. Today he woke up crying and hurting, but he is better now. It just takes about 20 minutes for the medicine to kick in. He went to bed with his head hurting (of course I gave him meds) and woke up that way, but I think it's just all catching up with him. Overall, it's been much easier than I expected. I am hoping he'll be okay to go to school on Monday. The dreaded "Day Three" which I was warned about has came and went and he seemed to be alright. I'm so relieved. He sleeps much better now and it is so wonderful to go in his room and listen to him sleeping soundly and breathing regularly. He's drooling like mad, but at least he's breathing! The surgeon told us his adnoids were completely blocking his airway so that's why he's been breathing through his mouth. His hearing is amazingly better too! I'm glad this is over.

I have been trying like crazy to find the time to finish my sketchbook for the Sisterhood of the Traveling Sketchbooks and I'm about finished. My book goes to Brandy and I've told her it'll be late. I think I'll be late for my own funeral, which might freak a few people out. So here's a little sneak peek at my self portrait.

So last night when I quit working on this at 1:30 am I was thinking this wasn't too bad. But this morning as I look at it, I'm less satisfied. It is still a work in progress but I don't think it looks like me very much. I'm not exactly a portrait artist.

Enjoy your day my friends!

Paint Party Friday Week 7

So I didn't keep my pepper thing going. I've got bigger fish to fry. I am behind on my Sisterhood of the Traveling Sketchbooks project so I had better try to stay focused on it. We are supposed to send out our books by the end of the month and ooops... that is tomorrow! Oy! This is my gig too, I am so bad. Anyway, I'll get back to my pepper pastels next week I hope.

This is the cover to my sketchbook. Soooo... what the heck is it? I went totally blank on myself as to what to put on the cover. I kept seeing everyone's fantastic pages and covers going up and I'm thinking Oh sh!t, what am I going to do? So I started piddling around with my new acrylics and had no idea what I was doing. I ended up seeing in my head one of my most favorite places to be... under water! I love to snorkel and this reminded me of underwater plants, so I added some freaky little fish tonight and voila! It is said that the best way to learn something is to do it, but there is something to be said about having some instruction too. I love the paintbrush in my hand though, the smell of the paints, mixing colors and a gorgeous palette. I'm hooked. So much to do, so little time.

I am also in midst of selling my heirloom tomato plants and painted my signs tonight. It is technically Thursday night here since I've not gone to bed yet :)  Even they were fun with a paint brush.

To find out about the Paint Party Friday fun, click on the side bar and see all the talented artists posting there. REally good stuff.

Happy Paint Party Friday! Oh, and I turned 41 today (the 28th). whoopee. not even a damn card from my hubs.

Painting Saturday, Messy Saturday

Today Asher finally played with the big easel I got him for his birthday. Why is it we end up doing all the work and they decide they are bored and skip off after 10 minutes of play while it took 20 minutes to get it all set up? That is what goes on here on a regular basis. I try to get up in my studio to do a little creative play myself and of course I've got a tag a long who wants to paint too. By the time I've got him all set up, paints open, brushes a plenty and lots of paper including water I finally get to my stuff only to have him say "I'm done". Oy. At five years old, he still can't be trusted to go play alone in the house so that means I'm done too. Oy again. I know I'll be wishing for these days back someday but right now it's hard to look past the work and aggravation. I suppose I won't remember the hard part, just the fun stuff.

I took this picture after I got done wiping up the red paint from the floor, cabinets and refrigerator from Asher dropping the bottle. Paint flew everywhere.  

As it turns out chalk is a lot easier to clean up.

The Sisterhood of the Traveling Sketchbooks has finally started and I can't wait to share all that with you, but right now I got nuthin'.  As far as the original traveling book, I think it's still in T's hands because I haven't gotten word yet about it being sent out. So if you're on the list to receive it, hang in there!

But in other news, Grandma has been moved to a new nursing home and they have her doing therapy, which is whoopin' her butt. I went to see her Thursday to do her hair and she was sleeping so hard I couldn't wake her up. She looked pretty bad, wore out and much older than before. I fear it may not be long. But she has come back and surprised us before. I'll to keep a good outlook until I can't anymore.

Look at these lazy things here. Thought I'd leave you with a smile.

Have a great weekend!

Birthday Boy

Today is my son Asher's 5th birthday! I'll post updates soon.

We have all 12 Sistah's for The Sisterhood of the Traveling Sketchbooks! Yay! So we'll be sharing pictures and artwork soon!

Have a great weekend!

STSB update + OWOH Winnings

The Sisterhood of the Traveling Sketch Books (STSB) is filling up. We now have 10 participant's including me and Stephanie, I counted wrong the other day. I'm told we may have another sistah if her computer isn't acting quirky. Remember, we're aiming for 12. I figure I'd give it to this Friday evening and if we don't have anyone else interested at this time then we could draw for who gets an extra month or we could do collaborative pages.

I have now set up a Yahoo Group just for us! It's called CreativeSistahs... Yay! Here is a link to go to Creative Sistahs. From here we can share thoughts and pictures, have a poll, start a conversation in chat and more! I thought this would be a great place to keep all our sketch book stuff and ask and answer questions. It doesn't cost anything to join a Yahoo Group. There won't be any spam since I have it set up to where I have to allow users access to join. So if you didn't get an invitation for the group through your email address, then you might have forgotten to give it to me! Please do as soon as you can =) You can also just apply through the link above. Oh and by the way, my "handle" is ArtsyFartsyMe... of course!

Also, don't forget we need 1 and maybe 2 more sistah's! If you have a blogging buddy that you think might like to participate please ask them! You can direct them to here which is the Sisterhood post. I still haven't got a badge yet, but I will soon. Some already have a sketch book and I encourage everyone to go ahead and find one you've got lying around waiting to be used (blank of course) or buy a new one. So be looking for those Blick, Michael's and JoAnns coupons... haha. Just remember these are getting mailed each month so size and weight will impact the cost to send it $$$$.

Also...

I wanted to share a card making book I won from Therese at Design 48 through the OWOH. It's got all kinds of inspiration in there. Thank you Therese! Unfortunately, she didn't leave me a link for her blog and now I can't find her. Let this be a lesson kids, leave your blog address and name on all your emails!

Have a great rest of the week!

Yee-Haw! The Loot is Pouring In!

OWOH Loot that is! Just look at the treasures that have made their way into my heart!

From Brandy at Artbrat's Bits and Pieces... a sweet little mixed media treasure box that she made along with her beautiful mermaid calling card and I love mermaids!!

From Sanna at Sannasartmind "So Many Hats" 6"x8" Mixed media collage that almost made it into Somerset magazine! It was so beautifully wrapped as well.

From Carolyn at LilDarlings by Carolyn I received "The Smallest Teeny Tiny Piggy Bank with coins" so adorable...  She managed to send it even though she had been without power due to the nasty ice storm... been there. Yuck!

From Laura at Artworks Studio and "Outside the Lines" blog... just for the simple task of asking for it... a stack of multi-colored envelopes that will come in really handy. So generous.

I also received another that I will post as soon as I get a picture of it. It's 1 am now and there is no sunlight which equals really crappy pictures so we must wait.

I am so filled with happiness that the OWOH giving spirit has brought out. I don't know if that sentence made sense, but you get the idea. What generous people who just pour out their souls through their work, it's just amazing to feel the giving spirit that I've encountered through OWOH. Thank you, truly.

On another note, we have got the gunkies again here at my house. Strep throat is running rampant in the school among other junk and I have felt like doo doo since Saturday evening. I don't think we have Strep, and I hope we don't get it! Today I have the privilege of eating with no taste sensation what so ever. What a waste of food and talk about no satisfaction whatsoever, jeesh. So I haven't wasted my chocolate ice cream I have hidden in the basement freezer at least. Yeah, I'm one of those. Food hiders. What can I say, it is sad but true. I feel like a big loser too, because I haven't mailed off the book yet to T. I will, I promise!

This brings me to the Sisterhood of the Traveling Sketchbooks. I haven't done anything else with it yet since I've felt so puny. I'm sorry :(  I know there is confusion about it. Plus, we still need 5 more people that are willing to join. Maybe I should set a deadline. That way if we don't have the 10 we need by that date, we will proceed and maybe some will get lucky and get an extra month. So if you're reading this and want join the sistah's, there is still time! We'd love to have you. Please chime in on your blog if you want to about it to stir interest.

Dat ta da daaaaa... Sisterhood of the Traveling Sketchbooks!

Introducing.... Sisterhood of the Traveling Sketchbooks! I'm diggin' this sisterhood name thing so I thought I'd keep the name going. I can't take all the credit for this project though, Stephanie Corder of Dragonfly Designs Studio wrote me after I posted the original Sisterhood of the Traveling Book and joining. She writes...

"I've been thinking about this all morning- I think it would be so cool if you/we got a group together to each donate a book to this cause, rotating through the group and each person ending with a different book than the one they originally sent out.."

 So here it is! Thanks Stephanie, I like this idea so much that I do want to try this. Now I'm not exactly sure what a Round Robin is, but I think it goes something like what we are going to do here.

We are going to have 10 open slots for this first time around. There may be more (projects) later and we'll get some more books going or maybe one of you may want to take it on. The reason why I'm picking 10 is because I'm planning on doing a theme on the calendar year.  12 months = 12 people (Stephanie is in already since it's half her idea! and then me, of course ; so that makes 12) The reason for this is so it will go around faster than just the one original book. There will be 12 floating out there!

 We will each need to purchase a new sketch book for this project and keep in mind we'll be mailing these, so keep size and weight in mind for mailing purposes. So I haven't thought of all the details yet, but we'll each be assigned a month (by me, drawing in the hat style again) and we'll start our sketchbooks with that month, even if it's out of order. Each person will take one spread (the two pages you open up to) and do what they will with it. We'll each have 1 month to work on it and then we'll pass it to the next sister. Like I said, it's still in the planning stage, but I thought that was the bones of it and whoever the first 10 people are, we can all come up with the plan together. By the time the project is over, a year will have gone by and we will each get back our original sketchbook and we'll have a wonderful piece of art and great memories to go with it. It will also bring all of us "Sisters" together and form a common bond... Sisterhood Artist.

I don't have any sisters so this is very appealing to me and I hope you all will embrace this project like the original Sisterhood... Of course we can only take 10 this time, so hurry and sign up if you think this is something you can commit to and enjoy. Like I said, maybe someone will be inspired to start another one if it fills up and more are wanting in. 

Let it begin!