5 Minute Parking

...and the moon up above and a thing called Love....

These pages don't require any other words. 

ALTERED BOOK WORKSHOP

Le Cirque

Yesterday was one of those days where I just couldn't get it together at the workshop....I cut a couple of the pieces of paper incorrectly and that threw me off....so I went through some of the exercises and then decided to bring all of the pieces home to construct.  Above is the result.  The right page with the ringmaster is an accordion book....I'll show you....

And more....

 On this one I made an envelope and used small brads;  I was going to put the two tickets in it...but you wouldn't see them, so on the page above, I just added them there.  This isn't  quite the way we learned it in the class, but it all came together.

Strathmore Workshop - Stencils, Spray

 I haven't had much time to do art this weekend but today I finally put some paint in a spray bottle and got a couple of stencils out...messy, I must say!  I had no plan for these pages...just using techniques...the spray, stencils, rubber stamps and letters....and this is how they came out. There is some bronze metallic on the pear leaves, but it's hard to tell in the photo.  I think I may tweak it a little bit more....

 I added some gold polka dots to the "me" and there is now gold around the stenciled letters and here and there...just not a great photo...It hasn't won me over, but it's OK.

Strathmore Workshop II -Start Where You Are

I started the 2nd workshop from the Strathmore Visual Journal series over the weekend.  It's called Start Where You Are by Linda Blinn.  I find her instruction really easy to follow.  So the pictures I'm showing are from a lesson about graduated pages...cutting the pages so they are not all the same to add interest to the book.  
The first 2 pages are the normal size....

These flowers are done with stencils, background with water soluble crayons, charcoal pencil for shadow and collage.

The next 2 pages....

The page on the left is an inch narrower than the previous page.  The page on the right is 2 inches narrower....

The next pages...

As you can see, the "tree" page is very narrow.  The pages on the left are "connected" by the colors and patterns chosen to make interesting edges...

And the last two pages....

 I decided the tree page would flip from summer to fall...and the bird page is actually a napkin.  

As I was doing these pages, I started thinking about a very old song (so how do I know that song....) at any rate..."Let me tell you 'bout the birds and the bees and the flowers and the trees....etc. etc.  

When I flip the next page over, the bird page, I'll be back to two normal size pages and I think on these it would be fun to illustrate another stanza in the song....maybe a scene at a drive in movie....I don't know....will have to see what develops...

Let me tell you 'bout the birds and the bees

And the flowers and the trees

And the moon up above

And a thing called "Love" 

The Birthday Boy

Today is my son, Tom's, 23rd Birthday. He was born on a Thursday afternoon. This fun photo of him in his pj's taken maybe 17 years ago, really expresses the confident, happy young man he's turned out to be. This will be the first birthday in his 23 years that I won't see him on his special day....because he's enjoying a wonderful, tropical vacation...best known as "Spring Break" ...with many of his friends. I slipped a birthday card into his luggage, but missing will be the special balloon I always buy...probably more for me than for him...but it's a tradition. I know he's having the time of his life...HAPPY BIRTHDAY, TOM!!!

Word Journal Book Cover

This is the front and back cover of the book I am altering for my word journal.  As you can see, the name of the book is Time Expired...haven't thought about how I might alter that, but I've added lots of words to the cover itself...which started out as just a plain royal blue.  When you're not sure what project you want to work on, you can always revert to your word journal to do an illustration...just pick any word you like and have fun!

Where Does Inspiration Come From?

I would say from all of your senses....sight, sound, taste, smell, touch....so I've been working on some pages in my Word Journal.  This word journal has turned into something different than my original concept of ...carefully chosen words.  The word featured in the art below is not a special word by any means (what makes a word "special" anyway?)  but for whatever reason, it's ended up in the book.  The word is QUEEN.  Maybe it's interesting to me because it's associated with so many different things, the obvious being royalty.  And a queen is....female.   She's at the top of her game whether it's in chess or the local beehive.  My siblings nicknamed me "Queenie" when we were growing up.  I was born in May so...the May Queen.  So, here are my "queen" pages....

 

A queen is....a goddess or a thing personified as a female and having supremacy.

A queen is....the wife or widow of a king

A queen is....a female monarch

A queen is....the fertile fully developed female of social bees

A queen is....the most privileged piece of each color in a set of chessmen.

A queen is....you can fill this in....

 

I ran into some technical difficulty when I was doing the page with the key on it...I had saved a movie ticket stub from a couple of years ago from The Queen...to put on the journal page and it was part of the "dress" I created.  Well, in my eagerness to complete the page, I was using my heat gun on it and got too close and it burned the ticket and you couldn't read the words The Queen...lost treasure.  And then I had to recreate that part of the page without tearing it.  So, I present to you the QUEEN.