Strolling the Garden

Painting, Collage, Stamping

Acrylics, Watercolor pencils

A little bit of art I did today....there's never a shortage of inspiration for garden pages in my Home & Garden altered book...because I love these colors.  I was doing some background work on the pages and as I was working on the left page, I saw a "face"...not a face I intentionally created, it was just there....so I ended up creating a lady....strolling the garden.  Still kind of working on it, but decided to post it anyway.

The Painted Board

Home & Garden Altered Book

 

 

The Painted House by John Grisham is the book I am using for my Home & Garden altered book.  The inspiration for this page came from the text opposite this art where the author is describing how someone has painted a board on this tired, old brown house. 

In The Spirit of the Garden

In The Spirit of the Garden

Home & Garden Altered Book

Paint, stencil, collage

WORD JOURNAL - Quandary

I haven't added any words to my word journal in a very long time and I've been thinking a lot lately about my approach to art...I've been in such a quandary....I started out with my first art journal back in 2007, Simply Blue, and all of the pages are painted.  I'm sort of a "kid in a candy shop" when it comes to art supplies...every time I see a new medium...I want to try it but it distracts me from what I love to do most....and that is paint.  I do love what you can do with collage and rubber stamps and paper....and wouldn't give it up...but I need to also paint because the more you use the skill, the more you improve.  In my art journals, I don't use a lot of words because I want the painting to tell the story.  In my altered books, I do more collage.  So...quandary is the word...along with perplexity and dilemma.  Each tag has a wooden letter bead attached to the string..didn't quite make the photo.

 

Home & Garden, Altered Book

I had some time earlier today for creativity....still running on the energy of yesterday's altered book workshop, so I decided to do another two pages in my Home & Garden book...using napkins, magazine photos, some acrylics.  This came about from coming across the napkin with the rooster in my napkin stash and from there I went through a box of things I've torn out of magazines.  When you collect things that you like...that speak to you....you can always find materials to put together and it becomes an interesting piece.  For me, I love the colors and the patterns of the things on these pages.

MARDI GRAS -Altered Book

FEMALE/ALTERED BOOK

Went to my monthly class yesterday and the theme was Mardi Gras.  The technique we learned was how to make something look like a tile.  The tiles across the top of the left page and the one on the right top, are pictures done on inchies and then treated to give them the look of being tiles...you can't see the shine in these photos.  There is also gold paper on these pages...the metallic doesn't show... and ribbons and feathers and rhinestones.  And some glittery purple paper bottom left and top right...all  in keeping with the theme!

Perhaps my "dry spell" is over...

A PLACE TO STORE " IDEAS"

I saw the new Smash books when I was in Michael's last weekend and while I was there, I said to myself....why would I want to buy a book that already has things on the pages....when I can create my own and have been...from a blank book.  So...I didn't buy one.  But I went back and looked at them online and decided...just get one.  I have to say, the quality of the paper is very nice.  And I feel like it's a book that I don't really care...if I mess something up...
I am always dog-earring pages in catalogues and magazines of either color ideas for rooms, or a cool gift idea, or a neat recipe that I almost never get around to trying or I have an idea for a Christmas gift...but it's only February...so how am I going to remember it in December???  Well, that's what I am going to use this book for. Inside the front cover, I glued down a polka dot napkin and on the opposite page I created a pocket for some of those things I've already torn out of magazines this year. I kind of scribbled and just did whatever. The one thing I'm not crazy about is the quality of the polka dot tape because it doesn't stick very well to this paper so I'm adding glue...I think the paper is just too slick for the tape.