KISS

One last post for the weekend....in my new altered book.  

 I had already created the little "Kiss" paper doll using Hershey's Kisses wrappers...perhaps should have made her more "va va voom"...but then maybe her innocence is appealing...and I needed to create some art to put her in.  And it's all about the KISS.  The paper doll is tied to the page with ribbon.  I'm not old enough to have seen the newspaper KISS of WWII....so very famous a photograph and I love it.  Then, of course, I couldn't actually leave out the musical group...KISS.  And Rosanno Brazzi and Katharine Hepburn smooching in SUMMERTIME, 1955.
Last but not least, my all time favorite song...AS TIME GOES BY, from Casablanca.  For those of you not old enough to be familiar with some of this...you don't know what you've missed!

This is how the pages look side by side.

 

BEFORE ELECTRONICS....

It is a miserable day here in New England and at this moment, we are under a tornado warning...it's very strange outside and the sun just made an appearance....and the wind is picking up....hoping it just passes us.  So...while that is going on, I created another two pages in my altered book, Sunflower Houses.  The graphics are, again, from Sandy Gordon of Artful Tea Life.  I added some paint, stamping and even a lush piece of silky trim to the right-hand page.  I saved some of the original text on the pages.  Down the left page, it says "Gentle Lessons Are Waiting To Be Taught"....seems apropos...and there is a poem by Nancy Bird Turner on the right page called "Home".  And it seems to be the type of poem the young woman on the page might have written:

I want to have a little house

with sunlight on the floor.

a chimney with a rosy hearth

lilacs by the door;

with windows looking East and West 

And a crooked apple tree.

And room beside the garden fence

for hollyhocks to be!

The pages....

The beautiful stone "summer cottage" is on the property where the Norman Rockwell Museum is in Stockbridge, MA....where I visited earlier this week.  It seemed right for these pages....

 p.s. I know....without electronics...you couldn't see these pages....

THE BOOK FAIR

The annual book fair at our local library took place last week...I was happy to see so many people buying "real" books....I went there in search of books to alter and books to read.  And I love to go to the "ephemera" table where I often find fun "little" books ...this year there was a Klimt book!  

I found a book in the children's section...a perfect size to alter, and it's called SUNFLOWER HOUSES.  This book is going to be filled with paper dolls and gardens and such.  I've posted about Sunflowers several times on my blog...here's how this book is starting out:

 This page features a house which I painted, stamped, glued, etc., before I attached it to the page.  Some of the graphics here are from Sandy Gordon, Art Tea Life (you can find her on ETSY).  You'll see more of her graphics as this book progresses....

Here is how the doll looks....

 and I can just slip her into and out of the house as it's a pocket. So for today, BEE HAPPY.

WEEDING

Strathmore Art Journal

You might wonder why I'm calling this post...WEEDING....but it was while doing some weeding in my driveway, that I made a discovery.  There are these flat, lacy sort of weeds that seem to like coming up through the gravel.  And while for the most part, I was pulling them out....I found them kind of architecturally interesting.  

So....I pulled a couple of them out and I took a small water bottle with a mixture of Italian Sage acrylic paint and water.  I laid the weeds on the page and sprayed.  You don't get the actual pattern of the weed, because the paint is too watered down,  but what you do get when the paint hits the paper is very cool.  So I decided that once the green layer dried, I'd add another color.  So the second layer is Midnight Blue.  The end result is sort of a marbled effect.  Actually, you could do an interesting sky.  Or try it with metallics... 

Bubbles...

Going Round in Circles

What to say about these pages....I wasn't going to post them.  They are more or less just an exercise.  The right hand page has very little paint on it, more of the ink that made the bubbles, circles, etc.  The left hand page was done with water soluble crayons.  I wasn't feeling terribly ambitious yesterday, but still wanted to do something.  I tend to gravitate towards....circles in art more than sharp angles.  They are visually appealing to me.

I took an art class a long time ago from a woman who had us, on the first day, close our eyes and take a pencil to paper and just draw shapes without lifting your pencil off the paper.  Mine tended toward circles and soft edges.  That exercise, she explained, is what defines your art style.  It's your "art DNA" if you will....At the time I was like, really???  How could that be?  It's inherent in us.  I found that to be fascinating.  Something I had never really thought about.   And  it's something you can't change.  Now you're thinking I'm crazy...that you can paint whatever you want!  That's true to a certain extent, but the beauty of art is that you're going to paint the still life in front of you....entirely different from the person next to you. 

Lately, I feel like I'm caught in a fragile sort of bubble that I don't want to pop.  That as long as I'm in the bubble, I am safe.  Ever feel that way?  Waxing way too philosophical for this Sunday morning.  Think I'll go back and listen to Nat King Cole from last Sunday's post!