Pink valentine

It's so hard to make a pink card!  It gets sticky sweet very quickly.  The glittery background paper is from a pack of baby girl papers, and the pink heart was cut freehand from some pink handmade paper.  the white ruffle was added to offset all the pink, and the word was strategically cut from a "Thank you" diecut.

What it lacks in elegance, it makes up in texture.

Challenges:
Art Impressions Stamps - pink
Pixie Dust Studio - heart
Southern Girls - sparkle
Do You Stack Up - pink
Paper Pretties - sentiment as focal point

Red flower valentine

I was feeling the urge to work on some valentines, and started poking through my patterned paper to see if I had any that I forgot about.   This paper is one of those that I have had forever.  I love the vintage fabric look to it, but I keep forgetting I have it.  It happened to be very close in color to this punched flower I had lying on my desk, a leftover from my son's art project (his girlfriend doesn't like florist flowers because they are treated with so many chemicals; he made her paper ones).  The rest of the card just came together.

 It's a little squished in the scanner, but it would get squished in an envelope, so I guess it is better to see how it will look to a recipient.  The little heart on the vellum tag is punched from a scrap of the same painted paper - I love painting paper rather than using colored cardstock for a lot of things, but I have both on here.  The sentiment is from a CTMH stamp set I bought several years ago - I have used the doodles in the set, but the words don't often see ink.  it was the only "friends" stamp that was mall enough to fit on the tag, though.  The only thing new on this tag really is the baker's twine.  Well, it really isn't new; I just haven't used it before today.

Challenges:
Aud Sentiments - use your scraps
Color Create - red, cream, sage
Gingersnap Creations - ribbon
Heart2Heart - stamp on tag
Incy Wincy Designs - vintage

S card

The Milliande challenge issued was to create a piece featuring words that were meaningful to us beginning with the letter S. Her example was text-heavy and shapeless, so I tried to think of another way to put words on a card other than in a list. I don't know why the idea of a playing card came to me, but I ran with it.

This is, of course, an ATC, which is the same size as a playing card.  It feels unfinished, but I am stuck - I am at that point where adding more doesn't feel like an improvement, but I know it isn't the best it could be, either.   This is the reaction of a woman who has ruined a few cards by putting too much on them.

Anyway, the words are things that are important to me, and the images are too.  Hatter, artist, bowler, that's me.  Card player, too.  None of those words start with S, though.

Doodles Unleashed assignment 1

I was intending to do the Strathmore series last year, but got sidetracked.  Fortunately, I was still on their mailing list, and signed up to do the new series this year.  This workshop is called "Doodles Unlimited", taught by Traci Bautista, and is about using mixed media.  for the first lesson, Traci basically encouraged us to use every art product we own on a nice base of fancy Strathmore watercolor paper (did I mention Strathmore is sponsoring this free workshop).  I own a lot of different media, and I didn't feel like using all of them, but I will tell you what I did use, and what I learned in the process.  I might still do more to this, but I just got tired of looking at it.

The first step was stenciling with colorwash sprays.  I happen to have a few bottles of the Adirondack colorwash sprays, so no problem there.  Actually, it was a problem.  the problem is that the Adirondack sprays need to be heat set - which I forgot about.  So, when I started adding acrylic paint, the spray ink started to mix with the paint, and I got some interesting effects, but I also had to cut my painting short, or the whole thing would have turned to mud.  Lesson learned.

Thwarted in my painting, I went on to the next step, which was adding subtle color and texture with alcohol markers.   I was still worried about the colorwash running, so I didn't use my good Copics, I whipped out my Bics.  I have to admit, I was not impressed with Traci's big graphic flowers, so I went my own way with geometric doodling.  I wasn't liking it - it was just getting cluttered, not pretty, and I didn't see how there was going to be a focal point to it.  I looked out the widow to the trees in my back yard, and decided that I needed a tree on my painting, so I went back to my acrylic paints, figuring that the colorwash couldn't do too much to brown and black, and started making branches.  I I made the thinner branches with the markers and also with pens.

It is way too busy - I needed more paint in the background, and a lot less doodling.  a little white highlighting would be good, too, but seriously - I am so sick of looking at those branches it isn't funny.

EDIT:

I added white, in the form of snow (white gel pen, correction fluid, and paint).  I thought it would add more contrast.  I'm not convinced that it helped.  I am thinking about splattering white droplets to create a snowstorm, but part of me thinks that it is a destructive impulse, and not something that will really improve the piece.

Vessel

Milliande's prompt for today is to think of ourselves as a vessel for seeds of creativity, or something like that (I'm not deep enough to really get it, I think).  I experimented a little with using Copic markers over acrylic paint, which worked out well, and then I detailed it a bit with my Uniball micro.  I like how well the Uniball micro works over other media, and I especially like that it is waterproof, but it is not Copic proof.  using the Copic markers over the Uniball ink caused the ink to smear and the markers to pick up black.  Yuck! (Please learn from my mistakes!)  So I finished with ballpoint pens, which are pretty good, but dry slowly on things other than regular paper.

The woman on this ATC is up to her eyebrows in dirt, but in the dirt are nuggets of silver and gold.  She is able to see the good in her life and find inspiration to create.

These exercises are so therapeutic!
 

Rose Hip

Last year I made a stab at art journaling with Milliande.  I wasn't planning on doing that series again, but the prompt for the first day showed up in my inbox yesterday, and I got sucked in.  The theme this year is "Seeds of Creativity", and the prompt for yesterday is "be the seed".  Don't ask me why, but rose hips immediately popped into my head.  It is a negative thought (negative thoughts were the reason I dropped out last year).   I didn't want to lock my negative thought into a journal, so I did a little ATC instead.

 Roses don't really propagate through their seeds; they are a plant for cutting.  The first time I saw rose hips on a rose, I thought they were tumors, and that the plant was diseased.  It might as well be.  The petals are gone, and the plant is a mess. Rose hips are good for their vitamin C, so they are more for eating rather than planting.  I guess the critters in my yard will enjoy them.

I feel like a rose hip.  I am a swollen, ugly thing, the remnant of lost beauty, just waiting to be devoured.

Silver paint plus ballpoint pen

When I was using silver paint on my inchie yesterday, I had a lot left on my palette, even though I only squeezed out one drop.  I wiped it off onto an ATC blank, imaging that it might make a nice start to a background.  After it dried, I looked at it, and grabbed a nearby ballpoint pen, and started doodling around the silver.

It was fun following the color around, and seeing what manifested itself.

Challenges:

Stampalot - monochromatic

2 Sisters - white and silver

Hiding in my Craft Room - freestyle

Fairy Tale - something easy

Sisterhood of Crafters - black, white, and one other color