A Day of Play

I decided I needed to drag out all my mixed media supplies, starting with a bag of vintage ephemera to design some fun journal pages.  I have been so focused on the remodel of our new retirement home that I wanted to have a day of play.

These are quite large, 9 x 12 but they will be folded and made into an art journal with other interesting pages.

By creating these 4 layouts together, I was able to use the same color palette and inks.  They will be used for sketches, scanned into my computer to be used for my digital backgrounds and could become greeting cards in the future.

What's Coming in 2017!

My calendar is beginning to look pretty booked up for 2017.  Starting in January, I will be traveling to a few places I haven't been too in several years,  January through October, I will be teaching several classes & workshops that I am really looking forward to.  Subjects include: Watercolor, Screen Printing, Paper Collage, Abstract Acrylic, Gelli Printing and more!  Plus I will be taking a few workshops this year as well. I love to learn new things.  It's going to be a fun, productive year!

Image is of a gelli print I made a few years ago. These make the most awesome backgrounds for greeting cards, art journals, ATC cards, etc. 

My Passions

Most of you know that I have been studying the art of watercolor for several months now, I think it's going on like 9 months and I'm still overwhelmed with all the information that I have yet to devour.  LOL!  I recently purchased a video of Soon Young-Warren's painting water and have watched it several times now, trying to get a feel for the methods she uses in her own work, while incorporating a few of my own tricks along the way.  I haven't been sharing any of these paintings with you only because they were either not good enough, or barely good enough to be juried into a local show.  I have 2 currently hanging at the Sandy Senior Center here in town for our Spring Show-2014 and one waiting to see if it will be juried into the UWS Spring Show in Provo this year. 
Anyway, this little painting is of a photo I took of a koi down in the pond at the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vega, and using some of my mixed media techniques, I was able to get a pretty good likeness of the real fish.  To do this again on a larger scaled painting will be the challenge! 

A New Blog

My local watercolor guild here in Sandy Utah is interested in having an on-line presence and sharing their work in one central place that is easy enough that all can participate.  I have been working on getting the blog set up and will be adding more fun things soon.  Please take a moment to go explore the home page, along with an experiment for textures page and get signed up to follow us by e-mail.  The guild's new blog address is:  Sandy WC Guild  (Click the name and it will take you to the blog). 
This blog isn't just about watercolor, it will feature many other things.

All water/wet media will be included, along with monthly challenges for our show & tell (which I hope we will start doing at our local monthly meetings beginning 2014),  (you can play along with these challenges too and post your results on your blog!  Simply leave us a link in the comments.) There are additional pages that share experimental results at the moment, but I will be posting techniques for: stenciling, carving textures, acrylics, inks, book reviews, etc. etc.  The possibilities are endless.  Please join us and don't forget to leave comments! 
Feedback is always monitored due to spammers, so your comments will not appear until they have been approved.  You may also share a link to your own website or blog in your comment.  We would love to venture over and take a peek at what you are creating. 
If you are interested in sharing a technique you have created, or a link to a good video you think would help inspire us, please leave the link in the comments and I will check it out.  If you host free tutorials, we would love to know about them, if you have written a book, a pdf zine or an e-book, again we would love to know about it. 
I recently set up a Facebook Group as well, but to keep life simple for me, I will be posting only to this blog and to the Sandy WC Guild blog.  No sense in duplicating my efforts. 
Not sure I shared this work in progress (above) with you all yet, but this is an enlarged area of berries in a bush taken from a photo I took up in Idaho at a fish hatchery.  I got kind of carried away with making the little streets on the leaves to make them look like maps viewed from space.  So, OK, I'm not always "photo realistic".  :-D

A New Blog

 

I've decided to create a blog for a new adventure exploring water media, which has unlimited options and I didn't want to bore everyone by posting all the time about this one topic.  Over the past few months I have been so engrossed in this new love that I've spent 90% of my waking hours learning more about water media, i.e. watercolors.   I've read every single book and magazine I could get my hands on, watched a ton of youtube videos and now I am ready to branch out.   I want to include my true loves, all water mixed media and I would like to invite you to join me.   You can participate by leaving comments, posting links to your own work and of course, share your own knowledge.  For a more detailed description of what I am proposing, visit this new BLOG.
And I started a Facebook group.  Please come and join me HERE.

Another Creative Art Book Review



If you love surface design, making altered books or even art journaling, along with incorporating snippets of fibers and adding various textures, this is the book for you.  It is chock-full of ideas to give you plenty of inspiration for utilizing texture, color, fibers, design elements, resists, "Brusho" (a product from the UK which is fabric dye in powder form-use caution), oil paint-sticks, wax, papers and options for recycling products we all have available.  This book covers multiple projects and materials such as: mark-making, block printing, mono-printing, hot & cold wax, tie dying, collage and guess what-this is only half of what the book covers! 
The other half of this book will give you plenty of ideas for hand & machine stitching, embellishing, fabric manipulation, applique and ideas for creating your own unique textiles.  Plenty of eye candy to get your thought processes working, so grab your copy today!

Assignment 4

If you haven't been following Milliande through this journey of self discovery, it's not too late to join in the fun.  We are only at Assignment 4 and the previous assignments can be done in just a few minutes-maybe an hour.  Developing a pattern from shapes which is this assignment, took the longest.  I call this: "Three Sisters of St. Mary's". 

Cleaning House

Actually I'm de-cluttering, de-hoarding my studio-workspace.  It is extremely time consuming since I have so much crammed into such a tiny space, that it is near impossible to remember where everything is.  Shelves and shelves of supplies hidden away in chipboard shoe boxes.  Not any more!  I replaced those shoe boxes with see-through shoe boxes so that I can see at a glance, where everything is.  The clutter is still there, but better organized. 




So, I also hoard cardboard, chipboard and a variety of vintage papers that I need to dispose of, so I am going to make art journals from these recycled materials.  Using my digital software and the custom shape tools, I can create some interesting journals, which I love to use.  (I hoard these little journal beauties too!) 

Fabric Swap-August 2011

Over at Arttechniques yahoo group, Sherre is hosting a 6" square 5 for 5 fabric swap.  These are two of the 5 I will be sending.  Each is hand-dyed and then over painted with stencils, silk screening and foam stamping in a variety of acrylic paints. 

Update on New Technique

In the post below, this started out with some beautiful colors, a stencil of Koi and another stencil of a square pattern that I picked up at the $ store.  Here it is with a wash of Chinese Sumi Ink, spray painted using a Cherry Blossom Stencil & Kanji lettering.  Then the ink is removed with water and the final version is highlighted with additional paints to brighten some of the colors again.  This technique was tons of fun, messy as all get out and the end results worth the effort.  I hope you will find time to play and follow along with Gary's tutorial.  The link to join the Loving Mixed Media group is in the other post below.  Have fun!

New Technique

Over at the LovingMixedMedia group, Gary is hosting monthly techniques and this month he demonstrated a technique using bitumen (asphalt/tar).  I used Chinese Sumi Ink and got close to the same results without the smell!  Here is a photo of the first few steps.  I'll share more pics soon. 
If you are interested in learning from some super friendly and welcoming artists, join the main ning and look for the challenge group to join as well.  Everyone is very helpful and encouraging. I hope to see you there, as I pop in occasionally!

New Release

Inside this book you will find artwork contributed by about 15 mixed media artists, such as: Misty Mawn, Susan Tuttle, Tonia Davenport and several more who's names may not be as well known as the others, but their artwork is superb.  The book is full of beautiful eye candy of each project, complete with photos of step by step instructions for fabulous art projects!  The only downside I can see about this book is, it didn't arrive soon enough!  It was on my wish List long before it was released-but it's here now and I plan to enjoy it!  An excellent variety of mixed media projects, great photos, wonderful color and simple instructions.

Bean Bag Tutorial

I have been making sets of these numbered bean bags for my grandkids the past couple of weeks and yesterday one of the sets got used by my great grandson, who absolutely loved lining them up in order.  He's only 3, but knows his numbers and colors!  this morning he wanted to play with them again.  They are the perfect size 4" x 4" to fit his little hands and they are weighted just enough to be tossed but can't hurt anything.  If you would like to make a set for the younger generation in your life, here is a quick tutorial for you.
Supplies needed: Fabric (fat quarters of various bright, bold colors worked great!)  You will need 1 strip 4" wide from 10 different fabrics, cut into 4" x 4" squares and 1 strip 3" wide or scraps from another project to make the numbers.  You will need No-Sew Heat N' Bond, an iron, a 1/4 yard of unbleached muslin, cut into 3 strips 4" wide, than cut into 4" x 4" squares.  Sewing machine, thread to match and "Food Grade" beans for filling the bags.  Makes 4 sets of 10 bags!

Step 1. Cut out all the squares and using a 2" stencil, copy the numbers , (mirror imaged) onto the no-sew heat n bond fusible web.  Iron to the wrong side of the fabric scraps or 3" strips and cut them out.  Peel off the paper and iron the numbers to the center of each of the muslin squares-as shown here.
Step 2; With right sides together, stitch around the outside of the squares using a 1/4" seam and leave the bottom, center open for turning.  Clip the corners and turn right side out. 
Step 3: Fill with 3 tablespoons of beans and stitch closed.  Do not over fill these bean bags or you will have a problem stitching them closed. 

For those of you who would like a set of these bean bags but don't have time to make a set, or perhaps you don't sew,  I have one extra set you can buy for $20 + postage.  The set even comes with it's own carrying case!  If interested, e-mail me at: powellcynthia@comcast . net

Earring Swap

Lesley is hosting an earring swap over at the Latest Trends. Rusty &/or found objects. Here's a pic of the earrings I made for this swap. I really had fun hunting down the elements to use for these. Somewhere along the line, I managed to either trade for these awesome green flowers or bought them in a bag of other goodies at a yard sale. The cameos were actually buttons that I removed the back of and the red discs are wooden circles that I inked. Join the group and sign up for this swap, there are some pretty amazing earrings already being posted, of which I wouldn't mind wearing!

April's Designer Paper Technique

Grab yourself some old magazines and have some fun tearing out the pages for this awesome paper technique! Sort your pages by color and group them with colors that compliment eachother. Use watercolor paper or thin cardboard as a substrate and decoupage your torn papers on randomly. To texturize, apply gel medium, (not heavy body) and rake through it with a fork or other impliment. Add a colored glaze, 3-5 times and you are done. You can then dry brush on some gesso or metallic paints, whatever your heart desires. Make sure you allow plenty of drying time between each layer of a wet application.

Bringing It All Together

Combining scrapbook die-cuts, with stamping & throw in a little Mixed Media and this is what I have been working on the past few days. I had no idea how long glitter glue took to dry! I started with a balsa wood type box. I then stamped a background using a background stamp from www.Inkastamps.com in sepia. The trim was done with a Martha Stuart hand punch for edging papers. The Ballerinas were die-cut using a file provided by Ruth Denton on her blog: http://scrappingaway.blogspot.com and the cricut machine. I love the Petaloo flowers so I combined them with an antique porcelin knob, threw on a tag, glitter glued the tutu's of each of the ballerinas, added some flat back rhinestones and after two days of drying time, here's the finished box. I will use it in my studio to store the Petaloo flowers for future use.