Birds of Sadness

I puttered with this canvas today, adding embellishments to the bird and the words. My heart is very sad today, because of issues with my Heart. Nuff said, back to Art.

Am debating whether to add UTEE in an iridescent color around the words. Thoughts?

His Heart Ache was Real- Revised

I used my artistic license to revise the finished version of this cabinet card. I kept looking at it, thinking, something is not right.....and with the addition of a few more threads, it looks just right now.

Working on the yellow Bird canvas next....

His Heart Ache Was Real completed

Worked a half day at work today, shopped for a birthday present, came home to lay down for a "minute" and yup, just woke up at 9pm. Decided to put the finishing touches on "His Heartache was Real" and share them. I cut little roses out of scrapbook paper, distressed them, used UTEE on the heart, ripped it. And after a wash of gesso, some glitter glue, (Stickles) Voila, finished.

I love my japenese screw punch. It works wonders on these thick cabinet cards.
Hope you like him!!!

"Yankees Collage" Continued - *Spoiler Alert*

Moving right along with my Yankees collage. I'm loving the creative process and the results, so I'm going to do a series of 3 collages. Below are the results of : cutting several pieces of acid free tissue 8 1/2 x 11, glue sticking the edges of card stock, laying the tissue on top, and running it thru my printer. There was a tiny bit of running on the red logo, but nothing that won't be hidden under several more layers of paint, anyway. I cut out the logos, and used Golden Soft Gel to adhere to the canvas. I edged them with some Paynes Gray to blend.

Printed Lou out on an Apollo Ink jet printer Transparency. Painted the back of his face and neck with Titan Buff. He's not glued on yet, I still have numbers and words and I'm thinking of having another player standing on his shoulder.
Let me know what you think!!

KoKo Taylor- QUEEN of the BLUES

I spent the best part of this weekend at the Riverfront Blues Festival in Wilmington, Delaware.
I was thrilled to get the opportunity to see the Blues Legend, KoKo Taylor perform.
But First!!!
We jammed to the Larry McCray Band.

Ok, I'm cheating, this photo is not from the concert, but we were right in front of the band and I didn't want to lose my place because of course I left my camera back at the chairs. duh. He is a great guitarist. On his website you can hear cuts from his new CD. Of course, my favorite song is called "Big Black Hole" (where once was a heart).Gotta have it!

Then: Li'l Ed and the Blues Imperials.

OMG Li'l Ed is totally and completely amazing. He plays to the crowd, is Majorly charismatic and an amazing guitarist. Again, I didn't have my camera so the photo below is from his website. He wears a fez, is about 5 foot 5 inches tall, but is so full of energy you won't believe it. He dances on his toes too. Great voice.

We were bummed to have missed Micheal Burks, who went on stage before we arrived. Lucky for us, Li'l Ed called Michael out on stage and they jammed together. Michael was the greatest guitar talent of the day, IMHO.

Now for the QUEEN!!!! KOKO TAYLOR!!!

KoKo is 80 years old and appears very fragile. She needed assistance on and off the stage. BUT, then she got the mic in her hand and HOLY HELL BATMAN she WAS the BLUES.

Here's the Proof:

These photo's were taken by my Heart, as we stood up to the very front of the stage. oh yeah.
KoKo's husband hovered around on stage with hanky's for her to mop up with, and water to keep hydrated. She also had another assistant watching her from the sidelines who made sure the Blues did not overpower the Queen. KoKo was so sweet, expressing her gratitude and love for the audience, and we gave it back to her tenfold. You would not believe the power that comes out of this 80 year old Legend.
We were also very fortunate to get to hear a duet between Sharrie Williams and KoKo.
For an encore KoKo did "Wang Dang Doodle" .

It just doesn't get any better than that.
Keep the Blues Alive.

His Heart Ache Was Real

I'm having a great time altering Cabinet Cards. I love it. This one is a work in progress. I've used Sharpies, Portfolio water soluable oil pastels, plastic corners, white gel pen, little roses cut from scrapbook paper and a heart stamp from B-Line Designs. I was fortunate to take a "Metals" class from Beverly, the talented owner of this company, at my local scrapbook store, The Scrapbook Station". We pounded wire, used 10 Seconds studios tools, played with duct tape and mesh. It was a great class. I stamped this image during class and brought it home with me. Beverly ran out of the stamps before I had a chance to purchase one. The stamp is called Torn Heart duo, and some day I will buy it!! More to come on this one.....

New York Yankees Collage *Spoiler Alert*

For my next ACT: A collage in honor of the closing of Yankee Stadium. I am a baseball plebe, and can only hope I do the Yank's proud.
Using an 8x10 stretched canvas, started out with some Goldens Hansa Yellow Medium Acrylic.

Added acid free tissue for texture and washes of G's Transparent Oxide Red/orange etc.
  Yankee's ticket sales brochure in which I found the poem and dated image of Yankee Stadium. Sanded the image and did a wash of Payne's Gray.

Printed out a pic of Lou Gehrig with Babe Ruth onto a transparency. Cut it out close and gel mediumed that sucker on. I like the way the texture and colors show thru.
Added more paint and a photo of Lou Gehrig with some other Yank's.
The focal point is going to be a gel transfer or painted transparency of a very young Lou Gehrig. Lou happens to be my favorite Yankee.
Stay tuned.......

New Header

How do you like it?? I'm an HTML dummie. If I wasn't, the title would be centered on the photo. sigh. Anyhoo the header photo is a collage I did for an envelope round robin. Our group was called Thingmakers, hosted by Leighanna Light. Our group met during Leighanna's "Ultimate Passion Book" class at Art and Soul in Virginia. Lots of great work. Scroll back in time to my old post and read all about the class and see my finished envelope! I just saw Leighanna's "King, and "Queen of the Lopes" artwork that was inspired by our project in LK Ludwig's new book, "True Vision: Authentic Art Journaling." Can't wait for my next Border's Rewards Coupon!

Artist's I Heart

I have met many friendly and talented artists via blogging. I have been remiss about adding blog addy's and websites to my Artist's I Heart column. Well, holy time consuming Batman, I've updated the list!!!! Check out each and every one of them at your leisure, you won't be sorry!!! I still have a huge list of tutorial sites to revisit and add....egads......

Summer Skinny Book Page

I was able to finish my arttechniques Skinny Book pages this weekend. In the previous post, the background and wordings are shown. Moving on to the mermaids....

First step was picking some paper for the mermaid torso. I used scrap paper and free collage paper that was included in one of my issues of Somerset Studio magazine. The mermaid related stamps are all from Invoke Arts. One of my favorite rubber sources.



I used white ,and a color mix of my own making, embossing powders for the shell bras.

Next step was choosing the photo for the tails. I used a photo of the Sea I took while on vacation with my heart at the Outer Banks, North Carolina.

My inspiration for the tail was the stunning colors of angelina fibers I purchased during vendor night at Art and Soul. I also purchased some really cool rubber at this booth hosted by Doll Makers Ink. I used the directions from Sherrill Kahn's book, Creative Embellishments, on how to heat the fiber to make it "flat" and paper like. I highly recommend this book.
I used a teflon sheet, my iron, and a deep imprinted rubber stamp:

The rubber did not make much of an impression this time. Next time I'll use a thicker layer of fiber. I wanted an airy approach to the tail so I used a thin layer. I used the rubber tail piece as a guide to cut out the tails:

Used brads and sequins to attach all the parts together. I then use foam tape to attach the mergals to the page. Here are 3 different maids:

They are all a little bit different. Here is a close of one of the tails:

On the backs of the pages I embossed a Fred Mullett Sea Urchin stamp. I also listed my supplies and wrote out the whole quote by Jill Davis on transparencies. I adhered the transparencies with Glossy accents. :

Missing Porn Star Sighted

Mitch was sighted briefly this weekend while I rummaged through my lingerie drawer.


Within seconds Mighty Mitch had disappeared again. He is a slippery inch. Stay tuned....

Baby Love

My first meeting with Baby Gianna. Look how weepy I got. What a pushover. This kid is going to get lots of checks from me, I can tell.

Before she came out:

God Bless Jonni, John and Gianna.

ArtTechniques Skinny Book Page

I'm participating in my arttechniques yahoo group's skinny book page swap. There are 25 artists playing with the theme "Summer". I was much inspired by the Sea during my vacation with my heart to the Outer Banks, NC. Not long thereafter, I happened upon this quote by author Jill Davis: "The Waves of the Sea help bring Me back to Me. " Fell in love with those words. This page was easy with all that inspiration floating around. The skinny pages are 4"x7" and will be bound in the upper left hand corner. I began with watercolor paper and a color wash:

Here are the colorwash ingredients along with water:
Next step was creating texture by layering papers and using bubble wrap:
Next step, sea sponging along the edges with Golden's Iridescent Bronze Fine paint. I'm totally addicted to this paint. When you add water to make a wash the colors seperate and you get different effects on your paper. oooooooaaaaaa.


Here are the buggers laying out to dry:
My next step was adding sticker letters. In the spirit of Using What I Have, I raided my old scrapbook supplies (egads, keep that on the DL) and found lots and lots and lots of letters. I mixed and matched and was able to finish all the pages without having to buy any!! woohoo. I played around with techniques, on some I added stickers, used rubnbuff in turquoise and white, added white gel pen outlines, on some I used the letters as masks:

added a little white gel pen for definition:

Thats all for now! stay tuned for the unfolding of my skinny page!

Missing Porn Star

Mitch is MIA. The guys are down to 6 inches now, with Mitch gone. I've started recruiting volunteers to help in the search. Will keep you informed.

Mitch, You are Missed.

70's Porn Stars

Got your attention, didn't I? Here is my "fun with inchies" completed. These guys are from pages of an old clothing catalog I scanned and added details with Sharpies. They just looked like vintage porn stars to me, not that I've ever seen vintage porn, ahem. Anyhoo, I had a blast picking very studly names for each face. Anybody got any other good 70's porn star names? I still have a few faces left. These only add up to 7 inches, and I have enough to make a good 10 inch. teehee.

Chinese Proverb Canvas

Finished this canvas this weekend. I'm 100% in love with the Chinese Proverb that I discovered in the July/August issue of Cloth Paper Scissors. The artist who utilized this proverb in the article "Art at the Speed of Life" is Pam Carriker. Her work is full of layers, textures and gorgeous colors. Her talent is inspirational. I'm not 100% happy with my hand lettering, but that can only improve, right???? Sharpy does not flow well over Golden's Tar Gel medium, note to self! I'm a slut for that shiny surface though! The proverb reads: "You cannot prevent birds of sadness from passing over your head, but you can prevent thier making a nest in your hair." What a great sentiment.
Please feel free to comment/critique. Input is most welcome.

Fun with Cabinet Cards

Last Sunday I got lost in my favorite local antique store. I found some great faces on a couple of cabinet cards. I have several cards already but haven't been able to make myself alter them. It seems sacrilegious in a way. The hell with it, I went for it this week. My Heart was away and I had time to play. My first step was applying several layers of gel medium to the central figures on the card. After drying, I added gesso to the backgrounds. I didn't scan them before altering, oops.

I started with the female figure. I had no idea where I was going with this, so I began by digging through my paper stash looking for ideas and inspiration. Lo and behold after several hours flew by, I came up with this:

I really like this one. Not bad for a virgin effort. I used stencils, stamps, german scrap, rub n buff, magazine images, acrylics, corner tag, metal corner, dictionary entry, plastic sticker thing for brooch.

I've also started a 9 piece ATC series inspired by a White Stripe's song. Here is a sneak peak:

Also been playing around with Inchies, these should be done and posted by this weekend:
And an honorable mention goes to these 2 pieces that I've also been working on:
The above one is almost done. Below needs a lot more attention.

I have to wrap these projects up this week or set them aside, because I've commited to a 25 page skinny book due August 1. Can't wait to start it!