Winter Greenery Postcard

My online art group, AAWA (An Affair With Art) is doing a postcard swap and the theme is Holiday/Winter Greenery.  This include Christmas trees, mistletoe, holly, poinsettias, wreaths, etc.
So when I saw this post of a Christmas wreath here on a blog called My Watercolor Journal, I decided that is what I wanted to do for my postcard. I hope that you will look at her lovely blog and enjoy her beautiful posts and tutorials.
I did 6 of these postcards to use for some of my Christmas cards too. I don't think mine are as pretty as her wreath turned out but I do like it. It was fun to do and I hope you enjoy looking at it.

A Tassel for my online Art group swap

My online art group AAWA (An Affair With Art) is doing a tassel swap. Jeri wanted us to do fibers, chain,lace and beads. I did use a metal thimble that I put copper embossing powders on. I was unsure if I wanted to use it or not but could not find a large bead cap in copper so I did decide to use it. I also used a bead that one of the members of AAWA gave to me as a little giftie.  I have been saving it for something special and could not think of anything better to use it on. I found the elephants at Big Lots and thought that they would make a good last minute addition to the tassel. I wove ribbon into my chains. I used the darker jewel tones that Jeri wanted us to use. I hope Yooper likes it!

Mix It Monthly - Owls

This is my art journal take on the Mix It Monthly Theme of owls. I think of wisdom when I think of owls so I added this quote. The colors that Conny wanted us to use were the red, green and mustard yellow. I hope you enjoy seeing my wise old owl!

 

Mix It Monthly - 2nd Canvas - Graphic pattern and Children

I did this canvas just for fun but realized that it would fit into the Mix It Monthly theme also because it has the correct colors and it has graphic pattern in the woman's dress. I found this picture in a magazine and just adored the sweetness of it and wanted to paint it. I did the dress of the woman in white and then did a stencil with lace over the white to give it the pattern. I wanted the woman to look like a bride. The little girl is just so cute! The canvas is mixed media. There are old book pages and writing underneath but you really don't see them unless you know they are there. The painting is water colors and acrylics. I named the painting "Flower Girls".
So here is my 2nd painting for the month! Wow! Didn't know I had it in me!

Mix It Monthly - November challenge - Kids and Graphic pattern

Over on Mix It Monthly (here), the challenge for this month was to do a painting of a child, to do some pattern and to use sea blue, pale pink, and green colors. A friend asked me if I had done paintings of my family and I realized that I have not. So I found this picture of my 6 year old Grandson.  I thought that it would be perfect with the pattern in his shorts, the tree for the green and the sky for the pink and blue. This is the best fun I have all month and I am doing things that I would never have done otherwise if it were not for this challenge. I hope you enjoy seeing it.

Conny over on Mix It Monthly has the honor of being one of the teachers in the Soul Food art class. She is giving away a spot in the class on Monday 11/11 here. If you'd like to win a spot in the class just go to the link and leave a comment.

Fleur De Lis Postcard

 

This is a Fleur De Lis Postcard that I did for a swap with my online art group, AAWA (An Affair with Art). I hope Sue enjoys it. I got a new little tool that has dies that creates the embossed Fleur De Lis and I had some little Fleur De Lis "buttons".  My friend, Jean gave me the die cuts in another swap with our group. I love all those die cuts and have really made use of them.  

Mix It Monthly art Challenge for October

Over on The Mix is Monthly Site Here the challenge is to do some art with a crowd in it. A crowd being 3 or more people. She also challenged us to use the orange, yellow and blue colors with some texture.
Well last night after my dear hubby went to bed, I found a magazine picture again to inspire me in a fashion magazine. I found these 3 ladies dancing the tango. I thought that would be the perfect thing to draw! I had a real challenge with the lady who is looking down at the first girl's feet to learn the steps. I erased her many times but finally am somewhat happy with how I have her looking.
After I was happy with the girls, I drew them in with ink and did watercolors.
My texture is Liquitex Blended fibers texture gel. I inked over the gel when it dried. I especially like the stone floor with texture. The walls have texture too but not the girls themselves.
I hope that you enjoy it because it was really fun to do and the most relaxing thing I did all day.

Making some cards

My sweet friend, Claudia was able to spend a weekend with me recently and she let me use her lovely new Swallowtail Stampin Up stamp. We did several colors of them and embossed them. Today I finally have some free time so I am making some cards. I cut this one out and put it onto some scraps of paper that I have and added a Celebrate stamp from another Stampin Up set. I may color some of them. They are so pretty!

Mix It Monthly Challenge - Feathers from Da Vinci

Over on the Mix It Monthly Challenge Conny has a challenge for us here to use a feather and the colors of mint green, grey and hibiscus. I found this picture in our local magazine of a man who shines shoes in our town. He has such an interesting face. I wanted to draw his weathered, interesting face so I decided to draw him for the challenge. I will never capture him exactly but it was fun to try.

 

 

Wahoo!

It pays to have friends who have vendor routes that gives you gifts.
This rack will be great to put art on!
I have been able to gift several of the South Carolina girls in our Altered Book Club with one or maybe two of these. I hope to get 4 more today or tomorrow and everyone is tickled with this great rack or RAK (random act of kindness)!

Slide Mounts - Theme - In The Garden

 This is my first time doing slide mounts. I did these for a swap with my online art group, AAWA (an affair with art) and the theme was "In The Garden". I had some of these cute little flowers that my friend, Dorothy gave me so I used them on the front of the slide mounts.
I cannot decide which one to send to Susan who I am to swap with so I am going to let her choose if she wants the single one or the double one and I will keep the other one.
I used micro beads around the slides.

Paper Dolls

We had a paper doll evening at our local stamp and scrapbook store, Whimsey's. Carol had this doll that she had already stamped for us and a sample that she had made for us. The background frame was from an antique album that she has in her shop. I have her on my mantel and will enjoy her for a long time to come.

I also stamped these two paper dolls and will make something with them too when I have the time. We all had a really fun time at Whimsey's and we all look forward to what Carol will have in store for us next time! Thanks Carol!

 

 

We All Shine On - Mix It Monthly Challenge

Over on the Mix It Monthly Challenge blog HERE they have a new challenge up that I wanted to join in on. She has challenged us to do flower, the colors violet, red, yellow and yellow-green along with an inspiration from a vintage piece of jewelry.

Here is my vintage piece of jewelry which is not a great scan but I'm sure you can tell pretty much what it looks like. It is a piece of costume jewelry from my sweet Mother-in-law who is a giver. She is always giving everyone something.

Here is my piece of art in one of my art journals. I hope you can tell that the centers of the flowers were inspired by the vintage piece of jewelry. I knew I want to write a quote of something with the word "shine" or "shiny" in it. I also did the centers of the flowers with Stickles to make them shiny.

Then on the way to work this morning I heard this song on my favorite oldies station. I did not realize until I got home that it is a John Lennon song. Perfect - I love the Beatles and that is what my hubby of 43 years and I loved when we were dating.  The Zentangles seemed perfect for this Lennon song too. If you'd like to listen to it you can go Here and hear it on You Tube.  Warning though, it might just get stuck in your head like it's in mine.

I know my sweet Mother-in-Law who is 89 years old will shine on in many peoples' lives even after she is gone. I know for sure that she will shine on as a perfect example in my life!

 

 

Just for Fun!

Our local Altered Book Club does a small project for one of our members each month. It's my turn and I asked for Halloween 4x4s. I just couldn't resist doing a 4x4 for myself since I love Halloween!

The cat, tag and background are grunge board. The little tag is the one that is outside of the package of grunge board and I recycled it for my project.

Pages for my friend, Dee and Mix it Monthly Challenge

I have an online art group that recently met in Texas. One of my very good friends, Dee, sent me

some pages for her beach junk book that she wanted me to do for her since I was unable to go to Texas. I decided to recreate some pages that I recently did in my own art journal at the beach. The shells were drawn and painted from some that were at the beach. I added the quote which continues on both pages and says, "I find myself at the extremity of a long beach. How gladly does the spirit leap forth, and suddenly enlarge its sense of being to the full extent of the broad, blue, sunny deep! A greeting and a homage to the sea! I descend over its margin, and dip my hand into the wave that meets me, and bathe my brow That far-resounding roar is the ocean's voice of welcome. His salt breath brings a blessing along with it." ~Nathaniel Hawthorne - "Foot-prints on the Sea Shore"

Then I found a challenge web site called Mix it Monthly challenge Here.

 

I decided to do this art for the challenge. The challenge wanted us to use blue, violet, and sand colors and real wood, and a bird.

So this is what I did on the backs of the first art that I did for Dee and for the challenge.

The seagulls are Sizzix diecuts which are watercolored.  The stamps are discontinued ones from Stampin Up.

 

 

 

The wood was a real challenge but I decided to use small pieces of wood that I painted white to look like the fences that you see around the sand dunes.

The sunset looks like it's melting into the sea due to the fact that I used water colors over acrylics but I just left it that way because sometimes it looks that way in real life.

The poppy is from a class that we did in our local Altered Book Club on Zentangles and it is a RAK (random Act of Kindness) for Dee because she loves poppies and grows some really beautiful ones in her yard.

It's been too long since I posted anything on my blog so I want to get back in the groove!

Paper dress on a tag

I've been enjoying looking at paper dresses on Pinterest for a while now. I think they are so pretty! So I was delighted when my online art group, AAWA, An Affair With Art wanted us to do a paper dress on a tag for a mingle. I purchased a dress stamp at my favorite local store, Whimsey's. I loved the stamp but made it a little bigger by adding extra skirt layers behind the dress. I just love this quote from Oscar Wilde. I made the rack from a paper clip and the background colors are Dylusions inks.  I thought that little piece of loopy trim was the perfect finishing touch!

 

April 'Take the Challenge' with Mou

 

I had this Ruby Rd. Woman tag off of a piece of my clothes and I saved it to do some artwork with. I also saved the Chinese fortune cookie fortune that say, "Your co-workers take pleasure in your great sense of creativity."  I thought that they would both make a great art page someday.  Well I went to Faber-Castell's website and found this challenge to make some art with something used or old. I think my tag and fortune certainly would fit the bill. I also did the girl with an old book page that I tore out of the altered books that I do with my altered book club. The background page was done at my art journaling class that I do at a local store, Whimsey's. She had us tape off our pages for a fun new technique. I think the background works particularly well with this page because it becomes the Ruby road!

After I did the background, I was a little stuck and didn't know what else I wanted to do with it but the challenge made me think - This is what I could do with that page!

I found the great quote from one of my favorite artist, Claude Monet and thought it worked well too.

The other writing on the page says, I love colors too and just had to do a woman in red to go with my tag from some of my clothes.

Then I add the butterflies for color and beauty.

 I hope you enjoy my Ruby red woman! She was lots of fun to make and now I have used some great old things.

If you'd like to see the challenge you can go here.

 

Carnival/Midway themed postcards

These are the two postcards with a carnival/midway design on them for my online art group, AAWA.

We love to go to the fair at Winston-Salem, NC with our kids and grandson and I found this paper several years ago and have not made a fair scrapbook page yet! But I will hopefully this year remember to make some good photos. Thankfully I had two pages of this great paper and the stamped images were from my art journaling class. The lady that own the shop shared her wonderful and perfect for this theme stamps with me.  Of course, I had to add a washi tape banner to them. I am just now getting into washi tapes and I'm beginning to love this stuff!

 

 

altered bottles and Easter

This is my smallest Grand girlie and she and I are making an altered bottle at Altered book club. I love this photo and this is how I want all of my little Grands to remember Nana - someone who loves them and wants to be with them and take time for them. We made two bottles for her and my bottle was pre-made because I knew most of my time would be spent on her.

This is my bottle. I did it with tissue paper and paint. I did do the "jewelery" for my bottle there at AB club.

My smallest Grandgirlie and I made the egg garland on my fireplace mantle. My DH was so sweet to get me these beautiful flowers that I was not going to purchase because I thought they were too expensive. So that makes them even more special to me! All my ceramic bunnies were made many years ago when I was into ceramics. There is Linda's altered spool on the mantle too!

 Here is our delicious meal! We had a spiral ham, green beans, Mac and cheese by my sweet little MIL, sweet potato casserole which is my sister's DH's grandmother's recipe, rolls and pickled beets and eggs that are in the Southern Living magazine this month. The recipe has a little too much salt but maybe they didn't intend for you to eat the beets - just the eggs . They are wonderful even if they are a little salty. I'll just reduce the salt next time and definitely will make them a next time!

This is my table with a vintage tablecloth, my Grandmother's dishes, Vintage family silver and glasses. I made some little bird nests with Chinese noodles and chocolate and candy eggs. There are more ceramic bunnies.  I have not taken down Jeri's Valentine Hangie that is hanging on my antique cabinet because I'm still enjoying it at Easter.

 That's me on the left, my tiny little 88 year old MIL, and my friend, Cherokee all having a good laugh. I don't know if you can tell or not, but my DH collects Santas.

Cherokee and I are cleaning up. This picture shows more of Grandmother's dishes, my lemon cake I made for Easter with a basketweave on it, and the little chocolate nests.

I had a great day! I hope your Easter was as fun and blessed as mine was.

Bird themed Altered spools

These are my altered spools for a swap with my online art group, AAWA. I did two because my good friend, Claudia wanted one too when she heard that I was doing a bird theme. She loves anything with birds. The front of the spools will also hold a small picture if you'd like instead of the watercolored bird. The little wire nest with three bead eggs can be removed and worn on a necklace if you add a jewelery ring or clip. I added some fun feathers and some bird washie tape to the back of the spool.  The other spool will go to Pam. I hope that she enjoys it! I know I will enjoy my spool that I get in return from Linda because it is bird themed too although different from mine. I will post it after I get it Saturday. These were fun and I think they turned out really cute!

Two other cards with Diecuts from our swap

Here are two other cards that I did that were inspired by my Pinterest board pins. I had a Pinterest Party the other day with 7 other friends and we came to my house and spent the day creating art inspired by Pinterest.

The vine in the first card and the frame for the bird in the second card were from my diecut swap with my friend, Jean. She really gave me some great dies and I will really enjoy using them all!

The Ferris Wheel and the bird are both from Stampin UP.

Tim Holtz's tattered flower challenge

 

Thanks to my sweet friend, Jean who did a die cut swap with me, I had some of the tattered florals to do Tim's challenge. I needed to send Jean a thank you card anyway for sending me some wonderful diecuts. I did a very shabby chic card since it is a tattered floral challenge!  I think the lace stamp in the background looks like it could be a stocking for a can can girl.

Now I'll just cross my fingers that Tim will like it and send me some free goodies!

Paint-Over and Altered Book

 

It's been a long time since I've had time to post on my blog. This is the latest art that I've done. This was a two page layout in Stephanie's Altered Book on Country Music. We've loved Willie Nelson since we first married 42 years ago.  So this was a pleasure to do for her book. I found the picture of Willie and put tracing paper over it and drew him over the picture. I love his song, Blue Eyes Crying In the Rain and was surprised to learn that he did not write that one! I also loved journaling about his quitar. He says when the guitar goes, he goes! He also hid the guitar when he was having IRS problems.  I put a list of all the songs he has written in the book and the list is over 300 songs long! I'm a messy painter and got paint on Willie's face but I figure it's artistic and looks like blue tears. That's my story and I'm sticking to it!

I did a similar Paint-over for a swap with my online art group in December and found this picture again in a magazine. So I did it for me this time. I just love this starry-eyed couple and they look so in love! I love painting over magazine pictures with my watercolors and I'm going to teach this technique to my Altered Book Club this Saturday.