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!