rubber stamping, collage, mixed media & altered art

I’ve been tagged by Beth and now I must to say 7 random things about myself. Since this is an art blog, I’m just doing art-related random facts. Here they are:

1. I always want to add glitter or rhinestones or sparkly brads or sparkle pen marks to my artwork.

2. Blue is my go-to color. Any blue.

3. I think Glue Dots are the best invention ever.

4. Followed closely by the Crop-a-Dile.

5. I can’t see the floor in my studio right now.

6. I am currently on a self-imposed craft supply embargo because I have more stuff than I can possibly use. But if I see cool decorative tape or pens that I need, I can’t stop myself.

7. One of my favorite albums to listen to when I am making backgrounds is the Proclaimers “Sunshine on Leith”.

Now I tag you guys:

Fran

Kelly

Christine

Venita

Joanne

Leighanna

Leah

This week seems to be devoid of the kind of creativity I was hoping to achieve each day, but I did manage to get in a bit of art/creativity despite the busy work week.

Day 10 (Monday): Played the “what-bills-can-I-pay-on-time-with-the-money-I-have-while-the-deposit-I-just-made-is-clearing” game. That is super creative, believe you me!

Day 11 (Tuesday): Worked on a logo for my friend. I want to show it here, but I don’t know that she’s ready for that. I still need to do a couple of alternate designs. This kind of work is really fun for me. I also shot the photos of my work during the weekend at the Kelly Kilmer workshops.

Day 12 (Wednesday): I went to trivia with Tim and we came in 3rd! Trivia night always requires some creative thinking!

Day 13 (Thursday): Faced with a few challenges, I managed work around it to get everything done without completely freaking out, which was a huge growth experience for me.

Day 14 (Friday): Worked on clearing up the office a bit, and began my big ole reorganization plan. I sorted beads, rhinestones, brads, eyelets, charms and MORE! I also found a whole bunch of stuff I forgot about, which could is definitely going to enhance my creativity.

Hm…am I stretching it? I feel like I’m stretching it. That’s ok, because this weekend will be jam-packed with creativity, as I have a swap deadline looming and it has to mail out by Day 21.

I am mostly recovered from the weekend of workshops with Kelly Kilmer. Almost mostly recovered. That girl is such a generous, talented and creative instructor. She’s so clever, too! My brain has been whizzing with ideas since the weekend and when I try to sleep at night, I dream about pens and decorative packing tape. If you are at all interested in bookmaking, collage, journaling or simply expanding your horizons, look at taking one (or more!!) of Kelly’s classes. Here are a few of the things I did over the course of the weekend. There are more on my Flickr photo gallery.

None of these projects are complete. There is still a lot of journaling and collaging to be done (what a bummer…haha). I’ve spent the past two nights ripping collage images out of old magazines while we watch tv. Kelly really has inspired me. She also took a look at an ongoing project of mine and encouraged me to teach a class on it. I would never have thought it would be a good class idea, but once she turned on the light, I could see it! One of the other students said she would take a class like the one Kelly and I were talking about, so I’m going to work on outlining that over the next month or so.

		The Storyteller book was fun. We made a book out half of a parent sheet of cardstock, folding and cutting following Kelly’s instructions. It’s a fun little book and I can see it being a great travel journal or journal for a specific event where you might not need a whole lot of pages like in a regular book or journal. Here is the cover and one of the spreads within the book.
The Storyteller
		Little Book of Faux Monoprints started from sheets of cardstock that we painted and on which we used a bunch of monoprinting exercises. At some point, I just started painting pages and then smooshing them together with another page. It was so freeing. This little book is so cute, but I am not sure what I’m using it for yet. Snippets was awesome. I love the shape and size of this book and Kelly’s methods of making split pages within the book are really cool. I never would have thought of them myself! This is just the cover. None of my collages inside are complete yet.
Little Book of Faux Monoprints	Snippets- A Unique Artist Book
		Goin’ Postal was a 2-hour class where we used 6×9 matboard to create mailable art. I am a big fan of mail art and appreciated Kelly’s input on my compositions. This little girl really haunts me. The other side of this card and the other postcard I started are on Flickr. And I finally learned Japanese stab binding in the Fukoro Toji or Little Bound Book. It’s not as difficult as I thought it was, probably because Kelly is such a good instructor.
Goin’ Postal	Fukoro Toji or Little Bound Book

Today wasn’t a superbly creative day, other than dealing the usual work challenges. The closest I got to art was photographing the last two days of journaling and pulling together supplies for the next three days of workshops with Kelly Kilmer. Kelly is one of my favorite instructors and I have been chomping at the bit for this weekend to hurry up and get here! I will have no problem meeting my personal challenge of art every day for the next three days, which is why I’m going so easy on myself today.

Have a great weekend, everyone!

I did this spread on Day 5 and didn’t think a lot about it. Used a background I did over the weekend. Cobbled together a silly little bird I drew on a book page. Played with watercolor crayons. TA DA! This is also in the same calendar journal as featured on Day 4.

I did most of this journaling while we watched the election returns on Tuesday. I felt hope and excitement and like I can do anything…just like Twyla Tharp appears to feel in this photo from a Gap ad.

This is in the calendar journal belonging to Terry, a member of Calendargirlz.

Now I know you are going to find this shocking, but today didn’t go as well as I had hoped in the creativity department. Better than most work days, however.

There’s a client of mine, a scrapbooking store in Plymouth, Indiana, that needed a rush post card mailing to be done today. It took a while to get it all to come together, due to a number of circumstances completely beyond my control and I am about 85% pleased with the job I did. I don’t get to do print work for my clients very often, so I find it to be a nice change of pace. I had to be very creative today, believe me!

And when that was completed, another client asked for a rush job on a business card layout, so I got to do it all over again!

Now I’m going to go sit on the sofa and doodle (which I didn’t actually get to last night after all) while my awesome husband makes dinner.

I have to admit, despite my excitement to start Art Every Day Month, I wasn’t as motivated when I sat down to do art. But luckily, AEDM basically covers any form of creativity. So here are the creative things I did this weekend:

• I made a big batch of pizza sausage tonight, managing to turn $10-12 worth of meat into the makins for a total of 6 easy meals for Tim and myself. Yay! And pizza dough was on sale, so that was an extra bonus.
• Started writing a letter to my aunt.
• I created our menus for the upcoming week.
• I began planning the autumn and Christmas decorating (in my head).
• I doodled in my daily journal, setting up my November calendar page spread.
• I jotted down a couple of pages of ideas for canvases.
• When I went to look for my canvases, I realized that stepping over everything and not being able to find what I’m looking for was hindering my creativity, so I did some filing, organizing, recycling and trashing. I filed a bunch of ATCs from swaps and figured out how I’m going to handle inchies (now that I am in love with them and am compelled to make many more).
• I came up with my plan for revamping an area of my office that isn’t making me happy.
• Informed myself and my husband that my “office” is now officially my STUDIO and we will never refer to it as an office again.

And, just so this post isn’t devoid of pretty pictures, I’ve added a photo of a recent journal spread I did in an RR. I am in love with this spread and luckily, the owner of the journal in which I did it loves it too! yay!

And after I post this and finish the letter to my aunt, I am going to doodle some more.

Encouraged by Fran, I am going to participate in Art Every Day Month (AEDM), which is run by an amazing artist I really love, Leah Piken.

There, I’ve said it. Now I’m going to do it. Catch you kids later!

Just a quickie tonight as I’m heading out for my last night at Creating Your Heart’s Desire Part 1 workshop. I made this little ATC for the October ATC of the Month swap on Stampers Corner. I love when a project (especially one with a deadline) comes together really quickly without putting a ton of thought into it, don’t you?

The orange dealies are Sparkle Spots I got from Suze Weinberg, but it seems like she’s out of them. Oh man, these are so easy and quick to add unusual sparkle to a project! I hope she brings them back! Retro Witch stamp from Third Coast Rubber Stamps.