Wire rack paint holder, disaster and triumph

My first disastrous attempt to hang the paint hanger with ribbon, 1 cupboard hook and staples at 3 am…took an hour before I gave up and began cutting it down (this pic is halfway through the cut down)

This lead to giving up, going back to bed and waking up in a horrible mood (that and other things lead to a melt down of epic proportions where the thought of burning every craft supply came to mind as I am feeling horribly overwhelmed)
Finally the Alex calmed me down and made me just shut the door on it for a bit.  I scraped up $10 and my mom and I went to Michael’s because in some weird logic getting more craft supplies made sense and it mellowed me out.  
Part of the stress has been the big 30 piece art project and feeling excited but stalled and trying to think of ways I can do it in time.  So what do we find for $0.25 each? 5″x5″ stretched canvases with some fruit printed on them that will be perfect for altering.  Yes I bought 30 of them but in my defense they immediately were put away in the hall closet.
So this cheered me up enough to try again with the rack.
I used 2 cupboard hooks spaced far enough to actually hook the bottom grid onto them then another cupboard hook above it with a ribbon to hold the outside grid up a pinch higher than the bottom grid so stuff would not fall out and a small ribbon stapled to the wall to hold the bottom grid flat to it so it doesn’t push away from the wall.
The results!

These are my puffy paints, glitter paints, screen painting paints and a couple of mediums.

8 steps to free yourself up as an artist:

Step #1 go to Pinterest (or a google image search)

Step #2 find a board with about 2000 pieces of random art (art journal ideas in this case http://pinterest.com/mardi_sheridan/journal-ideas/)

Step #3 pin (save) EVERY piece you see that even part of it inspires you, dont worry if it isnt something you think you can or would do or if only a tiny bit of it inspires you….PIN IT (or save it)

Step #4 go through your list of inspiring pins (pics) and think of the art you can create with these inspirations and ideas (not duplicate but make your own in maybe a new style)

Step #5 envision it on your wall

Step #6 imagine your friends seeing it on your wall

Step #7 every time you imagine and worry about your friends not liking your art because it is different from stuff you usually do, or not cool enough, or has pink in it…SMACK YOURSELF UPSIDE THE HEAD until you realize that it is YOUR art and what you think of it is what matters

Step #8 CREATE SOMETHING DIFFERENT, make something you might not otherwise try, open yourself up to ideas, go for it!

Faux tiled journals

Vinyl Wallcoverings with texture

Cheap Clearance Journal from Micheal’s

Random selection of the pieces of vinyl in neutral colors

Glued them down after trimming them with a slide cutter

I used Elmers first but it was annoying (slipping and sliding and taking a long time to dry) I now use a very small amount of E-600

I then painted the journal gold and used a foam stamp and matte red paint

Faux Arabic Lanterns

I had a great time turning an old stretched out sweater and a rotisserie BBQ cage into two faux Arabic lanterns for my front room.

A BBQ rotisserie cage I got at a thrift store for 30% off

I cut the cage in half (more or less) with wire cutters and tape to keep the little bits from flying around

This is an Old 4x sweater that got stretched out to about a 6X and I wear a 1-2X now but did not want to waste the material

The sleeves fit perfectly over the cage and I held them in place at the top with paperclips while I painted it

Due to the way the grid was placed the lanterns are slightly different sizes, I painted the sweater material with gold craft paint after spraying it with clear spraypaint to help keep it from all absorbing in too much

I then painted it with gold glitter craft paint

I wired them with the lamp sets from some Chinese paper lanterns and removable plugs (this was an adventure because I was exhausted and kept putting parts on the cords before running them through the top of the lantern)

I painted the small bulbs that were in the original lanterns with glass paint (the color is so much stronger than store bought colored bulbs) one has red and one has a blue green bulb

 

 

 

Art and Craft books I want

So many! Here are just a few…

My passion right now is mixed media and upcycling stuff for art

Coffee art

So I had seen pictures of art done with coffee, I am no where near as good as some of the artists I saw but I did have fun while sitting in the Dawson’s Downtown Coffeehouse with a piece of textured linen paper a waterbrush from my Koi Watercolor set and half an espresso, water and some espresso grounds.

Here is what I was able to do in 30 mins… pretty simple but fun

Coffee art

By the way I did not buy the espresso, it was given to me (hence being half a serving) so it does not count as going off my art supply buying wagon..lol

Hand-bound art journal book pages

I am doing a hand-bound books using the stitch over ribbon method for both my Weight Loss Surgery journey and for our Handfasting

So far I only really have stuff done for the WLS book, I need to start working on the Handfasting one soon.

Reset Button – Sharpie and colored pencil

Someday, Goal – Zentangle in sharpie micros

Would I be a different person? – Sharpie micro over colored pencils

Some more Art Journal Every Day stuff

I have either been prepping pages, studying/buying art journal books or actively working on pages every day this month

I have decided to do a weight loss surgery Journal using  “stitch over ribbon” bookbinding with Bristol and watercolor paper and some bookboards from an old light weight journal and then binding it with cloth measuring tape ribbon like the one below (mine is 8 1/2 by 5 1/2 in)

I may also do one on our Handfasting, not sure.

(sorry my camera phone is not great, going to scan a bunch of work this month)

the one with the butterfly above it is my inspiration

I am learning what I can and cant do with bristol paper which I have never used before, it looks like I will be investing some money in 140# watercolor paper and learning about gessoing bristol paper, It should be a learning experiment.

1st page in my 1st handmade book, red ink sunk through page, thankfully there was nothing on the back

I have also been doing Zentangles and some work in the new journal..

Zentangle to celebrate getting under 300 pounds (I was up to 463)

Zentangle for the point of ... well Zenning out

A DIY for the Handfasting – Guestbook

I am changing my Handfasting Blog into more of an official handfasting/wedding website using a blog format and moving the blog elements around to my other blogs where they fit.

I found a great photo album that holds 72 4×6 photos and has a picture frame on the front, so I watercolored about 50 4×6 sheets of watercolor paper with a few different techniques in reds and purples with a few blues (purple and black is our main color with red and blue as accent) we will put all the cards on a table with a couple of containers of different metallic gel pens and markers along with clipboards and stickers and ask people to leave us messages through out the reception.
I also got a great photo box that has a picture frame in the front as well, I will put a page explaining what we want in it and have it as a place for people to put the finished cards
When we are done we will fill the album with both the cards and the photos of us with guests so we will have both an album and guestbook

Box and 4×6 watercolor sheets

Guestbook album and sheets

More DIY – Skeleton Key Boutonniere and necklace

I am changing our Handfasting site into less of a blog and more of an official wedding site so I am moving my DIY and art projects form it to here

When Alex and I met at a LARP game we just sort of noticed each other
but never connected until March of 2010 when we met at a Masquerade and I
was wearing a Steampunk outfit that included a necklace with tons of
keys. Alex later told me he had wanted to play with my keys all night as
we sat and flirted.

So when I took that very heavy necklace apart I made parts of it over
into other stuff, including the necklace I will wear and the boutonniere
I made for Alex, and soon Earrings for me. I wired them for a little
more interest.

Ultimate Gamer/geek dice/feather/bead bouquet FINISHED

My bouquet for our handfasting in April of 2011

It is all done, got to love dice, beads, crystals, feathers, wire, duct tape and ribbons… I LOVE IT!

Handle and crystals

view from above

finished Bouquet

First attempt with thinning oil pastels

I have been doing my Art Journaling Every Day work, a lot of it by prepping an old art journal I did for Anatomy/life drawing in university in 1990.  I took out some pages and reglued them in with matte medium so they would have both double strength pages and clean backing pages since the original markers ran through the cheap old pages.  I then Gessoed all the blank pages and I am in the process of covering some of the others with matte medium to protect the original sketches and leave them workable.

I am following the Strathmore Art Journaling Series (next purchase a Strathmore Watercolor Art journal or mixed media journal) and one of the suggestions she had was using Oil pastels with an odorless thinner.  I have oil pastels, a 36 set and a 25 set nearly untouched because I dont like the choppy look of them but I decided to give it a try since I would be carrying it in the Art Bag Of Holding known as my Backpack.  I had a 20% off coupon at Fred Meyer and theyhad odorless mineral spirits for $5 in a nice little bottle with a secure cap so I got it ($4)

Izzie (Alex’s sister) and I went to the coffee shop and I did some artwork Friday afternoon and the only watercolor paper I had with me was for my 8x8in loose leaf journal and it had been prepped with a watercolor wash already.  I used a tissue I had in my bag and laid out a large piece of plasticized freezer/butcher paper to protect their table and started just messing around with the page.

I seldom draw faces but I wanted to give ti a try so this is what I eventually came up with:

My 1st attempt at using oil pastels with thinner

Sadly the photo is from my phone and not too great, I will scan it eventually after I seal it with fixative and give it time to dry completely.  This fills both my Art Journal Every Day goal and my 8×8 Art Journal Weekly goal where I am going to do a page in my 8×8 journal as well as any of my random journal work.

Izzie was so impressed by how it came out I gave her my old 25 piece Pentel oil pastel set (which as I said looked like new since I had not used much of it).  Even though they are older they just need the tops rubbed off a bit to be good and usable.  I kept the 36 piece Pro-Art set and I intend to invest in a much better set soon as well as another book of watercolor paper, though I would like to find one smoother paper