Altoid Tin Ornaments

Here are some Altoid tin Ornaments I had fun making this week. Im going to use them to put some gift cards in. I got the images from my free Christmas Images on my Blog from Go make something. I had a hard time finding long beaded trim. Surprisingly the best I found were at wal mart today. Have fun Creating this Holiday Season!!

Traveling by Train in Alaska

I wanted to finish one more spread in my book before I took it home to Christmas to share with my family. They all went with us to this trip in July. Here we are getting ready to get on the cruise in Seward. We took a train from Anchorage where everyone flew in to meet. We had 24 family members go on this vacation celebrating my mom and dads 50th anniversary!
The picture is a sketch of me and my son inside the train. I did this on watercolor paper. The pictures to the left were pics seen on the way. It was fun to have the whole car full of our family trading seats and catching up with one another. Merry Christmas!!

Alaska board book spread

I finished another spread in my board book from our Alaska trip this past weekend. We took a ferry trip across the Prince William Sound from Valdez to Whittier. Unfortuneately the weather was not the best so we didnt see as much as we could have. We did see some seals, and otters. I collaged a map of the land next to the sound where we went with paper of glacier photographs. I drew in the glacier areas with a white paint pen and labeled the many glaciers we passed. This is a photo of my son on the hull of the ship with a thin jacket as teenagers do. I thought it was funny with the oldsters all bundled up.

Zentangle Doodle

This is the first Zentangle I tried to make. I worked on this all weekend during the downtime of my three choir performances. I hate to set around without keeping my hands busy and this was a great use of time. I wanted to try these out on my middle schoolers. After I finished and did more research on this art form, I realized the size is supposed to be 3 1/2 inches by 3 1/2 inches. So the next one I did the official size.







How many of you have tried this "doodle" style?
It is supposed to be relaxing and stress relieving.

Marie Antoinette Award!! My first blog award!

Thanks to Val from Val's Altered HeART Journey who gave me this award. You can see her link on my favorite sites. Im so excited and told all my friends and family. I still have some friends Im trying to convince to start a blog too.
Link to the award: http://valsalteredheartjourney.blogspot.com/2008/11/oh-my-goodness-ive-been-given-another.html

I started this blog 5 months ago and it has been alot of fun. I encourage all you lurkers to start one. Its a great way to meet other artists online and to see others who have similar art interests.


I love many kinds of art and its so hard to decide what type to concentrate on. I love sketching and watercolor and also mixed media collage. Since I teach middle school art, I get to try out some things on them. After Christmas break, Im teaching two new electives: 1.Collage and printing , 2. sculpture. So I will get to post some new subjects as I go.

Thank you Val for giving me this award. I love all your collage work and all the textures you show on them. Go see Val's amazing work. She is so talented and lives in Colorado too. Maybe some day we will meet in person??

The people I chose here are supposed to post the award on their blogs, link to the person who gave it them, and then pass it on to seven other bloggers if you are so inclined, and link to them. Congratulations, all you fine artists.

1.Margaret Storer-Roche
http://waterblossoms.blogspot.com
I love her artwork sketching and painting of all the beautiful places around where she lives in Arizona and her travels. She is amazing how she is always creating something and her blog layout is gorgeous!! I dont think she misses a day. I didnt realize she was a middle school teacher as well. I love checking her blog and you will too!!

2. Martha Brown
http://m-is-for-martha.blogspot.com
I love all her great altered art of many varieties. Check out her blog!

3. Sandy
http://myfiddlestix.blogspot.com
I love her sketchings with color. Such great perspective and a variety of subjects. Always fun to check out!!

4. Anne Cough
http://bullesdorees.blogspot.com/
She has fantastic altered art . I especially love the houses. She videos all her art to see it from all views. check it out.

5. Anita Davies
http://artbyanita.blogspot.com/
I love her sketching and painting. She has so many interesting journals. I enjoy seeing all the architecture and scenes around her UK home.

Collage Finally Finished!!

Here are some finishing touches:
I found a tropical plant ( bird of paradise?) and cut it out as a focal point for the center of my collage. I added another fish picture and some mulberry paper torn to look like organic elements in the lower left. I glued on a real shell. I found a red matisse shape and cut that out on the top area. I put some rice paper (lacy type) over some hard edges to soften and bring the colors together. A little bit more tissue paper to fill in and its done!!

Step 3 on my Collage

Here I added more printing elements: We made styrofoam prints, here is a fish on the center left, I made a shell print with that foamy hairdryer substance on the bottom. Another printed paper is in the center as a thin strip (orange and light blue) This was a print from a Traci Bautista class using paper towels and liquid watercolor. Get her book, its great!! There is some paste paper techinique on the right side (blue) I cut into the shape of waves. I added some net on the bottom keeping with the undersea theme. Here and there I put bits of mulberry paper to fill in holes or cover up sharp edges.

Collage- part 2

Here I added some papers with text and map paper. Also some tissue paper to start to fill in the canvas. I am also trying to keep with handprinted or handmade papers. I will describe them as I add them. The paper in the top left hand corner is paper that was stamped with a text rubber stamp on tan paper.

Collage in Progress

Last week at Art Monday, we started a collage using different types of printing methods. We used foam plate printing and collograph. I picked the theme of Ocean/Caribbean/fish. We only got as far as the printing part. So Im posting the collage at each step to share with my artist friends.








This is the canvas after gessoeing the entire background. I painted in some color to coordinate with my color theme. I chose aqua, blue, maroon and tan, maybe some greenish blue as well.

Encaustic Art

I think I would use these as backgrounds for atcs or torn up in a collage. The image to the right above was on a piece of foam core that was folded to get the lines before adding the wax.


I took a class Saturday that involved wax on paper. I had always wanted to work with wax. The instructor worked exclusively on paper and made cards. I tried to branch out and incorporate paper into them. I think collage encaustic art uses wood and a thicker layer of wax. Here are some I made. We used a craft iron that we rubbed squares of wax onto in different colors. Then we combined them in patterns.

I didnt like how thin the layer of wax went on. To translucent for me. Has anyone tried this? What did you use them in? I would love to see your work.

Alla Prima in a Portrait

This is my first attempt in acrylics of a portrait with a live model. I felt out of my comfort zone since I usually draw flowers and landscapes. I signed up for a class with other art educators to learn Alla Prima. From the Italian word which literally means at once.This is where you complete a painting at one time. Our teacher was a young artist who does his own paintings. Daniel Gonzalez. He tried to get us to look for the shapes and values by squinting instead of going for alot of detail at first. I had fun meeting other teachers in the Douglas county area.

Here is the model we were attempting to draw.

Sketching in California

This was done outside our hotel in Santa Monica. I loved seeing all the palm trees we dont have here in Colorado.

Back From California-Art Museums

Some of the gorgeous architecture at Stanford and UCLA University at Berkely. I loved all the Trees and flowers everywhere. I brought home some leaves to sketch.

This was the Getty Villa in Malibu- An art museum that was a replicated villa from one in Italy that was destroyed in the Volcano eruption. Getty had it rebuilt from excavation they are doing now. It was incredible with all the gardens and mosaics in the courtyard . We also made it to the Getty in Los Angeles on the Hill. What an experience! They even have two Modern Art museums downtown.

Fall Collage

Finished my first fall collage. used a diecut for the apple shape and mostly paint . Some different printed papers. The quote is about autumn: The acoustics of this season are different and all sounds no matter how hushed are as crisp as autumn air.-edwin teale

Deer in our yard

We woke up this morning to four deer in our yard. This was as close as I could get without scaring them off. I got all four in the pic. Click on the picture to make it large to see them.

Collages in my Altered book

Here are some collages I completed in a workshop by Paula Hardesty. I did several in my altered book. It was fun as her personality made the afternoon go so fast. She introduced charcoal outlining and a white paint pen by sharpie.

This was done on a piece of watercolor paper, used rubber stamps, text collaged underneath.

The interesting embellishment she introduced was movie title letters she bought on ebay. They are 3 d and can be stamped with rubber stamps for textures.

Home sweet home collage

Just finished this collage. It was very fun to do. I used layers of text, music score, dictionary pages, rubber stamps patterned papers, gesso, paint and tissue paper. The idea was from Martha's website. I sent it to our schools fundraiser to have it copied on an apron for work. size is 8 1/2 x 8 1/2. I hope to make one or two more larger.

Alaska altered book

This spread shows the part of our trip where we flew into a remote area, Kennicott, there is a ghost town there from an old mine and two glaciers. We had a gorgeous day for the flight. Bright clear sunshine day so we could see everything. Down to the moose in the lake below.
Here are the beautiful mountains we stayed right outside of in Kennicott. We wore crampons for the glacier hike. The group ahead of us saw a mother bear and cubs. This was a nice place to get away from all the crowds. The only way into the town was to fly or drive for 3 hours on a gravel road going 30 mph and then had to take a footbridge to the town. One of the highlights of our trip. I used mulberry paper , pattern tissue paper for the mountains and paint to simulate the landscape we saw.

Ink Resist Watercolor- Red Lion Pub

This was a part of a photo I took in London last summer of one of the many pubs. I used the ink resist with 140 lb water and white tempera. The flowers and leaves were tricky and got me frustrated for a while. I took a workshop with Peggy Morgan Stenmark to make this painting. She has incredible work with such detail.

Inspirational Board Book

I finished another spread in my scripture book. This time it's Stacey's book I was working in. I chose Proverbs 31 and used two of the verses. I covered the painted background with some mulberry paper on each side. I used pastel pencil and colored pencils to outline the image on the right. The second side lifts up to read the end of the verse... Many women do noble things,
but you surpass them all (v. 29). I used my gold pen to outline the written words on both side. and my black pen to simulate stitching.
On Monday, we switch books again. I cant wait to see how she likes it.

Scroll down if you want to see another spread in the book.

Retreat in the mountains with an Art Lesson

I went to a retreat to Allenspark, Colorado just south of Rocky Mountain Park. The canyons and scenery were gorgeous. Here are some pics of our deck and the lodge we stayed in. 20 Women attended from my CBS class. We used these views for inspiration for the watercolor class of quaking aspens I demonstrated today.

I taught a Watercolor class using white oil pastel for the aspen trunks and watercolor pencil for flowers, leaves , and trunk details. I showed them how to mix colors for the different greens and golds of the aspens. We added our mountains in the background.

Here is one of the finished aspen paintings they completed in an hour.

Round robin board book

We are doing a round robin scripture board book trade. This is the first spread I did in Kim's book. I started with an acrylic painting of a colorado mountain scene. I chose the 23rd Psalm to go with my serene view. This represents the stage in my life I feel now. I added the fence with marker and finished off the flowers with colored pencil and puff paint. The image was from http://www.lacetoleather.com/victorian.html , a free image page.

Alaska Journaling Pages

I just got back from a visit to help my Mom with her knee surgery. While I was in her room, I found time to finish up my Alaska journals I had started. Here is one from our last day we ended up in VanCouver, we Loved the city.
Has anyone been to the town of Hoonah in Alaska? It was the only place we saw the native Alaskans. But the Dungeness crabs were delicious. And lots of whales there.
I had fun taking along my journaling markers and pens on my trip. Thats what I like about art journals, they are so portable and you can do many different techniques.

Art Day on Mondays

Our Art group decided to meet every monday morning this year and create some art. Here is the result from our first few times. We started with a gessoed watercolor background for texture and added multiple colors. It was alot of fun. Cant wait for next Monday!

New Journal Pages from the summer

We had our Kitchen remodeled and this was some of my experiences. I love the finished product!

This was a page from a themed art retreat called Artiscape in Sandusky Ohio.

Alaskan Board Book

I was excited to use my recent trip to make a themed board book. I decided to use a spread for each place we visited. Our Trip was 2 weeks so I hope this works out. The cover was made from some paper I printed from a Traci Bautista artfest class. I will share what I have finished so far.










This spread describes our trip to Denali Park. I used some bark at the top and stamped Denali over it. There is the map to the park as well as a pic from the lodge we stayed in while there.



This spread represents the day we drove through the highways from Denali to Fairbanks then onto Chitina. The map shows our route and we saw moose along the side of the road. The road was so deserted, you could stop and no one way around to watch the moose.

Marbling

Recently I had Kim and Stacey come over for an Art night. I taught them how to do some suminagashi Marbling. I had learned how to do this at an Artiscape class. I had the kit I purchased with many colors and the necessary surfactant- photo flo. We Played around with this for awhile. I used this color in my tip in book (see below) for a background in the Art Noveau pages. I hope to use this in making some book covers with my middle schoolers.

To do this Technique:
You select two colors of the dye and one clear photo flo container. We used sumi brushes to do this since it is a Japanese art. After setting up the tray (I used an old clear plastic box frame that was about 1 1/2 inch deep) fill with water and dip each brush in random order that has the color on it. The circles are made as you keep dipping into the center of the water. After you have enough rings you slowly blow to disturb and make the design. It was really fun. I hope to do this with my 8th grade class this year.