Ketchikan Altered Book

Here is the continuing board book I'm working on from our trip to Alaska last summer. This page was done with sponge painting for the clouds with other acrylics to look like the water. We had a great time kayaking here. Twelve family members joined us from age 7 on up to myself. That is myself in the kayak with the sunglasses. Some of us had the younger nieces and nephews in the middle with a triple kayak. We were amazed at the huge bull kelp we saw in the water. This town was very touristy and I wish we would of gone farther North to kayak to get away from the constant noise of the float planes taking off.

Vintage Paris Happy Birthday!

I had another birthday this month, my daughter, Ashley so I made her a card I thought she would like. I used rubber stamps and some collage papers and silk flowers I painted with acrylics.

Empty Bowl Fundraiser

Last Night I volunteered at the bowl table. This was my first year to go. The people came by in crowds to pick their one bowl they got with their ticket. My job was to restock the table with bowls underneath. I enjoyed chatting with the other volunteers, a local roller derby team and starbuck employees.
There were many styles, shapes, and colors. The local high schools also participated.
For your ticket you got all the soup you wanted (8 kinds but only 2 left by the time I got to eat) and bread and dessert. I saw a few friends there and talked to them awhile. It was a good cause for the womens shelter in castle rock.

Alaska board book "Juneau"

I finished another spread representing another stop on our Alaska trip last summer.
In Juneau my parents joined us in a van trip to the fish hatchery, shrine of st therese, and mendenhall glacier. I used splatter paint and tissue paper to alter this book. Next up is Ketchican.

Fat Book Pages finally done!

Here are all 42 pages ready to be mailed for the Artiscape Fat Book. The theme is the "Age of Innocence". I used watercolor paper and splashed coffee stains and acryllic paint splatters on the background. Then I collaged some pics of women and a NYC train ticket. On the back was a clock rubber stamp and some map collaged on. I put my blog address on the bottom of the page. I was so excited to actually have a blog this year. I look forward to seeing everyone's pages in April.

Happy Birthday Collage

This is a birthday card collage I made for my Dad for his birthday on Wednesday. He likes to travel so that is the theme I chose. I used splatter paint for the background and added different pictures and stamps. HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAD!

Happy Zentangle Valentines Day!

Here are my finished zentangles in heart style. I tried to use the official thread planning in my square. I only learned this from reading the websites-self taught. Click on the image for a better view. I hope to learn more when I go to an art retreat in April that is actually teaching this zentangle method. I will know more then. Try this fun and quick art doodle. Have a great Heart Day. My sweetheart is taking me out to a play downtown saturday.

Narrative Collage

This is a style of collage to tell some kind of story with text and pictures. I chose my son's upcoming marriage and used different things to describe their relationship and interests.
I started with layers of text below the actual collage and then painted the background. Painted papers were used as collage as well as images. Finally charcoal was used to outline the main images and text.

Zentangle Valentine

Has anyone else been making these? It took me a while to come up with a thread that used the corners for the image. Im working on two more.

Floral Watercolor Card

This is for a birthday card for my friend, Stacey. I used lots of layers and tried to get a 3-d effect. This is small 4 x 6 mounted on cardstock. Im going to try to print some on strasmore art paper to make more cards.

At the Pottery Wheel

I started making some bowls on the wheel today for the March fundraiser in our local area. Every year attendees pay for a bowl and get some dinner with it. This raises money for the Douglas county shelter for women. I hope to get 6 made to donate. I will have my middle schoolers glaze them for me.
They have not had much luck making pots themselves so far.

Collage in my "House "Series

This is a collage I finished today. I started a while back when I made my other house collage. I tried to stay with a burnt sienna and rust theme with the blue added in. I used a lot of brown chalk to outline and blend. This seemed to give it some depth. Lots of layers are here. I started with some glued down text, music score, and ledger paper. Then layers of tissue paper and lace rice paper for the sky. After gessoeing the houses , I started adding texture with different papers. I also used stamps and rub ons. I have one more house spread in my altered book I’m working on. I love architecture so houses appeal to me. Thanks for stopping by.

EDM sketches for the New Year.

This is a fun lamp I picked up at a yard sale. It
reminds me of the art noveau style. It has water
lily metal base. It was fun but a little difficult
to draw.

Reorganizing My Studio

I spent all weekend getting my studio in shape. It used to be my son's room until he moved off to college in Indiana. Now, he doesnt get home much so I decided to get things cleaned up. I went to Target and got these neat containers and labeled them to be able to sort and find things. The second picture is my TV and dvd so I can watch art videos while I am creating. Im still working on that. I also need to get some of my art matted and hung in the room to make it bright and colorful. Now Im all ready to create!!

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.