Psalm 121 Mandala

I've been having some fun doing mandalas in my sketchbook!

I used my mini Gelli plate to stamp this star on to my page. The first layer was manganese blue hue, the second was Nickel Azo yellow gold (?), and the third was pyrole red. All were open media acrylics.

The outside of a foam plate laid face down and traced around made a good outer circle. I devided the circle into parts according to where the points were where the gelli prints crossed, which you can see are not exactly the same, but then, measuring, or math, is not my strong suit. I used metallic pens to doodle the different patterns into the sections and a sanguine fine Pitt pen to go over the lines between them.

The feather stamp was carved from an eraser and stamped all the way around, and a tiny bought stamp was used to put stars in the sections between the star points. I also wrote part of the 121 Psalm, which is my favorite Psalm, inside the star with a white gelli pen and added black lines with a fine Pitt pen.

I used the black pen to darken the small stars stamp, add circles to the ends of the lines, detail to the feather quills, and glued on a punched out circle from a gelli print in the center. The circle kind of looks like sky and water. The whole thing has an earthy feel to me, and was very meditational and relaxing to do.

This was actually the second one I did in this session. The first is resting in a draft, yet to be finished and posted. I am also working on a third, but it's on an 8" x 8" wooden panel, as it may/may not be a gift, depending on how it turns out. We'll see!

Anyway, they are fun to do and good for my soul!

You don't have to be an expert to do what you enjoy doing! :)

Brit's NY Mixed-Media Painting

I finally got brave enough to give some of my art for gifts last Christmas. I gave some 6" x 6" mixed media pieces, and a few weeks later our gr-niece asked if I would be interested in doing her a bigger one, like an 8" x 10", to hang in her closet, which is actually one of her bedrooms made in to a walk in closet/computer room. She and her husband love New York City and have been a few times now, so she wanted it to have something about NYC or Sarah Jessica Parker, who she is also a big fan of. I told her I would see what I could come up with if she wasn't in a hurry for it.

I set about working on it in my head while I prepared a 9" x 12" gallery canvas to play on.

I have been playing around with mixed media for a while now, so I collaged a variety of bought and made papers on to the canvas surface with gel medium. I also printed off some photos of Britt and her husband made in NYC. You can see part of one with Britt sitting on a rock in Central Park in the upper right of the canvas, and I really meant for her to be in the final piece, but that didn't happen...

A thin layer of gesso was brushed on over the whole canvas and let dry, then I loosely wrote New York is our kind of town in a Pitt sanguine marker all over the front and sides...

I scrubbed some thin blue paint on top of the gesso/writing, let it dry, then stenciled letters on top of the blue...

Then I got the bright idea to use the same paint to stencil through a ribbon all over that. It looked a bit like skyscraper windows to me; still building layers...

When that was dry, I used gel medium to glue down color photos of Britt and her husband standing in front of Carrie Bradshaw's (Sarah Jessica Parker) apartment from "Sex in the City" and of the NY skyline, and I found a photo and quote (about NY) of SJP online, printed it off and added it to the collage...

Here I used modeling paste with a stencil to make some texture, pasted the words "You have stolen my heart" over the window, tore the words/music for "On the sidewalks of New York" out and pasted down, added three "buildings" out of gelatin printed paper that I had made and stenciled the bird, re-sized the owl to small enough to fit (because Britt loves owls) and pasted it down, and painted some on the sky and foliage...

I painted the leaves and branch, added some scrubbed in paint over various parts of the canvas, painted the bird black, and added a punched out star to represent the stars of Broadway on the bench. I also decided that it needed a few more modeling paste leaves and a branch for the birds to kind of balance it out.

 The little snowman canvas has nothing to do with this project. I was making my aunt a Christmas ornament at the same time (that's another story)...

Here, the whitish area between the buildings and SJP decided to represent the water in Central Park, I wrote "In a New York state of mind" up the side with a Pitt marker, went over the SJP quote with a white gel pen to bring it out more, and I used the aforementioned ribbon to make windows in the lower right corner...

I added metallic dots around the star to resemble neon lights and continued trying to bring out or push back elements, more branches grew...

New York, New York wanted to be across the top, a sailboat appeared in the water (painted), the birds decided to sit in a flowering tree, I continued to fine tune things, and I'm not liking the star with the neon lights at all, because they don't look like neon lights...

I printed the names of different places in NYC around the sides, except for the Today Show and date, which I printed off and glued on, because that's one of the dates that they were there. I did go over the letters with the same pen I printed the rest with, and I added a black grungy edge around the canvas...

Even after using alcohol on a q-tip to take the paint off the star, and writing Broadway in a gold gel pen, it's still not making me happy, but it does represent the stars on Broadway, I guess. I continued making marks with a marks all pencil, colored pencils, pen, etc. until I thought I had done all the damage I could do, and I called it done, put it in a gift bag, and delivered it to its new home.

What you see on the surface isn't always all there is to a story. There's a whole nother world going on in the process of getting to the surface, and it's the process that I love playing and experimenting with. I never know what the finished piece will look like when I start, even if I have a plan. And that's the fun of it for me!

I think I managed to represent the grunge/glamor of NYC, Sarah Jessica Parker, and the seasons blended together pretty okay, and maybe it will continue to evoke happy memories of their times spent there. The blue building isn't actually that bright in the last picture. It's more like the one before. In fact, this is not a great photo of the piece. Sorry! :)

I had no idea when I did this that I had picked one of Britt's favorite quotes to put on it, but I was glad I picked it. They seemed to be pleased with it, and that makes me very happy indeed!

More posts with projects in draft mode and more projects in progress! Feeding my soul all I can!

Thanks for visiting and I hope you feed your soul by doing something you love!

Gelli Prints with a Foam Plate Cutout

More gelli printing fun with my 8" x 10" plate and a foam plate that I cut a design out of with my x-acto knife! These are made with open media acrylics on cardstock.

All three pulled off one plate...

Changed colors and pulled three more off one plate...

Changed colors again and pulled three more (above and below)...

These were fun to do and I can see all sorts of possibilities! :)

I have so many drafts started that I've forgotten when I did what, so these posts may be out of order, but that's okay. It doesn't really matter when I did them. It matters that I did do them and that they gave me a sense of accomplishment while feeding my soul at the same time.

Don't be afraid to play with your supplies! Play with abandon!

1st Mini-Canvas Christmas Ornament

This is my first painted Christmas ornament. I borrowed the idea from Pinterest. I ordered a package of six mini stretched canvases, 2" x 2" square, and when they came in I took one out for a prototype. I was pulling prints with my Gelli Arts plate and open media acrylics at the time, so to get rid of the white I gelli printed the canvas! I didn't like the color, so I scraped off what I could of the paint.

When it had dried, I sketched a snowman on it, then used a palette knife to put modeling paste on it for texture and dimension...

After the paste was dry, I used a small brush to paint over the sky and ground. I've decided that this ornament, if it turns out okay, will be for my Aunt Lela, who insisted that I have her ornament in a swap Christmas, because I didn't know to bring one, so she wound up without one. We had a wonderful time at her house with her family!

The size of the canvas compared to a playing card, and I have added his nose and a scarf in paint...

I forgot to make pictures of the sides, but I painted them black and wrote Christmas words in white gel pen. I also added snow with the pen, shading with a Stabilo marks all pencil, buttons, arms, and facial features with Pitt pen, I cut the hat out of paper and glued it on, then decided to paint it, and put the eye screws in. I also used a red gold metallic marker around the edges, because I didn't have a silver one...

The words are a phrase from an old Christmas song that I cut out and glued on with gel medium, the added a layer over the whole canvas for protection. I used a belt that my mom gave me to play with for the chains. I had planned to add beads to the hanging chain, as well as the dangle chain, but I found a package or cute little red jingle bells at JoAnn's Fabric and Craft store and thought that would be cute on the dangle. That idea came about, because I forgot about the beads until I had already attached the chain. 

Anyway, I like how it turned out, at least for a first attempt! Aunt Lela seemed to like it a lot, so that made me happy! I plan on making more, so she may get a better one next Christmas!

It was a lot of fun, and now I'm wanting to make a bunch of them for gifts! We'll see though...

Have an awesomely creative week, and thank you for stopping by! :) 

Gelli Print Greeting Cards

I've been having fun printing greeting card backgrounds on my 5" x 7" Gelli plate too!

The first layer on the cards, using stencils and a silk peony as second layer on part of them. The whitish peony has also had pen and marker work done on it here...

More layers; the bottom two were the green and the burgundy/green cards above, which I didn't like, so I gessoed over them and gelli printed a different look on them, using scrap that I had punched large holes out in for interest...

These four just received their first print layer, using the cardstock negative that I had cut arches and a leaf out of. I drew the spirals into the paint on the plate with a brush handle. The left bottom arch card is actually accidentally printed upside down and was the first print pulled off the plate. The other arch card was the second one pulled, and the envelope at the top was a ghost print...

This card is completed and has already found a new home with our gr-niece, because she's a huge Sarah Jessica Parker fan. It was a gift included with a gift...

This card was completed and included with a gift for my aunt.

The rest are resting until I decide how to proceed on them. Meanwhile, I'm working/experimenting on a mandala, using a foam plate and the mini gelli plate, in my sketchbook.

It's all good, and it's all fun! Practicing my fearlessness, thanks to Connie Hozvicka Solera at Dirty Footprints Studio!

I hope you enjoyed your visit. Have a happy and creative week! :)

Art Supply Finds

So I finally got to go to JoAnn's Fabric and Craft store last Friday! It was mine and hubby's 45th wedding anniversary, so we went to Florence, AL, about an hour and a half away to celebrate. Florence is also where we got married all those years ago!

This is the nearest craft store to us except for Wal-Mart, which is about half an hour away. Anyway, hubby let me out at JoAnn's and he went to the Gander Mountain Sportsman store just a little piece away. We were both in heaven for a while! The main things I wanted they didn't have, but I came up with some great substitutes. I got a multi-purpose crafting tool for cutting stencils, soldering, woodburning, etc., 3 mini canvases, 7 sheets of scrapbooking paper for journaling, 2 strands of pink glass beads, a pkg of small red jingle bells for ornament making, a key stencil, a pkg of xacto knife blades, a pkg of 12 large paper doilies for stamping/stenciling, 4 large spools of sewing thread, and a small book of gorgeous mats for card making/journaling.

I meant to go back by and pick up a sheet of Tim Holtz bird stamps, but forgot them. I also wanted some washi tape, but didn't like what they had.

The bucket in the picture is actually a bucket of donut holes from Krispy Kreme, which we picked up after a delicious meal at Cracker Barrel. We finished off the day by stopping at a large clothing store, where neither of us found anything to our liking, getting an ice cream cone from the Sonic, and eating it on the beautiful drive home. It was a good day!

A few days before the trip to Florence, we went to a nearby town to the eye doctor and for some shopping. I found the pkgs of heart shaped paper doilies, the ticket stubs, a pkg of tattoos, and a roll of brown kraft paper (not pictured) at the Dollar Tree. I have also found some pretty napkins there.

I found the black glass beads, jewelry findings, leather cords, and swirly paper clips at Wal-Mart.

Now, if I can just find time to use all these wonderful things, plus get back in to my weaving!

Keep Creating! :)

Foam Plate Prints and/or Mandalas

Playing with using foam plates as stamps...

I used a bamboo skewer to "draw" on the bottom of this plate, rolled acrylic paint over it with a brayer, and printed on cardstock. This is the first foam plate I tried, and it may be a little busy, but I like it. Actually, I made it to use with a Gelli Art Plate, but I also like it as a stamp.

Plate #2 was kind of one of those "happy" accidents. I wrote different phrases about New York with a bamboo skewer on the bottom, because I'm making one of our nieces a mixed-media painting, and I was going to stamp these phrases around the sides of the gallery canvas. Fortunately, I rolled paynes gray acrylic paint on it and stamped on a paper instead of directly on the canvas. I had carved all the letters and words backwards, but I forgot to carve the phrase backwards so it would show up right on the canvas. Anyway, the stamped paper with the backward phrases reminded me of gravestone rubbings, and I liked it, so I made a couple more on cardstock! Of course, they need some additional work.

I wound up handwriting the phrases around the sides of the canvas...

These round plates could also be used as the beginning/background of mandalas. They are a good size. I think I'm going to try some! A good example of a mistake that sends you off on a whole different adventure!

Happy Creating!