Something Blue...and Yellow

I attended my high school classmates' annual holiday gathering last weekend.  We always have a theme for our grab bag gift exchange.  This year's theme was Blue and/or Yellow.  Since I have been on an alcohol ink binge lately, I decided to create a sea creature series in Blue and Yellow and frame them as a set.

I can't begin to tell you how complicated the grab bag gift exchange is, but this version allows people to steal gifts that have been opened from previous recipients.  I was flattered that once my framed was opened, many people were hoping to end up with it.  Happily, our hostess for the evening is delighted to be the proud owner of my frame and I couldn't be more pleased that she already has a place in her home to display it.

Wisdom

As we work our way through the Mindfulness Prompts each month, I can't believe how many ideas I have!  As an added challenge, I am trying to use a different technique for each month's card.

For this month, I have been experimenting and playing with light modeling paste.  I love how it adds texture and dimension to a piece.  I decided to apply the paste through a stencil (so many choices!)  When I stumbled onto my bamboo stencil, that was it.  I initially associated the bamboo with "strength" and/or "flexibility."  I tried and tried to find the perfect quote to express these characteristics of the bamboo, but none of the quotes I found felt quite right.

When I found this quote about finding wisdom in emptiness, it really spoke to me.  Instead of focusing on the "strength" or "flexibility" of the bamboo, I looked to the hollow of the bamboo to  represent "wisdom." 

"Beauty"

My Mindfulness card for this month was created with alcohol inks (Pool and Citrus).  I was just playing with these colors and when I was done, I thought they resembled lily pads.  I made the 3-D flower out of vellum colored with Distress Stain (Picked Raspberry).  The center of the flower is also colored with Distress Stain (Squeezed Lemonade).  I added detail to the lily pads with a .005 Micron pen.  Finally, I stamped "beauty" with black StazOn.

Alcohol Ink Tags

I am really enjoying experimenting and playing with these alcohol inks on Yupo paper.  The colors are so intense.  I'm learning not be be afraid of making mistakes because you can "erase" the color with 91% rubbing alcohol.  The more I played with them, the more I liked the results!!  These are some tags I made for a group of art friends.

Creating Sea Creatures

 

My girlfriend, Pat, invited me to a "Fluid Art Workshop" the other night where we learned to draw sea creatures with alcohol inks on Yupo paper. The process was so fascinating--the colors are incredibly vivid and brilliant! Sooooo relaxing and very addicting!!
I can't wait to play and experiment more with these techniques!

Mindfulness Card Swap

After an extended hiatus, I am finally, slowly getting back to creating again and it feels great!  I am  easing my way back to making art on a regular basis by participating in a Mindfulness Card Swap with two other friends.  We brainstormed and came up with a list of twenty mindfulness prompts.  Each month we pick a prompt and create a 4 x 6 card inspired by that prompt.  We make three cards--one for each of the other players and one for ourselves.  In the end, we will have a set of twenty different mindfulness cards.  I am excited to see what our completed deck of cards will look like!  Here is my first card:

The background paper is a gelli print on rice paper.  I was playing with color combinations and liked this antique white with a metallic acrylic paint (DecoArt Luminous Gold).  My girlfriend described it as "butter and sugar."  I tore the gelli prints into 3 x 5 pieces and temporarily mounted them with a glue stick onto my watercolor paper substrate.  I used the scrap pieces of torn rice paper (you can still see some of the paint on the scraps) to stamp the word "breathe."   I adhered that to the background paper.  To finish, I free-motion stitched around the edges with silver thread.  It complemented the metallic flecks in the gelli printed rice paper and provided just a subtle touch of sparkle to complete my card.  Though I was feeling a bit rusty after all these months, I loved the way my cards turned out!!