inspirational ATC cards

i am participating in a monthly inspirational card swap; so the past few months i have been making 12 cards to share. when we are all finished we will have swapped for a year and should have a full ring of inspirational cards.

i will share a few of the cards this round that were my favorites.

#printmakingunleashed {a mixed media paper towel}

i had saved a paper towel that had ended up with a cool pattern on it to start- simply setting it aside to see if some other creative idea would come along.....

low and behold, one of the print making unleashed challenges inspired me to use that paper towel to create a mixed media flower....i had used the paper towel to soak up spray ink off of an alphabet stencil. i love the lime green diamonds that were imprinted into the paper towel.

you catch a glimpse of the stem and leaves- those i used book paper and a strip of paper from a gelli plate print.

to tie the flower all together i stitched on the paper towel- sewing first the flower petals and later filling the petals in with a little ink. the center of the flower is watercolor/ ink scrap.

i ordered my book last week and expect a delivery sometime this week....cannot wait!!

meet the rust king

doing a little assemblage- meet the rust king....he may be more of a prince at this point. isn't he handsome? 

you can see just a few of the items i used to assemble him together in this pic. just a sneak peek until he gets to his new home.....

happy friday to you! 

onto canvas {to listen}

i was feeling so inspired on sunday in my studio with my art journal progress that i decided to move back to canvas.

i had started a painting on a 24"x 30" canvas quite some time ago as i sometimes do. i like to get paint onto the canvas so it is not white. white can be so overwhelming sometimes especially if your creative mojo has left....white can be crushing....have you been there?

i had been on such a roll with my foam stamps on paper, i decided to use those on my canvas as well as shown below.

some of my style is built up the layers and then, destroy and tear some of the layers back down to reveal whatever was underneath. i so like it when colors peek through in spots....at one point however during this painting, my mojo left. yep....mojo gone.....walked away....leaving me to walk away as well.

i let it sit for a bit and came back later only to discover that i need to be reminded that i too, "have to listen." sometimes that creative voice is whispering to you and you need to listen carefully; to not be afraid to walk away, but, come back when you have heard that soft whisper calling to you....

to put that paint down, and then scratch it off...to write those words and mist the words to blot some of the words away.....and yes....to listen.

stamping up a storm {foam stamps}

this weekend was busy, but, on sunday i did sneak down to the studio to play and do some catch up with the printmakingunleashed 31 day challenge....i must buy this book- this has been the most amount of good creative fun i have had in a while with such wonderful prompts to get you started....

(focus...)...okay- so the newest challenge was to make and use foam stamps. i looked around my studio and found my stack of play foam sheets and a small amount even had sticky backs! i set to work making up a pile of foam stamps. check out my pile...

with my new foam stamps i combined with my gelli plate to create backgrounds and several very cool pages in my art journal. i used my brayer to apply paint to my foam stamps; sometimes covering the whole stamp, and other times rolling just once and leaving empty space on my stamp. i didn't even mind if the edge of my stamp touched the page as you can see below.

are you playing?....let me know and i can stop over! happy monday.....

tgif

today is a happy day....it is friday....tgif to you!

thank you to Susan for the wonderful art goodies!

progressive printing in black n white

the challenge the other day was to print with white paper and black paint, ink, or whatever was handy....mine happened to be black gesso.

i laid down a fairly thick layer of black paint on my gelli plate and then, grabbed items that happened to be close to add additional details into the print.

here is my first print off of the plate. the paint was thick and i could not really get the paint and print to really pull the details.

my second print, is by far my favorite print. i pulled the items off of the gelli plate leaving a ghost image of the details in the paint.....the edges on this print are a bit softer and the paint is lighter and not as thick.

now when i pull this print there was still paint and an image on my plate, so i decided to print one more time (hate to waste any paint)....

 i still like this one- the softness and the looseness. i had sprayed water onto the gelli plate to keep it wet and allow me to print one more time, as it was becoming fairly dry.