Knitting! (And Some Paper Crafts Too!)

Hey everyone! I'm back with you guys again with another post. Today's card was for an accordion fold challenge on 365 Cards. I decided to keep it simple in this one. As I was working on it, I had other things planned, but as I put the butterfly on, I realized it actually looked best this way. I really like it. It's not common for me to be this simple in my work, so when it does happen, it happens every now and again.

See, here's a slight example of this difference. You have the very simple example of the previous card, and then a page that I was working on today - it's very different. It's actually very dark compared to the card as well, as you can probably see. I used a bunch of different stuff on it, and it was pretty fun to make.

Here's a more close up of the title as well. I really like how the black letters are so different from the 'e'. I'm pretty sure that I just ran out of the black letters, but I think that it sort of makes sense with the whole theme of the page. You know; how my style is so unique. It's just like that.

Something else that I've been working on is how I could actually make my own type of yarn. I just mixed a bunch of colors, textures, and types of yarn. I like how it looks, and I know that it could be used in many different projects. I'm thinking of knitting and crochet first off. I like the knitting aspect of it. That however, is probably because I've been really been into knitting lately. I don't know why, but I just think that it's a bit more calming and relaxing than crochet. Many crochet patterns are a lot more complex than in knitting, and in crochet there are DOZENS of different stitches, while in knitting, there are only two different stitches; knit and purl.

What you do is mix the two stitches. There are about a million different ways to do that, and you can do lots of things; such as cables, squares, triangles, and other things. It's known as a magic ball.

Here's more of a close up of the different textures in the yarn. I'm considering selling this yarn; how much would you suggest putting in a single skein, and how much would you pay for something like this? I'm just wondering... maybe I'll work up a swatch in this so you could see sort of you it works up.

One more thing that I've been working with - knitting with fibers. You know, the fuzzy yarns and such. It's such a pleasure to work with, even though it does get difficult in some places, and slightly bulky in others. You can sort of see where I switched from the stockinette stitch to the garter stitch. I've just been messing around with it. *shrugs*. I dunno. I just think it's sort of fun. Experiment. And play. Try it.

Art Never Ceases to Amaze Me

The title says it all. Art never ceases to amaze me. Never had and never will. It seems that the more I work at it; improving my technique and have fun messing around with paint and supplies... the more things happen. Good things. The feeling of freedom you get when you accomplish something. The accomplishment you have when you finish something. The pleasure of browsing through an old art journal and seeing the progress. Page by page. It all comes together and you can see your art journey to where you are today.

The page above is probably one of my very favorite pages I've EVER made. It's also the most recent. You think about that for a minute. It seems that almost every time I create a new page, that is officially my new favorite. It's art. And art never ceases to amaze me.

Take today's daily card for example. If you look back to when i first started up making my cards only a week or two ago, they didn't look too good. They weren't very enjoyable for me to look at, since every time I saw them I was reminded of how much I hated them. But now you can see I like them better. As you work at it, you gain more confidence in your work, and will enjoy working with the materials more than you quite care about the finished project. And sometimes... sometimes what looks like something normal - like the card above for example. Well...

It's not very normal at all.

From a Sketch to a Card

So I'm back here with you all and a whole 'nother post. Yeah. I just said that. I guess I'm just getting desperate for some new intros... it's sad, I know. So anyways, here's a page that I've been working on a lot lately, and I really liked the way it turned out. Actually, I had started the page a while back, and have pretty much just been adding to it since then. I like it as it is right about now, so this is probably the last time I'll mess with it.

Here's a close up of the title, since I LOVE the way it turned out. I used a bunch of foam letter stamps that were sent to me by a friend of mine as a RAK (thanks Dede!!) and I love the way they look. The tall, stretched out look is totally my style! Here, you can sort of see the faded texture/color to the background that I simply love. It's just hard for me to get it like this. However, when I do get one to turn out, it just makes it that much more special. :)

Last, but certainly not least, I've got a card to share with you guys today. I simply love the way this card came out. I used one of my favorite color combinations (you've probably already detected this from the short time on this blog); lime and black. With lots of white space. I worked from a 365 Cards challenge...

A sketch!!

I love using sketches, and you maybe can see where the idea for this card came around. I basically turned the sketch on it's side, and used the bracket in place of the half hexagon. I love it. It's fun using sketches, at least to me. I love the thought of sketches, and they're just so fun to use. If you haven't already, I suggest you try them!!

A Monochromatic Card....

Hey everybody!! Though I'm still playing a bit of catch up, this post may (or may not) be a little bit longer than the last post since I have very strong emotions attached to this page. This is, I think, the second time that I've actually emotionally connected to my pages. I had just gotten into a BIG fight with one of my brothers. It was horrible - a very bad experience, especially on my part.

But you see, in the end we made up and everything was good again. So I made this page as a representation of that. My favorite color is blue and his is red - when I scraped these colors together onto the page, it was a sort of literal representation of our differences being put aside; actually mixing even; into an entirely new color - purple!! I really like how it turned out, and I did a bunch of journaling on it. I'm still trying to think of the perfect title.

Here's another, more full, straight on view. I actually think that the colors are a bit more true in this photograph than the other, though they aren't THAT different. That's something else that I have trouble with; getting my colors true to life. I know it's never possible to get them perfect, but I'd like them to at least RESEMBLE the real colors. :P If anybody has any tips, that'd be cool...

And last but not least, a card for today's 365 Cards challenge. The challenge was to put color on your image in 5 different ways. I got my 5 colors on the first, upside down tear shaped bulb. From top to bottom, they are: gel pen, colored pencil, acrylic paint, markers, and glitter glue. The other bulb was simply colored in with gel pens and markers. I hope you like it, and have a good day!!

Color Scheme!

Yeah! I made it back for the fifth day in a row. I've been doing pretty good so far on my commitment. We'll see how long it'll last. So today was also day five of Art Journaling Daily. It's pretty awesome. So today I thought I'd do a little bit of experimentation with doodling. I don't think I've done that yet in my journal, so I just messed around with it a bit. I used the colors blue, green and orange. I actually got the color scheme from the 365 Card challenge, and it's going pretty good so far. I couldn't actually find a challenge to use for my art journal page, so I just decided to try that. I doodled the stars, then painted, stamped, and collaged over TOP of the doodles.

Also, you can see that along the edges are a line of glitter. I did that in the normal way, just using regular school glue and shaking the glitter over top of you. I kind of like using it, though it's not really my style.

Here's a version of it a bit closer away. I'll probably add more to it, but that's all I'm going to do for now. I like it a lot. By the way, this is my official 100th page!!! I'm totally freaking out. I can't believe that actually happened. It feels like it happened so quickly. It's strange. But so cool!!

Okay, so this photo above is simply a view of a color scheme. This was on 365 Cards. I love this color scheme. It's totally my style, and I love the brightness of it.

Here's the card that I created for this challenge. I know it's a bit messy, but that's sort of my style. I used more of that zebra stripe ribbon. I seem to be addicted to this lately. I'm not quite sure why, but I just am. Crazy huh?

Here's another view of it. In this picture you can see the stamping a bit better.

I know I promised you guys yesterday that I'd show you what my cross stitch is supposed to look like finished. And here it is!! Do you like it?

One last picture. This is my progress. I know I showed one yesterday, but you can sort of see some progression. I like it a lot so far, and think it's turning out perfectly. You can sort of see in the dark brown in the back the two extra cars forming.

An Art Journal Page, A Card, and A Dollar Store Find.

Hey everyone! I'm glad to be back once again with you all, and so far I've been doing okay with my post every day personal challenge to myself. This is day three, and also my third day of Art Journaling Daily challenge. I had a lot of fun playing today, and am glad that I had time to post this today. Sometimes my Sundays are especially busy, since currently in the afternoons I have been practicing with a group of others for our Easter play.

So anyways, this page was not only for the Art Journaling Daily; I like to have prompts to work with as they tend to get my creative juices flowing and give me plenty of ideas to work with. Today was another prompt from daisy yellow. I've said it before, and I'll say it again; I love her work and her prompts. They are just so inspiring, and I always get ideas instantly. I enjoy working with them, and even though this page is outside of my usual comfort zone (bright colors), it sort of forced me to think outside the box a little.

So here's another view of the page, only this time a bit further away. I love giving you guys two views and distances of my work; I just think it works better. It was done from the No Frills Prompt 18. In these prompts, she gives you a photo, and your job is to work a page around the page. I used the colors from the photo which were deep golds and mustardy colors. And I don't normally use yellow, so this was a pretty big stretch from myself.

So I decided to also work with another 365 Cards sketch challenge - I sort of like to work with cards - it's a bit different than my usual work. So anyways, on every Sunday they post a sketch to work with. I always have used sketches, and loved them, since I thought they made my stuff look better and more structured. But the problem was that I always followed them to a "T". It got old. So when I worked this time, I made several MAJOR changes, even though you can still tell that it's directly from the sketch!

So here's my card that I made. I used pink and green, a combination that I like, but rarely use, since the colors together are a bit too girly for me personally. So anyways, my favorite parts of the card would probably be the lime pearls in the upper left hand corner, and the zebra ribbon down at the bottom. But as I said before, I'm not much of a card person. It's going to take some getting used to. That way I can get more back into the swing of things.

And on one last note, I picked up some glitter in lime, pink and blue while I was at the dollar store, so you should probably expect to see some experimentation with this, since I've never used loose glitter in my artwork before. Yeah. You read that right. I've never used loose glitter since I was probably four years old. So I think it might be interesting to play around with this and see what I can do with it. You know, that's out of the ordinary. Anyways, I'll see you all next time. Hopefully tomorrow.

Realistic Tiger Drawing

Yo all you peoples!! Okay, so I'm back once more for a post with some more of my art. I'm glad that I'm finally managing to get into at least somewhat of a rhythm with my posting here, because I really like sharing it with you all! I guess I can only hope that you enjoy looking at it as much as I like creating and sharing it. So anyways, as a little idea of what I'd like to do, is to post on here daily. I know that sounds impossible, but I really think that it would encourage me. I don't know why I think that, I just do.

So looking back to the first picture on today's post, you see an art journal page with a zebra painted background and a little zebra doodle. This was a printable piece from Milliande's page, and it was also from one of her prompts. I know I'm a little late to the party as this prompt initially came out on January 1st, but when I find a good art journaling prompt series, I just can't help but play! It's simply not in my nature!

So as we look at this page, the first thing that probably pops out at you is the zebra. That's the prompt. Z for zebra. The zebra type background was drawn by me, freehand, and then painted with a paintbrush and acrylic paints. Black and white. If you look at the white sections up close however, you can see where some of the black pain mixed in and created gray. Though that's not quite what I was seeing for the page, I let it go anyways.

I added the doodle and a couple of spritz of glimmer mist, then stamped a few words and doodled a bit with a marker. So far I am kind of liking where the page is going, but it's far from done. I don't like it currently. But I have a vision for it, so I'm going to keep going and try it out anyways. As far as I know, it should work. And nobody's going to tell me otherwise. :P

Next up on the list of things to show you guys is a card. It's a card for today's challenge on 365 Cards. To use a bit of pink on a masculine card. Now I'm not so much of a card person, but when I do make them, I have fun with it. So I don't know why it doesn't happen more often. You see, I think what happened was when I discovered art journaling, the more structure aspect of cards and scrapbooking just didn't seem fun. The pleasure just disappeared. And when I'm crafting, the last thing I want it to feel like is a chore and that I "have" to do it. I need to have fun.

That's what gave me the idea to start putting pictures in my art journals. That would give it the same type of art journaling pleasure, with the pictures, memories, and practicality of a scrapbook. I may try that out tomorrow, though I'm not sure. I'm considering joining a monochromatic challenge for scrapbooking and entering art journal picture pages instead of the average type of layout. *shrugs* We'll see.

So now I've got another crochet/yarn arts type project to show you guys. I do quite a bit of crochet and knitting work over time, and if you've ever done that for any extended period of time, you know that you come up with tons of little scrap ends that are really short - anywhere from 6" to 3 feet. That you can't do ANYTHING with, but feel horrible throwing them away. So here's the deal. I had been stashing these little thread ends for about a year when it finally dawned on me - why not just create my own pattern just to use these up?

It's done entirely in single crochets, making it extremely simple, and it's fun to work up since you are constantly changing color, thus you never get bored of the project. Plus, all of the little thread ends are constant reminders and memories of finished/half finished projects that have fond memories attached to them; who would have thought that yarn could be so sentimental? I sure didn't. :)

And now, what you've all been waiting for; my first EVER realistic drawing. All in pencil, on an ATC sized cream cardstock. I can't tell you how long I spent on this single card - it was for a swap I'm in, and I thought it was worth a shot. If I had to give it a guess, this single card cost me about 3 hours of my life. And 2 of those were spent perfecting the eye. I guess you can imagine how late I stayed up last night. :P I thought I couldn't draw, but I guess I was wrong. Okay, very wrong.

This is a perfect example of how you should never doubt yourself when it comes to art. I spent four to five years thinking that there was no way I could POSSIBLY draw anything realistic. So I resisted the temptations I had to try. But here I am, my first try EVER to do something realistic and it turned out almost photographic. I know. It's strange. But don't doubt yourself. I learned that the hard way.