Collage Unleashed Progress + A Challenge!!

Hey people of earth!! I'm back in the blogosphere with another daily blog post for all of you. Today I worked a little bit in Traci Bautista's book "Collage Unleashed" and did the first project out of it. It was dyed paper towels. I'm not really sure how she gets hers to be so vibrant. Mine are always muddled and so dull. I need to experiment and try to get some better color. If any of you have any suggestions for my epic fail of paper towel dying, then I'd be happy to listen to any advice. Even if you're not sure the suggestions would work, please tell me about them in the comments, since I am always looking for new ideas. Even if it doesn't necessarily work for the original purpose that it was thought up for, with a little editing, we might have a new technique on our hands. :) That's the way I think of it.

With these paper towels I mostly worked with pinks and reds, but I used a bit of a blue and turquoise in there as well. And some metallic copper. I think my problem is that I'm using too much water. Or not enough pigment. Because you have to mix your paints with some water to make these towels. I used a bunch of acrylic paints, some sumi inks, and some watercolor paints (liquid). I love the way these turned out, but, as I said, I just wish they were more vibrant. Oh well. You win some you loose some.

Here was my basic setup/collation of supplies for this project. I just collected all the supplies that I thought I could use for this. The thing it, I always love pictures like this; you know, just a picture of the supplies, so I thought I would try one for a change. That's why I love Traci Bautista's blog so much though. Especially because of her "Snippets From the Studio" series. They are just so cool. Anyways, in this picture, I had just culled a bunch of acrylic paints, poster paints, tempera paints, higgins inks, glitters, gesso, canning jars, some syringes, and a few other things. And after I set them up I photographed them. It's as simple as that.

And here I have an index card I worked on today. I didn't finish it, but it didn't turn out half bad if I do say so myself. It's a technique that I've been experimenting with (I've been designing it myself). One of my favorite things to do actually is come up with my own techniques. It's so much fun to think of something that nobody else has ever before. You know what I mean? How about today I challenge YOU to come up with your own technique today? Post it on your blog if you have one, and link to it in the comments. I'll make sure to give it a look see. And I'll probably try out every single one in there. Let's do that! You post a link to your technique in the comments, and I'll try them out and post them as I do them! And, if you don't have a blog, then just type it out briefly in the comments section. :) So I challenge you today to post something for me. :) See you guys later.

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.

99 Art Journal Pages!!

Hello, hello, hello!! I've managed to make it back another day. I'm glad too. I've missed blogging so much and it just feels GOOD to post again. So anyways, yesterday I counted up all of my art journal pages that I've done thus far, and I had 98. So that means that this one is number 99! What a coincidence is that? I had a lot of fun creating this page, but you can't really tell what it took for me to get it like this!! I started it out with a lime green background.

Then I glued a bunch of torn papers to the lime color. So far so good. But then, I added black. And I don't mean a little black. I added a LOT of black. Too much black. So it was way too dark for my taste. I hate when that happens, since I love bright colors. I love them. Love them. So what ended up happening was that you could barely even tell that there was any lime there. There was just too much black.

So what ended up happening was that I added white over top of the whole thing using a paintbrush. I sort of mixed it in with the black, and it created this grayish color. Then I pulled up a couple of the paper strips I put down in order to reveal the lime. I like it a lot. A whole lot better. I just need to learn to control my black. Every time I add something black, I end up putting too much. There's a thin line between too much and too little. And I haven't quite figured it out yet.

I decided that I'd show you a card that I made using the glitter I bought the other day. This is a more sophisticated way to use it I assume. You see, instead of using school glue for it, I decided that I'd use a tape runner instead. The glitter stuck perfectly, if not even better than school glue would. I like it a lot. My only problem is that whenever I try using the glitter, it gets ALL over my clothes. And I never have been a glitter type of girl. Especially on my clothes.

This is the fourth card in a row that I've made for the 365 Cards challenge. It was called 'Up in the Air'. You were supposed to use three things that can be found in the air. I decided to try a new type of approach to this. I used a picture of a dragonfly and a butterfly. Then, instead of another animal or insect like I assumed others may be using, I decided to use the color blue. You can defiantly find blue in the sky, even though it depends on the day.

So now for the progress on my cross stitch. I managed to finish the football except for one line of stitching and of course some of the back stitches I'll be using on top of the actual football itself. Also, I've got started on the next train car I decided to start with. I'll probably work more on that once I get off of here.

Here's a bit of a closer photograph of the finished football and began boxcar. So yeah. I thought it was getting pretty cool. I decided to start on the toys at the bottom and then slowly work my way up into the actual clothing and skin of the little boy. Maybe tomorrow I'll post what this thing is supposed to look like when it's finished. I'm sure I could find a good picture online if I decided to look. See you all next time!!

An Update

Hey people. I'm back from a couple of days break. Sorry about that, but it couldn't be helped. I had a bunch of stuff going on, and I was just really busy. So yeah. I've got a bunch more pictures for you guys too. So I went to Hobby Lobby for the first time the other day and had a ton of fun. I just about fainted when I walked in the door because of the size, but it was all good in the end. What ended up happening was that I got some pom poms for a vest I want to make, some embroidery floss for my next cross stitch project, and some aida cloth to go with it. I also got a few mixed media/scrapbooking supplies. So anyways.

Here are some yarns that I've been working with lately, and they are all for a challenge that I've been working on. It's for crocheted jewelry on Craftster. The moment I saw the challenge, I knew what I was going to make, and pretty much got started with it right away. The winner of the challenge gets their pattern and pictures featured in a magazine (I can't remember exactly which one right now). Mine is pretty much done so far, but I'm just posting pictures of the yarn currently. I used all shades of blue along with accents of white and green.




Here's a full photograph of the cross stitch that I've been working on. It's not quite completed yet, but I'm still working on it, though not as much as I was before, since I ended up starting the new cross stitch pattern (I just couldn't help myself!!). What I like about this is all of the shading and the variegating that works through it. This was my first bigger piece.


Here are some pictures of the embroidery floss that I bought for my new project in rainbow order. It's pretty cool looking. I tend to do that when I make stuff, just because I get to fondle the materials a little and mess around with them.


Here's another.

And, on a finishing note, I want to update with a bit of progress on my second project made using the supplies above. This is going to be a toy train. I've got quite a bit more done on it since this was taken, but I'll post that another time. Tomorrow I'll try to get on again. And I'm hoping to have an ATC tutorial for you all.

I know that I've talked a lot about my ATCs in the past, but still haven't posted any pics yet. I think that a nice tutorial might be a good way to showcase that. Of course an ATC can be done in many different ways, but I thought you guys may like to see my progress. We'll see if I can get pictures. I might go work on that now. Thanks for the inspiration!