Mostly Pics Envelope Journal Flip

Hey guys. I'm back with you guys again today, but with a bit of a different post than what I normally do. I was gone all day today at a water park, so I didn't get to do that much art. Some, but not a lot. So, today, I think the post is going to be mostly pictures. This is pretty much a flip through of my envelope journal that I've been working on. Most of the pages only have a few layers of medium on them so far, but some have a bunch, and are extremely close to being done. So let's get started!

This is going to be a 31 Hearts page.

The tape was a piece of clear tape that I just rubbed the paint off of when I painted the background.

Leftover watercolor experimentation.

And that's it! I know it's a lot of a shorter post (less words) than normal, but I'm extremely tired. If you have any questions though, feel free to leave a comment. I will answer you as soon as I read your message. ;) Thanks again!

Color Challenge #3 Reveal!

Hey guys! I'm back with you guys again today, and this time I have a color challenge reveal for you guys! This was the date that Barbara, Mavis and I had decided upon to do for the reveal, and I finally get to share with you guys all of the fun art that I've been working on this past 10 days!! And I'm excited to do so! First, let's reveal the colors. Although you probably already saw the photo that I put above, I'll tell you the colors anyways. And they are pale blue, vermillion and purple. ALSO. As I said when I first revealed that I was going to be doing another challenge with Barbara (and I'm glad I did; she was a pleasure to work with as always) I mentioned that there was going to be a twist for this challenge. And that was the use of word prompts in the work. 

Barbara and I came up with the colors and words; she crowd sourced two colors (vermillion and purple), and then added the word prompt life. I added the pale blue color and the words energy and passion. We decided that we somehow needed to incorporate these words into our work, and I found this a wonderful challenge to try in comparison to some of the things that I've been doing lately. All three of the projects that I did for this challenge were art journal pages of one kind or another, but I'll focus more on what journal they were done in when I get to them.

The first page that I would like to share with you guys today is this art journal page that I decided to do in my 5,000 Question Survey journal. In case you aren't really a follower of my blog, the 5,000 Question Survey is a survey that was put together for people who were looking for journaling prompts to work on in private or in public; it really depended purely on the person. Well, I saw those prompts, and I saw art journals. Art journals all the way. And from there, this journal was born. I've probably done about 20 pages, give or take 2 or 3. The question was kind of a deep one, in comparison to some of the others. It prompted me to answer the question; "What is the truest thing that you know?"

Well. That one took a lot of thought, let me tell you. At first, it didn't make sense at all, since my brain, which so yearns for accuracy kept telling me that one thing cannot be any more true than another. Of course, I believe now that I was over thinking the whole question, but, after some time, I realized that one of the word prompts; life; actually went very well with this question. Though I still don't believe that life is the "truest" thing that I know, it is true, never the less.

Life is one thing in this world that cannot be denied, no matter how hard one might try. It is something that is always here, but people very rarely take the time to appreciate it. I know that I don't. Not as often as I should. But maybe, after working through these thoughts on this journal page, I will now.

The next page that I want to share with you is actually the facing page to the previous one that I shared with you. I love the way that this page turned out. It seems that every time I do a girl in one of my journals, in this way, I always like it. Always. I haven't done one yet that I didn't like. And, as I've said before, this is so much more my style than a lot of other ones that I've done in the past. As soon as I knew that I was going to be doing another color challenge, I knew that I wanted to do another girl. I've been doing so many of these lately, that it's starting to get ridiculous. But I love them so much that I find it difficult to resist. Honestly. Soon, my journals are going to be filled with these girls, and there's not going to be a thing that I can do about it. 

I love everything about this girl though. She's just too cool for words. In my opinion at least. I love her hair; the brightness of it is amazing. I think I'm going to have to do this color of hair again sometime. 

And her eyes. Purple eyes aren't something that I would have originally done; this challenge was destined to push me beyond my limits. Maybe sometime I'll try making one of these girls with her hands at her side; not hiding them behind her back, since I don't know how to make them. ;)

And then, just before I move on, I would like to share with you a picture of the two pages side by side in my journal. I love how they match/coordinate without being too matchy. That's the main thing I was worrying about when I made these two pages side by side. But I like the way that it turned out.

Now, the last page that I have to share with you guys today is actually the first page in the envelope journal that I shared with you guys the other day. I had been working in this in little bits for a while now; it seems to me that this little journal has sort of been soaking up the excess bits of my journal making endeavors for the past week or so. I always have a bunch of paint left over when working on art journal pages, and always want to do stuff with them. So far, these pages have all been created with these created leftovers. There are more, but that's for another day. Plus, this is the only one that's honestly finished so far.

Here's a bit of a close up of the title. I've been thinking about carving some letter stamps as of late, but I've been putting it off. These stamps were foam stamps that I've had for a while now, and I love to use them on my pages. So that's that.

My color challenge reveal.

Thanks so much for visiting me today, and make sure to visit Barbara and Mavis to check out their color challenge reveals as well! Also, Beth participated with us. Check her post out as well!

Summer of Color 2012: Week 5

Hey guys! How's it going for all of you guys out in blogland today? I hope it's been going pretty good. I managed to sit down today, and do a TON of art. It felt good too, to churn out so many different projects. However, I only have a couple of things that I really want to share with you guys today. First and foremost, we are going to have my Summer of Color papers. For this challenge I have been doing a small batch of painted papers for each week. This week was purple, blue, and green. I love the way that these papers turned out, and am looking forward to doing the final week. It'll be pretty cool. After that's done though, I'll be ready to start my next project, using these papers. And I think that it's going to be pretty cool.

For the papers today, I used mostly watercolors on a plain copy paper background. It was easy to do, and quite enjoyable, in my personal opinion. I just got to experiment with shapes, and the way that the different colors blended together.

Here's the second part of the challenge. Again with the watercolors. In the past, I've mixed up a batch of acrylic paints and whipped together some papers, and then mixed the acrylics with watercolors and washes. But this time I really wanted to go simple. And back to the basics of simple watercolor.

The other thing that I wanted to share with you guys today is this art journal that I recently started working in. I was considering using this journal for my In The Sun Class (which an update is coming for tomorrow), but I decided, after working on it a little, that I was wanting something a little bit bigger. This journal was handmade and bound by me. What I did was take some envelopes in multiple sizes, folded them in half, and then simply sewed them into signatures. Then I sewed the signatures together, and that was that. I actually made this a while ago, and was trying to figure out if I had mentioned this on the blog before or not.

However, the photo above shows what I did on the front cover of the journal. I used several layers of acrylic paint, some of which were already there. Then I added some stamping, and then the black border with a Portfolio oil pastel crayon that I bought at Staples. That's what I have so far on this page, but I still need to add a title. A title for the journal. To really show what I want to to with it. So this is really more of an unfinished sneak peek than a finished thing. Though I still wanted to share. Anyways. That's really all that I have for you guys today. And I'll see you guys later! Bye!

TOTALLY PIC HEAVY POST!!

Hey all you people!! I managed to make it back here today with yet another post. Sorry that there wasn't one yesterday, but this one's really long and pic heavy to make up for that. I don't know about you guys, but when I'm on a forum, or even a blog, I LOVE to see tons of pictures. There are a lot of people who apologize for that, but I just love to see all different angles and pictures. :P It could just be me though.

The first thing I wanted to share with you guys a bunch of envelopes I've been saving - rescuing from the mail in fact. I know that probably sounds kind of weird to you, and maybe even a bit hoarder type thing to do. But trust me, it's not. I have a specific project that I'm saving these for... I'll be able to share it with you soon hopefully. It's going to be a journal type album THING. Yeah. That's about the best description that I've got. But I'm gonna need a LOT more envelopes. These are used ones that I got in the mail. I was just lucky enough to get some colored ones. If any of you guys have any you'd like to donate to the cause... that'd be cool. :P

Another thing that I've been thinking about doing lately is a Dear Jane quilt. I started one a while back, but the different things didn't quite fit, and the size was waaaay off. So I'm just going to start over. :D I know it's sort of a bad idea, and kind of wasteful, but I think it's just worth starting over, in order to make it look nicer. Sometimes there's no other choice. Do you agree?

This is a little piece of folded, knit fabric that I managed to salvage from a tee shirt that was too small for me. You know, the ones that you don't want to throw away since the fabric is soooo cool, but you don't know what you'd want to do about it? I take them apart using a seam ripper, and most of the time manage to get really large chunks of knit fabric. You can actually also use cotton shirts for cheap quilting fabric.

Here are the scraps that I have leftover from taking apart the shirt. It was a care bears shirt, that was rimmed around the sleeves and neckline with the pink fabric shown above. Yeah. And I got all of that fabric from just one shirt. It makes you think though, doesn't it?

It's been a little while since I posted a picture of my cross stitch progress. So here's one for you. I've got quite a bit further, and I've got about three full cars done, one half done, and one not even started yet. :) I just love working on cross stitch though, since the more hours that you put into it, the more the shading develops and the better it starts to look. But this definitely isn't a one day project. Six months perhaps. But definitely not a day. Or a week. Or probably not even a month. I just like working on it cause it's so calming to play with the colored threads. But it's not too difficult.

Here's another calming endeavor that I love to do, even though I just dug this out of my many boxes this morning. It's a quilt that I'm making. I'm actually working on the quilting part currently, stitching the three layers (top, batting, and backing) together with tiny little stitches. BY HAND!! Of course, I guess I could use my machine, but I decided that I'd rather practice my stitching by hand, since I kind of stink at it. I'm getting better with practice though, I think.

Here's a closer up view so you can sort of see how the pattern goes. It's taking a LOT more work than I originally anticipated, but it's relaxing to try it every now and again...

And... I FINISHED MY GLOVES!! I don't know if you can see the cable pattern too well in these, but they really turned out well. On one of the gloves (the right one I think) the seam I did made the thumb hole a little too high, so I'm going to need to rip it out and do it over. It doesn't look bad, it's just a little bit uncomfortable to wear. So I think I'll do it over. But it doesn't look bad at all. At least I don't think so. But of course, I'm totally biased. XD

One last picture before I go; another quilt that I just laid out - the diamonds are blocks, but there are only twelve of them. I'm still trying to decide whether or not to make it bigger. Right about now it's pretty darn small, but I sort of like the size of it. I think I'll just have to wait and see.

Another thing that I'd like to share with you guys is that you probably won't be seeing me for somewhere around a week, starting Monday. My mom is cutting us off from screens for a week, and that includes blogs and stuff. But luckily, she's still going to let me find my patterns and stuff online. Thank heavens. Without that stuff, I'd probably be lost. :D

One last thing that I'd like to leave you mulling on - I'm starting another project sometime soon. I know, I know. I just started another project the other day. But I can't help it. I found an amazing tutorial HERE, and I about DIED looking at it. It's crazy. And it's totally me. Anyways, I'll probably see you guys tomorrow, but if not, then next week!!