Houses in isolation.

With all that is going on right now and the amount of time we are spending in our homes it only seemed right to have houses/home as the theme for August. I've had some wood houses sitting on my work table for some time now just waiting for inspiration and/or incentive to getting going on them. Of course that's not the only kind of houses I created this month. I love the theme of houses and can't stop thinking of different kinds to do now. I think houses will keep popping up in my studio long after the theme has past. 

This wood block house was nature inspired. I started off with crackle medium for some texture and used Nuvo Expanding Mousse for the mushrooms. It gave me some great dimensional texture. 

More crackle paste on the back with some nature die cuts coloured with embossing powder.

I call this one The Queens House. When I started it I was think maybe along the medieval or Gothic lines. 

It took me a few weeks to finally discover that it was the Queens house and then of course the queen bee had to go on the back. 

You didn't really think I wouldn't do a doodled mushroom house did you. It may get some colours in the future.

 These are a couple of house ATC's for trading. They are still up for grabs if you'd like to do an ATC house trade.

Do you do any house art? I'd love to see it if you do.

Keep Creating!

Wendy

Monthly Explorations

   It's been an interesting year so far to say the least. I've been taking some time to reboot and work on some new projects over the winter and just when I am ready to get back to doing some workshops the world has turned upside down. Now it's time to rethink the next  steps to take.
   Being an introvert makes the social distancing an easy thing to do for me. So I'm choosing to take advantage of my extra time alone in the studio to play and catch up on things. I hope you're able to make the best of the situation and give yourself permission to play.

   One of the things that has kept me busy this year is my Monthly Explorations Themes over on my FB group. In January the theme was Doodling, Mark Making and Drawing. What's not to like about that!

8"x5" journal page on Bristol Smooth

9"x11.5" Dylusions journal page.

In February the theme was Stencils. I love my stencils and use them often. There are so many ways to use them. Here are just a few.

Since it was February I had to do a few heart cards. I made my own heart stencil with a heart die I have and then layered other stencils on top of it for the patterns. I used Distress Inks and Oxides for the colours along with some light modeling paste and Finnabair Icing Paste for the texture through stencils.

Multiple layered stencils.

This page was done with a lot of layers of collage material, paints and stencils. The mushrooms were a new stencil I got recently from Stencil Girl. I used Nuvo Expanding Mousse through the stencil. This was an new product for me and I loved the way it puffs up when heated. Once dried I coloured the mushrooms with Finnabair waxes.

9.5"x8" double page in small Dylusions journal.

This is another page done with lots of layers and even more stencils. But here the stencils are used mostly in the background instead of the focal point as the mushrooms were. 

9.5"x8" double page in small Dylusions journal.

  And now in March the theme is Watercolour. This is not a medium that I play with much or know much about so it really is about exploring and learning. 

  I made myself a small book with 5.5"x5.5" watercolour paper pages to do my playing/experimenting in. It is a nice size to try out something new.

   I did a few pages of rocks. They were great for practicing some mixing and layering of colours.

Watercolour rocks.

   These little swatch doodles were inspired by a fun Canadian Artist, Cee Cee's Creations. You can find many of her videos on Youtube. They were very fun to do. I'm sure I will be doing more of them this month. 

Watercolour swatch doodles.

  If you'd like to see more come over and take a look at Dragonfly Dreamers Monthly Exploration Themes. And of course you are always welcome to join the group.

Keep Creating!

Wendy

Art Journal on the go.

Do you bring an art journal with you on vacation? Have you tried to art journal with ephemera found while on holidays?

I like to bring a little something along to create with when the Tin man and I go on vacation. Usually it's a small art or travel journal and a few supplies to use. 

This summer while away in Coquitlam BC visiting family I decided to collage with found ephemera. I brought a new art journal that I had made with acrylic pour covers and a small bag of supplies. 

Here is the small pile of ephemera I brought with me to supplement the found ephemera just in case I needed a little extra.

 I brought a few Inktense pencils to add a little colour to the collages. I didn't use them as much as I would have liked because a lot of the ephemera I found was glossy and they didn't work all that well on it.

 Of course a few pencils were nice to have. My Derwent Graphix pens came in very handy. They worked well on the glossy paper and were great for mark making.

I thought an assortment of pens would be nice to have. I didn't use them as much as the Graphix pens but they were definitely great to have. The glue stick was an essential although I do like to use gel medium more when collaging. It's just so much easier to travel with a glue stick. 

 The collages varied with the different ephemera that I found on different days. Here are our plane stubs with some of the paper ephemera that I had brought with.

 This has our tickets from the Science World and a postcard found at a coffee shop afterwards. I liked the Graphix paint pens for doodling in the spaces.

The images here were from a small local newspaper. And more doodling with the Graphix pens. 

I chose to do collage for our vacation because it is the theme I am using for the Monthly Exploration in our fb group. If you'd like to see more collages and/or join in, come on over to the group.

Let me know how you find some creative fun while on vacation.

Happy Creating!
Wendy

Musical ATC's

October's ATC theme was music. It looks like everyone had fun with this one. 

Kathy

Linda

Louise

Lucie

Marie

Olive

Veronica

Virginia

Wendy

Happy Creating!

Wendy

ATC Swap with a twist.

Usually for our monthly ATC meetings we have a theme and our cards are made at home, ready to swap during the meeting. But once a year we do a baggie swap ATC. This is where we all bring a small baggie of goodies and make our cards during the meeting. The last few years we did themes for our baggies and swapped baggies before making our ATC.  This year we decided to give it a new twist. We still swapped baggies before starting to make our ATCs but for an extra challenge we only had 10 minutes to work on our ATC and then we had to pass it to the person beside us who continued to work on it for another 10 minutes. We then passed it on to a third person to finish it up for another 10 minutes. This was a challenge but great fun. We had time to do this a second time with a quick swap of our baggies.
So each of these ATCs has been created by 3 people in the group.

Have you tried to do this kind of ATC challenge? Do you have suggestions for some other challenges for our group. If you do please give me a shout. We love a challenge!

Happy Creating
Wendy

Tea Bag ATC's

Do you do art with tea bags? I can't say that I had until this month when that was our ATC theme. Who knew you could do such interesting things with them. Just see the variety of cards that were turned out.

Kathy

Linda

Louise

Lucie

Marie

Olive

Veronica

Virginia

Wendy

So if you haven't tried it yet, start saving your tea bags and make art!

Happy Creating!

Wendy