Art Journal

I have finally gotten around to putting pictures of my art journal pages on my blog! These first two pages I actually drew and then colored in with Copic markers and Pan Pastels. The basic ideas for the pictures came from the very talented Joanne Sharpe. I absolutely love her work! She has been a real inspiration to us! The rest are different collages. This next picture of my "little stars" are six of my eight grandchildren. We had two babies added to our family a couple of months ago.

My mom, sister Carolyn and I have still been getting together every first Saturday of the month to make art together which I have thoroughly enjoyed. This is such a fun hobby for us!

Altered Book Pages

Thanks to Pam Carriker and her new book Art at the Speed of Life, I have been having so much fun working on pages in my altered book. Pam has the greatest ideas and I love her style and colors.

I've been using liquid acrylics as well as Pan Pastels to do these pages.

James C. Christensen

One of my very favorite artists for many years has been James C. Christensen. I absolutely love his magical fantasy paintings. He does such wonderful detail work with much symbolism which I love. What a great artist! These are two of my favorites: College of Magical Knowledge and Rhymes and Reasons. The words over the door of the College mean "knowledge is power". And how fun it is to pick out the different nursery rhymes in the second painting!

I don't have any Christensen prints other than glued together puzzles which are fading, but I have several of his books that are so fun to look through. What a great talent he is!

Hand Zentangle

This is a new Zentangle design I made to add to my altered book. I traced my hand, wrote in the words, and then drew in the rest of the hand. Can you say "serious Zentangle addiction"?!

Zentangled

Well, I have really gotten into this Zentangle that I didn't even know existed until a few weeks ago! It is so fun! I love the look of it on colored paper shaded in with white. I've gotten some great books on the subject and I'm having a great time trying out all these new patterns. There are many videos on Youtube.com that have been really helpful too.

Zentangle

My new discovery and obsession! We made some of these stamped and doodled cards in my last ATC class and one of the ladies told me it looked like Zentangle, which I had never heard of. So I came home from class and looked it up on the internet. Wow! It's a whole new art form that is really fun!

Zentangle is the art of creating beautiful images with repetitive patterns and it is very relaxing while increasing focus and creativity. There are a whole group of people "out there" who are trained teachers and they do workshops showing how to make all kinds of beautiful patterns. And I just thought it was doodling! Little did I know what a great art form this is! There are several books on the subject, a couple of which I bought, and they are incredible! These ATC cards below are the samples I did for the class. The card at the top is called a tile- 3 1/2" square, which they make in their classes. Lots of fun!

Latest Creations

These are some of the lastest cards and ATC's I have made for Stamp Club and the class I teach.

Altered Books

I have been having so much fun these last few months getting back into doing altered books. This is such a fun thing to do. The possibilities are endless when it comes to materials and techniques to use. It's great fun to use items that have been gathering dust around here for ages. The pages in this first photo were my sister Carolyn's idea. She did this in her book too. It's so fun that she has gotten excited about doing this! It's great to work (I should say play) on these together! In this book that I'm working on I decided the theme is sayings or thoughts that I like and then illustrate them however I want. So much fun and so little time!

The Latest ATC's

These are the Artist Trading Cards that I have had people make in my classes for the last few months. I can't believe how fun these are to make and all the many ideas and techniques that can be used. It's very fun that I have several people come back each month for my classes.

Latest Projects

This is the Valentine card I made for our last Stamp Club exchange last month. I used a new Cuttlebug embossing folder for the background and inked it with white. The hearts are punches and the scroll shapes are a Spellbinders die. (All those Spellbinders dies are just amazingly incredible!)

These ATC's (Artist Trading Cards) are the ones we did for the class I taught last Saturday morning. We used some techniques from Julia Andrus' great book Paper Transformed, including her mottled paper, faux patent leather, and faux sea glass effects. There are so many great ideas in this book that it will keep us going for a very long time!

And the Winner is...

The winner of my set of 12 handmade gift cards is
Miss Mary of Lillian's Stitches!
She was number 42 and was selected by Random.org as the big winner. She needs to send her address to my email so I can get them off to her.
What a fun several weeks this has been with people from all over the world visiting my blog and me visiting their blogs. There were people from England, Germany, Australia, Canada, Scotland, Israel, Netherlands, Phillipines, Mexico, Ireland, Sweden, Finland, and all over the United States. I couldn't even begin to have the time to visit all 1105 blogs that were participating, but I got to see many of them.
I will look forward to doing this again next year!

One World One Heart 2010

Again, this year I am participating in the One World One Heart event. Bloggers from around the world can go to each other's blogs and enter to win gifts. This year I am giving away a set of 12 handmade gift cards. To enter, just make a comment on my blog and on February 15th the winner will be randomly chosen. I will let that person know and ask for their mailing address to send it off to them!
If you would like to participate or go to see the other blogs that are participating just click on the One World One Heart logo on my sidebar!
What a fun way to "meet" lots of new people and enjoy their creations! I had so much fun doing this last year, that I just have to do it again!
Everyone have a wonderful day and Happy Blog Hopping!