Another Bunk Cover

After sewing for two or three weeks on camp bunk covers I finally finished the second one!

The car girls and I had so much fun digging through all the tubs of fabrics and trims to pick out pieces for their quilts.  The middle car girl is the most artistic and had plans in her head of how it should look.  I of course tried to accomodate their preferences, lol.  I was glad to use up the myriads of "embellishings"  in my stashes for such beautiful girls!

Torso challenge

On this blog
 http://aileensmusings.blogspot.com/search/label/Torso
 is a challenge to do something with a torso.  This is what I made:

I started with some really smooth heavy paper/ light cardboard- I have a roll of this stuff I bought at the YSM so I am not exactly sure what it is or what it is made for, but I like working on it.  I drew the torso, cut it out, gave it a copper acrylic paint coat.  I had a piece of this really strong checker board looking lace from another YSM find, I think it is fabric from vertical blinds which I pasted onto the torso with acrylic medium.  I was using the heat gun so I tarnished the edges with the heat gun a bit.  This torso has just been laying around on my art desk and I add left overs from other projects as I go along, lol.  I added some left over acrylic paint dry brush to it.  Finally the word and the bird showed up so onto the torso they went.  I gave the word and the bird an acrylic wash around the edges so they blended in.  I like the torso... what shall I so with it?

Travel Map Ideas

One of the things our travel guild will be doing is making a map!  Saturday I found a roll of tyvek for a $1! I think it will make a great fabric to draw/color/ a map.  I googled tyvek to see what I could find out about it.  It seems it works great with lots of different media.  I decided to try out what I had about the studio so I would have a reference when I start the map.  I kind of have an idea in my mind.  I know my map will need a lovely border to start with.  Maybe something like zendoodling?  I want to know that the fabric/paper will work if I go to all that trouble, don't I?  I made a line on the tyvek of all the media I found close at hand.  Tomorrow, I am going to see how well it sticks by giving it a swipe with a sponge.  Oh, perhaps I should give it a spray of fixative first to see what happens with that.  Any way, I am playing with it and learning what I can do.  I am not going to heat/bubble/shrink it for this project.  Here is the first lines:

Black India Ink wash

ball point pen

#2 pencil

 yellow opaque stain

green craft acrylic

orange Regular crayon

Red Dr. Martin liquid water color

Purple Other liquid water color

Red pan water color

Yellow glass acrylic

Red paint stick

Blue tube acrylic

Copper metallic acrylic

Blue water based marker

Pink permanent chisel Pt marker

Aqua water color pencil

Black fine point sharpie

Blue metalic marker

Pink ultra fine sharpie

Pink Pit pen brush

Flesh tone photo touch up marker

Orange gouache

Black Pilot V Razor writing pen

White out-White signo-White sharpie poster paint pen

Pink Calligraphy pen

Black Y& C Calligraphy pen

Orange Magic color marker

Green Sharpie Poster Paint pen

Brown Pitt Pen

Brown Koor i nor pen      Aqua Souffle Gel

Brown Micron oo5 pen

Sparkly gels

Sakura pens

Pastels

Brown Pigment marker

Blue Paint marker

Black pitt pen fine point brush

Charcoal

Pink W&N watercolor pencil

Graphitint  Inktense pencils

Blue Smooch Ink

Brown walnut spray ink.

Blue stayzon ink.

I am gonna make a beautiful map!

Trip

I am going on another trip!  I am so excited!  This trip is soooo unlike any I have ever taken.  It will be to a land called ImagiNation.  The plans are still in the making, but I, along with many other artists will be traveling together, yet individually, on this journey.  Our first assignment was to get our "gear" ready, so if we accept the challenge, we can be packed and ready.  You saw my travel trunk in an earlier post?  It is ready for me to throw the required articles in at the drop of a hat... so to speak, lol.  So, as I have been making a paper bag journal to put in the trunk, and thinking about other items, and sewing on my car girl's bunk covers, I found this:

One of the things I have around my studio... but I wanted to post it for myself and all my fellow travelers!

Yellow Rose

Do you sometimes take up the gauntlet of a challenge you find online?  I do.  Over in this blog:
http://colormechallenge.blogspot.com/

you will find a challenge.  The first one is to do a rose.  I made a yellow one because my husband, who grew up in Texas, has always bought me yellow roses.  The yellow rose of Texas thread, ya know?

So, I have quite a stack of painting boards from thrift shops and the scratch and dent store and maybe the YSM I wanted to start doing something with.  Earlier this week I did the purple cat challenge on a clay board.  This week, I decided to use a canvas board and do an acrylic painting.  Whoa!  I have not tried an almost all acrylic painting in probably 20 years.  I did not do so well!  But, eventually, after many glazing layers, I ended up with this:

I think I have forgotton a step or two to painting.  I started with the pre-gessoed canvas board.  I had to re gesso it cuz it had an outline of a tractor on it prepackaged, lol.  Then I transferred the rose with transfer paper.  Gave the whole board a yellow wash to get rid of the white.  Gave the back ground a green wash and the rose a yellow glaze.  Layed in the darks next.  Then layers of yellow.  I saw a photo on a cyber friends blog of a yellow rose with pink tinges on the leaves so added some red.  And the green background was way to glowey so toned it down with a red glaze.  More glazes to rose.  White added to lighter areas.  More yellow glazes.  Something was still wrong!  So, I decided the background needed to change.

Seeing my photo of the little wild flowers outside the studio door, I tried to match the purple to paint the background to set off the yellow of the rose. Purple and yellow are complimentary!  I like the background, or maybe the rose much better now! The background seems rather plain but the rose should be the focus anyway.  Well, maybe if I read up a bit and practice a bit more, I will find out what I did wrong with the rose.  I just have to say, not bad, considering my age and memory of how to paint, but I can get better!

The Butterfly Effect

Over in the Two Dresses Studio
\ http://twodressesstudio.blogspot.com/2010/08/butterfly-effect-open-is-calling-you.html
the owner is collecting art butterflies for a lovely project!  Hop over there and get involved!  I am sending her three butterflies I embellished... finally they are finished.  The scan does not show how sparkly and lovely they are... maybe by clicking and enlarging you may see more.  I loved doing these for her project!

I hope she gets thousands of butterflies!

Tangling

I am posting some recent tangles.  I am/was signed up for the Totally Tangled book study in the Artists of the Round Table group, but for some reason, after many months, and much art,  I am no longer a member there.  I have not been able to find out why.  But, I thought I would at least show you the tangles I made as we started out with lesson 1.  Why not, lol?

We were supposed to work on hearts, stars, crosses, triangles, an the ginkho leaf.

Can you see the cross?

This one I call Fish Sticks... 

I never really realized these doodles needed naming.  I learned quite a bit just by being involved in the lesson 1 of the class.  I wish I knew how to get re-entered back into the group...  Any suggestions?

Travel Trunk

In January, a bunch of us in 14 Secrets is going on an imaginary journey.  Right now, we are all digging out our "travel" gear.  This can be a suit case, a trunk, or whatever.  I decided to use an old steamer trunk miniture, because, since I don't have access to thrift shops here I had to design something.  And old trunks have an aura of history and such about them.  So, here is the process of my trunk making.

Tools needed:  board, glue gun, ruler, craft knife, and of course a drawing of what it will be eventually, with dimensions. 

Once parts are cut and glued, reinforce seams with tape.

Checking to see if top fits bottom, or vise versa..

Lining inside with previously painted paper.  This is a large strip of painted paper I have had hanging in the studio for months.  I painted most of it and wondered, what to do with it.  At last, a perfect place for it!  Cabbage roses... fun to paint, fun to see.

Give the glue time to dry...

I keep my glue mixture and brush in a plastic bag so it won't dry out between steps.

Found some embossed papers last week end at the YSM-perfect for the tin look!  I gave them a couple of ink washes then rubbed over them with a black stamp pad to bring out the embossing.  Cut some paper straps-painted them iron color.  Also gave the trunk an ink wash to get the wood color.

I had this vertical blinds fabric at the YSM last year.  I needed something strong to make hinges.  This is tough stuff so cut some strips of it and painted them copper.

Found my box of previous used tacks...

Flattened a belt buckle found at the YSM two summers ago..

The trunk with embossed tin look, straps, and hinges added...

Belt buckle added for embellishment... and sharpie marker difines the wood strips..

Rope handles... and front handle/latch made from the top of a shoe thong that I found at the scratch and dent store a few months back...  I get things that catch my eye, wondering what I could do with them.  Since this is really light weight, it fit with my very light weight trunk.

Out side for a final clear coat spray layer or two, inside and out..

And just outside my door, the fall blooming wild flowers welcomed me and my trunk!

Sharing Ideas

Blogs and groups have an infinite array of ideas to share.  One has to pick and choose what revs up their engines.  I find myself trying all kinds of things, because someone mentioned it on a blog or in a group.  My friend Sox, over in the sketchbook project group throws out many good ideas and challenges, the latest one I have tried is to make art in the Nick Bantock style.  She also has an invitation to join in a tribute to Nick (google a tribute to Nick Bantock) which anyone can join.  I was not really aware of his art, nor his books, until she mentioned him.  So, I have been trying to learn about how he makes/made his art for the books.
And then, my friend Susan from Australia wanted to do a swap, so we decided to try to make a collage based on Nick's processes.  This is my second layer.  I did one, did not like it, gessoed over it and started again.  I am still not sure I like this one (perhaps the purple is the problem) but it is much better than the last one.  I have some really fun finds from the YSM that I use on these... and old checkwriting machine that prints and embosses any amount up to a million dollars, lol, an official steel workers union embossing stamp, and an old pricing stamp that has $ and cent signs and you can print some amount like 3. and 1/3 cents... when did the stores use that sort of amounts?   Here is my almost ready to swap collage:

Swallowcliff's Art: Purple Cat

Swallowcliff's Art: Purple Cat

Purple Cat

Chaska loves Rodrique's Blue Dog paintings.  I do too, now that she has alerted me to them.  And over on her blog you can see some of his Blue Dog paintings AND find Chaska's challenge... paint a purple cat in the style of Rodrique's Blue Dogs. You can go see them
 http://www.artalchemystudio.com/
 I thought to myself "what fun!"  So, today, I decided to give it a try.  Well, let me tell you... I found a clay board that wanted me to use it, and after doing Carla Sonheim's labs,  I decided to try it in water colors.  I have never used clay board before-I like the smooth finish!  And it takes water colors great.  I, on the other hand,  do not have much expertise with water colors in general.  Getting a good purple, since I had none in the tube was impossible for me.  This is the painting which I call an evening fall stroll, for some reason which has to do with my muse, I guess, lol.

Finished!

I declare myself finished!  I am finished with the Drawing Lab Book Labs.  I did many of them, not all, sorry Carla.  Here are the last efforts for it.  Now, you will have to put up with viewing my doodles and some other things I am getting into, lol.

Illuminate or draw in or on books.  This is a page I removed from an altered book that is still waiting for me to play.

Make a mini book with collage and paint and stamping.

Scribble on a page then make something out of it.

Do a walk about and draw what you see.

More of the walk about.

And, I also declare my self finished with one (1) of the three denim camp quilts to go.  Another one is started...

Doodling Class

Why, you might ask, would someone need to take a class for doodling?  Most times, doodling is considered a mindless thing you do, while doing something more important, right?  Well, not in the art world!  Doodling has now earned it's own place in art, it's own genre, you might say.  And over in ART we are now doing a book study on it.  We started with some practices, then learned some basic parameters, learned a bit about naming our designs, learned what supplies we need and we had a major discussion on copywrite.  Wow, I am finding out, that doodling, is just like any other art project... all the basics then on to great pieces!  Well, so I thought I would show you what I have done so far...

So, in a sketch book, some practices,

Trying to develop some personal type designs

With in certain given shapes

I made this in the Drs waiting room with a ball point pen and a hotel pad which happened to be in my purse, lol.  Another example of "use what is at hand to make art!"

My Birds

We have lots of birds that hang out with us on our hill.  I so enjoy watching them!  So, when I had to draw some birds, I of course picked the ones that I see almost daily.  The first one reminds me of what we call the "bobbin'" rock birds.  The walk up and down our rock wall bobbin and jumping from rock to rock.  They have an unusual voice too, kinda like a machine noise.

And we have a lot of "big mouthed" birds too.  We have black birds with colors on their wings that not only holler lots, they make really prettey trilling sounds too.  Then we have some blue jays that caw really loud and they like it close to our house!

  And also the crows that play on the wind current and argue about everything.

And then we have the hooty owls, who used to get on our roof to sing, but haven't done that since we got the new metal roof, lol.  But we can hear them over in the cliffs.

Once in a great while, we have a flock of geese or ducks fly into the local area, honking and swarming, seeming to try to work out the leader ship on their way to whereever.  And we have the long legged variety of water birds too, like the long legged heron fly by.  They are not so noisy as the other birds but we get a kick at their legs dangling as they fly.

And we have pairs of doves.  Did you know doves mate for life.  We always hate it when the September dove hunt starts as sometimes we have pairs for months, then one day, it will just be a single dove, and it makes us sad to think they lost their mate.  This one has a crest... not too authenic,  I'm afraid.

I used charcoal-it's been a while since I tried to draw with charcoal but I like the looseness and feel of using it.  I used a handmade sketch book with tinted pages.  The pages here are kinda of a grayish green... I have not liked the color for scanning but the drawings are okay on it when you look in the book.  The paper is really nice for a sketching and drawing... good feel to it!

Art Challenges

Every once in a while, I see an art challenge that I want to join.  I found this one and did it.  Then, I think, I discovered I didn't do the right "king."  But, since I did do something, I am sticking to mine rendition of the "king."   If you want to play go to:  http://artswebshow.com/2010/08/17/art-challenge-king-of-the-beasts/

Alas, problems raise their evil heads.  My scanner decided to take a vacation.  I am trying to get it back up and running, but have to use alternative and not so great methods of posting pictures.  Dis-regard the waffly look and see the art please! lol

I used a #2 pencil, then high lighted it with a white conde crayon on amber colored drawing paper.  

Make a Face

Once again I have been playing with an eyedropper and ink.
There is something about these faces that beckon to me...

Next time I get the urge to do these, I am going to give them a try in my Face Book!

Girl Camp Quilts

My car girls are ALL girl girls.  They love all the fluff and stuff little girls love!  But, they also love to go camping and don't mind getting their faces, hands, clothes, shoes dirty or muddy.  This year they are learning to put a worm on their own hook!  Wow.  So, I decided to make them some bunk covers for their camper bunks... regular twin sized spreads are just too wide!  And what better to make camp type quilts and such than denim?  So here is what I did...

I rounded up my denim stash plus some heavy fabrics like cordoroy, velvets, and such to add color to the denim.  This is for girls so wanted the project to look girly.  Ripped the denims into strips, what ever I could get from the pair at hand and cut strips from the fabrics.  I am just putting this stuff together in a crazy quilt sort of fashion.  No rhyme or reason, just grab a strip and add it on!

Rounded up girly type stuff like

TRIMS

And Embellishments

And colorful stuff

And Rick Rac... I had lots of fun stuff in my stashes!  I just also added these things at random here and there on the top as it progressed.

I even found the free motion cat I made when doing the Drawing Lab Cats in Bed Lab so I made a block from it.  Littlest car girl really like it!  The orange in the lower left is heavy denim like fabric so it fit right in.

Some black denim I did their names with a discharge bleach process.   Then free motion sewing over that.  Evidently black is hard to discharge.  The denim piece you see on the top right corner was a pair I picked up at the YSM with embellishment up both legs!  The piece of denim with the triangles is a denim blouse front,

Add the rick rac and trims along most of the seams. With pieces of stuff sewn on here and there.

And this is a close up of a feather and silk flower the littlest car girl so wanted on her quilt so I sewed it on by her name.  It is very tactile!

I still need to add some embellishing hand stitches/enbroidery around the bare spots.

This is the first of three I will make.  It is for the littlest car girl who is so thrilled with it.  She asks me everyday if I am finished yet.  And, I think she is thrilled that at last, she gets something before the bigger car girls get it, lol.

And for my benefit... the next one will be easier now I have worked out some of the kinks!