Because It's Time

Yesterday, I mentioned that I was reading The Sound of Paper (SoP for short) by Julia Cameron (who most people know from her book The Artist's Way), and that I had started doing morning pages.  A little haphazardly, but they've been happening...don't judge, man...

So I've been doing these morning pages (only three times) and I had this great epiphany...crazy...

  I used to write a lot... that was my creative release, but I let it fall by the wayside a little after I discovered art journaling.  So all of my 'breakthrough' type things have happened while I was working on a journal page.  And so then I start a little bit of writing, and three days later...KABLAMO...mental breakthrough.  What the heck?  Oh, every creative thing in the world, this is why I will do you all at some point...and a lot of you, more than once...but I digress...

So, my epiphany...it was about Leonard, who I've written about/done pages about many times, and that whole situation...it's sort of a conversation with him/myself.  For anyone who doesn't know, Leonard was a very dear friend of mine who committed suicide.  

I'm just going to type out what I wrote for the morning pages, word for word (with quotation marks, just so you know where it begins and ends)...it'll be easier for me that way...and you can see my stream of consciousness that way too...so here you go:

"It suddenly occurred to me that you are the defining moment in my life.  How, if anyone wanted to really know me, I could not avoid mentioning you.  How, if I had to describe myself, I'd be lying if I never said your name.  The person I am right now is impossible without you.

I'm stuck in the moment I found out about what you'd done.  I can't seem to move forward.  And I don't want to move forward, but I do at the same time.  I think if I let myself move on, then I'll have to accept that I'll never see you again, that you are lost forever.  And I don't want to believe that.  I don't know if I can accept that and be ok mentally afterward.  I don't know if I could live with that as my reality.

At the same time, I don't want to go all  Miss Havisham either, sitting at home alone in my wedding dress waiting for a man who isn't coming back.  I don't want to shed tears for the rest of my life, not on a hopeless cause.  I don't want my life defined by you not being here.  I don't want my life defined by your death.  Especially since your life was not defined by your death.

Your life was defined by your living.  You were good and funny and kind; you were so many beautiful things.  Bad things too...and that's as it should be.  You were just a man...a good man...but only a man.  So all your bad decisions were just bumps on the road.  It's the good you did, the sweet and wonderful ways you had about you...those are what defined your life.

And I think that's what I deserve as well.  I deserve for my life to be defined by the things I've done and not done, by things I will do or won't.

So I think it's time.  It's time for me to really accept that you're not coming back.  It's time to let myself believe the truth, no matter how painful: that you are gone.

It doesn't mean I love you any less.  It doesn't mean you weren't important.  It also doesn't mean I'll ever stop being sad, blaming myself, or missing you like hell.  It doesn't mean that I'll ever forget you.

It just means that I deserve to have a chance at happiness and that I deserve to define my own life."  

And so that's the epiphany I had while writing my morning pages.  

I think that the art journals have let me get out a lot of sadness and a lot of grief.  I needed to have that happen...to put my emotions on a page and know that they were real and ok.  It seems like there are a lot of mourning pages in my art journals...and that's ok.  They served a worthwhile purpose for me, letting me feel my feelings and letting me honor someone very important to me.  Maybe at some point there will be more sad pages when I need them to happen.

But the morning pages, the writing, it's my logical side shining through when I need to be more reasonable.  My emotional side would have me mourn for the rest of my life.  Because how can I ever stop loving someone once I really felt true love?  But the thing is, there's a difference between loving and honoring someone and becoming obsessed...thank you to my mom for putting it into the right words for me.  

There is a psychological/behavioral condition known as ' The Havisham Effect' (Miss Havisham is a character in Great Expectations...google the book for more info on her character, if you are so inclined) where a person who suffers from longing for a lost love develops a physically addictive relationship with that feeling, in the same way as someone who is addicted to gambling or drugs, because it triggers the same neural reward centers.  From what I understand, it basically has to do with how memories of people we love make us happy, then, because we no longer have them in our lives, we feel deep sadness...the two things circle around to the point where the brain confuses the two and we become addicted to that feeling.  It makes sense in a way, but how messed up is that?!?

I don't want to become addicted to...or if it's already happened, stay addicted to...my grief.  I don't want to be inundated by sadness for whatever amount of time I have left...because that is not a life, and I value my life too highly to let it wither away like that.

So I'm letting go, because it's time.  I accept that he's not coming back.  I accept that what time we had together was beautiful, but it's over now.  And I accept that, even when it doesn't seem like it, every day I wake up is a chance to be happy again and the opportunity to define my own life on my own terms.  I can't tell you how much easier I can breath after realizing all of this.

I made a page in one of my art journals today:

Letting go...

I didn't start out with the intention for this page to happen, I was just trying to finish another page in my oldest (one of the two that have crappy paper)  art journal.  But somehow this image happened, and I really, really, really love it.  To me, it looks like I'm letting all of the obsessively bad stuff I've been feeling float off into the cosmos (how's that for hippy dippy).  I don't need to feel those sad things to honor or to love.  I see that now.  I see it.  It looks like letting go.

Roberta...Face 22 of 29

Here's face #22:

Roberta...made with micron pen, watercolors, gelatos, and acrylic paint

I was inspired to make Roberta by this song (Santa Fe by Eilen Jewell):

It's such a sweet, sad sounding song...I needed a sweet and sad face to go with it.

I don't know if she's 100% done, I only know that I am 100% done with her for now.  She's been a little frustrating to me...through no fault of her own.  I just forgot that the art journal I made her in has paper that pills if you use to much wet...so watercolors were probably not the best idea to color her with.

I liked the pencil sketch I had drawn of her, and I really need to remember to take a couple in-progress shots...especially when I've done a sketch I'm really happy with.  I say that to myself all the time, but I always end up forgetting...maybe Roberta will finally be the thing to make me remember!

Hopefully, Roberta will also remind me that, after 29 Faces is over, I really want to work on my handwriting/lettering.  ...I've said it before (at least a million times), but I think I'm really ready now!

Can you believe that there are just seven more faces left and we'll be at #29?  Crazy!  Don't forget to join the celebration on September 29th when the surprise prize will be revealed and you can enter for a chance to win!

Until tomorrow, my friends...

Maggie...Face 17 of 29

Here's face 17:

Hi, I'm Maggie.

I'm calling this gal Maggie because underneath the paint, gelatos, and gesso there's a face from a magazine...oh, I'm so clever... (haha)  

Anyway, this is actually a pretty fun technique.  You glue the magazine (or printed) image to a page, then do a light coat of gesso over the magazine page.  Then go over the features with a pencil (at least that's what I do) and then start painting.  Because you've done a thin coat of gesso, you can see where the features and shadows go.  It's actually pretty helpful too if you're having trouble with shading and proportions or some other issue, because you're going right over the photograph and you can still see the important bits...and you could really do it with anything you wanted...it doesn't have to be a face.  So fun stuff, fun stuff...

I wish I would have taken a picture of the magazine face so that you could see how different Maggie is from the original image.  To me that's one of the extra cool things about doing this technique...if you had ten copies of the original image and did this over and over, even though you used the same image, your faces will end up different every time...unless I guess you were REALLY good and you wanted to make the same girl ten times.  But, for the most part, your paintings are going to come out differently.

I like how the nose turned out pretty well...and I like the hair/head scarf situation too...and some of the shading is cool, and her bottom lip is making me really happy!  On the other hand, I'm sad that she's got a bit of the googly eyes going on...and teeth...the teeth situation is questionable as well...but I am a bit disgruntled at my teeth still, so that might have something to do with it... (I CURSE ALL THE TEETH!!!)  

I really liked using the gelatos over the acrylic paint too...they stayed viable and blended super well even if they dried before I got the other color in...they reconstituted well...I hope I am saying that right.  Anyways, if you haven't done it yet, try gelatos over top of acrylic paint...it's fun!

Until tomorrow, my friends... <3<3<3

Little Splash For Amber...Face 16 of 29

I mentioned that I was sent a beautiful background by one of my Facebook friends, Amber.  Amber made backgrounds for the ladies in our group, sent them out for us to add our personal touches to, and then we'll mail them back to her.  I finished my piece today.

Here's the beautiful background that Amber made:

This background is so pretty...I really hated to cover even a little part of it up!  

I thought long and hard about what I would make to go on top of Amber's background.  The more I looked at it, the more I thought it looked like a bunch of raindrops splashing in a puddle, sending ripples out in all directions.  I almost made a girl with an umbrella...but that wasn't quite right.

No, the more I thought about it, the more I leaned towards my second thought...that this water was much deeper than a puddle...and that something underneath the water was disturbing the surface instead.  And so it was:

Lo and behold, hiding under the surface of the water was a feisty mermaid in all her half-fish glory.  This is my pencil sketch of her, that I then cut out and glued to the background.  I think that's the wisest course when one is nervous about wrecking something beautiful...make some rough drafts, get it right, and finally, cut and paste once you're happy!

And so in the end, I was very please with this version of the mermaid, who was hiding in the water all along:

Underneath that riotous surface, she was merely making a little splash with her beautiful tail!

I thought about adding more to the piece, but I couldn't bring myself to do it...I loved Amber's background too much...there needed to be plenty of it showing through!  

I used watercolors, faux gelatos and Silks acrylic glazes (as well as some black Microns for the detail work) on Amber's mermaid.  She's got some lovely glimmer to her that the camera just refuses to pick up, so you'll just have to take my word on it...but it's there, all shimmery and pretty in her hair, her eyes, and her tail.

I hope that Amber will enjoy her Little Splash as much as I enjoyed making her...now I'm tasked with another project that will hopefully go as well as Amber's did.  I get a little nervous about adding things to something someone else has already done!  When the work is already so very beautiful, I get scared that I'll go and mess the whole thing up!!!  But, fingers crossed, ...at least till I start to hold the pencil...that my gal pals will like what I add to their already stunning pieces...

Don't forget to come back on the 29th of September for a surprise prize giveaway...in the meantime, I hope you'll be getting some art on, just as I will be doing every day till then.  Until tomorrow, my friends.  <3<3<3

Cat Woman...Face 15 of 29

Face 15 of 29:

"If I were a cat woman, I'd have scratched your eyes out by now."

I think I've thoroughly lost my muse today...or my muse has gone totally crazy...I'm really just not sure which. 

 

I was sitting at my desk this morning, waiting for inspiration to strike.  I was scanning through my file of pictures to use as reference photos, and I found one I thought would be good for today.  I started sketching her with my pencil when my cat (Snick is her name) came in and decided it was time for me to pay attention to her.  

The odd thing about it is that Snick is not really a lovey cat.  She doesn't really want to be held or petted or even acknowledged most of the time.  She wants to come inside, eat her cat food and then be let back outside...and then repeat the cycle when she chooses.  She has no time for human interaction...she only has time for murdering other animals.  But, apparently, murder cats need love too (every great once in a while), because she would just not leave me alone till I paid attention to her. 

So I let her jump up in my lap and tried to pet her and sketch at the same time, but in Snick's opinion, I needed both hands to pet her so she commenced clawing at my pencil and the hand that was holding it until I gave in to her demands.  She was satisfied at last because she had my full attention and rewarded me by quietly purring...she purrs even more rarely than she wants to be touched...and so it went for about five minutes.  At that point she decided she'd had enough, looked up at me with her yellowish cat eyes, bit my hand ever so gently as a thanks for my service and jumped off my lap, meowing demandingly to be let outside.  

So after coming back from letting her out...I have to give in to her demands, she has the most annoying meow in the history of meows...I started to draw this cat lady with her yellow eyes.  I was thinking about how cats just don't care what other people think...no consequences in cat world, really...  And if I were a cat woman, there are several people who's faces I think I would have a field day with...and quite a few I'd snuggle up to as well, but that's a page for a different day.

I don't know that I like this cat lady, but she has given me a rather brilliant idea for a cat lady of a different type to draw...so that's a good thing.  I do like the lower part of her hair and the shadow on her neck though...and I kind of like her fangs too...maybe those things will show up in the next cat lady I draw.  

I'm still working on my piece for my Facebook friend, having had a little gluing setback, but all is going well now and I just need to do a few more things to finish the piece.  I should have her done by tomorrow and then I can mail her on my lunch break at work!  Huzzah!

In the meantime, don't forget to come back on the 29th for the surprise prize giveaway.  I've decided that you don't have to be my follower in order to get in on the giveaway...it makes me seem desperate and needy.  I want people to read the blog because they like it, not because they feel pressured.  And I want to have a giveaway as a thank you to the nice friends I've made by blogging, not to increase my followers or page views or whatever...I want people to come back because I've got good content and they like what they're reading.  Therefore, the only thing you'll need to do to win is to come back on the 29th to see the prize and then (on the 29th) leave a comment saying you want to be entered to win.  And that's it.  

And now I'm off to make more art so that I can post another face tomorrow. Smooches to you all! <3<3<3

Obscure...Face 14 of 29

Face 14 of 29:

"to obscure emotion was becoming a natural reflex; it helped sometimes not to feel at all"...paraphrase from
Truman Capote

I tore a page out of Other Voices, Other Rooms (by Truman Capote) early in the morning today...I couldn't sleep and at 3 in the morning, I finally just got up, figuring I might as well do something relatively constructive.  I didn't get my quiet time last night and BLARG!  I am really ready for quiet time.  I guess 3 AM art kind of qualifies, but I was extremely tired and mostly out of it (like a zombie...a sleepy, sleepy zombie), so it really doesn't...  

I used my faux gelatos on this girl, and it made me remember how much I like those things!  I should use them more often.  I was having trouble seeing the pencil marks on this book page last night, so I think my gal is a little wonky looking...but I do like the colors around her eyes.  The purple and pink and blue look pretty cool.  I stuck her into my Gregg journal with some scrapbook paper to differentiate the words on her page from the words on Gregg's page...and then, of course, some washi tape to stick it all together.

I've got to get working on a piece for a friend of mine from one of the Facebook groups I'm in.  She sent a piece of paper she made a background on, and I'm making something to go on the background and then I'll send it back to her.  I think all the ladies in this particular group are doing this, so when she gets all the pieces back, she's definitely going to have something very special!  I think I am the procrastinator of the group, so I've got to get a move on!  Well, really, I'm not a procrastinator...I just wanted to make the exact right thing for her background and it took me several days of staring at the beautiful background she had made before I could decide what I wanted to make.  But I finally picked, and now it's drawn and just needs colored in and then I can send it on it's merry way.  So I'm off to spritz my watercolors and get them ready for action.  <3

Page at last and icad too

I finally did an art journal page last night.  FINALLY!  From start to finish (thanks to my beloved industrial strength heat gun)!  And, I suppose, technically two pages.  *insert gigantic sigh of relief here*

I decided that I would start to watch some videos for art journaling and see if I could learn some new techniques, be reminded of ones I've not used for a while, and even to see if I saw something that would inspire me to create a brilliant technique of my own.  

So, last night I sat down and queued up Pinterest and started searching...and then ingeniously forgot to pin the video I watched, so I sadly can't share it with you.  When I stumble across that video again, I promise I will put up the link...and I'll remember to pin the video next time so I can share it with you right away!

At any rate, I watched a video (it was a lady who did a Dyan Reavely inspired video, using Dyan's products/style)and then tried to copy what the woman in the video did.  She did some things I didn't/couldn't do (because I didn't have all the supplies she did) and I added in my own touches as well to get the pages to be 'finished' and more my style.  And here they are:

Started off by spaying the page with fresh lime and black marble Dylusions (I notice people using this color combo a lot, and it looks good when they do it, but I HATE it when I try it...)  Then I used one of Dyan's stencils (which I do have, but don't know the name of...it's the one with the flower edge and dots in the middle) and sprayed through it with the same color dylusions as above.  And then I decided (she did not do this in the video) to use some white acrylic paint and went through the stencil with it as well (because the page was VERY dark in places, and I didn't like that.   Then, in the video, the woman uses one of Dyan Reavely's stamps on a separate piece of paper, and then glues it on the page, but I don't have any of her stamps, so I just drew a girl instead, colored her in with Dylusions and pasted her in.  I used postbox red Dylusions sprayed through the same stencil on the left page to tie in with the headband of the girl. Then I used the mini "Mixed Up Alphabet" stencil and traced out the letters on the left page ("You gotta be kidding me"), with Pitt pen and then colored it in with acrylic paints in yellow and in turquoise to try to tie in the girl a little better...she was sticking out like a sore thumb pretty badly.  Then I took some black acrylic paint and added in the words on the right page ("Can I just be over it now?") because there was too much white going on.  Then I added the dots with turquoise and black acrylic in some random places, outlined some stuff as well.  I used black faux-latos around the girl and then a sparkly peachy one to color in her face a little more (it was a VERY stark white before)...then I took that same sparkly peach and went over the whole page randomly.  And then it was bedtime!

I also got my ICADS done for yesterday and today, just didn't have time to share them.  Both are on 3x5 cards.

This is the one for the 19th, the prompt was 'summer':

I saw a picture of this on Pinterest, and it had these really bright awesome super saturated colors, and I thought that looked pretty summery, so I tried to recreate it on a card.  I REALLY LOVE how the colors look on this.  (Used watercolor and Pitt pen)

And here's today's card, with the prompt of 'poem'

:

"Faces of other people follow me around the room."  This is acrylic paint and then I glued down some faces I made using paperclay (the blueish white ones) and Martha Stewart Crafter's Clay (the purple ones).  I painted their eyes, lips, and cheeks with acrylic.  The poem this is from is below in it's entirety.  I wrote it and it's a double alphabet poem, minus the letter 'x', because there are just not that many 'x' words out there to use...  I always end up cheating and using words that sound like 'x' at the beginning...extreme, extra, etc.

"The Firing Synapses"

And you will always

Be with me, beloved.

Closed eyes call and you answer in 

Dreams that keep you dear to me, 

Ever in my thoughts, even where you shouldn't be.

Faces of other people follow me around the room.

Giddy laughter covers the gloom in me.

Half of my life rots with you, hallow in the grave.

Indecision corrodes the rest.  If only you had not...

Justice, however, won't be served and I'm always jolted back.

Killing me slowly, they keep it up.

Love, they never seem to let me alone.

My memories of you are constantly interrupted,

Not by anything I care for, nothing important,

Only for the sake of this half life I lead.  This open wound

Pouring, barely enough left to keep me going.  Nothing easing the pain.

Quietly, life drains out of me...quick enough I suppose.

Ready or not, when the time comes, you can't resist.

Sometimes I wonder where you are now.  Sickly

thoughts try to make sense of it.

Useless.  I know I will never understand

while I still breath, while I still think, 

exactly what happens, what to expect.

You yearn to know or else try to forget the question.

Zapping your brain, the synapses zero in or else try to disconnect.

So there you have it...if you'd like to read more of my poetry (some is pretty decent, I swear!) you can check it out HERE.

ICAD 16 and 17 and a Bonus

I was a bit of a no-show yesterday...sorry about that!  And here I've been so good at posting at least the ICAD cards once a day...Oh well...

The reason I didn't post yesterday is that it was my first day of non-smoking.  Oh yeah...it was great.  I got one of those e-cigarettes to try to take the edge off...I don't know how well that's going to work.  Let me just say I could totally eat a cigarette right now.  I wouldn't even flinch. 

I have quit smoking before.  Literally quit, I didn't just make an attempt to quit for a day and then take it back up.  No, I quit for three or four years.  Then, I had a bit of a personal tragedy and started again.  That was about two years ago.  

The first time I quit, I quit cold turkey (after attempting the pill, which made me a psychopath)...that may be how I end up doing it this time as well...  I think this electronic thing is just making me angry.  

The sucky part is that I LIKE to smoke.  I REALLY like to smoke.  OH LAWD, HOW I LOVE TO SMOKE!!!.  

But I know that I need to quit.  I've been getting out of breath way too easily, and it is probably a combination of the smoking and the general amount of unhealthy that I possess, but I'm willing to try to quit smoking first and see how that works out...then exercise if I HAVE to.  Another good reason to quit is the stink.  I know everything I have probably smells like smoke.  I have been thinking about trying to sell some of my art online (Thanks to the encouragement from my gals on Facebook) and I can't do that if it smells like smoke.  And then there's the whole money end of it.  Yeah...I don't want to tell you how much I spend on smoking a month...you'll gasp in horror.  ...At least (AT LEAST!) $200...sometimes more.  Yeah, that's not a typo...two hundred dollars a month or more spent on smoking!  *GASP!*  I know, how ridiculous is that? Do you know how many art and craft supplies could be bought with that money?  So many...

So if everyone I know in real life could promise not to be annoying for the next week or two, that would be great.  From quitting before, I know the first two weeks were the hardest for me.  That was the time frame that I wanted to rip people's faces off.  After that I was totally ok.  I thought maybe the e-cigarette would take some of that edge away, but I think it is making it worse.  

I am trying to think of all the awesome reasons I have to quit smoking, but good grief, just talking about it makes me want a cigarette!  I promise this will not become a blog dedicated to how I quit smoking, but I may mention it off hand, just to keep me accountable.  

At any rate, I did do my ICAD cards this weekend, and here they are: 

The first one is from the 16, the prompt was "polka dots" and it's a 3x5:

This is a stamp I have.  I embossed it and then used watercolor to paint behind it.  I could get inspired to do much else on this one, I just wanted to try the idea out again.

Here's the card for today, the prompt is "definition" and it's a 3x5 as well:

This one reminds me of smoking...if you look at it sideways, it looks like your trying to light two cigarettes with one flame.  I can't look at this anymore!  *tear*

Finally, I have a bit of a 'bonus' card today.  Inspired by the lovely (and VERY nice and funny) Tracey Fletcher King and her amazing cuppa cards, and using her step by step how-she-does-it on her blog (found HERE), I made my own cuppa card!

Here's my cup, I use her for holding pens and crayons and crochet hooks, but she is very much a mug, I promise... :

Isn't she adorable?  I love stuff like this!  I got her forever ago at a thrift store for a quarter.  She's worth much more to me; I just love her!

And here's my card, a 4x6:

Not too horrible for a first try, right?  And I did like Tracey said on the blog, and used NO PENCIL, only pen...on the lettering too, which is why "promise" is colored in...because it's an 's' not a 'c' as I originally tried to write...Note to self: spell check first next time.  Overall, not terrible, but I think with practice that I could get better.  So practice is the plan!  

Thanks to Tracey Fletcher King and her awesome how-to!  I really had a lot of fun attempting this...even though I couldn't use my pencil safety net... :)

ICAD June 15

Here are my ICAD cards for the day, the prompt was "Postage Stamp".

This one is 3x5: 

I saw the quote on Pinterest.  She's sepia-toned Micron 0.5 colored in 'faux'-latos.  The Guatemala thing is a rub-on I've had forever.

Here's the 4x6:

This is a stamp featuring  postage stamp size pictures, some of them even postage stamp related...I feel like it captured the essence of the prompt.  I embossed the stamped image and then used my watercolors to color it in.  My heat gun has been at my mom's house for quite a while, and I realized I missed it ever so much...I do not wish to be parted from this day forward.

Playing with dolls and ICAD 8, 9, and 10

One of the groups I'm in on Facebook is having a swap using a template from Stampington.com.  You can find the template HERE, or go to Stampington's site, which has a bunch of other templates, tutorials and free projects to try...I'm definitely going to be visiting that site again soon!

So anyway, here's what I made with the template:

I used modeling paste for the hair, so it has some texture even though you can't see it.  The arm is articulated, thanks to the little paper fastener thingie.  The wing is Angelina film, which is iridescent, (although it doesn't come through well in the photo) and stamped with Stazon.  And paint (acrylic and watercolor), pen, scrapbook paper, and lace are the other ingredients.

I get to swap with my most favoritest Boo in the whole wide world!  I hope she likes it!

And then here's my ICAD's for the past couple days, all on 3x5 cards: 

June 8, the prompt was "city or map", and I did this with an XS Pitt Pen.  The line is from the Johnny Cash song "The Ballad of Barbara" below.

June 9, the prompt was "sun".  This is water soluble crayolas, gelatos, and watercolor.

And today, June 10, the prompt was "list of favorites".  I'm not a list person, so I just had to wing it.  The list is 'favorites today'.  And it says:

1. This French Violet color paint (it's Valspar and the picture doesn't do it justice...the color is a really beautiful purply grey, and I like it quite a bit...my mom gave me the paint)
2. Art jounaling...yeah, that's an every single day favorite, duh!  I haven't had much time in my art journals for the past few days and I am detoxing or something!  I hope I can get some time with them after work tonight!
3. White space in journals...I do love the amazing layered backgrounds that are popular right now, but there's something about white space in journals that just does it for me!
4. My new haircut...yeah, I said goodbye to a good 4-5 inches, and it feels SO much better...I swear to goodness, I could shave my head bald and I'd be so happy about it.  But sadly, I have a bulbous head and bald is just not going to be a good look for me...so I settled for shorter than it was...
5. Summer storms...the kind that leave it cooler than it was before the storm started anyway...I don't want any of that humidity crap afterwards!  
6. Reusing file folders...I did the art doll above on a manilla file folder, and I have about 10,000 more file folders.  I am happy to be able to put them to use, even if it's just one at a time!
7. Line drawings...  I love simple line drawings, even though I am always adding in detail on my own things.  A well done line drawing is HARD to do, (at least to me) but gorgeous!
8. Chocolate milk...seriously, I could drink a bathtub full of chocolate milk and still not be sick of it...I have a problem...
9. buckeye brownie cake!!!  I stopped at a diner yesterday because I just wanted to get out of the house and got a philly cheese steak and a piece of this cake...  Oh.My.Goodness.  I am not even a cake person, and this stuff made rainbows shoot out of my mouth!  It was SO delicious!
10. Sad songs...I am currently listening to Trio, which is Dolly Parton, Emmylou Harris, and Linda Rondstadt.  I love the songs on this album (and Trio 2, also gorgeous)...it was one of the first CDs I ever bought, and I wore it out.  Now I'm listening to it on Spotify, contemplating a quick Amazon purchace...   

Dancing On A Graves and ICAD Day 5

When I first became interested in art journaling, as is my tendency when I become interested in something, I did a lot of searching.  I scoured the internet for pictures and information.  Well, honestly, the first thing I did was talk to my sister, who's an extraordinary researcher...and I put her skills to use for myself...she may or may not be aware that I use her as my research monkey.  (I love you, Marian!)  And the next thing I did was to take what she'd given me and branched out on my own and found information where ever I could.  I went to the library.  I stalked the blogs of people who's work I admired.  YouTube seemed to become a homepage for me, because I was constantly looking at how-to videos.  I ordered a bunch of books off of Amazon.  I can get a little obsessed sometimes...it's a good and bad thing.  But in that initial burst of interest, I discovered something I found very interesting.

In all the blogs I stalked, all the videos I watched, all the books I read, there was a pattern of...I don't know if this is the right word...cheerleading (?).  There was inevitably something mentioned to the effect of "You can do it!  Dismiss your inner critic!  There's a little voice inside in your head saying there are beautiful things  inside of you, and YOU CAN SET THEM FREE!", etc.  My pessimistic side wanted to mock all of these encouraging words, because they seemed like a bunch of mumbo jumbo.  Not because they were stupid or wrong, but because I didn't understand that there were so many people out there who needed to hear them.

Let me try to explain:  

In my life, I've had the pleasure and the pain of being responsible for myself and others from a pretty early age.  The downfall of this responsibility is that I question basically all my choices.  I can be the most indecisive person in the world...I over-analyze EVERYTHING.  I am always afraid of making the wrong choice and that the consequences of my choice will have this butterfly effect that eventually leads to what we all fear...a zombie apocalypse.  OK, that's a stretch, but you get what I mean, right?  Choices lead to actions, and actions have consequences beyond our control.  The fact that we don't know what consequences our actions will have is a little scary to some people, and a lot scary to other people...I fall into the "a lot scary" category.  It's not the actions, it's not the physically doing something  that scares me.  It's the mental part, the choice, that's scary.

The good part of being responsible from early on is that I know I can DO.  My mom's favorite saying when I was a kid was "Can't never did nothing."  If you keep saying you can't do something, you're right, because you won't even try.  This line of thinking has led me to be able to do a whole heaping lot of different things.  Oh sure, I'm a colossal failure at many things, but I keep trying.  For many situations in my life, failure has not been an option.  If I have to do something, I'll latch onto it like I'm covered in super glue and won't let go til I'm as close to perfect as a person can be.  

And that's why I couldn't understand that people need to hear "You CAN do this."  ...well duh, of course you can!  For me, once I made the choice to do creative things, the majority of the scariness ended.  It became about practicing at that point.  It became irritation that I couldn't get my hands to make the things I saw in my brain.  It became about learning as much as I could about how to make the kind of art I wanted to make.  

I am still learning.  I am still not at the point I want to be at.  I have second thoughts about certain decisions: Do I add this color, or is it better without?  Do I want to put this journaling here?  Do I want to use acrylics or watercolor today?  See, it's the choices I'm most afraid of.  But the great and forgiving thing about art is that you can always make more.  You can always have a do-over.  It makes the consequences of your choices much less scary when you come to terms with the fact that, if we choose, what we make can be never ending.  Anything we do can be fixed, repaired, altered, amended or covered over entirely and it becomes a new start.  In art, mistakes merely teach us what we need to do to get better.

Deciding to make art has been a really wonderful choice for me.  It's taught me so much.  My attitude towards life has started to become a reflection of my attitude towards art.  I've always been scared of making decisions because I didn't want to make a mistake; I thought of consequences as final.  Art has taught me that no mistake is irreparable.  Even the worst mistakes, if nothing else, teach us what we don't want.  

So here comes my mumbo jumbo:  I've heard so many people say "let go of your fears".  That's pretty good advice.  But, I think I have better advice.  Don't let go of your fears.  Bury them.  Bury them under mounds of your art.  Just make something, anything, and make your mistakes.  Make so many mistakes that your fears are suffocated by effort.  And then learn from your mistakes.  If we keep doing this, eventually we'll stop making mistakes and our fears will be completely buried.  And then we'll dance on their graves.

"I came here to dance on the grave of my fears."  I had done the background of this a while ago.    The sky is Dylusions, and the bottom is colored pencil with dylusions over top for the individual blades of grass.  The mushroom cap is scrapbook paper and the stem is a tag I cut out of a piece of paper I nabbed from work (I really like paper with boxes and grids on them.)  The lady was part of a set of free printable stuff from somewhere online.  I printed it off so long ago,  before I was even on Pinterest (oh, Pinterest, was there ever a time you weren't a part of my life?), that I can't find the link for it.  But the face, arms, legs, and dress are all separate pieces.  The topmost butterflies are angelina film stamped with Stazon ink.  (Angelina film is iridescent and amazing...go google it, it's worth the time.)  The bottom butterflies are stamped with my faux gelatos (faux-latos...hehehe) and outlined with Sharpie markers and Microns (as is the woman).  The shading on the mushroom and the woman's shadow was also done with faux-latos.

For ICAD day 5, the prompt was "recycle or repurpose".  ICAD is a great start for letting go of your fears, and this prompt seems like a bonus in that direction too, because you could use an index card and something destined for the trash can...so who cares if it doesn't work out?  Bury those fears!

This is the 3x5 card I did:

"Do raindrops dance down at your feet tonight?"  This is a line from the song below, "Where You Are" by Clare Burson.  To make the background, I grabbed a paper towel I had used to catch over-spray from when I was spraying an art journal page with Dylusions, sprayed a little water on it and then scrubbed it onto the index card.  There was a lot of color left in that paper towel!  Then I took the cap off an empty container of glitter glue that was in my trashcan and stamped the circles using black faux-latos.  Then I used watercolor for the text part.

Here's the song that the lyrics in the above card are from:

This song makes me think of someone who's died.  One of the lines is "When I look to the stars, I know where you are."  I'm talking to our fears when I hear that line and I think to myself: "I know where you are, stupid useless fears...buried six feet under!!!" and then I laugh maniacally because I'm holding the shovel that put them there!  Bwa-ha-ha!!!  

Here's my 4x6:

"If you are willing to do something that might not work, you're closer to being an artist." -Seth Godin
Hooray for subconsciously managing to get all of today's pieces to come together around a common theme!  It was purely accidental, I swear...my brain just gets stuck on a notion sometimes.  For this card, I again used one of my paper towels that I use to catch the Dylusions over-spray with (I had used this one mainly for ICAD day 2's 3x5 stitch themed card...you can see the outline of the card pretty well.) and glued it to the index card.  Then I took a black Sharpie and wrote out the quote.  Lesson learned: sharpie spreads/bleeds when you use it on paper towel.  So it made the quote pretty hard to read in a lot of places.  I was trying to find a way to fix this, and watercolors were the solution.  As long as the watercolors were on top of the part where the black Sharpie had already bled, they didn't run (you can see how precise it ended up staying on most of the words).  If the watercolor hit a piece of the paper towel that didn't have sharpie on it already, then the watercolor would bleed/spread too (you can see this in a couple places, like the "o" in "to" and several of the letters in "artist").  I signed it with a Pitt pen, at the bottom left, and that didn't bleed, although it wanted to snag the paper towel a lot more than the Sharpie did.)

So that's my long-winded thought for today.  I'm off to go murder some more fears and hide the evidence...

Happy Mail Art and ICAD Day 4

What a happy surprise I found in the mail box today!  My lovely friend Anna sent me a surprise care package.  Thank you, Anna, for making my day!  

I thought I would show you the fabulousness that I was lucky enough to receive:

This is the back of the envelope.  I love this little guy so much!  He's just too cool.  His eyebrows are my favorite, I think, but his arm that's resting is a close second.  Such a cutie!

I'm sharing my favorite thing from what was inside the envelope first (I think that you're supposed to save the best for last, but I'm a rebel)  It's hard to pick a favorite thing,especially when everything is completely awesome, but I have admired Anna's lettering for so long now that I am absolutely sure that this is my favorite thing!  I love it, love it, LOVE IT!!!  I am so proud to be the recipient of this gorgeousness!  It will have a special place of honor in my craft room for sure!

I also got a beautiful ATC with its own envelope.  I love the brown toned hillside and the winged hearts, and am totally jealous of the ability to make something so cool in such a small space.  Teach me your ways, Anna, my darling!

And then there was this spectacular umbrella gal...I have a special place in my heart for all things umbrella...I wonder if my Anna secretly stalks me like I stalk her???  I am totally digging this gal's fashion sense too!  The skirt and tights, the color combo...this is what I would dress like if I were cooler than I am!  Who knows, with all my internal changes, could I be ready to make some external ones as well?  Maybe I'll be on a mission to find an awesome green skirt now!

Then I got this cute little charm in it's own special teeny envelope.  It says "You are my sunshine".  Why, thank you, thank you!!!  I think this is a scrapbook charm, but I am totally going to put it on a chain and wear it!  Maybe with an awesome green skirt?!?

And then there was this sweetness.  So beautiful!  I think this is just fabulous.   This is on kraft paper, and I am in love with the colors she got going on, especially how vibrant the red is!

I am not sure what to call this...I think they are called tryptics, but I'm not positive.  Maybe tri-fold envelope?  I don't know for sure, but either way, it is super groovy.  I love that paper!

When you open up the tryptic/tri-fold envelope, this is what's inside!  It says "Amaze yourself, dream big, love well, open your heart, sing along, fear not, zig zag, jump 4 joy!"  I am certainly doing several of those things right now...singing along (I've always got music going on in the background.), jumping 4 joy at all the awesome presents I got, and loving my amazing friend Anna...loving her well!!!  

So, aside from being super excited and squealing like a happy pig in mud, I did get my ICAD cards for today done as well.  The theme was "wallpaper".  This one was a little bit of a challenge for me, but after thinking about it for a little bit, I did some experimenting, and I ended up liking both cards quite a bit...what do you think?

The 3x5:

I experimented with masking on this one.  The background is a stamp I've had since 1922 and have never used until now...  I think it looks very wallpaper-y, don't you?  I used a piece of scrap paper I had and masked off the area where I wanted to paint my landscape picture.  I used a metallic Sharpie for the frame, drawing that first, then went in and painted the little picture.  Can I just say I am ridiculously proud of this?  I don't know why, but it made me feel like a darn genius when I thought of this...that's two flashes of genius in one week...I'm starting to get a little nervous about those!  

And here's the 4x6:

I have been admiring people's use of 'extra' colors in their pieces for a while now, but one of the other ladies in the ICAD group (Thanks Stephanie!)  had done a girl with 'extra' colors in her face, and it reminded me of my love for that technique.  Stephanie's piece (and others that I've drooled over) had much more boldly colors, but I got scared and went with more demure colors...which lent itself to a sad theme pretty well.  I used the gelatos along with watercolor for the details.  I couldn't get those quite right with the big stick of the gelatos.  I need to remember next time that I can use the gelatos like paint if I just water them down first...  But I do like the effect that the watercolor has over the texture of the gelatos.  I did this card first, and as I was having trouble with the wallpaper theme, I cheated a little and used it in the text instead.  I just made up the words and printed them out on regular computer paper.  Then I used alcohol inks (butterscotch and latte colors) to try to get a vintage paper color...I'm pretty happy with the result I got on that front.  I really would like to experiment with tea dying sometime soon...I have some berry tea that I had gotten forever ago and it got shoved to the back of the cabinet and forgotten about...and is therefore WAY out of date (we're talking like 3 or 4 years out of date...)...so that seems like a good thing to try dyeing with...as opposed to drinking it and end up dying in an entirely different way...  But I digress...  I am really digging the tears in the eye to the right and the highlights in the other eye...I think that's my favorite parts of this...and the text thingie too...I like that a lot!

I am really enjoying this index card a day challenge.  It's making me think outside of the box and try things I might not try otherwise.  I also love getting to see the creativity of all the other folks who are sharing their work on the ICAD Facebook page.  I am so grateful for the interaction on Facebook in general, because it means I've gotten to meet such interesting and creative people...who then send me fabulous care packages!  BWA-HA-HA!!!  (Thanks my darling, Anna!  I really do love all my amazing surprises!)  In all seriousness, the way these fellow artists support and encourage and inspire one another is such a beautiful thing.  I really don't know what I'd do without them!

ICAD and Organ Donor

I've been playing around with lettering in my art journal.  It's one of the things I really want to work on so that I can get better.  I have no natural talent when it comes to handwriting, so I know I will have to make up for that with hard work and perseverance.  Practice makes perfect, so if I keep trying, eventually I'll get it, right?

"I could be an organ donor The way I give up my heart."  I saw that quote on Pinterest (of course).  The background is Dylusions sprayed through some plastic mesh stuff I found on the floor of my house...I have no idea where it actually came from, because I have been wanting the mesh from a bag of oranges since I first saw someone else use it as a mask/stencil.  Apparently the universe has provided for me...now if it would just get on that whole millions of dollars thing I've been asking about...  I also used acrylic paint (the rust color is metallic..it's shiny in real life, I don't know if that comes across...) and some red glitter glue.  There was an incident with smearing of glitter glue that you can see in the left heart at the bottom of the page...

I've also done two more ICAD cards.  Today's theme is 'candyland'.

Here's the 3x5:

She & Him lyrics again...actually I got it wrong, the lyric is "In the light it faded to white, in the light the colors turn to white", so I got it backwards a little...oh well.  This is acrylic paint over gelatos.  The acrylic wanted to peel a little in places...I don't know if it's because it wasn't all the way dry, or because the acrylic didn't want to stick to the gelatos.  The gelatos are meant to look like (abstractly, I guess) skittles...at least I think I got the classic skittles colors right...

I thought you might like to hear the song for yourself.  (I like what the person did with this video, it looks really neat, I think):

And here's the 4x6:

"You used to be sweet."  Except with my bad handwriting, it kind of looks like "You used to be sweat.", which is kinda gross...  I had fun playing with the gelatos on this one.  I am loving how creamy and smeary they are... it makes for a neat effect.  I did the lollipop first, and so it looks a little wonky, but I figured it out a little more by the time I got to the face.  I can't wait to play with them some more!