Tabs

I've had one of these weeks...the yuck kind of week.  One of the kittens passed away very unexpectedly and without warning.  Apparently, it's not uncommon for that to happen between 3 and 6 weeks for kittens, generally from birth defects, often related to their hearts.  But it's still very sad and makes me worry about the other kitten, who we've officially renamed Mortimer, because he just couldn't be "Fat Tony" without his brother Pauly, so now he's Mortimer and it suits him much better.

In addition to that sadness, I said goodbye to yet another tooth yesterday, in an emergency yanking.  For the record, if at all possible, try to avoid the emergency yankings, because they cost about 3.5 times as much as a yanking at your regular dentist.  On the opposite side, it was the most pain-free yanking I have ever had, so it was almost worth the extra money, because that sucker just popped right out and I looked at the dentist as he walked away and said "Was that it!?!"  It was a glorious moment for dentistry, let me tell you.  Also on the positive side, I'm running out of teeth to yank, and since they don't grow back, I'll very soon not have to deal with the tooth pain ever again!  And I can get dentures and be able to actually chew things again.  The prospect of chewing things is very exciting for me...

Also on the sad side of things: my walks had to be suspended due to stupid Daylight Savings time.  I am kind of in a funk about that.  But my friend Gayle and I have decided to have dinner once every two weeks until we can get back out on the trail.  And that's a good thing!

Also, weird emotional stuff keeps popping up for me this week and last.  I'm trying to avoid going down to blue funk town, but the waa-waa's have been kind of pervasive.  And you can see it in my JOURNAL 52 page for the "Stencil" prompt:

"You are terrifying and strange and beautiful, something not everyone knows how to love." -Warson Shire

I really like this page, despite the line backer body I seem to have given her.  Let's call it a metaphor for how we hold so much inside of us and not the fact that I wasn't paying attention to the scale of things when I drew the shoulder area...because it makes me sound so much more artistic the first way...

For DOCUMENTED LIFE this week, the prompt was to "Add a Tab" and this is what I came up with:

I used acrylic paint, scrapbook paper, modeling past with gelato added to color, dylusions, image transfers, and metallic foil embossing/rub-ons.

This is not one of my usual color combos...it's so...girly!  I think the only thing that saved it for me was the black Dylusions...  Once I added that, I really liked how it looked!

Here it is with the tags removed from the pockets.

I was really enjoying the foil embossing...can you tell?

"I got my own back." -Maya Angelou
"I was never one of those girls..."

One side of the tags ended up matching the page pretty exactly...the other side is brighter and bolder for sure:

"Look for the answer inside your question." -Rumi
"Very few of us are what we seem." -Agatha Christie

I think the girl with the Rumi quote is my favorite one...I really like the frame around her head.  Also, in happy accident territory, this is what happens when you are impatient and you don't let your gel medium dry completely during an image transfer...shame on me, but I also think it looks really cool!

I really like the "Tab" prompt, because it led me to do the pull-out tags.  I like that there's an interactive part to the page, most of my pages are not like that.  I think I am going to make it a goal to make my journals more interactive in the future.

Speaking of the future, are you as excited as I am for the new sessions of J52 and DLP?  The fact that I've stuck with two year-long projects is really motivating me to try to do even more, so I've also got some other plotting going on in my mind for projects next year...nothing concrete just yet, but the plotting is abounding! 

Have you heard of any other year-long weekly or monthly challenges in the works?  I'd love to have another thing to include in my plotting... 

No Bambi

I'm squeezing in at the last minute for this week's DOCUMENTED LIFE (DLP) spread.  

The prompt was "Sketch What You See Right Now".  Since you're my friends, and you will in no way judge me, I will admit that I was reading about the prompt while in the bathroom (where I do all my important reading...remember, no judging...) and in my bathroom, I happen to have a cute little deer statue that looks like this (minus the bell):

This is not MY deer, although mine looks exactly like this...I meant to take a picture of mine, but forgot and now it's dark at my house and it is a dank pit of despair doesn't have the best lighting, so I found one online...

Since my eyes landed on the deer, I decided that would have to be my sketch for the week:

"I'm no Bambi"

Since my husband kept trying to call my fairy from last week "Tinkerbell", I figured I should go ahead and give him the heads up that my deer was NOT Bambi.  And then I ran off on a tangent with the thought of not being 'a Bambi'...which came in a wave all of the sudden.  I thought of naive, innocent little Bambi the cartoon...and then I thought of strippers, because Bambi seems like a total stripper name...which I always thought was kind of funny, because Bambi was a boy...he doesn't seem very boyish though and I tend to forget...  And then I remembered that when I was a kid, I had a friend named Rachel and her sister's name was Bambi.  How do parents go from naming their kid Bambi (super rare, possible stripper ) to naming the next one Rachel (every third girl in my class)?  It seems like a leap, doesn't it?  The human Bambi I knew when I was a kid was very nice though, and not a stripper at all...more like cartoon Bambi, except not a dude...

I'm lovable!

I'm pretty cool with my sketch...I like the 'extras' really well on this page... I put down torn up book pages first and then did my sketch and painted it in and then used acrylic paint for the blue wavy sky...I like the way the book pages show up between the blue...  I'm also pretty darn happy with the lettering!

I have nothing insightful to say...

For the right page, I started out with a packing tape transfer of this image:

He's not looking up her skirt...He's adoringly admiring her general awesomeness...

And then I just wanted to have a stab at making those fantastic, painty, crazy pages that I've seen other people doing quite brilliantly.  It seems like every time I try to do a page like this, I end up getting the "crazy" part right, but not so much the fantastic part...  I don't hate it...it's just...bright...  Actually, every time I attempt these kind of pages, they end up bright ( I will remind you of the TERRIFYING CHICKEN PAGE from the Alternate Amy blog...).  There has to be a secret...I just haven't figured it out yet...

In other news, the new kittens have gotten much more adventurous in the last two days and are currently having fun knocking over everything in the studio and then either hissing at it, sitting on it, hiding under it, or shoving it around the floor...it's hilarious until I remember that I have to clean up after them, then it's only funny and I get the broom...  They're out-and-about-iness calls for a studio overhaul, so I don't lose important bits or end up having kittens in casts or something...maybe that's a good plan for Sunday...

And lastly, I think you'll be shocked (and hopefully proud) because I've walked FIVE MILES in the last two days!!!  And I'm not even whimpering in pain!  A friend of mine from work, Gayle, asked if I would want to start walking with her, so right after work is over, we meet at a trail and walk a mile and a quarter down and a mile and a quarter back to the car.  We've done it twice now, and I am both proud and shocked that I haven't had a heart attack!  The plan is to keep doing it until the time change and then it will be too dark to see anything and too cold for Gayle...hopefully by the time that happens, we'll be so used to walking together that we find an alternate indoor location for the winter (aka become old lady mall walkers...) and keep going. 

I never, NEVER get any exercise, and I hate (HATE) doing healthy things by myself, so Gayle was a lifesaver with her walking suggestion!  I already feel better today than I did yesterday, and I really want to keep that trend going!  Plus, it's always been my secret dream (don't tell anybody) to have a head-turner body...  You know I'm cute (seriously, so adorable you probably couldn't stand it... :) haha), but I want, just one time in my 30s, to be a jaw-dropping, tongue wagging babe (and then to rub it in people's faces...hehehe)!  

You've seen the healthy-Amy-in-her-early-20s pictures...but I was young and stupid and didn't appreciate it then!  

Now I'm the sad-Amy-who's-knees-hurt-from-carrying-her-fat-rolls-around-all-day-Amy...  

But I'd like to be the happy-Amy-who-feels-good-and-is-comfortable-in-her-own-skin-and-remembers-the-happiness-of-finding-clothes-that-fit-and-is-healthy-Amy...

I feel like that's a lot of pressure to put on two 2.5 mile walks, but I'm being optimistic!  It really does boil down to feeling good verses feeling puny...  I've been feeling puny for a long while, and wanting to do something about it, but I am just not a good self-motivator when it comes to moving and shaking...  After walking just once, I actually sprang out of bed this morning!  It's been SO STINKING LONG since I've woken up without throwing punches towards my husband with half closed eyes that I don't even remember the last time it happened!  So I'm really hoping that Gayle and I will help each other keep up our momentum so that we can both feel healthy again!  And I'd guess Andy is hoping we keep it up so he can quit dodging my sleepy time left hook!

My Brief Flash of Genius and ICAD day 3

A while ago, I talked about the coolness of packing tape transfers...they remain cool to me.  You can find a tutorial on them HERE.

I was having a lousy thoughts day and decided I needed to get some stuff out in my journal, just some mental yuck that I didn't want anybody to see in the end.  I just wanted to get some kind of cathartic release thing to happen.

Anyway, I was looking for an empty space in a journal to work out my frustrations on and came across a page where I had just written something random and stuck down an extra transfer I had done.  Then I had an epiphany.  A big "What if I..." epiphany.  

So  I grabbed some acrylic paint and squirted it over top of the page, moving it around with an old credit card.  And then I took a paper towel and swiped over the packing tape transfer that was on the page...SUCCESS!  The paint wiped right off.  Hooray!  So when the paint dried, I used a sharpie and started writing out some of what was in my brain and then stuck another packing tape transfer over that.  Then I repeated these steps (with different colors of paint) till everything was of my head and did one final layer of paint over the top of everything.

And here is the result:

The first transfer that was on the page was the bird one...I "put a bird on it".  Hehehe...Portlandia.

I really like the image of the dancers, it's so interesting to me...

I like how everything's facing a different direction, how you can see some of the words but as a whole they're still obscured, and how there's a different color paint showing through from every layer.  Thanks brain!

OK, I confess that having the words "And now all these things live in me." coming through  inside of the house image was on purpose...  I had written it and realized that it might fit and come through if I angled the house right, and boom!  It did!  I think that's a neat little extra touch.

So anyway, I just wanted to share that idea in case you wanted to do write something personal, but don't want anybody to be able to read it afterward.  Or even if you don't and just want some color from underneath to come through to the surface.  It was a flash of genius for me, so I had to show you guys, because they happen so rarely, and I kind of wanted some proof that they actually do happen...

It also happens to be day 3 of ICAD, with the theme of "faux stitching", and I did two again.  What can I say, I'm on a roll...

Here's the 3x5:

On the edges, there are fake stitches, and then I did the real stitches too.  It only took me till when I started doing the border around the word "real" to realize that if I punched some guide holes into the card first, I could probably get it to look more neatly done.  And, as a bonus, the needle would stop slipping and I'd quit accidentally stabbing myself with it.  The blood loss from needle stabs was minimal, but my finger was starting to get really sore!  See how ICAD helps?  Now I know, for future reference, to punch guide holes first!  You learn something new every day...  The extra dumb part was that I had punched guide holes in the faux stitches part in an effort to make the stitches look more real.  So it probably shouldn't have taken me so long to put two and two together concerning the real stitches...  But I got there eventually, and that's the important thing.

Here's the 4x6:

The quote says "I myself am entirely made of flaws, stitched together with good intentions."  Hooray for quotes that fit the technique!  I've really liked that quote since the first time I saw it, and have wanted to do some kind of real embroidery incorporating it, so now that's back in my mind.  I like the little faux stitched daisies at the bottom.  And the zigzag too...it reminds me of Charlie Brown.

So anyways, that's my creativity for the day.  I hope you can use the multi-layer packing tape transfer idea for something, or that it leads you to your own epiphany...and that you'll then share that epiphany with me, so's I can try out your idea!  We'll have an interchange of epiphanies!  And then we'll go get tacos...

In My Dreams I'm Free

"In my dreams I'm free and I like the feeling."

The prompt for this page was DREAMS.

I started by doing a gesso transfer of the image of the little girls face.  And I got impatient and started rubbing the paper off before it was completely dry...hence the image not being all there...but it's ok, I kind of like it that way.  I went over the page in a couple different colors of alcohol ink after that.

Then I glued down some ephemera.  The top heart is crackled, with teal as the background and red over top...it's kind of hard to see in the picture.  The bottom heart is a book page where I did a crayon resist over a Tim Holtz embossing folder and sprayed with Dylusions spray inks.  The purple is an ATC size piece of manila folder.  I wrote the word "Free" on it, getting the lettering style inspiration from something I saw on Pinterest.  I went over it with alcohol ink.  After I glued that in, I wrote the rest of the journaling.  I am becoming lettering obsessed, as per the plan, and I like the lettering on this page pretty good.  I have to work on spacing things out a little better...perhaps if I had a plan before I started...or did a pencil sketch first...I'll work on that...

Lastly, I found a really nice and easy tutorial for how to make the little paper butterflies HERE.  (I love origami!)  I sprayed them with Dylusions to match the crackle heart and glued them down...and that's that.