Art Weekend Content

So Pam and I had spent two days creating and while I got a few backgrounds done, she did many pages in an altered book journal and quite a few journaling inspiration cards. You can see her results here: http://dieverdog.blogspot.com/ . Pam is a graphic artist with lots of skills in her bag. I usually take her ease and speed at creating in stride, i.e., I just expect her output to be about three times mine, but I was starting to feel some pressure to at least make something that had some content. So I did the Hard Heart page and a few soulless cards and felt a lot better. My heart is fine, by the way. (Unless Top Chef really does harden it.) All of the pieces have a major collage component and the more I do it, the more I enjoy it. Ken and I have even gone dumpster diving at the local recycling center to get some glossy magazines. The amazing resource of the King County libraries ongoing magazine sale is not available here, so send all of your old magazines my way. I cut out what I want and recycle the rest. I'm only partially kidding!

Art Weekend

My second project was also from Jane Davies' book. She suggested making some collages that are only intended as backgrounds for other work. I just used some heavy cardstock as a substate and started gluing torn scraps of paper from magazines, calendars, and scrapbook paper. Much of the red one came from a Christmas flyer. This was really fun and I can foresee using both the original and the scanned version to build onto.

Backgrounds and Paperdolls

My friend, Pam, came to visit for four days with the idea that we would play with our paints, stamps, inkpads, and collage materials the whole time. My first project was to do some paint playgrounds, an idea I found in Janes Davies' Collage Journeys. I used 22" x 17" paper and just smeared it with paint with a foam brush. Obviously, I didn't know when to stop, but one of the things I love about this book is that she tells you many ways to go back and forth between digital techniques and messy hands techniques. So I think I can use these backgrounds effectively in digital collages. The paper dolls are BJD bodies from Minoru World. I wanted one of these but they didn't go on sale, so I made her some clothes from vellum. I sort of ran out of patience before I finished the last card.

Farm Pix

I haven't gotten out to get pictures of all of the snow, so here are some earlier ones.

I had tried and tried to get the ducks that were using the pond from late October through the beginning of December and they wouldn't let me get close. But when Pam was here, 12/10, we were walking through the woods and came up on them from behind and they just sat there for a photo shoot.

The tractor pictures were from even earlier, sometime in October. Ken wondered why I was so intent, but anyone who knows me knows my greatest fear is being behind the wheel of anything. Combined with the boredom of going about 1/2 mile an hour, it made for a strange expression. We were dumping leaves from the yard out in the woods.