Dragon Gatefold Card

This is a card for the Smudgy Antics challenge to make a gatefold card. I've used a Stampers Anonymous arch which totally lent itself to this type of card, a Teresa Sherman stamp, Dragonlets and Me, and colored it all digitally. I made the cover dragon from metallic polymer clay.

A New Altered Board Book

The places I frequent on the WWW have had a flurry of Alice in Wonderland activity. Rick St. Dennis just released some new AIW stamps in addition to his already fabulous selection. Donna Muninger, who hangs around some of the same places I do, just posted an amazing Alice in Wonderland card here. And I've been missing playing with the Mad bunch since I finished my Alice altered book here . So I've started another! The first one followed the story in a linear way and used the original Tenniel illustrations. This one will be much less controlled and I hope to sample illustrations from lots of current digital artists.
To start off I've used Rick's new Alyce from his Randi Dandi line and the "down the rabbit hole" scenario. This is a big book with at least 21 double page spreads so I'm hoping the parameters I've set will hold my interest.

Thanks for visiting!!

The Art of the Kiss

I think I started this book before the 31 Days of Halloween and finished it just recently. Although I do think it's really neat, I didn't do much besides find the artwork, find the quotes and design and create the pages. In other words, I didn't color any real or digital stamps.

The book form was purchased quite a while ago from Somerset Studio if I'm remembering correctly. Most of the papers were from scrapbooking paper pads although a few of the blue ones I created digitally. I do not know why that first paragraph links to the first picture???  But if you're looking be sure to zoom in to the pictures to see the quotes. I worked to coordinate them with the artwork.

Creative Collaboration with LeilaniJoy

I was going to Miranda's blog to examine some of her backgrounds and read what she had to say about them. The first thing I saw was an incredible mermaid creation that she had done as part of a Creative Collaboration Contest with LeilaniJoy. There were only two days left to enter the contest and it was something I thought would be so much fun. I spent most of the first day looking at resources to help me draw the faun legs on the provided upper body (three choices). I knew I wouldn't have time to do a background so choose the fairy personality (three choices) because it fit onto the wonderful mushroom picture either Ken or I took on our trip to Seattle. I don't enter lots of competitions but this one just grabbed my imagination.

Other than the sketches for the legs, clothes and hair all creative work was done in Photoshop. I'm getting fairly comfortable there and learning more all the time.

Images from Music - "You Can Leave Your Hat On"

 I've been in a mood to finish up old projects and finally decided that this one will never get the covers I had envisioned for it because it's perfectly fine the way it is with the painted covers. It's been so long since I made it that I do not remember where I first saw the book form. I have a lot of bookmaking books but think I saw this one in a magazine. The pages are 4" square primed canvas. I painted one side of each in teals and the other in burgundies, both sides edged in gold and all the paints were Golden acrylics. I zigzagged the edges together with gold colored thread and tried to leave enough room between them to make it easy to fold.The small collages were made with shiny sheer material, the images, and bits and pieces of stuff. They were assembled and sewed onto paper and then glued to the book pages.

The lyrics, of course, are from Randy Newman's "You Can Leave your Hat On". I love the stories he tells in his music and have more artwork inspired by his songs but this is the only one I ever finished. The images are from Tallulahs.com and possibly from Lunagirl.com and were purchased bundled onto discs. .

The "New Beginnings" Challenge

Today is the day that the new Sparkle and Glitter challenge, "New Beginnnings", goes up on the Sparkle and Glitter blog. After Christmas I had a bunch of new things to try. I colored the image, Francoise Clown, with my new Spectrum Noir pens. This is the third thing I've colored with them after the two cards in the previous post. I am not taking to them as easily as Rick did with his Creepmas posts but I do think this one shows a bit of improvement. Another new plaything was my GelliArts gel plate for monoprinting. My friend Pam and I played for a few days with our new plates. It's so much fun to find things to make textures with that the huge dining room table barely had room for a dishpan of water and our plates. The one I tore up for this journal spread was a deliberate attempt to make a light-colored background for my planned project. Additionally, I filled in the white spots with distress stains.



My third new thing was a pastel color scheme. It's not that I've never used it - but infrequently enough that it's quite alien to me.
The challenge goes for two weeks! Do you have something new you'd like to share with us there?