Snapping green beans – I love hearing the snap noise.  It brings me back to my childhood when we had a vegetable garden in the backyard complete with a few rows of green beans.

Picking blackberries in the backyard for my protein shake.

I just can’t believe it – I spent well over 1 hour writing this blog with the speech recognition program and all of a sudden the program did something and lost it all.  So I’m having a mini melt down and I’m going to walk away from my computer.

I was sharing something about two e-classes I was taking, one with Traci Bautista and one with Suzi blu but lost that too.  Also I shared about my studio open house this Sunday at the magic cottage – it’s between 11 AM and five PM.

I have to go now before i break something…..  Thank you for the kind thoughts some of you sent me about feeling under the weather yesterday.  I really appreciate it.

The genesis of an art journal page:

Yesterday I received a bit of upsetting news. I have been waiting for many months to see an ear specialist about a hearing problem. Not only did the Dr. have bad news but he also had a terrible bedside manner. I had spent the past year going to clinics about a hearing problem – the doctors made me go home and do strange things like use a steroid nose spray which only made my nose run and clog up my head. Another Dr. Told me to go home and have a shower, plug my nose and blowhard with my mouth closed so that I could pop open my plugged ears. Of course that didn’t work! I kept thinking that I had plugged ears and needed grommets or tubes put in my ears. To make a long story short the ear specialist said I had hearing loss and that grommets in my years would not help. He implied that I would most likely benefit from hearing aids and controlling my environment??? What the heck? By controlling my environment he meant only talking to people when they’re facing me, not across the room or when they’re out of earshot.

So I was pretty upset when I came home and decided to create a journal page around what had transpired. On a happy note – not hearing very well can be quite entertaining since I find what I think people are saying is infinitely more interesting and humorous than what they are actually saying. For example the other day Mr. Gee said we should have brought our umbrellas with us but I heard him say gorilla!!!

Life is full of fodder for your art journal pages.  What upsetting situation did you have that can be transformed by creating a journal page around it?  Art truly can heal you in so many ways!

This is going to take me quite a while to do this tutorial so you might wanna check back in a while to see when it’s finished.

Supply list:

• Micron pens
•  Water color pencil crayons
•  copic pens
• cardstock
• decorative paper for background
• Grommets (grommets kit)
• Folk art acrylics
• Glue
• derwent sketching pencil -medium wash

Begin by painting over a piece of decorative paper (if you look closely you can see I had first glued some text over the background). I thinned down some white folk art paint and dribbled it on the page.

Begin sketching your idea on a loose piece of card stock in pencil.  Ink in with your micron pens and erase your pencil lines.  Colour in the woman’s face, hair and the flowers with watercolor pencil crayons and also copic  pens (you can use ordinary felt pens as well). Colour in other elements as well such as the hands and talk bubbles.

Cut out all of your elements.  A little trick I use to make cutting things out more easier is by outlining everything with a thick black felt pen.

Tone down the background a bit with some watered down white folk art paint.  Glue all the elements  on your page.  As you can see at the last minute I decided to add a hand holding a talk bubble with grommets hammered into it.  When the glue has dried add a bit of shading to your cut out pieces with a derwent sketching pencil -medium wash.

Good grief! Our poor Violette! Were you all as surprised as I was to hear about her mishap? But, of course I love the cast! lol What a perfectly Violette way of making the best of the situation! I can hear myself in the future saying “what would Violette do” when something unexpected comes up!

Another way to decorate a cast, or, hopefully something pleasanter, is with Zentangles! Violette talked about Zentangles in one of her 5 days of frogs post and I did something similar earlier this year, but with the stencil of a woman, rather than a frog. The pattern that I used is from the book, Creative Paper Dollmaking, by Rhonda Rainey, but Violette suggested to me that you could just cut out a person from a magazine and trace it on to your canvas or sheet of paper. BTW, I am really, really into Zentangling and have covered the surface of everything from a light switch cover to a wooden craft stick. But the way that I do it is a little different than shown on the original Zentangle site.

My favourite method of Zentangling is to divide the surface that I am going to decorate into many squares and then fill each one with a different pattern. The photo is of a 5″ x7″ gallery stretched canvas, divided freehand into 40 squares. First, I draw the patterns in with pencil and yes, I DO erase until I like how it looks. True Zentangling encourages you not to worry about it and just keep going, but that thought doesn’t relax me, so I erase quite wantonly! Sometimes I change my mind completely about which pattern I will use so the eraser really comes in handy then.

A Sharpie extra fine point black pen on this and a mechanical pencil and am very pleased with the results. Now I have a unique and contemporary piece of wall art and a great reference guide to 40 Zentangle patterns! And it is just the beginnning!

With the papier mache butterfly mask, I used the sampler method again, but without a stencil. It seemed unnecessary in light of the cool shape. Next I will be using this method to cover a white cotton fedora I bought expressly for the purpose. And I’ve been using individual Zentangle squares to make Scrabble tile pendants for necklaces and bracelets! With the same idea, last week I painted 12 4″ x 4″ canvasses black, leaving a white space in the middle. Then I used dimensional fabric paint to make one large Zentangle pattern in each centre! I love it and will be posting photos on my blog soon!

There are currently 4 wonderful books about Zentangling from Design Originals. While you are waiting for them to be delivered, you can start Zentangling right away with ideas from the original site and other cool sites like Tangle Patterns.

What will you Zentangle first?

Wendy Gibson of Craft Dinner

FYI – The Zentangle® art form and method was created by Rick Roberts and Maria Thomas. Zentangle® is a registered trademark of Zentangle, Inc. Learn more at zentangle.com.

Hello everyone! What an honour it is to guest blog here and to share with you a really fun and frugal project! A big, glittery thank you to my inspiring friend, Violette, for this opportunity to connect with more creative spirits!

Paper Rose topiary
Originally uploaded by Sister Wend

I had to make these Twisted Paper Roses the moment I saw Alisa Burke’s tutorial. She really has been “redefining my creativity”! Alisa uses many different materials to make these but I just love the idea of using flyers and the free newpaper that comes twice a week. Experiment with how tight you coil or twist. You can vary the results easily by increasing or decreasing tension and using different parts of the flyer or newspaper sheet, where one colour predominates. Catch Alisa Burke’s tutorial here.

This is how I made the roses:

Choose a flyer or newspaper and rip or cut it from the fold.

Twist and coil glue, twist and coil, glue

Make a whole bunch! To make the topiary, I then took two styrofoam balls, shoved the bigger one onto a dowel, about a quarter of the way in. I then bruted the dowel entirely through the smaller ball. I shoved it in, first on one end, and then the other, working it gently through. Then I used pretty pins to fix the flowers on the balls. You can paint the balls and the dowel if you want, add a ribbon, stick it in a terracotta pot and there you have a really beautiful centre piece as well as a conversation piece!

These would be nice at a handmade wedding!

If you make some, will you please tell me? Thanks!

–
>Wendy T. Gibson<

A note from Violette – I will be back in a day or two with a few photos of our trip, which has been awesome so far.

In this piece I decided to spray paint the frog through the stencil – i’m not sure if i’m too cranked about spray painting but thought i’d give it a whirl. Sorry I was unable to show you the steps I took due to my camera batteries dying. Anyways here is what I did which might not be apparent by looking at the art journal page:

Step 1: I used a piece of watercolour paper since I wanted to put a wash of acrylics (fluid acrylics) and have it workable (cardstock would just absorb the wash right away). While the background was still wet I placed a piece of saran wrap (plastic) on the page and smooched it and then removed it – some of the colour came off leaving a bit of a crinkly effect.

Step 2: I placed the stencil over the background and sprayed though it with very toxic spray paint I had lying around. It would probably be best to use a non-toxic spray paint – I believe Duncan has some. Does anyone have any recommendations?

Step 3: Next I cut out some scrap painted papers (some were dyed paper towels) to form a scallop border – I adhered the pieces to the journal page.

Step 4: I wrote the words “The Handsome Prince” on a piece of graph paper, edged it with a Stabillo black pencil and then attached it to the page with two miniscule (don’t you love that word?) brads.

Step 5: I drew a vine and grass with Copic markers and accented the images a bit with micron pens. The words were written in micron pens too and highlighted with Copic markers.

Step 6: I cut out a wee door on the frog’s body. On a scrap piece of card I wrote the words “save yourself”. I taped the scrap to the back of the journal page so that it would line up with the door.

What I did not do which I think i’ll add now is a safety pin and put the words “save me” next to it. I love the look of rich textured add ons especially if they fit in with the theme of the journal page!

I hope you have enjoyed the Five Days of Frogs. It’s been a challenge for me – not that I have difficulty coming up with ideas (I have a kajillion of them) but because I made the journal pages in the morning before blogging and before I am coherent. So like I said it was a challenge!

Podcast interview

Last night’s podcast interview with Tina Ferguson was the best ever……i mean I totally felt I could be myself – I talked about art and spirituality which I feel are inextricably linked. Some interviewers bring out the best in people and Tina is definitely one of those folks. You’ll be able to listen to the interview if you go here and click on the episode “Embracing your Inner Eccentric”.  Thanks Tina for the wonderful opportunity to share with your listeners.

You can still enter to win my class Bohemian Bliss by going to Wendy’s Craft Dinner (if you haven’t already entered the other contest – your name is automatically entered).  We’ll be drawing a name on Monday.  Good luck.

I hope you all have a marvelous weekend.  I am going to be celebrating my birthday with friends and also celebrating a few “gemini’ friend’s special day over at Nicci’s place!  Should be fun!

I have always been a huge Kermit the Frog fan (well – Jim Henson fan actually) so decided to go with one of kermit’s songs – It’s not easy being green. I had thought about using the song “Jeremiah was a bullfrog…..” but then decided to go with Kermit instead since I LOVE him so much. I could have googled “Quotes with frogs in them”…….and i’m sure I would have come up with tons of quotations to fashion a page around. Do you see how easy it is to make a page around one idea? There are so many possibilities! Enough with the talking and on with the tutorial!

I tried to use the positive image of my stencil and paint around it rather unsuccessfully I might add – the twinkling H2O colours seeped under the frog – it would be better to use acrylic paints for this step however since I knew I was going to do lots of doodling the watercolour background is a better option.

Step 1: using the positive image of the frog I painted around the image with watercolour paints (twinkling H2O’s).

Step 2: Trace your frog onto another piece of cardstock, ink it in and the colour in with watercolour pencil crayons.

Step 3: Activate the colours by adding water to them – this heightens the colours.

Step 4: I went over the outline with a sharpie pen so that I could more easily cut out the frog.

Step 5: On your painted background begin doodling designs and writing words which appeal to you and make you happy . I used Micron pens for this step.

Step 6: Add foam tape to the back of the frog to add dimension.

Step 7: Add your frog to your page and voila! You’re done!

I plan on sewing this page into a handmade book but will most likely reinforce the frogs leg so it won’t bend too much. The shimmery-ness of the twinkling H2O’s doesn’t allow you see how bright the black is on the page. Trust me – it looks better in real life!

Interview tonite with Tina Ferguson!

I’ll be interviewed tonite by Tina Ferguson – Intuitive Life with The Queen of Dreams at 6 pm PST . Please join me – you can call in or listen later if you’re not able to tune in! It should be a fun chat – you just never know what Tina will be asking me.

Okay so i decided to do a textured frog using my stencil today. 

Step 1:  I applied Modelling paste through the stencil with a palette knife. 

Step 2: I let it dry over night.

Step 3:  I gessoed the frog to seal it and then added bit so collage pieces to the page – book text and painted papers.

Step 4:  I printed out a photo of myself and adhered it to the page.  Then i painted most of the page with greens, blues and white acrylic paints.

Step 5: I placed the stencil ontop of my page and painted the frog through the stencil.

Step 6:  I added some painted scallops, talk bubble, talking swirl for the frog and some graphite accents to the frog, scallops and talk bubble.  I glued some painted papers to the face and then wrote my text with micron pens.

Yesterday was not the greatest day – i was in a funk and couldn’t get out of it………so rather than try and be all shiny, happy and fake i thought i’d take this opportunity to Journal about it – art journaling as you know can be oh so theraputic!

I thought i would share with you another fun way to add dimension and variety to your art journal pages by creating a stencil!

Find the image that you like on google image search (i used the words “leaping frog”), save it and bring into photoshop (or any photo editing program) and adjust the size.  Print it out in grayscale.

Place a piece of graphite or carbon paper underneath your image and on top of your piece of cardstock and begin tracing over the design.

You now have a lovely image transfered onto cardstock

With an exacto knife carefully begin cutting out your design.  I say carefully because some little bunny got bored and sliced off part of the design.  But don’t worry – all was not lost since a piece of scotch tape saved the day!

Voila!!!!!!  Hooray!  You now have a positive and negative frog image! Now don’t be too quick to throw either piece out – you’ll be wanting to save both so you can create some fun mixed media and art journaling pages.

As many of you know i’m crazy about crows (they are my totem) so i created a crow stencil.  You can find this stencil in my book Journal Bliss. What i did here was use both the positive and negative image….in crow number one i used the cut out crow, carefully taped him onto my page and with a sponge brush applied paint by pulling it away from the crow stencil.  In crow number 2 i placed the image of the page with the negative cutout and then applied paint on the inside by pouncing a paper towel soaked with paint (you can use a sponge too).

The Five Days of Frogs

Starting on Monday i’m challenging myself to create a page a day using the frog stencil – both positive and negative images in a variety of ways.  I’m going to call it “The Five days of Frogs”. You are welcome to play along with me using any stencil you desire – you can post links to your images in the comments section so we can check them out.

How i came up with the frog stencil idea

Now some of you out in blogland might be interested to know where i got the idea to create a frog stencil…..i’m glad you wondered because i’m always wondering “Gee……i wonder where they came up with that idea?  What is the genesis of the piece of art?” So yesterday i’m walking at my local park and for the past several weeks i’ve been checking to see if the frogs have emerged from their murky hibernation in the mud. No frogs……how disappointing. But yesterday as i approached the pond a frog made a squeaking noise and jumped into the pond!  I was so delighted…….and then another frog jumped and another.  So i thought to myself “Hey, i should create a leaping frog stencil and create some journal pages with it.  It’s a wy of honouring the frogs that i love so much!”  So that’s how it all came to be!

Contest – still have time to enter!

You still have until monday to enter the contest for a book and online class.  Make sure you HOP on over to Wendy’s Craft Dinner to post your comment and here too! While you are over at Craft Dinner please check out the interview that Wendy has posted! Thank you Wendy for taking the time to interview.  I have really enjoyed getting to know you better the past couple of weeks!  It’s so neat to meet another kindred spirit.

Happy Weekend everyone!  Have fun with your loved ones.

Love, Violette xo

Kaya, Torren and Talia with their creations

Talia used sequin waste to add texture and then she stamped on circles and created a starburst design with the edge of a credit card.  Cool!

Cheno with her i-pod cover – she is about to write on a phrase with micron pens.

Yesterday Kaya, Torren, Talia and Chenoa (Chenoa, Talia and Torren are siblings) came over for a craft day – the two older girls made i-pod cases and the two younger kids made bags to be used as purses or in Torren’s case as a camoflage Indiana Jones carry-all.  The kids had lots of fun and so did i!

The following project first appeared on the Art Glitter blog and i thought it was appropriate to repeat it here for you!

I often like to create my own purses and accessories so when I recently received an i-touch (like an i-pod) for my birthday I thought I would create a glittery case to house it in. Why not make matching accessories? With this graffiti fabric painting recipe you can make a few at a time, one for you and several to give away as gifts. Which glitzy gal wouldn’t adore to own this sparkly pouch? This same idea could be used to create a case for glasses as well.

Materials:

Art Glitter Designer Dries Clear Adhesive (DDC)
Art Glitter Ultrafine Opaque #299 Celery
Art Glitter Ultrafine Opaque #70 Moondust
Art Glitter Ultrafine Opaque #263 Bright Gold
Cotton muslin
Assorted colors of folk art paint
Gesso or latex paint (I used pink)
Sewing machine, thread
Bull clip
Discarded credit card
Wooden skewer

Directions:
1. Cut a piece of cloth approximately 12” x 12”. Basecoat it with gesso (I use latex paint).
2. Squirt paint on randomly (use 2 or 3 colors) and using a discarded credit card scrape it in a random fashion covering as much of the fabric as you like.
3. With a wooded skewer splatter and drizzle thinned down white gesso on your piece of scrap painted fabric. Let dry naturally or blow dry painted fabric.

4. Cut 3 pieces of fabric – 5 ¼ ” x 3 ¾ (front of case), 7” x 3 ¾”(back) and one long piece 12′ x 2”(for pleated ruffle). Adjust the size of your fabric according to the size of your i-pod.
5. With your sewing machine zigzag stitch around the top of the pouch pieces. Put wrong sides together and zigzag down the sides and bottom.
6. Paper pleat the 12” x 2” piece and add a drop of DDC adhesive in each fold – you are pleating the long strip. Use a bull clip to hold the fanned piece until it dries. Remove clip and form a circle with your fan and glue. You might have to clip it together until it dries.

.

7. Run a thin bead of adhesive along the edge of your circular fan. Dip edges into glitter, which has been mixed (the celery and moondust). I poured out the glitter onto a piece of cardstock and dipped the edges of the pleated circle embellishment into it coating evenly.
8. Set aside and then cut a star, heart or any other simple shape from your painted fabric scrap. Coat with DDC adhesive and then coat with bright gold ultrafine opaque glitter.

9. When your embellishments are completely dry then you can adhere the star to the circular pleat and then the entire embellishment to the case using DDC adhesive. I didn’t add Velcro to the flap however you could if you liked.

Note: Make sure to tap off all of the excess glitter.

The completed page

•  I painted a scallop design and a tree with gesso. The stawberry was drawn on a scap piece of card with my micron pen

•  Next I outlined the scallops and tree with micron pens and stabillo black pencil crayon. I also used Derwent Sketching pencil (light wash). I painted the tree trunk with acrylics and water color pencil crayons 

• I glued down the text with a glue stick, painted the strawberry with twinkling H2O’s, cut it out and also glued it down.

• Now came the fun part adding more acrylic paint to the tree to create leaves. I used some Walnut ink dabber to tone down the words and also to add an antique effect to the scallop. I added words to the tree with micron pens. I added a flourish to the side with my pens. With a bit of washed down paint I created a block below the strawberry so I could write my words and have them show up a wee bit better. Using the pen I added a few more embellishments. Did you notice I used the “jack” design in the lefthand corner? A few weeks ago I was staring at my bedding and noticed a pattern I liked and decided to use it in a journal page one day! Voila! I did!

If you are wondering about the thinking process behind “hang up your sunshine” here it is: Originally I thought I’d add small sunshines hanging all over the tree (to make the random phrase make sense). But then I thought hanging up your sunshine is a way to create your own happiness – pay attention to and hang up whatever makes you happy – the simple things. I just happen to like strawberries and a few of them were lying on the counter as I was about to make yogurt, granola and fruit for lunch. So the strawberry found it’s way there and also I have enjoyed hugging and touching one particular tree in the local park so this was a way to pay tribute to the tree.

I hope you have played along with me and if you did post a link to your journal page (whether its on your blog or on your flickr site) for us to see! Thanks! Xo

The Upstart Crow Art Journaling class

I am teaching a class tomorrow at the Upstart Crow called Journal Bliss – it’s all about Art Journaling step by step. There are still a few spaces left so check out the link if you are interested! Should be a fun class.

There is another great article up on the Meylah blog about taking shots of your artful products. I know that I have struggled with taking photos and making my art look as interesting as possible. Check it out! You might need some pointers for your etsy shop or just for taking more interesting photos to post on your blog.

I hope you all have a fabulous weekend!

Love, Violette xoxo