Queen of the Jungle

Cali was a very beautiful and special girl. She let our other 2 cats know who was boss.

Night

These photos are amazing to me.  I usually use a T4i Canon Camera for my photos.  These 2 pictures were taken with my camera phone after dusk.  I would not have been able to take photos like this with my Canon camera without a tripod.

String of Beads Without the String

I watched a Donna Downey Inspiration Wednesday video.  She used Golden Glass Bead Gel on her art journal page.  I had never used it before but I love the effect.  The first picture shows weird colors but I wanted to get the light to shine on the page so you could see the shiny beads.  The second picture shows the correct color of the pages but the beads look like sand in the second picture.  When you look at the page you see beautiful shine from the beads.

Happy Creating!!

Oops I Did It Again!

When creating an art journal page, I have a tendency to keep adding too much color, texture, collage elements, and paint to a page.  Then it looks like one very large mess.  Fortunately, I took a class with Dina Wakley. She said when you have a background that is too busy then block it out with random shapes.  I used Dina Wakley’s Night acrylic paint to cover the background.  I didn’t like the page before but now I like it.  The page now has more focus.

Happy Creating!

All Dressed Up and No Place to Go!

I took a class with Finnabair who is a designer for Prima Marketing.  She is so amazing! I fell in love with her work.  I took her class here in North Carolina and a month later I drove to Indiana to take another class.  The art above is from the class I took in Indiana.  I was supposed to have brought a vintage portrait of my grandparents. I do not have any of my vintage family photos, because my mother has them all.  All I took with me was a magazine.  I found the lady above in a fashion magazine and I new she was perfect.

Happy Creating!

Peaceful Evening

I’m drawn to the beach and to sunsets.  Walking down the beach with my toes in the sand and the waves washing over my feet, is my idea of a perfect day.  Atlantic Beach, North Carolina

Art to the 5th: Solitude

Art to the 5th Academy

Documented Life Project

The Journal

Last year the Art to the 5th Academy had art journal prompts each Saturday. I really enjoyed the prompts.  You can view the past challenges here.

April Theme
Color Safari (Exploring Inks and Paints)
April 25
Art Challenge:  Inks
Journal Prompt:  Before the Ink is Dry

I chose:Art Challenge:  Inks

While taking a class with Traci Bautista she showed some of her Holiday Printmaking techniques.  She cut paper snowflakes and used spray inks to create this amazing background. So I went to the Dollar Tree ( a store in the US where everything is a dollar) in December to find some items that I could use to print.  I found some snowflake Christmas ornaments and some foam snowflakes in a package.  All the Christmas family holiday fun happened and I soon forgot my wonderful purchase.

Then this week I started thinking about my snowflakes again.  I don’t really know why being that the weather is beautiful and warm here.  Weird!  Anyway, I created the background by first laying the foam snowflakes on the page and inking around the foam with Tim Holtz’s Worn Lipstick and Shaded Lilac Distress Inks.  Then I laid the 2 different snowflake ornaments down and sprayed Vibrant Turquoise and London Blue Dylusions Sprays on the ornaments. Next I sprayed Gold Heidi Swapp Color Shine sprays on a chunky snowflake.  Finally, I added my photo from Alaska.  The white blobs in the water are ice.   I was very shocked at how this background turned out.  It looks like those photography studio backgrounds that photographers use for portrait.  I fell in love with the background so much so I couldn’t add anything else to the page.  My husband named the page “Solitude.” I have tried various letter combinations and just couldn’t add the words to the page because of the background.

Happy Creating!!

Brother and Sister

I was watching one of Donna Downey’s Inspiration Wednesday videos.  I did not have the same supplies she had so I made do with what was in my stash.  I used texture paste on the background and some of Tim Holtz washi tape.  The little boy and girl are one of Tim Holtz’s vintage photos. Then, I surrounded the tags and photo with some of Tim Holtz’s stickers and tickets.

Enter at the Gate

This beautiful gate is located at the Asheboro Zoo in North Carolina. It is so detailed. I loved how all the animals really look like they are in the woods or forest.

Tell Me a Secret

I found a very talented artist on Instagram.  Her name is Danial Powers and she loves to make ATCs which are so beautiful. I decided to ask her if she had any ATCs available and she had one.  I created the ATC above so that I could trade with her. The background is made with a Tim Holtz texture fade called Ledger.

You can see more of Danial Power’s work here at her blog called Empress Dragon Arts.