Barefoot Wanderings

The Hardest & Best Job in the world....

This would have to be one of the best ads I have seen on TV for a long time. It is so beautiful and touching, it made me cry.

Listening Pleasure.....

I just got a copy of Train's new album California 37 a few days ago and I have been playing it a lot, and I have even already put it on my iphone! It's a great CD. I hear they may be coming out - would love to see them live!

I haven't picked a fav song yet but am loving Mermaid, Bruises and Drive By as well as others!! Found the video of Drive By on youtube....

 

Iced Tea

Where does the time go? I must admit that any free time I have had to myself I have been playing in my studio, mainly with textilely stuff which I will share some more later. For now, here is my page for Nanette's Tea book...

I had fun creating this page.

First I had to drink a few cups of tea as the background is made from actual used tea bags - dried and emptied before use of course!

I then adhered them to some muslin with acrylic medium.

Once dry I drew on my image and used Caran d'ache Neocolor II watersoluble crayons to colour the image. (Colours: Ruby Red, Yellow, Prussian Blue, Orange, White & black)

I then cut a piece of craft felt to size and pinned it at the back. Using my sewing machine I free-motioned stitched around the image and then did the horizontal and vertical lines. I used a yellow variegated thread.

I printed the text on TAP (Transfer Artist Paper) to then transfer it onto the page.

The last thing I did was use the same variegated yellow thread to zigzag stitch all around the piece.

Here is a close up:

Cranberry Crush Iced Tea is a favourite in our house during summer. 
For anyone interested this is how I make it:
Make a pot of Rooibus Red Tea according to the directions (I get mine from T2)
Once brewed, allow to cool. 
In a large jug I add the cooled Rooibus Red Tea and add an equal amount of Cranberry Juice.
I then place the jug in the fridge to chill.
To Serve:
Add ice to a long glass
Take a slice of orange, cut in half and add one half in the glass and the other on the glass.
Pour in the chilled Rooibus/Cranberry mix almost to the top. 
Then add a splash of fizzy lemonade (the sprite kind) to add a little sweetness and fizz.
(As the Cranberry & Rooibus Red Tea are both quite tart more fizzy lemonade can be added for those that like a sweeter taste.)
Then drink and Enjoy!

Typography

is the theme for Marie Johansen's book for the round robin. I have been fascinated with the art form of words creating images - some art work out there is truly amazing. I was not as yet confident to try this myself, instead I created a word with words... 

I started off by listing all the words I could think of when I thought of love and then used them to create the word LOVE, literally words that make up the word love!

The next layout was inspired by the musical RENT - I love it!

I wanted to use handwriting as a main part of the background since fonts/words is the theme, and as my handwriting leaves much to be desired it needed to sit quietly in the background. I wrote the lyrics to the words Seasons of Love across a painted page with blue ink then turned the book 90 degrees and wrote the lyrics again in black ink. I then used my own handcarved stamp of 525 600. 

The right hand page is one made from my trusty "Cloth, Paper, Paint & Stitch" method that I have used a few times in this round robin - it gives such great texture. I used the same light bluey grey background. (made from mixing Matisse Burnt Sienna, Ultramarine & Titanium White). I hand cut a brick wall stencil and used a mix of Burnt Sienna & Ultramarine paint for the bricks. I used Michelle Wards 'Splattered Paint' stamp with Matisse Alizarin Crimson paint on both pages. Once dry I then used my sewing machine to free-motion stitch the words Seasons of Love. I then adhered the page into the book. Here's a closer look....

 

First Year

Today my little man turned one! 

what has he achieved in his first year....he has gone from lying still to rolling to crawling to pulling himself up to cruising furniture to standing steady without holding on to now attempting to take take his first steps - not quite there but not far off. He has gone from a liquid diet to trying any solid food you give him, he loves to eat!, fruit, veg & meat - I am hoping that continues. He loves to make a mess! with toys and eating, especially when having watermelon. When feeding him he likes to take things out of his mouth, have a good look and then put them back in. He is very much wanting to feed himself but isn't quite there without the messs. He now has five teeth as the 3 top teeth slowly make there way down. He is quite chatty and is making a few words like Dada. He can wave, 'high five', clap and blow kisses. He lights up when his older siblings approach - there is so much love between them, it is truly warming for the soul. He goes to Day Care 3 days a week where he is one of the favourites as he is such a happy buba, full of smiles and he loves to laugh. He has started to finger paint and draw - with a fair bit of help I am sure. He loves to hear his sister play the piano, it calms him during the 'witching hour'. He sleeps well throughout the night when he is not sick or teething and has done so from a reasonably early age which we are grateful, but like his older brother is an early riser - usually between 5.30 & 6am. He loves cuddles. He loves to explore and is curious about the world around him. He will try to put most things in his mouth. He has the same cheekiness the other two have. He is now at the stage of being weary of unknown people but will warm up to people reasonably quickly, especially males and is very much a Daddy's boy. This week he was introduced to full-fat cow's milk and Chocolate Cake! Soon will be strawberries, honey and as more teeth come through there will be other food he can sink his teeth into like a steak that isn't very finely chopped! We look forward to his first steps, then walking and a little less to the mischief he may cause! His vocabulary will grow as will the love.

Postcard Swap

Just as I was striving for the finishing line with the Sketchbook Project, which I am please to say I met, I crazily signed up for Shannon's Mixed Media Postcard Swap. I loved the idea of receiving something in the mail that was interesting and being able to do that for others too. So I created my postacrds and managed to send them all off on time, along with a few extra I made for some of my special friends.

Collage, Acrylic Paint and Ink, 
The bird image is a hand cut stencil 

In regards to the Sketchbook project, I have received confirmation from the Art House that they received my book and it is in the process of being added to the digital library. For those interested you can go there to check it out as well as other impressive Sketchbooks. I have created a photo album in the left hand column of my blog with pictures of all the pages in my sketchbook.

Along the Line

is Sandy's theme for the Round Robin, and here is my interpretation.....

My thoughts went something like this, from Sandy's "objects on a line" to things hanging, like a clothesline to trees to leaves hanging on a branch = line.

Taking it futher... besides being currently obsessed with tress I am having fun playing with free-motion stitiching which to me equates to 'along the line' as images/designs etc.. are created by a line of thread being taken for a walk. 

The result are the leaves - made from a bit of Wool Top being stitched over with Varigated thread. (Note: the idea came from The Thread Studio's kit A Trio of Aussie Leaves. I used my own sketches of leaves and tried to take Dale's idea a little further and make it my own). 

Of course I had to include the tree and all the lovely raised lines.

I loved her idea for a sign in page but was a little put off by the shape of the tag. Don't get me wrong I loved that the tags were different being triangular, I just had a blank with what to do. Until I started thinking a little differently. The only instruction was not to remove the tag from the line, which I didn't..... 

Hope you don't mind Sandy, but I suppose that's the real beauty of a round robin - everyone putting their own into it, doing things differently!

Sketchbook Project

A sketchbook can mean many things to different people. To me a sketchbook is not a place of finished art but a place for capturing an image that speaks to the owner of the book. A place to capture an idea, thoughts, inspiration, feelings, etc..... Sometimes it can be a place to take things further with some experiment/playing, a place for samplers and notes. It can serve as a spring board to various creative outlets. A page can be finished in moments or take hours. It is not meant to contain polished work that can be framed or displayed. It is a place where you are allowed to be free, there are no wrongs and no rights. You have permission to play and not be perfect. It is a book that captures a small part of the sketcher, the artist, the creator, the person behind these labels, and for this reason it can be a very personal space.

With all of this in mind is how I approached my Sketchbook for the 2012 Sketchbook Project. Before receiving my book in the post I jotted down my thoughts and ideas of how I was going to approach my chosen theme, with lots of room to see where the journey would take me. I decided I would not go on-line to see what others were doing as I did not want to feel doubt and lack confidence, this was already a big step for me and so I want to stay protected until I complete my book. 

There have been times when I felt I would not finish and thoughts of giving up ran through my mind but for reasons I can not give I have pushed on. With the deadline of January 31st fast approaching I have been spending lots of time in this little book. I can't wait to finish, to see what others have created, to see their interpretations of the various themes and send my book off into the world & share what I have done.

My choosen theme is A Path Through the Trees as I love trees. To me that means looking at trees and all they entail and using all that I capture in this book as a path to creativity outside of it. So for me a more apt title is A Path Through the Trees to Creativity.

Here is my first page...

I did not really give much thought as to what my first page would be, it just happened that his is a path through trees near my house that I sketched. As the first page I feel it is inviting me, and possibly any viewers, to come down the path, into the book and hopefully into inspiration for creativity.

Summer is finally here

It has been wonderful to see the sun these past few days.

For this week between Christmas & New Year everyone in the family is on holidays from school and work except the the little man who still goes to Day Care. This gives us an opportunity to do things with the older two. Unsure if the weather was going to stay fine we decided the day before that regardless we would head to the beach early after dropping him off, and what a glorious day it turned out to be.

I decided that not only would I take my sketchbook and small supply kit but that I would actually use them, in which I did. I only did one little sketch but it's a start!

 

 

Merry Christmas...

to you and your loved ones from me and mine!

Lose Control

in Penny's book - Music. Here are my first set of pages...

The page on the left is inspired from the Crowded House song Private Universe...'highest branch on the apple tree was my favourite place to be...' This was another Cloth, Paper, Paint & Stitch page, once complete I actually stitched it to the paper page. The page on the left holds a CD I burned & printed on for Penny. Each song on the CD captures a memory, the little note slipped in behind the clear CD pocket holds a brief explanation.

this is a second set of pages I completed...

both pages are coneeced by the band Mr Mister.

The page on the left was inspired by Mr Mister's song Broken Wings.
I wove together two sheets of paper to create the background, the first page contains the Lyrics to the song and the second sheet was some of the sheet music to the song. I then lightly painted over this with white Fluid Acrylic paint. The famous image of the couple dancing is a gel medium transfer. The other elements were hand stitched onto the page.

The page on the right was inspired by Hey Soul Sister by Train.
I painted a colourful background of Red, Orange &  Nic/Azo Gold. Once dry I placed a mask I cut of a woman dancing in the middle and painted the page with Golden Carbon black - lovely and glossy. I removed the mask to reveal the woman alight with music. Once dry I used a white paint pen to write the words of the song.

I'm Yours!

On Saturday the 19th of November I was treated to an amazing show by Jason Mraz accompanied by the very talented Toca Rivera. It was an accoustic concert at the Sydney Opera House, no better venue to truly showcase the talents of these gifted men.

I found this fab video on You Tube from the night of them performing the song that first led me to love the music of Jason Mraz, I'm Yours...

Precipice

At the precipice I almost lost my sanity!

I love trying something new, experimenting and playing, the journey of discovery. If I am lucky I will get caught up in the creative process and go off on my own tangent before realising I have strayed from the instructions. The freedom of creating for no-one, without having to have an end result is a joy - ecstasy if the instructions are easy to follow and actually work.

Trying something new whilst participating in a Round Robin with dead lines and pieces to be created for others can add the insanity to the process. There were, and are, many new things that I would like to try, choosing which ones to do in Jan's book was not an easy decision. Some attempts made it into Jan's book but as many didn't. Some of the end pieces I included in Jan's book are not pieces I think are great but they are in keeping with the spirit of the book. Thanks for the challenge Jan, and the push to try new things.

When I try a new technique from a book I often like copy what they have done, that way I can concentrate on learning a new technique and not worry about what to actually create. I did not feel that I could do this for Jan's book as the work would not be mine. To get over this hurdle I decided to use familiar images, one's that I had created previously. 

This page is the result of trying my hand at techniques from Stephanie Lee & Judy Wise's book Plaster Studio

This page was a little tricky as I had to keep in mind that this was not only a book page but one in a round robin, so it needed endure. After the plaster was applied to a heavy page and dried, I used acrylic paint that I added Ground Marble Dust to. The image used was one I have played with a few times as shown here. 

This was the first page I actually finished...

I had painted this image previously in acrylics, as shown here.
For his page I cut pieces of the flower out of 3 different coloured recycled fabric (fabric from sample swatches) - Blue for the petals, Pale Yellow for the flower centre and Green for the stem & leaves. I then used fusible webbing to adhere them to background fabric which I had backed with heavy weight interfacing. I then used my sewing machine to thread sketch the details of the flower using eight different coloured threads. There is some free motion stitching on the orange background fabric and it was the first time I have used my machine to write a word.

In amongst all of this I was also trying my hand at Digit Art in PSE (see previous post). Time was starting to run out but I felt I needed another page. After a few different ventures this is what went in Jan's book:

The background was one I created using Wet Felting Techniques, whilst the flowers were created using Dry Needle Felting. As I said, there were time restraints so a great deal of work was not lavished on this piece.

Over the Edge.....

I jumped off the Precipice, landed in the unknown and created this, my first piece of digital Art.

I am currently working in Jan's Book which is all about trying something new, perhaps something that we have wanted to try for a while. For me that covers way too many things to try in one month - that's the length of time we have with a book - but one thing that has been top of my list is to have a play & create with Photoshop Elements, I just needed to get over how intimidated I was by it and what better way than to jump!

I have a texture layer and a text layer. I used the magnetic lasso, feathering and blending. I got rid of colour and adjusted perspective. I played with saturation, hue, lighting and opacity. I added butterflies and the flower, and created the dark edge.

The books that helped me were:
Adobe Photoshop Elements 9: Unleash the hidden performance of Elements by Mark Galer & Abhijit Chattaraj
Digital Expressions Creating Digital Art with Adobe Photoshop Elements by Susan Tuttle   and
Adobe Photoshop Elements A-Z: Tools & Features Illustrated Ready reference by Philip Andrews

Celebration of Trees

Inspiration:

Page:

 

Again, this was done using the technique from Stitch, Cloth, Paper & Paint  
It is a very textural page as I was trying to capture the 'scrubiness' from the photos above.

These images were taken in the parks/bushland near my house. I feel so fortunate.

Joyce's book is now making it's way to the USA - I sent it off this morning.

Fish

This is another page I created in Joyce's book. The background is a similar technique as used here.

Celebrating the Butterfly

I am currently working in Joyce's Book ' A Celebration of the Beauty of Nature'.

There are soo many wonderful things in nature to celebrate it was hard to choose where to start.

I love butterflies and they hold so much symbolic meaning for me that I thought it would be a great place to start. As I don't have any photos of my own, I searched the internet and found a few images appealing. I grabbed my journal (a new one especially for this Book Round Robin) and sketched a composition from these various images and used coloured pencils. This was the result:

The journal I have started for this Round Robin is a place where I can keep a record of all my ideas, and as I will not see the pieces I create again once they leave my hands I take notes of techniques, colours etc and make sure I have an image of the completed piece. This way I will always have a record I can look back on.

To the left is the page opposite the sketch. I took notes whilst I worked on and after I completed the page.

And here is an image of the completed page:

I collaged some text & sheet music before taking to the page with acrylic paints. The 'black' of the wings does sparkle a little as I added black mica flakes.

One Image, Three Mediums

The image is of a Scarlet Robin, the three mediums are....

Acrylic Paint:

 

Colour Pencil

I used Faber-Castell Polychromos colour pencils

 

and Machine Thread Sketching

This is my first attempt at Machine Thread Sketching.
If you ignore the fabric puckering, it's not too bad for a first attempt. 

 

Textures of Nature

"Is it Interesting?"

This is the last page I created in my book of quotes for the Round Robin.

It started out completely different and I really struggled with the page (it is at the back of the sign-in page). I made changes, placed various images and ideas over the page trying to work out why it wasn't working. Nothing was really working, so I left it.

I watched The Lost Thing - a short animated film based on the picture book by Shaun Tan (I know I have said it before but he is an amazing artist - he is a multi-award winning author & illustrator and won numerous awards for the film including an Oscar).

Part of the DVD extras is an interview with Shaun. During the the interview he talks about art and "is it interesting?" That's when I had the lightbulb moment on the page I as struggling with. Asking this question of that page the answer was 'NO! not to me'. I thought this was a great question to ask myself on any piece I create. Inspired, I wanted to create a page reminding me of this moment and thought, and I wanted to pay homage to Shaun. What was more appropriate than in my book of quotes.

Out came the gesso, the Yellow Pages and paints. 

I loved the soft muted colours he used so I mixed similar ones of my own.

As I was mixing, it brought to mind GPP Crusade 53 - Mad Scientist

So I named my colours..... 

the muted green - Cool Aid
the dark shade of green -  Deep Aid
the 'yellow' - Summer Sand
and
the Bluer green - Breeze 

The above page was the result.

Very appropriately placed next to my page with the quote 'What other People think is none of my business'