Latest art from my busy studio

It continues to be a whirlwind around the studio these days.  So much inspiration...so little time!!  Let's see, where did I leave off.....

Ok, here are some new ATCs for swaps I'm participating in.

These are for the Let's Get Messy swap.  The rule was that all the cards had to be painted without using ANY tools other than finger, elbows, toes.... you get the picture.  Those of you who know me, KNOW how difficult this one was to get into!  NOT!!  It was great fun actually.  So much so that I find I'm fingerpainting a lot of my backgrounds since this swap completed. 

A Day At The Beach
Waves breaking. Seagulls calling. And the only footprints in the sand are your own. Ahh what peace!

Cave Drawings
Decided to go primitive on this one. Okay...abstract primitive might be a better description. I painted the shapes with the side of my little finger dipped in paint. Then overwashed it with some Marigold Procion Dye.

Patiently Waiting
It fits the title because I dipped my fingertips in several colors of acrylic paint and then drummed them on the card like one does when waiting. If you look closely you can even see my fingerprints.

Grape Hyacinth
Lots of tiny purple flowers with white tips to make up one stem. The look very similar to a bunch of grapes...hence their name.

Nurturing Creativity - Week 11

A day late because the power supply on my computer FRIED!! I mean smoke and everything! Thankfully, I have 2 geeks in the family and one bought the part and the other one replaced the fried one. I LOVE having computer geeks living here!!

So, anyway, about nurturing creativity. Picking a card...................and the winner is.........

Do It Wrong

OK, the concept is to (at least for one time) ignore that voice that keeps saying "You're doing it wrong!!" and just go ahead and do it wrong! Then to discover that the world doesn't come to a grinding halt...and my favorite....that your passion for your art doesn't disappear! So what if it isn't perfect. Sometimes the imperfect things have a beauty all their own and some turn out to be awesome! So what have you got to lose???? GO FOR IT!!

This is perfect timing for this one for me. I do have one project that HAS to be perfect but others that I can just play with and the play ones have smaller parts that if they don't work out...well....I really haven't lost much time or supplies! And who knows just what I might discover!!!

Care to play along! Then DO IT WRONG.....at least once in your life!

Nurturing Creativity - Week 3

Shuffle.....shuffle.....close my eyes.......and chose a card!!!!

This week it is:

Creative Space

Well, this will either be very easy or very difficult. Very easy in that I have a wonderful creative space already in my studio. Very difficult would be coming up with a way to make this card relevent given that fact. Hmmmmmm let me think........................

OK, I've determined that to me this card speaks of KEEPING my space creative. While I'm a very messy artist in many ways (just ask those who have worked with me in my studio!!) I find that having it messy DURING a project is waaaaaaay different that leaving it messy before I start the next project. So, what I think to do is this: there are currently several stacks, baskets, boxes of things in my studio left over from a stint of trying to sell things on e-bay (what a waste of time THAT turned out to be!!) My goal for this week is to get rid of them ALL. That will probably mean a trip to Salvation Army to leave stuff there or FreeCycle or something but they will ALL be gone by the end of this week!!! I know that doesn't sound difficult but when I'm in my studio I want to create....not clean up!!! It will be a discipline to walk past all my "toys" to go through boxes and things to get rid of stuff. LOL!! I just wonder how much stuff I'll find that will stay in the studio because "you just never know -- I might be able to use that in an art piece someday!!!" I'll try my best to keep that to a minimum!!

I am going to keep the deadline thing though. That was really an interesting experiment. One - to keep the deadline realistic given my current life situation and Two - to keep the deadline which also means managing time to end up "done" on the deadline time. It really helped keep me focused on whatever I was working on and not to start three other new projects along the way!!

More Snow Dyeing Results

OK, so I now have my backing piece for Adaptations. But there is so much snow........so little time (yeh, like all the snow in Minnesota will be gone by next week!! LOL!). So I just HAD to do some more snow dyeing while the previous ones were melting.

Below is the one where I scrunched SA soaked fabric in a cottage cheese container, packed on the snow and then squirted on the dye. It came out fine....the darker parts were on the bottom of the container. The snow melt doesn't run off in this method and so the bottom gets a full shot of the dye. So, the method really depends on what, in general, you are looking for in results.

This is the one with red, orange and yellow dye.

Remember how I had a big mess to clean up (especially the big pool of purple snow melt???). Well, here are some pretty awesome paper towels!! First from the green cleanup...(oh if only this was re-creatable!!)

And these are some smaller pieces from the clean up of the big purple pool!

Oh yeah, these will find their way in to my art work somewhere along the line!

A little behind schedule on Adaptations (I forgot to figure in time to stop and prepare meals!!!) But I'm not far behind. The window is inset and the whole thing is quilted. Now to add all the fun bits and pieces!!!

CRACK!!! oops....the whip is cracking.....better get back to work!!

Still on Schedule!

OK, right on schedule so far! A slight delay due to helping put away groceries. It's always something I guess. But, in the true spirit of learning to dance in the rain......I'm thankful we have food to eat!!!

Snow dyes washed and dried and ironed - here they are!! I had forgotten how wonderful snow dyes can be.

I love the separation of color and the shades of those colors. I used a mix of a blue and yellow to get the green I wanted. I LOVE this piece!!

However, this is the one that won the audition for the quilt backing. This is one of the pieces which got squirted with green, blue and dry bronze

This is the other green,blue,bronze pieces. Unfortunately, it is my little mutant piece. While drying, it slipped off the drying rod and fell into a couple of the drip pools from the other pieces. So, it has a couple of blemishes. Poor baby. However, there are still several beautiful parts left and who know but what I might need a piece just like this one for something someday. So, mutant though it is.....it still has a loving home here with me.

This is the all purple piece. Notice the separation of the red and blue I used to make up this particular purple. I LOVE when that happens!!!

These are the two pieces with purple and red. I love these, too!! Just like a mother with her children, huh???

I had a remaining FQ in the SA soaking, and still plenty of snow to take advantage of so I made another piece over lunch. It is currently still melting.

So, to complete todays goals, I have to get busy and stencil to see how that will work out and do the window on the quilt.

Deadline for Today - DONE

YEAH! It feels good to have accomplished what I set out to do today!! Below is the piece which is mainly green as it started out. I scrunched up the SA soaked PFD on the screen, packed snow on top of it and squirted the green and blue dye on it. Then, I sprinkled some dry Bronze onto it. Got a bit heavy in spots but we'll see what it turns out like.

Here it is beginning to melt! The hardest part about snow dyeing is waiting for the snow to melt!! (Patience is NOT one of my virtues!!) So far it looks pretty good. There are two FQs in all that green snow.

Here are the mainly purple two as they started out. Fun part of this one was that later in the day I discovered that the plastic bin lid I use under the screen to collect the runoff was leaking!!! I had a huge pool of purple water all over the island! Changed containers, cleaned up the mess (ended up with some AWESOME purple paper towels, too!!) It is now continuing to melt.

Wanted to try a slightly different approach this time. I scrunched the FQ into the bottom of a cottage cheese container, packed snow on top, squirted on the purple dye.

When all the snow melts I'll let them batch overnight and rinse, wash and iron them in the morning! Stay tuned!!!

MY CREATIVE JOURNEY - week 37

Was rather thoughtful when I read this one. The title is Creative Space. The idea is to set aside a creative area of some kind for yourself. Well, I have my studio so that is a done deal. However, after several deadline projects lately it is a HUGE mess. Sooooooo, I decided my completion of this card would be to clean it up a bit at least.

The problem with cleaning my studio is that I come across something and the creative juices start flowing and I get side-tracked making something new!!! HA! But,I will make a concerted effort this week to see if I can make a dent at least. But in the meantime I have three other projects in process so it will probably never be spotless. (Not sure I would want it to be!)