To Frame or Not To Frame...

...that is the question here.
My sister is having her first baby girl after two boys. She bought the cutest little quilt for the nursery and asked me to make canvases of some of the flowers on the quilt for the wall. Well, I came home and promptly painted two of them as I saw them and HATED them. I just couldn't continue. And here is the lesson I learned...when you try to mimic something you haven't created, it will never be "you" and you will never like it or be proud of the work.

So, I started over. I began by laying a foundation of old sheet music, children's book pages, a french lesson book, and scraps of scrapbook paper. Then on each canvas I cut a shape, a butterfly for yellow, a flower and a heart for pink, and a bird for blue. I then painted over the whole thing and wiped away some of the paint to make the foundation show through in places.

Then I used scrapbook paper scraps to cut petal shapes and after sanding and distressing them, glued them all together. I added hand stitching, buttons, and ribbon to each flower and glued them to the canvas using double layers of foam mounting tape for dimension. I like them MUCH better now. I hope my sister does too. Girls don't come along very often in our family so we are all super excited. Now a decision must be made about frames. Should we frame them, leave them as is (I wrapped the paper and painted the sides, too), or should I adhere ribbon to the sides? Decisions, decisions. I think I'll leave that one up to my sister.

The weather has been very overcast and rainy all week so I haven't been able to take any pictures. Here are some of my "Wreck This Journal" pages that I have finished lately.

I decided to choose glitter glue over plain glue. The reason seems obvious. I just LOVE color.

Here is the doodle page. I did it while I was working the Primary Election. Primaries are pretty slow. So I finished this and the page below also.

The only thing on this page originally were the little circles for poking with a pencil. I drew the rest of it with Sharpie's and then poked the holes. So much fun poking holes in books...who knew?

And finally, I received a most awesome gift this week. My mom and friend Deb Evans who owns myvinyldesigner.com asked to borrow my art journal and returned with this:

It is a giant print of my journal page. It is printed on a stretched canvas and it awesome! I crazy LOVE it! I wish the photo could show just how big it is but I can tell you that it is about 2 ft. x 3 ft. and did I say awesome? After they brought it to me, my heart was pounding all day and my mind was racing with all of the possibilities Deb's scanner could bring. It is just so exciting. Well, that pretty much sums up my creative life lately. I'm off to get some more work done.

I'm a Wreckie! Are you?

After some crazy amazing inspiration, I bought "Wreck This Journal" by Keri Smith last week. I was looking for something to do during the slow moments of working a couple of elections that didn't require me to pack up an entire studio's worth of art supplies and would still be fun enough to hold my attention. Then, I found all the "Wreckies" on flickr.com and the amazing things they are doing with their books. I thought it would be perfect. It is SO much fun.
Here is the cover of the book before it is too "wrecked". You know that it won't remain boring black for very long around me. I fully intend on adding a little color to that cover, which is one of the many instructions found in the book. Along with tearing, scribbling, cutting, collecting, tying a string to it and dragging it along on a walk, taking it to bed with you, and bringing it in the shower. Not to mention about a hundred other crazy creative exercises intended to help you think outside of the box. One thing that I am finding challenging is collecting the stamps from my mail. My mail seems to be pretty boring. Nothing but bills and junk mail that don't have any stamps. I haven't collected a single stamp yet. I need to work on that.

Here's is the page that says "Fill This Page With Circles". You would be able to read it if I hadn't filled this page with circles. I'm nothing if not obedient. This took me a couple of days but it was a great project to work on during the election. You just have to check out the great "wreckie" pages on flickr.com. Search for "Wreck This Journal" and hundreds of pages of "wrecked" inspiration will appear. It's addicting and so much fun. Well, I'm off go rub dirt in my journal. Be back soon.

Happy Birthday Kasey!

What do you get the 10 year old boy who has everything?
A bunch of shirts! That's what! 20 of them to be exact. I found this little tutorial HERE. There are some amazing things that people can do with dollar bills out there. It boggles the mind. These are a little complicated and it took awhile to fold 20 of them but my dad just gave me five more dollars to fold some for him, and I got them done in no time flat. I guess all that practice has added a new skill to my repertoire but I think I will have to wait until I can regain feeling in my fingertips before I do any more dollar bill origami. $20 (and $5) is hard on the fingers. But they are fun and worth it for my nephew (and dad). We wrote on the card "we heard that you wanted clothes for your birthday, so we got you a bunch of shirts." He wasn't terribly excited about a bunch of shirts until he realized they were hard, cold cash (which is what he wanted for his birthday. Just cash) He loved his shirts and I bet he has never been able to say that before. He is the sweetest boy! I just love him and I can't believe he's 10. Wow! Happy Birthday Kasey! Love you.