Book of days

photo.JPG, a photo by lelloavengers on Flickr.

Here's the cover I Painted for my book of days in 2012. My word for the year is Balance and as I'll probably be posting lot about that as I journal and paint in it.... I'll just say now how I did it.

It as a layer of collaged tissue and some paper I made with a crayon resist and then embossing, I can show that process another time. Then I mostly covered it with acrylic and rubbed it off with a baby wipe where the embossing was. Then it's all sprayed with a sealer.... Done!

Happy paint party Fridays!

Calm

IMG_0068.MOV a video by lelloavengers on Flickr.

I love snow globes, I have a whole slew of them on my desk at work, I keep them there so they don't get broke here at home.

So take one minute and watch the snow settle, it'll just make you feel better!

About a week ago the foothills here where I live looked more like we were living in a snow globe........., some giant had picked us up, turned our little world over and dipped the top of our hills into powdered sugar, wish I'd had my camera then, it was so pretty.

And that day I heard a song on the radio I'd never heard before.... "Wish that I could live in a snow globe"!

Did you watch the video? Go do it! It's 1 minute of your life...

Linking to share the joy! Here...
http://meriak.blogspot.com/

And to time travel Thursday on the sidebar!
And Thursday's favorite things at Katherine's corner here...

http://katherinescorner.com/

Ok, so now that I've checked this out after posting I see the video doesn't show up but you can see the snow globe if our click on the IMG thing at the very beginning, not as calming as if it just posted correctly, oh well...

Joining

photo.JPG, a photo by lelloavengers on Flickr.

I tend to want to join every site I see on the Internet, do every challenge, pin everything onto my pinterest site.... It gets overwhelming actually. and at home, I think I have to do everything, fix everything then when I can't I get stressed....

But I'm not feeling as frantic as I was a week ago. For one my husband, the rock, reminded me that it's all ok. he's very good at that actually. And secondly I joined the free e-mails from Goddess leoni and listened to her meditation and felt better! Just one quick meditation, no big deal buti haven't done that in awhile and it reminded me it helps.

I'm adding a link to her site on the side bar where you can sign up for free e-mails or buy all sorts of products...

I' m also adding a few other new links, which would seem like I' m continuing to try to do too much but the two new links "book of days", and "52 play dates"are both free sites where you will find weekly inspiration on art journalist and I' m hoping it will inspire me to art journal regularly which was going to be one of my resolutions. I may give up trying to do challenges with given themes and I may even quit my etsy shop, haven't decided on that....and just work in my art journal. Effy Wild's book of days, asks you to get a new book ready and pick a word for your year.... to center your art around, I didn't even have to dwell on that one.....

I need to find BALANCE. My word for the year.

So here's another few of those little happy thought paper dolls I've been painting with my new word! Sorry it's at touch blurry...

I.m linking this up to butterfly effect as their theme is resolutions, and I plan to make an art journal page with all my resolutions soon!

More happy thought paper dolls....

photo.JPG, a photo by lelloavengers on Flickr.

Since I am still technologically challenged, I can only seem to add one photo per post using flickr as my way to get photos on here, and I have 5 photos or so of these ladies so I Just post one a day.... you can read how they came to me and see another one here that I posted on Wednesday...
http://fallingladies-fallingladies.blogspot.com/2011/12/paperdolls.html

Along those lines of being technologically challenged I have to add if you read something absurd on here, please realize that I'm not used to "auto correct" and since I' m posting from iPad now, it does auto correct and it changes my words randomly, sometimes I don't catch it..... I tried to say"this is my most favorite"on etsy yesterday and it changed it to " this is my most aborted"!?!?!?, I didn't catch it before it posted but luckily I could delete the comment before anyone read it and thought I was absurd. What's your oddest auto correct story?

Happy paint party Friday!

Solstice greetings!

photo.JPG, a photo by lelloavengers on Flickr.

I have all I need!

Sharing with butterfly effect and share the joy Thursday.

paperdolls

photo.JPG, a photo by lelloavengers on Flickr.

The idea for these dolls came to me in that half delirious time when my son was up at 2:00 am for 3-4 nights in a row, and when he wakes up he giggles and laughs hysterically for hours while I try to sleep. I can't of course, because he's also climbing all over me but I do try, and when you get soooo tired your mind starts to think of weird things. These dolls kept coming to me whenever I would close my eyes. All in black and white patterns and swirls...


Not that they're all that original but I think it was a combination of some art I'd seen at the mall that day, and that old skit where you have a paper bowtie, and you hold it up like a mustache and say in a dastardly voice...


"you must pay the rent!"

then you move the bowtie behind your head like a hairbow and say in the voice of the poor herionne desperately in need of rescue...

" I can't pay the rent!"

back and forth 3 more times till you hold it up like a man's bowtie at your neck, and say in the voice of the HERO...

"I'll pay the rent!"

..... "my hero!"

We did this skit in girlscouts when I was young.... hopefully someone knows what I'm talking about.

Anyway, here's the art, done in my goddess sketchbook with a bit more color added than my dream... plus I added some wisdom from the valentine's gift from my mother where she made up a years worth of wisdom written on strips of paper then folded into origami stars. I blogged about it quite along time ago and have been opening a star a day at work all year.

I'm frustrated because for some reason I could only post one picture of these and I have 5 or 6 some of the dolls are cut out, obviously I haven't figured out flickr and blogger yet...

Hope you like anyway!

Wordless wednesday

photo.JPG, a photo by lelloavengers on Flickr.

Distracted....

photo.JPG, a photo by lelloavengers on Flickr.

The story of my morning a few days ago is typical of my life lately.... Hectic and scattered and distracted. It's my own fault, I start by walking to a room and instead of wondering why I'm there, I think, "oh, I meant to go to the pantry first", so I leave to go to the pantry and get there and think, oops, I meant to stop and get the scissors, so I go get them and head out to check on my son. He wants waffles so I pop two in the toaster and head to the bathroom again forgetting the scissors and have to walk back to get them again.... After probably another Circle around the house I actually manage to cut the tag off his pants, put the scissors away and get the waffles to him. Everything seems to involve 3 more trips around the house than would actually be necessary, but I'm still getting things done so all is good. I get him dressed, go to brush my teeth, (impressed with myself for remembering right off)check myself in the mirror, (which honestly most mornings I don't actually do)and therefore realize my outfit does not match. So I start to change, hear the bus out front, and run downstairs to get my son's coat on and see that he's taken most of his clothes off again. We do manage to redress and get to the bus with a backpack and lunch before they leave, which seems amazing in itself!
So now I have 15 minutes before I leave for work, and I have to testify in court today so want to at least appear put together.... I change my clothes 5 times, "put together" doesn't seem possible today so I give up and head out, snagging my head back when I walk out the door because I've gotten my scarf caught on the door handle,( you just don't want to even know how many times I've done THIS!)

So anyway, I'm about five minutes later than usual and driving up what we all call the gulch road, a very narrow, windy, curvy road with steep sides, I come upon a very bad accident, a head on collision that happened 5 minutes before I arrived.... Just when I normally am driving through. No one was seriously hurt, but I'm shocked because the cars look totally crumpled.

Anyway, this was my little reminder to wake up, get focused, organized and slow down to pay attention to the moment I am in! I'm really going to try to stop rushing and getting farther behind because of it....

Linking up to butterfly effect as the theme this week is storytelling.

photo.JPG

I have soooo many ideas and projects in my head. I can't sleep half the time for all the things I want to make, yet I don't make them.

Well I do make things, but I seem to spend more time searching etsy, making treasuries, reading books and the Internet. So I guess my problem would be just laziness, but it doesn't feel that way. It feels like I get stuck in inertia because I want to do so much.... I can't decide which to do first. It's easier to sit still and dream of creating than to get organized, get focused, get prioritized and just do it.
So instead I surf the really cool sites on my son's iPad, because I can sit with it on the couch by my son like he wants! And I start ten new projects and then put each one aside and go read a book, actually I've started 3 books....
So here's something I started....and finished, but have no idea what to do with it now that it's done. I just needed to draw it.




So tell me, do you paint with a purpose in mind for your art or just because it's something you need to get out of your head?

I'm linking this up to paint party friday and creative evryday. And I just have to say... this was so hard to figure out. I still have no camera so I used the camera in the ipad, it wouldn't let me post photos from the ipad to my blog so I had to figure out how to e-mail them to a flickr acct then it still wouldn't let me post from flickr to here so I had to find the embedded code for the photo..... wow so complicated just to upload a photo... is there an easy way?
photo.JPG, a photo by lelloavengers on Flickr.

Fat cats, skinny cats, cats that sit on your head....

I hated the fact that I couldn't seem to paint a cat... So I kept at it! I mean how hard is it really to come up with a cartoon like cat? So I also happened to be going through Carla sonheim's book of drawing exercises and her first one was drawing cats, plus I'm seeing a lot of cats on blogs lately because of Amy's free cat classes,(even though I didn't see that particular class myself), so here goes.... I like these cats much better than my last try on canvas. These are in my second altered book, I'm putting a lot of Carla's drawing exercises in this book too. The fat cat is colored pencil, the skinny cat is acrylic over collage, the three
round cats are watercolor over gesso over tissue, and then there's one on a book page with acrylic and marker and the last is doodled in marker over a mailing envelope. The cat that sits on your head didn't quite get finished yet.

I also stuck in another page I did in my goddess altered book.... It's marker and a little acrylic over the book page... I started it because some challenge weeks ago , maybe an I.f., was vanity. I should say, since I don't think you can read the words, that she't not vain, she's just strong, confident and independent! I didn't get it done on time to post it to the challenge, but I'm adding it in this week with my cats, and linking up to paint party Friday and butterfly effect whose theme this week is book pages! I really love painting right on the pages so the words show thru.... More to come soon!


I have been so inspired to create lately!

I've been reading a few art books,

then I've been checking out other people's favorite art on Pinterest, which is totally addicting,

And then I've seen such really great stuff on etsy too while i've been Christmas shopping on there!

So much to make and so little time!