A NEW STUDIO!!!

I am SOOOOOOOOOOO excited! I am having my studio professionally built out! My studio is what used to be my youngest daughter's bedroom. It's pretty big and I'm pretty organized but there is just so MUCH STUFF in that room!!! I have book shelves all long one wall, tons and tons of containers, of rolling spaces, well.... you know what I mean! What most of us have!

Well, today I approved plans for my fancy-schmanzy new studio and have to share them with you!!! Isn't this awesome? The long drawers (30 of them!!!!) are the exact size for my stamps! I can put all my stamps in these drawers and just label the drawers and know what's there!! Can you IMAGINE! I looked through tons and tons of magazines before figuring out what I wanted but this is it.

So what do you think?

Blog Award!

I received this wonderful blog award from Valerie Brincheck! (click on her name to visit her blog!)

It's not the just the award but the wonderful comment Val made that made my day!


" This first one is a no brainer because this women always has a good attitude no matter what is going on in her life. I also like her because she lets you know what she thinks with a smile. (Even though I 've only talked on the phone with her I can still "hear" the smile.) http://www.elenaismyname.blogspot.com/"


I try very hard to stay positive ... although in the past few months it's been tough. I am blessed to have such wonderful friends in my life that it really isn't so hard to do even in the most trying moments.

I get to meet Val and the others she gave an award to (except, unfortunately, Ali who lives in England) in April when they come to stay at my house for a few days of art and fun and I can't TELL you how excited I am!!!

Thanks Val! Love you kiddo!

Now I guess I am supposed to give it to six more people? Okay... gotta think on that one! Will be back!

MARIE ANTOINETTE JOURNAL

March 10th is the send off date for our fourth round robin journal project! We have just about completed the first one (after over a year) and have two in circulation. (I already know what the 5th one will be!!! But I have to wait until a second one is completed!! )

This will be our most ambitious project yet!!! When you think of Marie you think of feathers, and bling... lace and flowers... all the girly things that she is most known for.

This is the journal i have made for this round robin. I made the journal using my all time favorite paper - Fabriano - in an 8x10 format. I painted the journal in blues and gold. I then printed an image of Marie on fabric and glued it onto the cover. I took out my box of "Marie goodies" and just started throwing things on there until it felt finished.

There are 17 artists from the US, Canada, Australia, and Europe. Each artist chose a theme for their journals... A really cool one will be Marie and Sex in the City! Can you imagine!??? Mine is simpler than that.. it's My Dearest Diary.....Can't wait to see what everyone comes up with!

I will be doing the first two pages and zettifying Marie in my journal. We will see how that pans out! Stay tuned!

BETTER????

Still working on this. It's a lot harder than it looks!! LOL!

PRACTICE PRACTICE PRACTICE

I like my Bleu Lady from yesterday except she looks MAD! I am not sure it's not a reflection of my mood yesterday but be that as it may, I've decided that if I want to learn how to draw faces (especially considering I've never been able to draw a straight line), the only way to do it is to practice. This was today's practice face. Still need to work on the expression. I am thinking that I am not leaving enough ROOM on the face - not enough room between the eyes, nose and mouth???? I will try a different composition for the next one and see how it goes. Meanwhile, I can keep a "chronicle" of my progress right here! This was done with pencil in my wonderful little Moleskine.

The first one was on February 17th. At least I have made some progress!!! LOL!!!

BLEU LADY

This is a really neat idea by Monica Zuniga . You first make a background using no more than two colors (I used blue and white). You need an image of a woman from a magazine. Look for one with great eyes! Then you tear out the eyes, part of the forehead and upper nose from a magazine. You glue that image down with Gel Medium. You then use a charcoal pencil to draw the remainder of the face (from the eyes down and from the eyes up.) The key is the blending and the shading. I still have to work on the shading .. I just don't "get it".

Anyway, you then use your two colors of paint to make the hair. I added some yellow ochre to it because it looked to "blah" with just the blue and white. I then added some rub-ons and some stickles and there you go! I really like the way it came out although I was not able to do it the way I wanted to given the limited space. I used my journal which is 8x10 and that really is not enough space to do this the right way. I like the way it came out though and will be trying it in an even smaller journal to see what happens.

Stencils and Water Colors

Two things I don't use hardly at all. Well, I am taking this awesome online course with Monica Zuniga (Hands & Heart) and she does really wonderful backgrounds using stencils, gesso and water colors. I have a "practice" journal that I use just to try out new things and I really like the way these pages came out.

I used the stencil with gesso (aha! it is not jUST for prepping paper!) and then I used various watercolors and my Caran de Ache water soluble crayons. It doesn't look half as nice in the scan as it does in person. I really like this technique.