Black and White Fairy

Black and White isn't as easy as it would seem! While doing this and a few other ATCs in black and white, I really found it quite challenging not to add a touch of color. My work usually is full of colors, sometimes way too much, so this was out of my comfort zone. First I stamped the moon. Then I painted the tree and the leaves. Added the fairy on a toadstool. I had to darken quite a bit of the fairy, because she just seemed too transparent. To ground the toadstool and to hide the ugly base, I added grassblades and flowering stalks! This might be look like it lacks color, but in the end, I felt I'd actually added a new color to my palette.

Distress Inks Challenge

I love distress inks and have a hard time passing up a challenge to use these inks. This card is done for a distress ink challenge hosted by Christie on Stamp-Shack. I used six different inks. Smooshed (that's a technical term! lol), them on my craft mat, sprayed them with water and wiped my card across them. Then I embossed the stamps with black embossing powder. The dragonfly seemed to blend too much into the background, so I added some green and purples to it using prismacolor pencils.

Monochromatic Challenge

I did this monochromatic blue card for a challenge on the Stamp Shack. The challenge was to do a card in any one shade of color. I decided to do it in blue. Last night, after playing a bit, I came up with a card I was somewhat pleased with. It needed a little bit more, but I wasn't sure. So, I decided to scan it first, just in case. Well, as luck would have it, right after I got it totally colored in with pencils, I ended up smudging it with some black pencil shavings that were left on the pencil sharpener, which came off onto to my hands when I sharpened my blue pencil. I tried to remove the smudges, but just made a bigger and bigger mess. So, I figured, heck with this and I'll just use the card I've already scanned. At 1:30 a.m. when I tried to add my card to the challenge gallery, I found out that I'd scanned my card at too high a dpi. I was a bit dissapointed, but not defeated. This morning I redid the card. This time I used feather stamps on the background paper instead of the eifel tower stamp. The sentiment is computer generated. I like this version a lot more. Hope you guys like the finished card.

Tim Holtz - Nostalgic Metal Memoirs

Have you ever taken a class from a teacher that you just couldn't get enough of. Well, that's how felt when I took a Tim Holtz class two years ago. He returned this past weekend to teach a few classes and I was lucky enough to take his "Nostalgic Metal Memoirs" class. He makes a class so much fun that you don't even realize that 5 hours have passes since you sat down and that you're holding a small piece of art in your hands! This class was a combination of book binding and metal class. The book is 4 x 4 and has 90 pages hand sewn into it. Then we worked with metal sheets which was embossed, sanded, distressed and colored with AI inks. The sheets were then used like wrapping paper to cover the top and bottom covers. Once corners, a decorative clasp and crown on the front were added, the journal was finished. It always amazes me how everyone starts off with the same kit, the same instruction and comes up with a totally different and unique piece when you take one of Tim Holtz class. Oh, and did I say, how much fun this was? Loads!!

Whimsical Marie Antoinette

These three were done for a "Whimsical Marie Antoinette" hand drawn/painted swap. I was pretty excited to do these. Not sure why. Not as if I watched the movie or knew much about the ill fated queen, but something made me want to do this swap. So I signed up for it. Now, here's the kicker! I joined on 4th of July. We went to our local fair grounds to watch the fireworks. We had about 3 hours of wait time and I drew all three of them fairly quickly before it got dark. As I said, I was pretty inspired. Not sure I've ever drawn so many cards so quickly before. Then we went home and packed for our trip to disneyworld starting the next day!! I thought I'd be back in time to color them and mail them out. Nope, didn't work out that way. By the time we got back, they were due in 4 days. So, I got them colored and priorty mailed them out! Hopefully, the hostess will have them in time.

When I showed my husband these, he wanted to know what "whimsical" meant. Hmm....I didn't know how to explain it. So, I looked it up. Here's what the dictionary says..."fanciful, odd, funny, unusual, peculiar, eccentric, queer, flaky..." The more I read these adjectives, the more I'm loving this word. I'm not sure my queens are eccentric or peculiar or flaky enough, but, they're whimsical. Right?

The Blue Angels

Recently our local Naval Base had their air show. Which was spectacular. There were lots of acrobatics in the air, some on the runway, and lots of food vendors. The traffic coming into the base took 1.5 hrs, where normally it takes 15 mins. Needless to say, we missed closeups of a few of the attactions. But because most of them are aerial displays, we were able to watch much of it from the car!! My favorites and most likely everyone else's there too, are the Blue Angels. The Navy's premier acrobatic team. It's a six man/plane team, with #7 being the spare. It's simply amazing to watch these jets zoom by each other at high speed and miss each other. They flew straight up, in formation, upside down and sideways. It was skill and grace in the air. I loved it. Here's a little of what we saw. I look forward to when they will be back again.

Hobo

I joined an inchie face swap and was playing around drawing some. I ended up doing a face that resembles this one by mistake. I loved it so much, I did an ATC size. I love this elongated face style. I took it with me to the Artfest, but he looked kind of sad to me, so I kept him, instead of trading him.