ADK park sign

I enjoy the vintage postcards and national park signs that remind me of family camping trips when I was a kid. This project has the outline of 16,000,000 acre Adirondack State Park in Upstate New York and it will hang in the hallway of our house. I had a great time drawing and painting it and working with my Dad to cut it out on the scroll saw. There will more of these projects in my future. I have many ideas rattling around the noggin!

O

WL image transfer & pop dots

This was a very interesting technique which included covering the background in the colors you see popping thought the dots, stamping the dots, then gesso-ing over everything but the dots. It produces a fun result. The image transfer is one of nieces college graduation photos. I would have liked more contrast in the transfer since the blacks turned out greenish. But this was another fun lesson and I will  try it again

Wanderlust family

I like the colors of this more subdued layout, which was a lesson from Wanderlust. Since I've been feeling like I get heavy handed with the brighter colors that I really like this was a good lesson for me to see that there is interest in subtly too. The photo is random and it was supposed to be my family and their story, but I can imagine that they looked just like this.

This is my wonderful life - IW cocktail napkin

This weeks Inspiration Wednesday started with cocktail napkins. It was amazing to see the stashes of people's hoarding of cocktail napkins. I had no idea and had been missing out apparently, since I had zero napkins.  I eventually went out and started my hoard with three bright and shiny packages. I used this pattern and some Tim Holtz plastic words for the message, with silver around the page edges for a grungy affect. It was a fun and simple way to make a page, which I will keep in mine for a quicky sometime.

Today was..... Art journal page

Art journal page inspired by "today was..."

I had a great day with my Dad creating a woodworking project I've been thinking about for a long time. The Adirondack Park sign project we worked on influenced this design in color, the blue tone being the great outdoors along with the nature leaf  panel. The text is tribute to the fun we had working together and these type of projects have always been where we connect the most.

Inspiration art journal book

This was my first foray into making an art journal book. It was a fun project. I used many of my favorite papers, tags and even old college notebook pages, all cut in different sizes and bound them to an old Dr Seuss book. I used my new crop aide to punch the holes for the binding and it worked great. I kept the all of the pages of the original book since I liked the colors and may gesso over part of the pages for an interesting background. It will be a fun one to fill up with my art journaling.

IW journal Live a life Inspired

Sounds like a great idea to me, live inspired, although much trickier for me than that. This was a fun lesson, I enjoyed the textures and colors. I'm still trying to embrace the grungy glazing but I'm not there yet. Maybe I can find a lighter color to glaze with so that everything doesn't get so dark! Otherwise, I like this with all the textures, patterns and subtle colors which is a deviation from the lesson. Good for me! Also, this was the first time I used the Tim Holtz distress crayons to add some color back in and create a color wash on the top half of the pages. They were very easy to use and gave a great effect.