Art and Easter

 

I grabbed a little 5"x7" canvas board, pulled out my pitiful collection of acrylic paint, inks and a handful of those triangle-shaped make-up sponges and just started sponging on a few lighter colored paints. Before I knew it, I created this! I stepped outside my comfort zone yet again and I couldn't be happier. As I sat there, staring at it, I actually said a prayer of thanks for giving me this surprise gift. It wasn't pride I was feeling, it was more like magic, that I, someone who can't even draw a straight line, painted a scene that actually looked like something.

And when Dawn spotted it and said, "Wait, what have you been up to?" (looking at my paints all over my craft table) and then looked up to see my little work of art, "You did that?! Are you kidding me?!" it made me feel so great!

It's nothing out of the ordinary for most folks, but to me it is huge because it came from my imagination. I didn't have a starting point with stamps or stencils. I was totally in the moment and made some art from nothing.

I used the edge of the sponge to make the grass, stems and blue and purple flowers. The pinkish-red puffs were made with a Tim Holtz Distress dauber. I did the blue parts of the flowers first and thought I'd ruined it. It needed something more. So I spilled out some purple acrylic paint and sort of smooshed it on. As I was doing that I kept telling myself, you're making a mess, oh, man, you're gonna have to gesso over the whole thing and start over again. But I didn't! They actually look like whispy things found in a field of wildflowers. (At least, to me.)

I'm in love with the sky! I still can't believe this was done by my own hand. On the back is place to name your art, so I wrote "Accidental Beauty."

Okay, enough about that.

Last week I made a few cards. This sympathy card was for someone who had a 9-month old chocolate lab puppy. He swallowed parts of a squeaker toy and rubber, which caused a blockage. Although they did surgery on him, he didn't make it and his owner was really torn up about losing him. I don't know why rubber is included in dog toys. It doesn't make any sense.

I only made 3 Easter cards this year. Dawn gave me this stamp because it's one of our favorite songs, and it's freaking adorable. So it was the natural choice for her card. I fussy-cut the two little birds and popped them up. The bow gave me a hard time, it just wouldn't glue down, so I ended up using a stapler to tack it down.

Valerie has been having a tough time lately, so I made this one for her to set out and be reassured when she looks at it. (Dawn also gave me a set of stamps with darling dogs on it; this is one of them.) The butterfly on the pupper's nose is sort of 3-D. And I didn't even try to glue this bow down, I went ahead and stapled it in place as well.

This is for my husband because he IS "egg"stra special!

If you haven't noticed, the common thread is the pastel card stock I spritzed with Recollections pastel sprays. The squares on my daughters' cards are cut from it and the bunny and sentiment were stamped on it as well. I also started with the same pre-made card base in a pretty shimmery purple. All say "Happy Easter" on the inside from that same sheet of spritzed white card stock.

On this Easter Day, I am thanking God for sacrificing His son so that I can live this wonderful life. In the words to a song we sang in my youth choir (back in the day), from the CELEBRATE LIFE musical, "He is alive, he IS alive"

My Very First Art Canvas

 

Gah! I've started my very first canvas! After watching tons of YouTube videos on how to do backgrounds and such, I finally took the dive. I'm nervous to do an actual art piece, but really enjoying the process. These colors, I really like them. It looks so much different already. I've done several layers and I'm on the homestretch!

 

I threw my hat in the ring for this give-away for a corrugated-looking ceramic dish and won!

One of the corners crumpled in shipping, but the cool thing is it actually looks like it's meant to be that way. This happy accident just added more character to an already unique piece of pottery.

Thank you, Storage Geek and Greyslater for being awesome!

Been playing around with the Vagabond again. Also, made another card. Go, me.

To Dye For

As I've mentioned before, I absolutely love SisterDiane of CraftyPod, and every day I am reminded why. She tweeted about a nifty tissue paper craft she spotted over on Things to Make and Do. She said she was "Ready to blow off my entire to-do list and spend the day making tie-dye tissue paper," so I knew it had to be extra-good. I tweeted back, "I will if you will," and she took me up on the deal. The race was on and I went straight for the finish line! Here is the result of all that tweetin':

Even though my folding prowess stinks; I was too lazy to put the dye into bowls and took a short cut by dripping the dye directly on to the tissue paper; got it a little too wet on one corner so it ripped;

and I have multi-colored fingers;

I would say the results were not too shabby.

Cool, eh?

Oh, yeah! The tissue paper was recycled from the packaging of a prize I won by entering a contest on Diane's mother's (Pam) Web site, Gingerbread Snowflakes. So in a way her unintended gift will keep on giving because I'll be wrapping someone's Christmas present with it.

Thanks, Diane, for getting me off my duff and inspiring me to go make some art!