Journal pages more than not

Hello Readers!

Today I have some journal pages to show you all. Someone in the envie group over at AFA, I forget who....might of been a couple of someone's....posted some eye candy and tutorials to do with art journaling. I started an art journal sometime last year and it has set under the kitchen table in a box waiting on me to get back to it. There were about five pages done when I started back in on it yesterday. I've shown you those pages here as well as the boatload I've done since yesterday. In order to have enough pages to fill the cover that is already prepared, but not arted up in anyway yet, I will need again as many pages as I have done now.

And technically, those pages are not done. Only the background of the pages is done.

At any rate....here's some journal pages.

The majority of these here start out as a UPS envelope cut to size...i forget what size, but guessing I'd say 14x9 inches or so. I use the fold in the bottom of the envelope for the fold down the middle of the page, so they pages are already folded nice and straight. I cut them with my large guillotine paper cutter. Makes quick work of it! The ones that are not UPS envelopes are cut to size from cereal boxes or manilla file folders.

 I've covered this one with painted newspaper and then drew the flower and leaves with acrylic ink. The black splatters are acrylic ink as well.

 This one, as well as the first one are upside down. My phone refuses to cooperate when taking photos and does just whatever the devil it wants to do. More often than not I have to turn the pictures around. I forgot to do that to these two. There are probably more of them to come just like these.

This page with the upside down rabbit was half done when I discovered it in the box with the rest of the stuff for this journal. The rabbit is a foil wrapper off of last year's Easter candy. You can't see them well any longer, but there are four other foil candy wrappers on this page as well. I pretty much covered them up with acrylic paint. Finger painting. I love getting down and dirty with the paint!

 These two with the circles all over them were also half done when I started back in on this journal. They were covered in newsprint printed in either green or pink, from drug information pamphlets. I added the circles in different shades of wall paint. I covered up all the words, people's faces and anything else that could be identified. Each were given a pale wash of acrylic ink once the paint had dried.

 This one was finished already.

It's a couple of magazine pages of nothing in particular that I drew all over with a black sharpie.

 This one was also finished.

 As was this one.

These two have the same dotted tissue paper on them. The bottom one has nothing but the dotted tissue paper on it. 

The one above has painted magazine pages and other scraps along with the dotted tissue paper.

 This one is remnants of painted newspaper.

 Painted newspaper.

If you've been reading for awhile,  you've seen all these painted newspapers before.

 Painted newspaper.

 Painted newspaper.

This is one of my favorites!

I think this page may end up with a city scape of some sort.

 Painted newspaper trimmings laid out in lines.

 painted newspaper

 painted newspaper

 painted newspaper

 painted newspaper

 painted newspaper trimmings laid out on a diagonal

 painted newspaper

 painted newspaper

 painted newspaper

This one isn't dry yet, so it hasn't been trimmed. It started out as a manilla file folder. I tore some pictures out of a fashion magazine and started layering them on with some punched out stars made of teal color printed newsprint. They pretty much disappeared when I slapped on the yellow paint. Got a little heavier handed with it than I had intended. No biggie! I intend to add a few more stars to it once it dries. There is white tissue paper over most of the background. The people are cut out of magazine paper as are the white hearts. The 'dragonfly' is cut outs of a couple of earrings from the fashion magazine. The red blobs are acrylic ink blown around with a straw.

 I still had a good pile of scraps of painted newspaper so I covered a few chipboard pieces with them.

 The chipboard pieces came from the back of a blister pack that held phone cord. The top two still need the other sides done before they will become little book covers.

 There's Fred Dog, upsidedown--sorry, asleep on the kitchen floor. That which looks like blood smeared on the floor is in fact red acrylic ink. I made a terrible mess when those splatters ended up on the floor. Most of it landed on me! If someone had come along at that point, they'd have thought I'd just murdered someone! It was all over the front of my dress and one of my hands! How only those three little spots ended up on the floor, I do not know. But I am thankful. I wasn't so lucky with the blue ink the other day. I didn't lose as much blue ink, but there's a nice long splatter under the table. Acrylic ink is permanent. My floor will forever have paint spatters. And that's OK with me! :)

 Another painted journal page. Not sure why it's out of order with the rest of them. This one isn't newspaper. It's brown kraft paper. It was all wadded up in a box of stuff I ordered a few months back. Makes great waste paint paper.

This is my newest fish picture #17. I still have not finished #16 but there is nothing that says I have to do them in order. I do believe one of those little glittery fishes will end up on this canvas. No glittery fishes in this post though. I forgot to take their picture again! This fish picture is only 4 x 4 inches. I've used some nail hole patch (which is basically spackling compound), acrylic paint and glitter on it so far. It's going to get a few strings, maybe some beads  and I don't know what all before I can call it done. 

Fish Picture #16 quit talking to me so it's hanging out in the laundry room out of my way. I really need to laundry in the next few days so I'll be looking at it a lot. Maybe the muse will tell me what it needs to be finished. I don't know. We'll just have to wait and see!

That's all for this installment of 'What Has Donna Been Up To?'.  

Thanks for hanging in there to the end!

Remember...

Be good to one another!

It matters!

Peace

831

Fishes Mostly

Hello Readers!

I'll just get with it and show you all the happenings in my world since the last time I was here.

The kidnapping mentioned in the last post did not happen for various reasons, but the main reason is my son's  car crapped itself. Damn thing just went out of warranty and the transmission took a dump! A brand new car, still 11,000 dollars owed on it and it is useless now.  That just don't seem right! One would think a brand new car would last at least until the damn thing is paid for!   So no kidnapping for me. No  grandkid time for me. No visiting for me. 

I stayed home and rearranged my work space in the kitchen instead.

 The mess before the rearranging.

 Again, before. Not sure why these pictures are so dark....

And after Ma and I moved the table around in front of the window. Now I can get to the tall white shelf on the left of the table. I also threw away two boxes of junk I didn't think I needed any longer. Murray was a good helper....sticking her nose into anything and everything!

I promptly got busy and painted after everything was back in place again.

 Miniature Fish Windsocks

 Seven of the little critters. They are made from some kind of satin material that was once the lining of a prom dress from the late 60s. It started out white but I painted the fishes after they were cut from the fabric and before they were assembled. They are glued together. They have a copper wire ring at the top with another copper wire through that ring to secure them to the bamboo skewers. That's copper foil tape around the skewers to hide the copper wire ends. The fish are about 3.5 inches long. Each one has  a tiny bit of polyester fiber stuffing inside to make them puffy. I painted them with spray fabric paint, acrylic inks and acrylic craft paint.

 I really can't decide if I have the fishes for the swap over at AFA yet or not. I keep making more fishes! These four are made from toilet paper tubes. Painted with acrylic inks and acrylic craft paint. They still need some googly eyes.

A helpful tip:

If you have a bunch of dead CDs, use them as paint pallets. Works wonderfully! Disposable too! Or if you're like me, after use as a pallet, save for art fodder. I think the CD in this picture is going to be made into a book cover. I'll have to research how to make a round book before that happens, but yeah, I do believe that's a new book cover.

 Murray cat being snoopy again. This is the only cat out of three that insists my work table is for her to run around on. She drinks my paint water too.   

The painted newspaper she's standing on (which was dry at the time, thankfully) will also become a book cover in the near future.

As will this painted newspaper.

 More fishes. These guys are paper mache, painted with acrylics and then covered with sequins. I've added googly eyes to them since this picture was taken. Seven seems to be the number for fishes.

And I'm still not sure which of the fishes I've made this month will end up in California to be dispersed across the Globe. 

There are six more fishes sitting on the kitchen table that I forgot to take pictures of also. Decisions, decisions, decisions!

Fred Dog is still with us. I've had a chat with the vet and he has agreed to come here the time comes for Fred Dog. I think I may have jumped the gun, thinking his time was up. He seems to be doing pretty good this morning. He wasn't too uncomfortable the last few days when the temperature got up to 100F or more. I'm going to play it day by day a bit longer before I call the vet to come out and do the deed. I'm really not ready to say goodbye to Freddie just yet and I really don't think he's ready to go just yet.

 

Miss Lola, sitting on the front porch railing.

 That's Murray walking past the Forsythia Bush in the front yard. I really wish I had caught the scene a few seconds later when she was walking past the flag there. It was flapping in the breeze and she attacked it! Was snarling at it! Had her claws sunk into it. Fred hates it when the kitties wrestle and make those snarling, meowing, yowling noises. He bounded down the front steps and made that cat leave that flag alone! I laughed so hard at the pair of them. Murray scooted off after giving Fred a look that should have dropped him dead!

 The vultures returned a few weeks ago to their roosts atop the co-op silos in the center of town.

If I'd have been thinking, I could have gotten some pretty good close up pictures of vultures yesterday afternoon. I went out with my sister to the oil rig my son works on. It's out in the middle of a pasture about four miles south of town. On the chalk road to the rig there was a dead baby deer that someone had hit. There were a gang of vultures cleaning it up. They all flew to the other side of the road, landing on the fence posts, waiting for us to move along so they could resume their feast. Must of been a dozen or more there.

Toilet Paper Tube Dinosaurs

You can make your own!

I still need to carry mine to the kitchen so they can be painted.

 In the last post I was so excited about selling some embroidered balls, I had to make a few more!

I didn't have to make the balls themselves. I'm still flush with made balls....got about a dozen of them ready for embroidery.

 This one has fish all over it.

Fish are really on the muse's radar!!!

 This one didn't take near as long as the other two. That fish ball took me about 8 hours total embroidery time. This one took maybe three hours.

 A whole box of embroidered balls! I sent off eight balls to Colorado yesterday. I've another ball in the process of being embroidered. When I watch Coronation Street later today, I will add to that embroidery.

 Milo field on the 17th of June.

I'll take a walk out there once the sun is fully up in the sky and take some close ups of the sprouts out there. I'm pretty sure it's milo, but I could be wrong. 

That's about it from my neck of the woods.

I leave you with a problem child...

Drooling Tippy 

I've never had a cat who drooled like this cat!

Thanks for wading through the ramblings and arriving at the end!

Remember....

Be good to one another!

It matters!

Peace

831

The Muse Has Returned and The Farmer Planted the Field

Hello Readers!

Long time, no see!  I've been around, just haven't had much to show you all.

this post will be filled with many fishes, some rugs and the tale of the planting of the field  continues from the last post. I made that last post on the 26th of May so it has been a little while.

We'll start off with arts and crafts before we delve back into the planting of the field. Better get a cuppa something and settle in. It might a long one.

I started (and finished) some rugs out of the fabric yarn I showed off in the last post.

These rug pictures are in backwards order. This is the third rug made with the Q size hook. It's about 30 inches long and 30 inches wide. It isn't exactly square, but close. None of the rugs crocheted up nice and square. This one is made from all cotton materials from a couple of blouses and 4 and quarter dresses.   The other 3/4 of that dress is in the second rug.

 This is the second rug. It's about 3.5 feet long and 30 inches or so wide. It is made from cotton material also. This one the material came from 5 dresses. I used most of the dress from the first rug in this one. Can't really tell but all of the fabric in these stripes have patterns on them.

This is the first one I crocheted with the Q crochet hook. It's about 4feet long and 30 inches wide. I didn't actually measure any of the rugs. This one is made from cotton material from 4 (and a half) dresses and 2 blouses.

The rugs kept getting smaller and smaller....

This is rug number four. It is made entirely of t-shirt material. Not all the garments used to make this yarn were t-shirts. There were some long pants and capri pants in that bunch as well. I'm still working on this one. One more ball of t-shirt yarn left to put on it. This one was crocheted with the size N steel hook.

Day before yesterday I was fast asleep in my bed at 3 o'clock in the afternoon when my son and his wife paid a visit. I never laid eyes on either of them but I talked to the boy for a minute or two. Can't remember what he wanted. I think he was telling me about my new front porch steps but I'm not sure. When I finally woke up around 9ish or so that evening I found this box sitting in my livingroom.

 The note written on the box says: Donna I thought you might want this material. If not just toss it. Love you. Lue. Lue is my daughter-in-law.

The box is filled with velvet. Most of it is clothing that has been cut in one way or another and there was one large piece of chocolate brown velvet ad this set of blue velvet curtains. LOTS of velvet to do something with! My brother brought me the gold rope curtain tie backs. There were three of those but my sister Susan came along and said she needed some curtain tie backs so I gave her the other two. I also told her how to make a vent cover so all the cold air from the A/C went out into the room instead of up behind the drapes!  She said I was a genius! :)

I have no clue what will happen with all that velvet. I had a stash of velvet...a large stash...when the house burnt 10 years ago. It was all lost. I've been collecting velvet since then but didn't have very much of it. I really want to make a crazy quilt from all that velvet but I haven't a clue how to make quilts. Something will be made from it eventually.

I promised you all lots of fishes in the title of this post so we ought to see some fishes.

I started another fish picture. I forget what number this one is really. But I think it's #16 so that's what we are calling it for now.

 I started this thing ages ago....couple months ago anyway. This is a terrible picture! You get the idea though. Still lots to do on it.

 Here's a close up of the painted puzzle pieces and fluffs of weird yarn that were a failed experiment. Almost everything on this fish picture is either a failed experiment or something others wouldn't bother saving to use in artwork. 

Those puzzle pieces would have been a bear to put together into the puzzle. I got the puzzle from Carrie's yard sale. It was made in the late 30s, early 40s, I'm guessing. Those puzzle pieces are about 3/8 of an inch thick. I painted them both sides with acrylics and then put glitter glue on them as well.

I got a box of art fodder from Ma the other day that included some fabric spray paint. Guess what Donna did with the purple fabric spray paint. That's right! She went against the instructions to use it on fabric and sprayed it all over her newest fish picture.  The big round thing at the left hand side of the picture is a chipboard cracker box cut into yarn (nothing is safe from being made into string) and I crocheted it into a round. I was actually trying to make a small basket out of that cardboard yarn but that's easier said than done so I chucked the cardboard crochet basket idea and said, hey! this will work great on the new fish picture.

This fish picture hasn't really been talking to me at all since I started it. I look at it numerous times a day just to see if it's gonna say anything. It's coming along slowly. I'll probably finish it in a flurry of ideas. I'm on a fish kick at the moment so fishes for this picture will probably be made soon. I may have already made them and not realized it.

You'll see what I mean here in a minute.

 This is the box of art fodder Ma dropped off the other day. All kinds of stuff in there!

glittery paint, glitter glue, craft acrylics,

 a sea sponge, some other sponges,

 dimensional paint

 fabric paint, gold foiling  paste, pencils,

and lots and lots of paint brushes.

I needed the paint brushes. I'm terribly hard on my paint brushes! I try to keep certain ones for glue and gooey paint but I always break that rule and end up using one  of my better brushes for such and end up ruining them for painting.

I'll put this stuff to good use.

Now, some fishes.

 I entered a fish swap over at AFA. Open media, fishes no longer than 3-5 inches. These here fishes are right at 5 inches. They are a lot larger than they need to be.

 I forgot to take pictures of them in their plaster casts before I covered them in tissue paper and painted them all with acrylic ink and then gave them some bling with a coating of german glass beads. They don't really shine like that! That's the flash on the camera hitting those glass beads. I tried to match the color of the fish to his glass beads but that didn't work out so well with all of them. The red fish in front actually has pale pink beads and the brown fish has red beads. It all worked out in the end.

 I painted the lines in their fins and tails with silver acrylic ink and gave them all some googly eyes held on with gray stained glass paint. (Kinda like dimensional paint. It came from a kit.) They're your run of the mill paper mache fishes that are entirely too big to be sent to California. 

So I said well heck! I gotta make some different, smaller fish for the swap.

These came about:

 Miniature fish windsocks. Ma says they're just as cute as they can be! I'm rather enamored of them myself! They're the right size for the swap. But I wasn't satisfied, I needed to make more fish.

 So I made another school of smaller paper mache fish. Eight of them instead of seven. I didn't mean to make eight of them but that's what happened. I'm thinking maybe...if they don't go to the swap, these newest fishes ...at least a few of them, will end up on my fish picture. They're the right size for it. They still need a few layers of tissue paper and a paint job. And I need to figure out a jump ring of some sort.

Anyway, fishes are on the radar hot and heavy!

More on fishes to come in the near future!

In the last post I showed you the activity in the field north of the house. 

 There are little green sprouts popping up all over this field on the 6th of June. They don't show up real good in the picture, but believe me, they are out there!

 And on the 7th of June, the field has a tinge of green all over it. Still doesn't show too well in the picture but I swear those sprouts grew double their size from the day before!

And on the 11th of June, the field is really greening up! I wish I could say those sprouts are sunflowers. But that is not the case, sadly. Those little sprouts are milo. I'll take a hike out to the field in the next few days and take a picture of the sprouts so you can see them. And we'll keep an eye on the milo field throughout the growing season. I could be wrong about those little sprouts being milo. They might be sorghum or some such thing. Guess we will all have to wait and see.

I forgot to show you all my newest cardboard book. This one is 6 inches square. It has a tiny metal enameled ladybug on the flower and a small pink glass gem on one of the leaves. Pages are copy paper sewn in the coptic stitch with brown embroidery thread. I think there are six signatures of 5 sheets giving the book 60 pages.

I got a very encouraging note in the mail today from the director of the Grassroots Art Center. A lady from Colorado bought all of my embroidered balls they had and wanted more. She's in luck~! I have a bunch of embroidered balls that can be hers! 

It still amazes me people will give me money for things I make out of trash! The balls aren't made entirely of trash. Just their innards, but still it amazes me!

That's about it for this post. 

Might be a few weeks before another post appears. A kidnapping has been scheduled and I don't know how to do a post from my phone yet. Not even sure it can be done.

At any rate...thanks for hanging around to the end!

Remember....

be good to one another!

It matters!

Peace

831