A Plethora of Creatures, A Couple Things and 3 Little Books

Hello Readers!

I've been busy since yesterday! 

Chipmunk Max

ATC

I know Max looks like a squirrel, but he's not.

markers on cardstock

Gary Goldfish

ATC

watercolor and marker on book page adhered to cardstock

In honor of my late husband. 

God rest his soul.

Gertie Goldfish

ATC

watercolor and marker on book page adhered to cardstock

In honor of my friend's late cat.

God rest her soul.

I am certain animals have a soul.

Mean Purple Fish

ATC

watercolor and markers on book page adhered to cardstock

Orange Monster

I started him on Thursday and finished him when I got up on Friday afternoon.

He now lives with 4 yr old Jo. I sure hope Jo's papa isn't too mad at me for not showing up at Jo's wingding. It just wasn't in me. I sent Orange Monster with my sister to Jo's celebration.

I think I've already shown you all the red Polish Star in this picture. The other three I made on Wednesday. They have glitter on the ends of all the points. They really shine when the light hits them! All three are magazine paper.

Orange Fish

ATC

watercolor and marker on book page adhered to cardstock

Purple Fish

ATC

watercolor and marker on book page adhered to cardstock

I really, really like how this book page paper takes watercolors! Wow! It soaks up markers on their own, but the watercolor wash slows down that process! I love how Purple Fish turned out!

Turkey Vulture

ATC

markers on cardstock

Caroline

4x4 inches

watercolor and acrylics on book page

George

4x4 inches

watercolor and acrylics on book page

George looks a bit drunk...He surely looks nothing like the famous painting of him that adorns the US $1 bill! It's all practice though! All practice! If I hadn't told you who he's supposed to be, you 'd of figured he was a drowsy colonial planter or something. You'd have known it was a man at least! My adventures in painting portraits has come a long way! :)

Practice, practice, practice.....

Gloria Goldfish

ATC

watercolor and marker on book page adhered to cardstock

In honor of all goldfish ever flushed.

Hattie

4x4  inches

watercolor and acrylics on book page

Practice is definitely necessary! 

Orange Poppies

Altered Envelope 

4.5 x 5 inches

oil pastels and acrylics on paper

Pink Owl 

Altered Envelope

4x5.5 inches

Oil Pastels on paper

Reidid, Agnes

ATC

markers on cardstock

Blue Text Twinchies

Pamphlet Book

5x6.5 inches

6 brown paper bag-like paper pages

book text collaged on chipboard from a cereal box, watercolor wash, two twinchies drawn in 2009 and a bit of white nylon cording to hold it all together. 

Gray Journal

6x7.5 inches

16 manilla drawing paper pages

acrylics on chipboard from a cereal box

there's a blank natural colored pc of chipboard inside the front cover to stabilize the fold I couldn't avoid in the cereal box.

You could theoretically take this book apart, pretty it up with your own creations and then sew it back together again. It would be a lot easier to work on the cover if the pages weren't in it. 

Manilla drawing paper is good for dry mediums. Crayons work wonderfully on it! As does pencil and charcoal and oil pastels.

Green STripes and Dots

pamphlet book

3.5x5 inches

scrapbook paper adhered to cereal box chipboard

16 manila paper pages

sewn with green crochet cotton

This one is headed to The Netherlands as soon as I make it to the town to go to the post office.

That's it for today.

We'll have to see what tomorrow holds....

Be good to one another!

It matters!

Peace

831

Bunch of Paintings, a Drawing or Two and some Works in Progress

hello everyone!

Thanks for stopping by to see the newest creations~!

Enjoy!

I was thinking the day before yesterday, that I haven't really done much creatively in the last week or so. The muse ran off to Aruba for some sun and relaxation apparently! Actually, it was just too damned hot to do anything! The A/C unit bit the big one and had to be fixed. I was without A/C for five of the hottest days of the year thus far. I slept a lot during those five days.

So I dragged out the paints yesterday and here's what happened!

Blue Hair

ATC

Brown Elephant

4x4 inches

Bubble Tree

ATC

this one is markers on cardstock

Dream Spores

4x4 inches

Evangelina

4x4 inches

Flowered Wall

ATC

Goddess

ATC

Gray Gum Trees

4x4 inches

Green Hair

ATC

Iberian Lynx

4x4 inches

Sometimes I just do not get it right! This is probably the ugliest cat I've ever painted! You all get the good, the bad, and the ugly!

June

ATC

Three Polish Stars

This is the red board book/paper mache book I did last month that I never got around to showing you all. It's technically not yet done as I have yet to do something with the long strings hanging off the binding. I'm stumped as just what to do with those.

This is the pastry box where I keep all my supplies for making Polish Stars. There are enough rounds in this box to make a good many more Polish Stars. There is one already in progress as you can see by the star shapes at the top of the picture. I use fast drying adhesive to put these guys together. A pencil for making the points and magazine pages for the paper.

Ropes. Some might call them braids. I found a tutorial to make a braiding disk and went to town with some acrylic yarn. I ended up with these long ropes of braid and had a devil of a time deciding what to do with them. I initially wanted to make a basket out of them by sewing them together but when I started the sewing process, I discovered that regular sewing sew thread isn't very sturdy and a basket wouldn't hold up to much abuse so I opted to stop once I got a good sized disk sewn and call them coasters!

This is the failed buckyball from last month that I never got around to showing you all. The units in this one will end up on the next fish picture. I really need to get started on that picture as the County Fair is next month and I'd like to enter another fish picture in the fair this year.

A WIP....toilet paper tube flowers. Yes, that is half of a hen's egg shell in the basket with the flower pieces. There's a snowman hat in there too.

My grandsons brought me all these fresh water snail shells from the Stillin Basin out at Webster Lake. My dil, Terah, painted the colored ones with fingernail polish.

Naked Brown Trees

4x4

Acrylics and watercolor on book page

Palm on the Beach

ATC

Pear

ATC

oil pastels on book page

Pink Tree

4x4

Poppies

acrylics and watercolor on book page

ATC

ATC

I forget the name of it at this moment. 

Sleeping on the Blue Bed? That might be it.

I don't remember her name either.

4x4

Visions

ATC

Be good to one another!

It matters!!!

Peace

831

Another Little Book and More Monsters

Hello Readers!

I've not been real busy with arty things since the last post.

Kansas fell into HELL the last nine or ten days. Temperatures were well into the 100F degree range and it was quite miserable without any air conditioning. A/C is now fixed so artwork commenced. 

I made this little book and the cover for it yesterday.

Pictures are screwed around but you get the idea.

I used two plastic credit card-like cards for the covers. These two happen to be dish network cards. Not sure what they call the cards...these came out of dish network equipment that my brother junked.

I used the needle tool to poke the holes in the cards to sew them to the page block which consists of paper that came out of a kit of some sort for making greeting cards. The papers I used were 'practice sheets' for getting the printer to print on the paper where you wanted your design to go. I think I used the cards that came in this kit for mailing out art trades, not sure really where this paper came from! 

One loses track of where all their crap comes from when one has as much crap as I do!

I didn't do any measuring with a ruler. I just eyeballed the size of felt I'd need for the cover. That red material isn't felt. It is part of an old fleece shirt I used to wear! The beading (which is hard to see in the picture) was already on the fleece when I decided to use it for a book cover.

I blanket stitched the gray felt to the red fleece with embroidery thread. The tie is braided embroidery thread sewn into the cover. The button is plastic but it's a nice button for being made out plastic! And it worked great cause it's gray! The bookmark is a length of satin ribbon sewn into the cover. I glued a freshwater snail shell to the end of the ribbon but that snail is not there now. Should have left well enough alone cause I was messing with it and broke the shell! It's OK though, I have about 300 of those little shells that my grandsons brought me from the lake so I'll put another shell on the end of the ribbon and it will look just the same.

Once the page block was sewn to the covers and the felt cover was done, I just slipped the plastic cards into the pockets on the felt cover and voila! a new book is born!

This little book will be used to record my blood sugars everyday.

It has 30 pages. Only 8 of those pages look like the one you see in the picture above with writing all over it. They are all blank on one side though. 

Recording blood sugars is a necessity, but keeping those records on pristine paper is just a stupid idea to me. Why not reuse other papers when all I'm going to do when the book is full, is throw it away? 

It isn't me that thinks those things need to be recorded anyway. It's the doctor who wants to see what the numbers are looking like. My A1Cs are always fine so I don't know why she thinks I even have diabetes! I play along though cause if I don't play along, she gets upset with me. My blood sugars are the very least of my worries where my health is concerned!

And then -- no, that's not right. It wasn't ....and then.....the book was made after the monsters were made!

But anyway....

And then there were monsters.

This one is made from dark green velvet (used to be a little girl's party dress) and cashmere sweater material for his horns.  Felt for his eyes and he's stuffed with fiberfil. He's about 9 inches tall. I'm guessing on his measurements. I didn't really measure him!

This one was started on the 29th but finished yesterday. 

Again, green velvet for the body, purple fleece (used to be a pajama shirt-I still wear the bottoms of that set.) His eyes are orange polyester sweater and purple velvet. (Orange was a sweater my sister gave me to cut up for other uses and the purple velvet was once a skirt.) His hair is thick nubby pink yarn. He's about 7 inches tall. This is the least favorite of ALL the monsters I've ever made. To me, he's just ugly. It's the eyes, I think. And the fact his arms are all wonky and one of his legs is longer than the other one. Poor thing doesn't stand a chance in a beauty contest. Good thing this isn't one, yes?

I've done a few drawings since the last post also but none of those drawings are completed yet. They're just line drawings in black sharpie. One is an ATC the other two are Moo cards. You'll get to see them next time perhaps.

Can you find the monster in this picture? 

He flew into the desk room and landed on my hand as I was playing Mahjongg and scared the living daylights out of me. It didn't take me long to realize that it was just a robber fly and he was not going to hurt me in the least! It feels rather strange when they walk on your skin though cause they have barbs on the end of their legs for feet. They stick good to whatever they're standing on. He's flown off of me and onto the felt drumstick that hangs on the wall by my desk (along with other various strange things). This was the best picture I got of him. Late last evening I found on his kind, dead in the dishwater sitting in the kitchen sink. :( 

Robber Flies are very useful critters! They eat other bugs.

Here's a GOOD picture of a robber fly that I found on Google Images.

Be good to one another!

It matters!

Peace

831