Category : Creativity

622 posts

It’s been a weird week…or two weeks. I missed T stands for Tuesday last week. It just wasn’t in the cards to get something posted or even attempt to make the rounds to my fellow Tuesday bloggers…or anywhere else for that matter. So moving on…

The next weirdness was the crazy weekend blizzard the weather folks were hyping up.  Well there weren’t wrong!! We got 16.2 inches of snow here.

And guess what…school went on here as scheduled Monday. 

As I walked in the building this is what I saw to my right. 

Here’s the drift that reached the roof that was to my left as I walked into the building! Crazy! We have more snow in the forecast for Wednesday. UGH! But then 60°F by the weekend. So weird. Mother Nature has lost her mind!!

Ok…I know you are tired of hearing me complain so on with the creativity.

Last week I sat down with an idea in mind. Creating a scrappy, handmade, hand bound journal. After creating my signatures I needed to come up with a sturdy yet pretty way to bind this journal.

This was my idea. It’s very fine plastic canvas…like needle point size grid. I used a Japanese screw punch to make the holes to stitch my signatures through then glued it to the lace panel with E6000.

I don’t think I exactly follow the hand binding rules but…don’t care..it’s the way that works for me. I’ve been doing it this same way for over 11 years!

I decided to use this book cover, covering the inside with scrapbook paper before gluing the lace bound signatures down.

I’m pleased with this little book. I’m planning to use it for random thoughts and quotes along the way.

Last weekend…or I guess that would be the previous weekend when we could actually leave the house…Mini-me and I treated ourselves to coffee.

These Minnesota-isms just don”t seem to get old especially when we have feet of snow on the ground.

This week holds a solo/ensemble contest for Mini-me and getting ready for the end of the school year wrapping up. I was told that there are 38 school days left. YIKES! That kind of freaks me out. There is so much to do!!!!
What are you don’t today??

Wow…11 years!!

I am just 4 days late for my 11th bloggerversary!  I never thought I’d still be at this after all this time. You see, I tend to get really excited about new projects then when the next obsession crosses my path and I drop everything for that. Eventually I do circle back around to older things but it can take a while.

Growing up, writing ranked up there with pulling teeth. This is yet another reason I’m impressed that I’ve continued post after post, month after month, year after year.  What is very more crazy to me is that I’ve grown to enjoy writing. I find it very freeing. It unclutters my mind. I don’t worry about the little things like the squiggly red line under unclutters telling me that is not a proper word. I don’t care. It’s the word I’ve chosen to use.

I do find it very ironic that my first post was about a handmade book I had just created…and now 11 years later…it’s a handmade book that I created that had me sitting down at the keyboard today.

More on my new book in the next post…

 

We all have our fingers crossed for tomorrow. We are getting snow and seemingly lots of it so we might as well have the day off if we have to have snow after Easter. The weather reports are saying 6-9 inches.

❄ UPDATE: Snow day!!! ❄ 

Enough about the crummy weather and on to the art journal.
collect beautiful memories

I created this page with a layer of randomly cut squares and rectangles using both heavy card stock and a textured chocolate box.

collect beautiful memoriesI used a combination of stains, distress paint, gelatos and charcoal sticks to create the variation of color.

collect beautiful memories

I layered my “found relative” image over a fussy cut flower photo, paint stained baby wipe and frayed fabric. The paper clip had just the right patina so it found its way on the page as well.collect beautiful memories

I adding some distressing to the photo which started as a printed image. I used gel medium to adhere it to card stock to give it the weight and stability of a photo of that age. I scuffed up the edges then wet misted them before dragging across a distress ink pad. I ended up accidentally creasing the image in a couple of places with added authenticity in my opinion.

Linking up with Art Journal Journey for the theme: Recycle and Collage

Art Journal Journey
I also need to share my photo challenge recap. 

16. Money …..accidental collection of money I’ll never spend

17. Green

18. Bread ….lunch

19. Season ….it’s supposed to be Spring…right?

20. A note

21. Oh No! …someone is disturbing Marvin’s peace

22. Last thing I bought …arrows

23. Candy

24. Perspective ….grilling with snow on the ground  (imagine that I’m having a nice glass of wine with this…photo not included) 

I’ve officially abandoned the rest of the month. This month was difficult and not very inspiring. I’m taking April off from the photo challenge scene.

So Tomorrow…Tuesday…I’ll either be shoveling the going to work or just shoveling. I’m hoping for the latter.

What are you doing today?

 

The calendar says its Spring but I think Mother Nature needs her head examined. It’s cold and snowy. So since the weather isn’t cooperating I figured I’d create something that would brighten the gloomy day.imagine spring

I pulled bits together from my scrap bucket.

imagine spring

I even briefly set up my sewing machine on my workspace to get some stitching onto the page. I sewed this scrap directly into the book.

imagine spring

This piece was stitched together before gluing into place. Gosh I’ve missed using my machine! For some reason it inspires me.imagine spring

Lastly I added the word imagine. I was trying to imagine what Spring should feel like. I’m linking up with AJJ for Spring.

Art Journal Journey
With it being spring break so many people are traveling. Mini-me and I did as well. It wasn’t a tropical destination. It was 4 hours NORTH of here for the state archery tournament. caribou
We drove up on Friday and spent the night in a hotel since she didn’t shoot until Saturday. A snow storm was expected anyway so might as well go early. Thankfully we never did get any snow…just a cold wind.paul bunyan
We had to do the usual tourist things…amazingly enough there was others venturing into the frigid wind off the lake for a photo op that were nice enough to take a picture of us. That may look like standing water under Babe the Blue Ox but its solid ice.
After the tournament (at which she beat her personal best score by 24 points!) we headed for home but took a slight detour since we were that far north to visit Itasca State Park. Itasca state park
As we turned in we quickly realized that we probably wouldn’t get to see the headwaters of the Mississippi as we had wanted. Some of the roads weren’t even plowed. Instead we just took a photo of the map on went on our merry way.Itasca state park
I really wanted her to be able to jump across the Mississippi as I had when I was a kid…heck, I wanted to do it again now! Oh well…maybe another trip.
This is typically when I share my photo challenge but I’m woefully behind. I will get caught up though and share them next week as well as the next months challenge.

Last week was awesome! Busy but awesome. I’ve been continuing to do pour painting when ever I have the chance. I did get my step by step process written and posted. You can check that out in the previous postacrylic pour walk through

The kids had their Spring concert Thursday.

It’s the second to the last for J. The next one will be sad for me. He’s been in choir since the 4th grade. He plans to sing in college but I won’t be necessarily seeing those performances. His choir sang such a cool song with movement. I wish I had know so I could have recorded it.

This is the video that they learned the movements to the song from.

I must say that our choir with the kids in the robes looked much cooler when their arms were swinging to the music.

The weather has been amazing…so beautiful on Saturday that the neighbor had the first bonfire of the year on St. Patrick’s Day.  Some adult beverages were consumed. One neighbor even put green food coloring in his beer to be super festive. 

As the sun began to shade the driveway and get chilly even with the fire the decision was made to move the party across the street to a sunny spot. Yep…portable fire. Us Minnesotans are dedicated to being outdoors!!

The week wouldn’t wouldn’t be complete with my photo challenge update.

10. Savory…. sausage dip tastes so much better than it looks.

11. Iconic

12. Pastel

13. Ha!

14. Clouds

15. Blue & White

It’s off to work for me. Three days left before Spring Break!!!!

What are you doing today?

 

I know its taken a while but I’m finally going to show you how I do my acrylic pours.  (This is a photo heavy post)acrylic pour walk through

Lets talk about the colors I used first off.  I use all brands of paint, even house paint for my pours. I really only care about the color I achieve in each cup. I mixed the 2 browns until the color felt right. I did the same with the 2 reds in the right of the photo.

acrylic pour walk through

In all I have 7 colors. As I’m mixing these I add a product called Floetrol, which is a paint conditioner. I plan to use some of this in my paint for the front door…hopefully eliminating my brush strokes.

acrylic pour walk through I use about a 50/50 mix of paint and Floetrol. I eyeball it…this girl doesn’t measure. If the paint is still quite thick (which is almost always is) I add distilled water very slowly until I get the proper consistency. For me that is the paint running in a thin line from my stir stick. acrylic pour walk through

Now comes the dirty pour part. I always start with a small amount of white in the bottom of the cup then begin adding streams of color in a varied order. I pour from different heights which distributes the color in the cup in different ways.acrylic pour walk through

As you can see I tried out colors from my paint drawer on the canvas before preparing my cups. It doesn’t matter what is on the canvas before so feel free to reuse an old canvas. After filling the cup with enough paint or what I assume is enough…remembering that some paint will be poured off the edge in this process….I’m ready to pour or flip as the case may be.acrylic pour walk through

Some people quickly flip the cup over onto the canvas…I have yet to be brave enough to do that since I am working in such a small space. Instead I flip with canvas over.acrylic pour walk through

And now we wait a minute or so for the paint to settle. Not sure how necessary this is but its the way I do it. I also tend to put a little paint at the corners to get the pour to flow over the edge quicker.acrylic pour walk through

Every time I’m amazed by the designs that come straight from the cup.acrylic pour walk through

Already cells are forming from the paint bubbling up and popping. No silicone used or needed.

acrylic pour walk through

I sometimes lightly blow on the paint to pop the surface bubbles before tilting the canvas to begin the flow.acrylic pour walk through

acrylic pour walk through

acrylic pour walk through

acrylic pour walk through

So much fun!!acrylic pour walk through

Here is the completely dry canvas. I did drizzle some paint left in the cup at the bottom of the canvas to add interest. Not sure if I entirely like that addition but its all a grand experiment.

Here is the second one I did with the same colors.

acrylic pour walk through

Crazy how different they are from each other. I love this this one…so does Mini-me. The colors work as a perfect accent in her room which was why I used them in the first place.

Special thanks to Mini-me for her photography during the process.

I’m obsessed with acrylic pouring again! It is so fun!! I have one to show you but three additional made. I just didn’t get photos taken before it too dark for natural lighting. Those will be in another post. In fact, mini-me acted as photographer for one so there are some in process shots. 

I decided on black, white, silver, burgundy wine and dusty rose for my paint pour.

So cool. I just can’t get enough of how these look.

I thought the area of pink was a little much of one thing smack in the middle so I used what was left in the flip cup to draw…drip…accent…a design.

They look a bit like striped tear drops meandering across the canvas.  After mini-me saw this one she asked for one for her room in specific colors. I mixed enough paint for two so she’d have a choice. Those I’ll show in the next post.

In case anyone was wondering…we had a two hour late start for school on Tuesday last week. They really should have cancelled in my opinion. We got 6 inches of snow overnight and then it began snowing in earnest again during the day. Made for crummy driving conditions. We decided to use just one vehicle that day…the 4 wheel drive one. I drove Mr. G to work, kids to school then got myself to work on time.

I started a new photo challenge for March. This one is definitely presenting more of a challenge.

Here’s what I have so far.

I’m stretching a bit with some of these and have fallen behind several days…then play catch-up all in one. Oh well. I’m not big on rules anyway.

What are you doing today?

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