Reverse Painting on Plexiglass

In "The Year of the Spark"

we reverse painted on plexiglass.

Here are some process photos--

quite fun and challenging...

thinking in reverse always is :)

I love this piece of my mom and our dog frolicking in heaven--

each doing what they loved,

and my indoor cat enjoying the out-of-doors.

 I bought Michael's linen stretched canvas

and mounted each to the frames.

I love the look of the slick over the rough canvas

and these two hang on my stairs and greet me every morning.

The Week in Instagram

a glimpse of my week

Oscar doodling

Doodled during the Oscars last night--

Meet Henri and Oscar who came to life 

by first glueing down random (the heavy lines) paper prompts

and then making a story out of them.

Henri has two prompts and Oscar has four.

Fun to be silly and just do it.

All inspired by The Year of the Spark.

Today I will Choose Joy

 In MATS Bootcamp our assignment was to make wall art

on a piece of roundish wood.

 So I first sealed the part of the wood that I planned to paint on,

then sketched the general idea.

 Painting commenced and I found it rather hard to get 

the acrylics to flow and blend.  

Fought it the entire time....

But I persevered and eventually these happy souls appeared-

A bear delivers flowers to a crow in need of encouragement,

and a young girl and corgi welcome the two to their cozy home

for tea and scones by the fire.

I wish I could join them.

 Words of affirmation were added

 to remind me that I have a choice everyday 

to love and experience joy,

or squelch it.

It really is that simple.

so today I will choose Joy!

This oval 11x14" rough edged piece of wood 

would love to adorn your wall 

and remind you to 

give flowers

 or words of affirmation

or whatever is needed

 to those around you each and every day. 

$150 - email me if interested or it will go to the gallery soon.

Have a Meowy Valentine's Day!

Sent this Valentine across the country to my granddaughter.

She loves seeing Matteo when we Skype

so I figured he could wear a tutu and crown while they danced together.

Hope she is old enough to smile.

Happy Valentine's day!

Musings Notebook for MATS Bootcamp

I am loving Lilla Rogers'

Make Art that Sells Bootcamp.

Our first assignment was to sketch Edwardian brooches

which was quite fun.

This assignment morphed into turning these sketches into a cover for a journal.

The final drawings are displayed on her site.

How fun is that?

I thought you might like to see my initial sketch.

I wanted to make a journal that I would buy,

and as this wasn't for an actual client,

I didn't make the jewelry the focal point.

So I decided to fill the pages with the way my art desk actually looks with art stacked everywhere.

A notebook should be for lots of ideas and brainstormings don't you think?

Not neat but messy which allows for more

musings, meandering and markings.

Then I decided I needed my own copy.

So I was happy with it for my first project.

Now on to the next one.

You can see my project and all the other beautiful submissions here.

More Snow Globes iPad Style!

 It's that time of year again when we make snow globes!

Only this year one of my iPad classes is studying fairy tales

so we made Hansel and Gretel candy cottages in that class...

Each is enveloped in snow of frosting and candy.

First the students drew their cottages.

 Then we cropped them into a circle.

They cut them out,

added ephemera, 

colored the globe with white snowflakes,

and glued 3/4s of the cover on,

which left an opening for me to add the glitter.

 I took them home,

warned the cat to hide,

got out the glitter,

 and started stitching and filling each globe.

 I will be seeing glitter for quite some time...

such is the small price for beauty.

Ahh pure joy!

These are all based on my original snow globe taught years ago.  

You can see the original lesson here.