more art to share...

I have been really enjoying Christy's She Art class. I can't recommend it highly enough! It's been so much fun, creating girls and learning new techniques! I really have loved it. She's offering it again in April and I encourage you to sign up too! You will have more fun than you can imagine, no matter what your art skill level. Visit Christy.

Here are my most recent girls.

I am actually on my way to a speaking engagement at the local community college, so I can't really type a lot, but I wanted to share these girls and encourage my friends who have not signed up yet to do so! This class is WAY totally a blast! Really! I'll try to get back with more of a post tomorrow or maybe thursday. Take care!!!

First canvas completed...

Last night, on my way home, I stopped and bought a few $1 stamps, and some other little things, to add to my growing collection of embellishments for art canvas projects. When I got home, I had dinner, then sat down for about an hour and finished up the canvas that I posted earlier in the week. At first, I thought it was going to say Dream Big, but then I realized it went deeper than that. This canvas represents me letting my "little girl" out to create art in an uninhibited and unstructured way. I'm letting the inner artist take over and create. It is the coolest thing, but holy cow can you lose track of time. I've done a lot of crafting, but none has taken me this deep within myself, that I remember.  Anyhow, there is a ton of symbolism on the canvas, including a winged heart, a bird freed from a cage, tons of flowers, and way more. I purposely let the text on her face show through a bit, because it is actually words from a hymn book, about love. The legs are from the same page, but show musical notes.

I shared the canvas on flickr with the group taking the class, and it is fascinating how different things leap out at different people. Probably the most interesting thing about this canvas is the background. I did the background using a product called Radiant Pearls. I should have known they would do what they did, but I just didn't. They are water soluable. Therefore, when I had the canvas sprayed to where I liked it, I applied Mod Podge. Now, if you have ever worked with MP, you know that it is very thick. When it met with the Radiant Pearls, everything started to slowly change. It was really like watching something in slow motion! I called it morphing, because you could see what was happening and kind of figure out where it was going. Fortunately, I had a paper towel (ok, I had 2) handy and I started blotting as fast as I could before I lost my beautiful background. LOL In the end, it all worked out, and I know now that, should one want to use a water soluable product, that is fine, but you have to do the extra step of spraying mat fixative over it before you move on to the next step. :) Love learning on the fly. So, if you want a background that morphs... oh, never mind, you probably don't, and there are probably easier ways, but it's certainly pretty, and I wasn't bored doing it! LOL

-Make it a great Friday and have a wonderful weekend!!! Oh, pop back tomorrow because even though I am not officially IN the bloghop that was started by a few ladies from the Soul Restoration class that I recently took (long story), I will have a post up about my experience.

She Art.Wednesday

I went home last night, after spending a delightful hour or so with my friend Helen, and I created another background! I had prepared a canvas on Tuesday night by Mod Podging it with pattern pieces, so it was all ready to be painted and messed up. :) I LOVE messing up canvas now!
I got out some acrylic inks that I bought last year when I took the art journaling class at A Work of Heart, and I squirted a bit of turquoise onto the canvas and mooshed it with a brush (that's technical talk, in case you wondered!), then I added some pink acrylic paint. Its not a baby pink, it's more like flamingo or salmon pink almost. Bright and bold. Then I scraped some off. I want to see the pattern piece printing through the paint. I bopped around, using different texture techniques, and different "tools" like the back of a Starbucks cup warmer, and eventually, I came to what you see here.

I am really happy with it. I think I need to do something on the lower right corner, because that line is too sharp, but that's okay, I can play more! No rules means it is finished when I finish. I am LOVING the liberation of creating. Finally, I seem to be understanding the "no rules" part, and I am doing more of letting myself create for the sake of creating.

I bought a package of TEN 8x10 canvases on the way home the other night. I am so excited to have that much open space for creating!!

Make it a great Thursday, do something creative and fun!

Week Four - Soul Restoration

I am still loving the Brave Girls Club Soul Restoration class. It's fabulous. I've learned so much about myself and why I am who I am and how I got here. It's been an amazing journey so far! I recommend this class for every woman. Really. It's that good! You can click on the Soul Restoration link on my blog to go and take a look. The next one starts soon, so don't wait! It will be the best money you spend this year! Plusalso, if you take it next time, you can take Part 2 with me in June!!!

This week is all about "She did it Anyway".
In other words, no matter what happened in the past, no matter how difficult things got, or what got in her way, she pressed on, persevered and did it anyway. You know there's lots more to it, but that's what I'm sharing. Here's one of my pages from this week. When I first finished this page, I didn't like it, or its companion. They were jumbled, messy, the new art technique, which I'll talk about in a minute, didn't quite do what I envisioned, and I just overall had a sense of displeasure.

As I "lived" with the page, however, each time I looked at it, I disliked it a little less. I'm now to the point where I can see that although I'm the one working the Mod Podge and the brush, I am reaching deep within to pull out the things that are important to me, and those are the things that are getting onto the page. If I look objectively at the page, I see that I am really struggling to move forward, and I think that's good! Obviously, I'm still a work in progress, but wow, what a long way I've come!

So, about that new technique. Melody did a series of new art technique videos for us, and one was just too cool to pass up. Boy did I get messy too! You take string or yarn or twine and you drench it in Mod Podge and then make shapes with it. I did the anyway in it, as well as the flower centers on this page. I had SO much fun! However, this was part of where my "diss" of the page came in. I used some leftover cotton yarn that I had from the dishcloths that I make for my mother in law every year. It was varegated in color, and I just used whatever landed in my hand. It happened to be at a color change, so half of anyway was white and half was navy. In retrospect, everything happens as it is supposed to, but once that baby was glued down, all I could see was the funky color change! By then, I had run with scissors and added all of my little phrases and stuff. Now what? I got out my bits of multi-color gold leaf and had at it. More Mod Podge, several layers of gold leaf and some medium mixed in and I was happier. :) That's when I decided to stop. LOL

The lesson for this week opens in a couple of hours. I know what I'll be doing this evening! I seem to settle in and watch all the videos on Tuesday evening and then, on Wednesday or Thursday, I dig in and get podgy. :)

On another note, I'm losing again, down another 1.5 lbs. Yea! Focus, baby. Get rid of the weight.

Last but not least, I want to throw out there that Christy Tomlinson is doing a class called She Art, starting in a few weeks, on art canvas painting. I'm totally taking it, want to join me? Sign up here: SheArt Workshop. I think it's going to be a blast! Christy does great tutorials. I did that Christmas tree canvas using one of her tutorials. I'm SO jazzed. It was $35 for 3 weeks... Yea!!!

~ Make it a great day and do something to get your hands all messy!