Everything is meant to be used ...

I don't really date my work, so not when I made this page, but it was several months ago.  Many life-altering things have happened since I did this journal page and I can now hear the gentle whisper of God's encouragement, as He tried to prepare me for so much of what was to come.

"Everything is meant to be used," He whispers ... and so I can have peace in the knowing that nothing is too broken to be of use to God.  I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me ... and He can use all things for His good purpose.

Journal -- Framed!

Recently I found an old art journal I started several years ago in a class with artist Kelly Kilmer.  Each page has a frame cut nad I will be making works of art to insert in each window.  I decided to try collaging across some of the windows, glue on some extensions, etc ... just to shake things up a bit.

I didn't have any real design for the cover, but just felt like adding a starfish and painting.  I like the look, but it may take some additional work to keep it from looking like an ocean-themed book.

Sun Burst

This was a fun piece I made for a friend away at college. I consider myself somewhat fabric-challenged, so I was happy it turned out the way it did.
  

Scraped Fabric

This was an experience.  I  decided to take Michelle Ward's Street Team Challenge and try scraping paint on a piece of gessoed fabric I am using for a wall-hanging for a friend.

I scraped on cadmium yellow, crimson, and phthalo blue.  Then I scraped some paint over a masked stencil.  It made neat patterns and a grungy kind of texture, but the images were lost.  An interesting combination of colors ... but not the color scheme I was looking for and defintiely did not match the trim I picked out.  

I brayered over most of it with French Vanilla and scraped more paint in pink and blue tones.  Coordinated with my trim better, but definitely not the colors I was originally aiming for.  I wanted a crisper look with my masks this time,so I used fluorescent pink and teal spray paints.  This was fun and I will definitely experiment more with tyvek masks on paper.

Jacqueline Sullivan Classes

I don't have computer access at home right now, so I haven't been able to post as soon as I would like. I had a wonderful time taking 2 classes with Jacqueline Sullivan. It was a lot of fun and I learned some new techniques. The green collage is pretty good size, but I was determined to alter these paper-mache half-hearts. I used family photos on that piece. Hope you like them!

Collage Art

Wow ... I can't tell you when the last time was that I did a real collage on canvas LOL This was a stressful holiday, as my Dad was suddenly diagnosed with a terminal illness and not expected to make it much longer. My sister is doing in-home hospice care for him and he made it out on Christmas Eve to be with his family, but is basically an invalid for the remainder of his days.

We were all fried between his hospital stay, last-minute preparations to bring him home, and all the normal holiday rush ... so we had a couple art nights to de-stress ... and this was the third of my pieces. The first one was a painting of my parents for my Dad's xmas gift, but no one had a camera to take a photo ... so I don't have a photo of that one right now.

The background was done with scrapbook papers and paint ... Kelly Rae Roberts style. The painted face was inspired by DJ Pettitt, but I did a little different painting technique and I really like the look ... so I hope you guys do too :)

This seems to fit in with several prompts, so I am posting it on Arty Girlz, Mixed Media Monday, and Wednesday Stamper.

The photo is not particularly good, so I also scanned as much as I could squeeze on my scanner bed for a better shot of the face I painted.

Growth

Here is another page in my Heart Speak journal. I felt truly compelled to do this page ... in honor of my friends for encouraging me to do something I was terrified to do :)

Muerte de Medusa

Yeah!! Another project not destined for my UFO (UnFinished Object) pile LOL

I was a little nervous about the time on this. I signed up for Michael de Meng's Found Object Alchemy class. Half a day was spent hitting antique stores in search of objects to alter. I figured I'd be coming home with a half-finished projct ... but whew! I got about 95% done in class ... that' pretty good for me LOL

I had a bit of a headstart on mine. Part of my assemblage was fashioned from an old lamp I found in the rust pile at my Aunt's house posted a few weeks earlier. It was a major feat to get the roof and base removed, so it's good that I had this done ahead of time.

The base is made from an ornate metal jewelry box I gutted. I had it in my head to do something with a Greco-Roman feel, but it turned out quite differnt. Michael pointed out the colors has a Latin American feel and the vines and medallion on the front gave me a feeling of Medusa, so I am calling this Death of Medusa.

I'm also posting the back, which seemed to be Michael's favorite part LOL I just hate velvet. It was covered in black velvet and I knew I wouldn't have time to do anything elaborate to get rid of that look, so I just gessoed and painted it and I ended up with a faux rust look.

More Class Homework

I am officially out of school for the term --- wooo hooo! My homework was long done, but I had a few more pieces from my success class I wanted to upload now that school is over. This is probably the only class I'll have in my academic career allowing that kind of freedom LOL

These are Academic Advantage tip cards. The teacher supplied large index cards and said we could alter them in whatever way we chose as long as we included our tips. Here I am showing the cover and the backs of 2 cards to show what my background looked like. I stained them with walnut ink, used Color Mists from Outside the Margins, and rubberstamped.

Sally

I don't like this painting as well as the ones I did in DJ's class. I struggle with shading and what-not. It is going to take me a lot more practice. She turned out more cartoony than I would have liked. I decided her name should be Sally -- but it later occurred to me that maybe her name should be Paris, because she is painted on those plaster of Paris gauze strips. The cheesecloth texture was hard to paint on, but it was a very neat effect.

Heart in Hand ...

I am a bit late ---- eeeekkkk! But here are some hand pages I did for a hand-book swap in honor of sweet Michelle -- who does some of the most amazing journal pages I've ever seen :)

I hope she likes them. I haven't been doing incredibly deep work lately. I'm just doing what I like these days --- if that makes any sense.

Trust Your Heart

I can't get with it lately. I seem to have lost the logging bug :( I am posting some remaining pages from the February calendar I was too lazy to post last month. Perhaps I will get the March pages posted in April LOL

Things have been a whirlwind lately.

Broken Wing

My temporary purple/blue obssession continued with this page LOL
I had originally intended to do a whole piece of bubble wrap for the background -- in honor of Bubble Wrap Day LOL -- but my muse had other ideas.

The heart was textured with puff paint. There is also a piece of tulle netting, but it's not really visible in the scan.

Glimpse

I started this page and figured out the connection when I started writing the words. I've been stressed over a special project at work -- one that is special to my heart and one where everyone looks to me for leadership. We were not getting good technical support -- in fact, he was literally tearing our department down -- brick-by-brick -- and there was a risk that he would undo all the good things implemented by the previous contractor that worked so hard for us.

Watching this destruction was hard for me professionally and personally. The temptation to reach out and catch someone ready to fall is great, but I had to let him fall to save ourselves if that makes sense.

There seemed to be no hope. I woke up one morning and it was crystal clear to me -- our previous contractor was coming back to us -- our work family would be complete once again. Approximately 3 days later things fell apart and the wheels were set in motion to bring him back to us -- and he is here now. ESP scares me -- but it is not always about bad things :)

Iron Heart

This is a bit ironic LOL -- but the challenge on Inspire Me Thursday this week is to push your boundaries and what timing. I push the boundaries with a lot of my art, but some pieces are harder than others. 3-D work has been a challenge, but also the most rewarding for me.

I couldn't find my large paper mache heart and the thought of trying to form my own heart shape seemed daunting, but I tried an experiment. This is actually the central piece for a window screen assemblage I am outting together and I plan on entering it in a juried show -- another scary thought LOL

I cut out a heart shape from brown paper bag, stitched, and stuffed before treating with texture mediums and iron paint.

Dark Souls

I've been working on this project on and off for a while. I altered a box to store loose pages in for a round robin with a dark theme. It took me a while to pinpoint amore specific theme, but I came up with Dark Souls -- I am hoping to do something with Phantom of the Opera -- and maybe one more page about another dark soul -- but we'll see LOL

I loaded a picture of the top of the box, but there are a lot more views in my webshots album. I put quite a bit of time into mixed media techniques on this.

Nerves and Fear Came Swiftly

Kind of a heavy title, but that's just the way this page worked out. This is one of my favorite ways to work -- I just haven't done it for a while. I started with a grungy looking waste paper -- this one has extra crunchy texture LOL -- but it doesn't show up very well in the main photo, so I included a more detailed close-up.

I had no idea what to put on the page, so I flipped through a magazine until an image jumped out at me. Then I cut some phrases out of an old type-written letter and put them together for my journaling.

Fabric Paper Postcard

Here is a postcard I made with the fabri paper from the previous post. The color looks a little different --- more realistic here. In the previous photo I had taped the paper up to the window to show the translucency, but the color was a bit off there.

Making Fabric Paper

I found these two links when someone connected with me through a fiber arts message board.
Making Fabric Paper
Painting Fabric Paper

This was a different spin on making fabric paper than I had seen before, so I gave it a try. It mentioned you could use organza as the basic fabric and I love coming up with semi-translucent backgrunds, so that's what I started with for my base.

I sandwiched some fun fibers, scraps of lace, bits of paper, cheesecloth, and a little rock salt between the organza and tissue paper topper. I used Color Mists from Outside the Margins to color the paper.

No! She Screamed ...

I'm not sure what the meaning is behind this page -- it started out as more of representaton for what I was feeling. I ended up with another unusual color combo I would never try if I had pre-planned out the page.

I rarely go dark, so I started out brushing wild strokes of Payne's Gray and Micaceous Iron Oxide on -- except apparently I forgot to clean my brush and the bristles were all glued together. I decided to go with the look I was getting and figured this was a good time to play with various painting tools inspired by the experimentations in Belinda's Acrylic Artists group.

I painted a heart with Quinacridone Burnt Orange, which turned out a little too dark on my background once dry, so I went back over the heart with Cadmium Red Deep Hue. I added smudges of True Grey with my fingers. I sanded some red off the heart to bring the dark ridges beneath back out.

The background still wasn't doing it for me LOL So I added smudges of Medium Turqoise. This was a really old bottle of Aleene's and it was super thick from sitting there, which made it work better for this application I thought.

I trie using a bamboo skewer and paint for the lettering, but it wasn't quite working for me -- -especially the smaller letters, so I gave up and went to a liner brush LOL The Ultramarine Blue also turned out to be too dark for the Payne's Gray in th abckground, so I outlined with a souffle pen.