TUESDAYS FREE IMAGE

Here is today's free image. It is a detail of a guinea feather.

Enjoy it and use in the most creative way!

May your art be blessed and a blessing!

Every day---

If you are a writer, you must write every day.

If you are a musician, you must practice every day.

If you are an artist, you must make art every day.

I walk almost every morning and during that time I often plan my day, pray, write in my head or decide what and how to execute my next piece of art. I know now that it is essential to the betterment of my day and who I am. I call these words that come to me GIVEN BY GOD.

Here is today's offering and a pic to go with.

Lord you send the sunshine and the rain
I will forever praise your name.
You send the storm and the calm.
You are my holy balm.
You are Father, Son and Holy Spirit all three.
I will forever worship the Trinity.
You are the Lord of peace and forgiveness.
To that I will witness.

through God

Through the river of life
Flows God's love
With his peace and mercy
Sent from above
He gives us family and friends
To share until life's end
If we believe, accept and trust his grace
We will meet him in heaven face to face

I am working on a new devoitional booklet.

Sample above.

Using the recent back drop I painted for the cover.

Free image will be posted tomorrow.

Blessings this day!

It is Sunday and I feel very blessed to say that

God loves me.

God loves you.

Spread the good news.

Fernwood!

Heading to my beloved Fernwood.

Our retirement property, old family homeplace, and home to a new construction soon maybe!

Do I really want a new home this late in life? (I'm 52)

I've always wanted a new home. Actually I just want space for my junk or the will to part with my junk. Being a mixed media artist is detrimental to closet, shelf and nook and crannie availability. Everything is seen as a possibility for a collage or assemblage. Oh! The curse!

Ah! The blessing! Find some space in your day to make art!

Here is a lovely friend I made last Saturday at Fernwood!

Artist Profile

Thanks to Cyndi at http://www.layersuponlayers.com/artist-profile-chris-tessnear/

Hope you will give it a look!

Life isn't as good as you thought IT"S BETTER!

Almost finished with backdrop for church dinner theater. Whoo whee!

Haven't been able to get a decent photo of the entire 15 feet by 7 feet piece, so I've taken several shots of individual panels and pieced them together digitally. Here are the results. A little tweeking on the stream and tree trunks today and hope to deliver it tomorrow.

ALSO, I am suppose to be the featured artist profile on http://www.layersuponlayers.com/

tomorrow July 19. Please check it out and tell me what you think.

Free Image Day!

Here is this week's free background image.

Believe it or not it started as a detail photo of cut glass and with the help of Adobe Photoshop Elements and Microsoft Publisher it became this amazing tile piece.

Use for ATC's, altered books and collages. Or get our your crayons and color a design of your own on top. Have Fun!

addendum to Monday post:

The skies parted yesterday and I got the base coats and general design blocked in on my very large background for the church dinner theater.

Monday rain

The Carpenters sang "Rainy days and Mondays always get me down>" They've got me down too. Tired and much to do and no energy. Ran errands but heart wasn't it that but it's done.

Guess I'll just finish laundry and do some chores and maybe it will either rain for real or the sun will come out.

I need to start on a huge backdrop for a church dinner theater (woods scene -15 feet long by 7 feet tall) but it's too damp outside and I don't have a large enough inside space. I want to get this started and finished. I hate huge projects hanging over my head.

That's life, one project after another, but when it's my own it's not so bad. Doing it for someone else is a different story. The reason I do so few commissions.

Today's image is a card I did last week. My eyes photoshopped into a heart I painted and printed on a transparency. Text reads "You must see with your heart".

Guess that's what I'm doing today!

Hey! I see the sun peeking out.

One last Queen of Heart Spread

This image has a transparency paperdoll of me, a leftover collage image of me as a child from another transfer method, a quote and lots of postage stamps. Stamps make such a great page element.

The quote says:

There is a light that shines beyond all things on earth, beyond the highest, the very highest heavens. This is the light
that shines in your heart
Chandogya Upanishad

When the Sunday supplements offer stamps for a cheap price. Order them and use them in your collages, ATC's and other art enterprises. Great fun!

Sorry for repeat

I just realized that yesterdays image had already been shown. I somehow overlooked that.

So, Today's is different for sure and then there's one more from this altered board book.

You can buy cheap children's board books and sand and gesso them to use but companies are now selling blank ones to start with. If you are impatient like me witht he prep work you amy want to try them. Michaels carries thema and if you use a coupon, the cost isn't so bad; it does save time.

Today's image contains three tape transfers, one of me, a quote and a compass.

The quote says:

By using your heart as your compass, you can see more clearly which direction to go to stop self-defeating behavior. If you take just one mental or emotional habit that really bothers or drains you and apply heart intelligence to it, you'll see a noticeable difference in your life. Doc Childre and Howard Martin, The HeartMath Solution

Have a heartful day!

one more Queen of Heart Spread

This piece has many elements you may not see at first. There is a paper cross with a metal cross on top, a stamp of a lady's face I liked framed by slide mount (painted), a crown on my transfer image, the quote that is a transfer as well and fibers glued down the center.

Background is textured as others with a yellow undercoat.

More from the Queen of Heart

Here is another spread from the book.

These pages have the same kind of layered background with mutiple colors and texturing.

The large pair of eyes are packing tape transfers. The woman is my mother in law whom I use in much of my art. She was a beauty. The heart overlay is a transparency with my eyes overlapping hers. The quote is written with an Elmer's paint pen. they come in many colors and write over practically anything. A great tool for altered artists. Michaels occasionally puts them on sale. They can be bought individually or in sets.

I print most of my images from my own Canon i960 inkjet printer. They are pretty archival with the amount of gel medium I use on them. I have several pieces that are a few years old and have not faded in the least.

Covenant Village Seniors Watercolor class

I'm so glad to be able to add a title again. These blog generators are a bit screwy at times but I love them. Writing my own and reading all the other fine artists' ones.

The ladies were so grand yesterday! They are always up for a challenge and they simply blow my mind with their abilities, even those who say they've never painted before. I hope and pray I am still making art and creating wonderful images when I'm their age, whether at my home or in a home. If I ever lose that I guess I'll just be a really crabby old lady. I'm one now alot of times. I don't like that about me. I never knew getting older would affect me in that way but I think I'm freer to be me. I've held so much in for so long and now I just let it flow.

Well, a dear lady in her late 70's once said the older you get you get to be your real self warts and all. So here I am world...WARTS and all!

Enjoy this photo of the ladies and here is also another spread from my Queen of Heart book!

Covenant Village Seniors Watercolor class

Hello and welcome!

Here is today's free background image to use in your art, personal or sell.

I just want everyone making art and enjoying the blessings of life

I taught a seniors watercolor class today and they bless me so much. I will share more about it tomorrow with a photo.

This image started as a paste paper piece and through Adobe Photo Elements and Microsoft Publisher I made it into a tiled piece similar to a quilt, turning the image to make it interesting. Enjoy it any way you wish. If anyone would like to share how they use them I will post them on my blog here.

Blessings to all!

Blog won't let me add titles the last couple days frustrating but I will continue to share my newest altered book_Queen of Heart.

This spread was first painted in

yellow and textured with a combing tool. Dried and painted in red and combed again. Fleur de lis was stamped with gesso. The dots on the edges are Elmer's paint pens. Great colors and they work virtually on top of anything else. I especially like the white and gold. The image of me is a computer altered image made into a packing tape transfer with a gold crown added, other image of woman is from a stamp and framed with a photo slide mount painted and embellished with the paint pen. The crosses are paper and metal. Quote is a transfer.

The quote says "The purpose of the heart is to know yourself, to be yourself and yet one with God. Edgar Cayce

Another free image comes tomorrow.

Another altered board book nearly finished.

A heart shaped board book from 7 Gypsies, lots of background fun by painting and texturing with one color, drying, painting another color and then scraping texture and reverse stamping with a favorite fleur de lis chunky stamp. Lots of red since it is a heart. Named it queen of heart and used images and ephemera to collage. More pages to come.

Answers to comments and posts

I am so happy to have brought some viewers to my blog...Thanks for all the positive comments.

The free image started as a scanned piece of paste paper and it was altered in Photoshop elements with several different effects but mostly in the liquify effect under the filters menu.

Just play with your images and you never know how many terrific things you may come up with. I make and alter alot more of my own stuff for my altered books than I buy or find. I am absolutely obsessed with computer alterations. Try it and have some fun creating your own designs and get them the way you want them. If like me you find lots of neat stuff but you always wish it was this or that way; it can be. YOU can make it whatever you want.

Here is another great image to download for free just for asking for more info. This image is made of serendipity paper (paper you have smeared leftover paint on) with a leaf print on top.

No computer alteration whatsoever.

Maybe I need to start blogging about all the neat ideas I try. some work and some don't but I still have lots of fun and learn something everytime I do it.

Family Tree house project pages

I'm almost to the end of pages to post for this project. More art projects to follow.

I'm very pleased with the response to the free image I posted so another will be posted next week.

Happy 4th and Happy Arting to all!

Free Background

Here as promised yesterday is a free image to save and use any way you wish in your art!

Enjoy! Remember I will be posting one a week for the next month. If there is enough interest then there will be more!

Family Tree House Project and Announcement

Here are more pages from my Family Tree House.

Also I'd like to announce I will be posting a free background page once a week for you to download and print and use in your art anyway you wish.

If there is good response I may offer them more often.

Tomorrow will be the first image. Please check for it. It will be high quality that you can print full sheet size or save and alter as you wish.

Family Tree House Project

Here are a couple more images...

Family Tree House Project

paste paper background with prismacolor accents, wedding photo is a computer generated image that has become a contact paper transfer, images of myself and my husband and home, accented with prismacolor

I think it's finished

I am pretty sure my Family Tree House is finished. I did the last gluings and binding yesterday and too photos of everything this morning. The house is a pre made paper mache house painted in colors I seldom use but I like its vibrancy. The booklet is made up of individual page signatures tied with ribbon. Backgrounds of pages are paste paper designs in the same brilliant hues. Prismacolor stix (a favorite staple), regular Prismacolor pencils, photos, transfers, transparencies and stickers make up the images on the pages. I'll post pages for the next several days.
Let me know what you think!

ideas beget ideas

I've never had the problem of lack of ideas. My problem comes in not having enough time, energy and resources for implementing my ideas. If only....boy! I'd be something!

Currently working on a submission for Somerset Studios theme Le Chateau. My idea started with a paper mache house and my love of family and family history, thus Family Tree House.

The house is painted in bright colors, not my usual palette of natural earthy hues. Then I thought what goes in or on the house, well.....the back has a transfer of my family tree (from my son as a starting point since he will someday own my legacy of art.) Then a house shaped book sewn together in single signatures painted in paste paper fashion in the same bright colors as the house with images, transfers and more family tree imagery collaged on the pages. So far I only have an image of the house and yet another idea from that. A self portrait witht he house as my torso...thus suggesting the John Biggers' idea of women carrying their house with them. Digitally executed of course... no time for the real thing.

So let your ideas grow, you never know where they will take you!

Nice Girls Finish

Sorry it's been so long since I blogged but I took my parents to see my son who moved 5 hours away to work for a newspaper. He's doing great but still settling in and needing a little family visit to encourage him. He moved to New Bern, NC and it is an absolutely charming historic town.
Since returning I've been busy doing all the post travel stuff and just not had much op to do art but did this little journal page last night while watching TV. I started with a paper doll and some stick on letters and along with prismacolor art stix (absolutely wonderful if you haven't tried them DO!) and a black sharpie. I think it has a positive message and nice graphic appeal.

By the ways everyone says I'm nice and I always protest. Maybe I am and I will finish all I aspire to do and be some day!

with one stamp challenge

Here is my offering for the one stamp challenge. I used my own rubber stamp image and will be doing a blog article on that soon. The legend for the images:

top row left to right:

gift card in mini bag, altered christmas tree playing card, tag bookmark, accordion tag book

bottom row left to right:

layered greeting card, mini mat, altered greeting card

Thanks to Linda at http://www.craftygallinda.wordpress.com/ for the challenge!

New Technology for an Old Lady

I got a new digital but now I hate the process of learning all the bells and whistles.

I really loved my old Sony Mavica! The new one takes great photos and does lots more than the old camera but.....I just hate changeand relearning............

Here's a sample of an old watercolor; I have tested taking mostly photos of my art which is

what I use a digital for mostly but I am doing a wedding next weekend and better be practicing on people!

Good Vs Evil

The good first....I have been asked to supply ATC's for an artist's missionary trip to Albania. I said YES of course because I like the thought of my art in another country and doing good. I cannot send anything that is overtly religious but I am sending things that can be interpreted and witnessed to through Jesus Christ. For example, a vessel being me, having three flowers, being God, Christ and the Holy Spirit, the Trinity. I am posting the image so you can find other hidden Christian ideas.

Now the bad...I got the printer fixed and working without cost. I had to buy a new ice maker $200+. Now my digital camera needs service...at least $211.

Help! When does it stop?

Blessings to you reading this!

Mandala Mania is good for design study

Just devide a circle into at least six equal parts and design each part the same or as a series of designs that repeat. The sky's the limit so let your imagination and fun side run wild.

Use lots of color, shapes, images, ANYTHING!

Mandala designs are made as a prayer thought within the sacred circle and is used by Tibetan Monks. Lots of nifty sites and designs online and if you teach, try it with your students, all ages will have fun!

I did a lesson with my kids and now I keep doing more and more and even did a circle book (book from 7 Gypsies company.)

Vent Time! AKA Meltdown Mania

This will be a fractured entry at best...............of random stuff that is on my mind.

• why does everyone want something from me? friends, relatives, strangers even? I don't have that much to give and yet they all seem to think I do! Well, I don't! How do they think I ever get any art done? Chores? Errands? Family time?


• I miss my son terribly and plan to go see him next week! By myself if I have to!


• Finally got the printer working again but for how long?


• Making art, self portrait collage ATC, mandals circle book (great for design ideas), other collages, digital art, images for aunts cd cover, and writing and painting and preparing a lesson to teach at the local senior activity class......the list goes on and on.


• I want that studio my husband is designing for me in his mind...an upstairs bonus room at our new home with bay windows overlooking the woods at my beloved Fernwood. It will be like being outdoors with no bugs, ticks, spiders and snakes!

I'm tired now and have vented all I dare by chance someone I really know reading this and figuring out who is who!

Thanks for letting me vent dear blog o mine!

necessity is the mother of invention and inspiration

Creatively, I cannot live without my computer and printer. I print much of my own art and clip art for various projects. I always make my own greeting cards and usually I do them digitally.

Well, my printer is on the fritz. (Canon i960 has a design flaw that when the waste ink tank is full {which really is felt pads not a tank unless you consider it is in the bottom of the printer case so could be called a tank} it fails to print anylonger.) I was already working on Father's day cards digitally and then the printer goes so just in case I am not up and running in time to print, I pulled out my stash of digital images and leftovers and made two cards manually and it was as much fun as the mixed media ones I just shared.

Here is a digital collage I had stashed away aftering doing my recent ruler book on the measure of a man. I simply cut it and matted with two shades of cardstock to enhance the image.

when life gives you lemons

make notecards.....I had made some watercolor notecards recently that just did not turn out too well....so I gessoed over them, pressed stamps and distressed the wet gesso, dried, glazed with watercolor, dried and attached more of the mixed media vessels I have been doing....comment with your email and I'll contact you for a special freebie!

Why do birds sing in the morning?

Inspiration comes from unexpected creative play!

I admit it! I get stuck on ideas and themes that I never get finished with. Actually that's

a good idea for kick starting creative slumps. just revisit an old theme. I did that whole series of vessels in the early 90's and now I'm back at and more obsessed than ever. The little image I cut from Art business news for an ATC started me doing them in a different method that includes my new passion for collage!

The single vessel on a fern background is about 11X 14 inches but the idea began from the two small ATC's The one with the man rising from the vessel is a total magazine collage on a watercolor background; the one with the daisy is a watercolor vessel with a magazine flower on a watercolor background.

You never know where inspiration will start or end or if it ever does!

New ATC series

I spent a relaxed morning at my beloved Fernwood on Thursday, making ATC's from magazine clippings and watercolor backgrounds. I cut various parts out of old Art Business News to make one set and the other set is made of cut up watercolor backgrounds and re invented as vessels, one of my absolute favorite themes.

Here are some of the results

one more seedy lady

Not the last and not as good but different...

seed packet dress, hand cut arms and legs, magazine head, watercolor markers and collage from paper towel images for the back ground.

seedy lady collage

Here is the actual cut and paste version of yesterday's digital collage.

Somerset STudios free artist page was scanned and altered. Color book image

of black eyed susans was colored with markers. Actual seed packet and clip art heads from Lisa Volrath's free images were all adhered with double stick tape, a favorite adhesive of mine.

Digital Seedy Ladies

I am working on an actual collage but here is a digital version

I call Grow Your Own Seedy Ladies.

I used background image from Somerset Studios free artist pages, clipart heads from Lisa Vollrath, created my own black eyed susan image from a color book page, and made the seeds and seed packet completely on the computer.

Try your hand at digital collage. It's a great way to iron out problems before actually cutting and pasting your precious images or wasting ink by printing and re printing images to use.

Seedy Ladies Trio

Cut seed packs in the shape of apparel

Add clip art heads and cut legs and arms from patterned paper

Place on decorative background.

Voila!

Seedy Ladies ATC's

These miniature seedy ladies were made from little seed packets again from Lisa Vollraths free images and other bits of vintage clip art along with Prismacolor color sticks. A great way to add color to art work. They are much like color pencils in square sticks so you can use the whole side like an unwrapped crayon which makes them very versatile. If you like to do rubbings they are perfect for that. If you haven't tried them, do, you will not be disappointed.

Seedy Ladies-Next in series

a 3X12 inch canvas with clipart pieces, handcut pieces, scrapbook paper and seed packet

adhered and covered with gloss gel medium

working with collage images now to make into drawings, paintings, and future rubber stamps

New Mini Art Series

I had the grand idea after planting flower seeds yesterday to save the packs and make paper dolls from them. The idea mushroomed and I now have a mini series of pieces I am calling SEEDY LADIES. I used clip art heads from Lisa Volrath's just print something freebies. Made my own legs and arms from scrapbook paper ads. The seed packets are the torso. Found more flower clipart to embellish and attached all to a vintage looking flowery scrapbook page. The finished piece is 12X12 inches.

I have more pieces to share over the next few days including a 3X12 inch canvas collage, ATC's and another 12X12 piece. Hope they inspire you to create with seed packets or other things we usually throw away.

Have fun and find your own seedy project.