APR: Series

I have no time to create anything new this week, but if you come back either Friday or Saturday, you will see what has kept me so busy in the studio. Hopefully I'll be finished by Friday, but the absolute deadline is Saturday, August 4.

Jenn's Artist Play Room at Just Add Water, Silly is asking us to show a series. Now I bet many of you are thinking I'm going to show rocking horses, but that series has been shown before on my blog, on Seth Apter's blog, and on Inspiration Avenue's blog.


So today I dug out a collage I made in 2008 (since some of you are newer visitors) which I subsequently gave away. Now I realize shoes, unlike rocking horses, quickly go out of style and favor (unless you are wearing Princess style Reebok tennis shoes whose style has remained unchanged for over 15 years and I wear exclusively), but I thought you might enjoy seeing the shoe style way back in the good old bygone days of 2008! I call it Shoe Fetish and copied it from my blog. Here is part of what I wrote about the piece:

I was surprised at the wide variety of shoe styles this year. Usually, the heels are either big and clunky, or skinny and spiked, but not in the same year. (By the way, I'll take my Reebok Princess style tennis shoes any day!)

Unfortunately, when I copied the image to this post, it was quite small in this size,


and HUGE when I copied it in this size. At least you can see all the details of these shoes, all of which I cut from various magazines popular in 2008. The background contains various book pages cut to size. Come to think of it, this could be a series on shoes and a series on book pages! Please visit APR for other Series entries.

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Write tea

I could have called this "Doubling Up Tea," or "Cofftea," but I chose this title, because I am actually writing a double post today.



Since it's Tuesday and I have never missed a Tea Tuesday post, I am joining Kimmie and friends for tea. Actually, it is ice coffee,


but the ice isn't going to stay around long, since it's another of those scorcher days we have gotten so used to in Kansas. You can see how the ice has already nearly melted in the glass. BTW, this is freshly ground French Roast and half and half.


And to prove how hot it is, here is what I snagged off my blog when I checked in shortly after noon yesterday!


But back to the coffee and art. It didn't take long to consume most of this wonderful drink I love so much. And it didn't take long to apply the E-6000 to the pen nibs. But I should have been more careful when I started adding the letters, made of vinyl.


You can barely see the "E" on "Write."


However, at the Artist's Play Room, Jenn challenged us to use ink, pen, and paper this week. Jenn, whose blog is called Just Add Water, Silly, knows I'm not the best at following the "exact" rules (remember my apple among the pears last week?).


I don't think I've ever had any ink (unless you are thinking of an ink pen), but I did have magazine images of pens, real pen nibs, and a background I painted using an old gift card. Along with the letters, this is a true mixed media piece. However, you will probably see this same piece soon. I am working on a larger project and created it when I saw Jenn's challenge. And since I have posts scheduled for the remainder of the week, I had to double up on this post, or not be part of Jenn's challenge at all.

So , please join Kimmie and all my Tea Tuesday friends, then visit Jenn for more pen and ink drawings this week.

I would also like to leave a message for TwinkleToes who always leaves a nice comment AND makes fantastic art. However, I'm not on Flickr, so I can't leave a comment. I just want you to know, TwinkleToes, that I appreciate your art and your comments, even though I can't leave one for you.

Artist's Play Room: Pear (or other fruit)

At the Artist's Play Room, Jenn asked us to draw a pear this week. Although Jenn's blog is called Just Add Water, Silly, Jenn has to be silly if she thinks I could possibly draw a pear. I know they are supposed to be an easy shape, but I don't draw, sketch, or paint much of anything, much less fruit. However, I looked for a fruity rubber stamp and remembered I had this quiltlet I had made for a friend back in February.

So there it is, my apple rubber stamp colored with red, purple, and green dye reinkers that I stamped onto a portion of a dictionary page. If you want to see how I made the background using Staz-on reinkers and shaving cream, go here.

APR: Altered recipes

This week the Artist's Play Room with Jenn at Just Add Water, Silly asked us for


altered recipes. Little did Jenn realize what she was getting into. Back at Christmas in 2008, I received a small handmade art journal from my dear friend Halle. It didn't take long until I started filling it with altered recipes, something I had wanted to make for a long time.

Allow me to explain that I have shown all these photos previously over about a year's time from late 2008 through nearly all of 2009. Since most people who visit my blog today have never seen them, I decided to pull them out of mothballs and show them again. Because I took them from my blog, the images were quite small. I found when I enlarged them, they were huge. So, I've shown both a small and a large image, since Jenn would probably like recipes everyone can read. Of course, some of them were not meant to be read anyway, because I took recipes from magazines or images that spoke to the nature of an altered recipe book. For your enjoyment, here is my APR entry this week. You will need to click once on the large photo to see it in its entirety in a new window. Edit: I would like to add these were taken using my former scanner.


I began this book with a hand written recipe, over which I added a tape transfer and a tiny wooden slotted spoon. I hate my handwriting, so was glad I could cover most of it.




I realize this is not a recipe, but it was a two page spread I loved in the book. The stoves are tape transfers, the words are from various book pages, and the girls are from Paper Whimsey.


I can't draw, so all you real sketch artists, please don't laugh. I drew the big top over the recipe I found on the internet and printed in pink. I added an elephant from my stash for decoration.




I found this image and recipe in a magazine on drinks and had to use it. With the image enlarged, you can tell the image was from a magazine.


Another one of those spreads I made to create a bit of whimsey and humor. I felt it went well in the book. All images are from various magazines.





Again, no recipe, but I used old recipes I cut in squares and edged with various ink pads.



I suspect you are wondering why I called this an altered recipe book. Again, a bit of whimsey, since I attached an old seed packet after I stamped (yes, STAMPED) the background.




Ah! A real recipe. But it looks more like a page in a scrapbook than it does in an altered art book. I used the layering technique scrapbookers use as well as a wooden spoon used in scrapbooks. To my credit, I spent a lot of time trying to make the spoon look old and well used, like most of my wooden spoons.



When a friend learned I was making an altered recipe book, old culinary type books appeared on my doorstep. Since I love, love, love Flan, I couldn't help but make this two page spread, especially after I found those cute custard cups in the scrapbook section of Michael's.




I realize these are only a few of the many pages I made in this book, but I thought that was enough for the challenge. If you want to see more, do a page search for "altered recipes." And thanks for sticking with me through this walk down memory lane.

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Artist's Play Room: Red and White

I want to thank all the help I received in order to get online today and make this post possible. I have the BEST friends in the world.

With my friends' helpfulness in mind, what is red and white and celebrated in July? Why "Oh Canada," of course. It was Canada's birthday this week, and it was the US's celebration of Independence. So that makes two reasons to celebrate red and white at the Artist's Play Room with Jenn at Just Add Water, Silly.


I realize today is the day for my Inspiration Avenue post, but Jenn closes her challenges each Saturday morning, and I've missed several because I didn't get them in on time. So, this week, I'm determined to show my art, especially since I had to completely rework it. As an aside, I am now making a new IA challenge piece because I misread the prompt. It hasn't been a fun return to reality.

I had hoped to have this finished before I left on vacation, so I would have it pre-posted. However, when I started this piece, all went well until


I tried to put the front to the back. The overall background of the front is velvet, and I'm not a velvet person. The back is cotton, and I couldn't get anything to match up properly. So I tried to sew the front and back together and run swirls around the two pieces to try to get them to lie flat rather than bunching up in various positions. I made such a mess of things, I ended up having to take the piece with me, along with my only fabric scissors so I could rip out the tiny, tiny stitches.

When I got home, I proceeded to use a type of bonding material similar to Wonder Under, only much heavier, to fuse the front and back together. It was at that point I decided the red and white also needed a bit of color to make this abstract quiltlet work.


For the back. I used a piece of my monoprinted hand painted fabric to which I added my name before I sewed the two sides together, this time into a much flatter quiltlet.

I hope you like my take on homage to red and white.

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Inspiration Avenue and Artists Play Room come together

I have never combined prompts before, nor entered the same art piece in more than one challenge. But for some reason, these two prompts came together so flawlessly, I couldn't help myself.

Maggie, our favorite Magpie at Inspiration Avenue, suggested we probably all knew how to art journal. Well I admit it, Maggie. I don't journal. It's one of those paper crafts I don't do. Why? Because my life is an open book on my blog, and I have none of the fears and feelings of angst I read about when I visit many blogs devoted to journaling. Since I'm a pretty positive person who is comfortable "in my own skin," I leave journaling to people who need that self assurance. I use my blog as my "journal." It may sound cliche, but that's one of the reasons (OK, the MAIN reason) I started my blog. I wanted the daily record of what I did without the demands of having to write it down on paper using a pen, pencil, crayon, or bloody paw.

But for some reason, I can't seem to let Maggie down. I always answer her IA challenges, no matter how hard they are, or how far off track they send me.

Then I was reading Jenn's blog, Just Add Water, Silly,
where this week's challenge for the Artist's Play Room is "In the Garden." Now you see how both these prompts came together to make a single spread in one of my altered books.


What I used:
The book: my techniques AB I bring to altered book class with me.
The paint colors: pink, yellow, gold, orange.
The pen (Sharpie) colors: green X 2, purple, turquoise.
The flowers: real pressed from my garden and others crudely drawn.
Magazine image fussy cut.
The sentiment: my own creation. After all, I love anything positive!!


The left side,


and the right side. I think I've mentioned before I can't draw. This should affirm that and attest to my inability to draw even simple "flowers." I'll probably stick with collage and altered images in my altered books from now on, but this was a fun exercise, ladies.

And while you're here and I have your attention, please feel free to enter my blogoversary HERE. There are no commitments or obligations, just a comment is all I'm asking for.

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Artist's Play Date

Tonight instead of showing some of my normal AB art, I'm joining two blog hops. Not that I have a lot of time for either, because my company is still here. However, my friend will leave sometime tomorrow and I will finally have time to visit everyone I've neglected for nearly three weeks. So, please join me at CED and APR.






Jenn at Artists Play Room has a weekly challenge that I have only played in once before and missed last week because I thought the deadline was Sunday. I was determined to meet the deadline this week, because the theme was based on books and bookmarks. Now I don't actually have a bookmark showing in the above photo, but I have a lot of altered books. These are all ABs in progress, or were back in September, 2011, when I first published this picture. Sadly, when I tried to copy it to this blog post, it copied full size, which made it way too large for you to see in this photo. In order to view the entire photo, you will need to click on it.


Then, in February, 2012, I was asked to show a few of my altered book covers, at least the ones I had completed. There were so many, I couldn't get them all on one table,


so here are the three you couldn't see that were originally lurking on my dresser behind the table.



And finally, since Jenn DID ask for a bookmark, I have one I made back in 2003. I looked long and hard and found this reject. I was in a bookmark swap and this one, hidden away with other rejects, didn't make the cut. In fact, it didn't even make the hole or tassel. But it IS a handmade bookmark, using some of my handmade paper and some really unflattering dried bits. Sadly all the others (more colorful, I might add) went to swap friends years ago.

So that's it for me until I have time to return to blogland. Have a great Monday everyone.

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