narwhals, narwhals, swimmin' in the ocean, causin' a commotion, 'cause they are so AWESOME!

i know some people sing hymns on sunday, but the narwhal song is good, too... and somewhat more pertinent as an introduction to this week's index-card-a-day output:

card 54: aquarium

here's my thought process on this one: "hmmmmm... aquarium... fish, water, coral, seaweed, pebbles, OOOOOH! NARWHAL!" so now you know. :)

(some advice from lovely husband jeff for moments like this, "just go with it")

card 55: olympics

helping out the olympic committee by redesigning the rings logo. not sure they'll have it up and running for the games next week, but i have high hopes for 2018...

card 56: text or texture

what i thought was a super-fast idea --to stamp a rainbow alphabet using 7 or 8 different letter sets-- actually took longer than any other card in this post, but it was fun, at least!

card 57: stickers

the infamous $4 pack of vellum stickers from target makes a triumphant return to a mandala near you!

card 58 (a, b and c): off prompt

when card 57 didn't quite finish off the set, i decided to make "one more card" using the rest of the stickers. turns out, it took three more cards. you can't say you don't get value for money at target, eh?

card 59: tic tac toe or hopscotch

i chose the former, and yeah, it's a looooooooooooooose translation, but i had a blast playing with stencils and ink and pens and... well, it was fun!

 card 60: sorbet

once again, more a case of "inspired by" the prompt than a real interpretation of it. but that's why they're called "prompts" and not, "assigments you must take literally, and YES, we mean you, lauren" right?

card 61: graffiti (out of order)

i deliberately saved this one 'til last because i thought it'd be the perfect vehicle with which to say a ginormous THANK YOU to tammy garcia, to my fellow ICADians, and to all the commenters, cheerleaders and bestowers of little hearts via social media; you have all helped to make this my happiest ICAD ever and i am very grateful! 

♥♥♥♥♥ 

and finally, the shot i've waited 61 days to take: the official sprawly ICAD2016, book chock full of this year's colorful, crazy, fun cards. can i get a, "WOOHOO" darlings?!

hope life is treating you well this summer sunday morning, and that your very first week of august will be full of ♥AWESOMENESS♥!

it's the last week of JULY, people!!!

and whereas the time spent doing ICAD absolutely always flies by much more quickly than ordinary time, this year seems to be moving especially fast. of course, it's been especially fun, too, so i really have no right to whine! in fact, i think i'll post some index cards, instead:

card 47: monochromatic

as far as i'm concerned, there's only one color to have when you're only having one color... and that's HOT PINK! (obviously.) in this case, hot pink stickers, with hot pink outlining, on a hot pink background. 

card 48: aurora borealis or australis

i don't have many rules in ICAD (or life, for that matter, lol) ...except... since this is supposed to be about creative spontaneity, i tend to feel "no do-overs" is a really good policy. but even a self-imposed rule isn't really a rule until you've broken it, so i did. :) 

(even having tried several versions, however, i still don't feel like i really "cracked it" in terms of producing something that either somewhat resembled the aurora borealis OR something i really liked; but it was different and fun and a great excuse to mess around with paints all evening, so i'm ok with that.)

card 49: off-prompt

a conversation in the ICAD facebook group reminded me that it'd been aaaaaaaaaaaaages since i'd made a one staple collage. which is obviously unacceptable.

card 50: paisley

yep. that's paisley, all right.

card 51: purple or violet

a card that went back to the "no do-overs" rule and kicked its butt. b/c this is NOT what i envisioned when i sat down with a few lovely shades of color burst to watercolor some hand-drawn letters... but i just kept going and let it evolve, and i'm really glad i did!

card 52: staircase

inspired by the actual spiral staircase in my home... but in the style of m.c. escher... with colors chosen by hello kitty...

card 53: fortune

i was totally and completely stumped, until i remembered fortune cookies!!!

(and once again the day is saved... by baked goods...♥)

hope you're having the best sunday of the whole entire week, but if not, there's still time to do something FUN or creative or both! (and if you're in the northeastern united states, i hope you're keeping COOL in this heat!) ♥♥♥

paints and inks and pens, oh my!

art supplies are awesome. fact. they're fun to shop for, fun to bring home, fun to look at and ESPECIALLY... they're fun to play with, ANY way you want! i hope you got to spend some quality time with your art supplies this week, but if not, try to squeeze a little art into today, k? even if it's just on an index card, like these:

card 40: surfboard

i know what you're thinking, you're thinking, "hey lauren! why is this called 'surfboard' when there's absolutely no surfboard in this (admittedly kinda cool) little color burst watercolor?" well, just look waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay out into the ocean and maybe you will see it!

(ok, fine, yes, you've caught me, i got so involved in painting the beach, the ocean and the palm tree that i forgot the prompt was "surfboard"!!! sometimes it's very tiring to be me, lol!)

card 41: longitude and latitude

when i'm really stumped for an idea, i either jump waaaay out of the box, or climb in to its deepest depth. this is the latter. i googled latitude and longitude and got the numbers for our town, which clearly was of no use at all for making an ICAD... or... hey waittaminnit!!!

card 42: yellow

another idea for when you have no ideas: grab a random selection of stencils and one color of art supplies; keep adding layers until you like what you see or run out of time before bed, whichever comes first.

card 43: mint

feel free to use my color burst painting of mint leaves in your color burst painting of a mojito!!! :)

card 44: rainbow making machine

arguably the BEST PROMPT EVER, which is really saying something, since tammy garcia is awfully good at thinking up themes!!!

(ps: i'm happy with my "masheen" though the proud auntie in me feels i must tell you that my niece jillian drew the most amazing cannon with a very fancy control panel which shoots segments of rainbow and it's one of the coolest things i've ever seen in my life!!!!!)

card 45: play on words

i freely confess that i totally copied this, my all-time favorite visual pun, from an artist called jason bergsieker whose original was featured on i can has cheezeburger several years ago, and that it still makes me laugh really hard every time i see it!

card 46: off prompt

yet another idea for when you have no ideas: have a "default drawing" subject. pick something you never get tired of, and just keep doing different versions of it. mine-- as you know-- is the mandala. for this one i laid down the ink first (using sponge applicators), then drew in the lines, then added detail and shading with colored pens. 

i hope you're having a fabulous weekend, but if not, you're quite possibly the only person in the world looking forward to monday, so take a few minutes to revel in the uniqueness of that, won't you?! ♥♥♥

ICAD week 6: with EXTRA color! ♥

because if color is good (and... it is!!!) then it stands to reason that ♥EXTRA COLOR♥ is extra good. obviously. in contrast, something which is not good is if your dishwasher suddenly decides that instead of washing your dishes, it'd be cool to partially dissolve the dishwashing soap powder, use the sprayer function to blast that stuff all over the dishes, then use the heat dry function to bake it onto your (still somewhat dirty) dishes. because if you think, "well it's just SOAP, so it'll be self-cleaning; i'll just soak everything for a bit" let me say that scrubbing the baked on soap crystals off glassware was more difficult than the worst stuck-on-roaster-pan scenario i've ever encountered. on the plus side, when compared to other "dishwashers gone bad" scenarios in which kitchens got flooded and electrical circuits shorted out, i'm feeling VERY lucky. and the rest of the week was fun and full of ICADS, which coincidentally happen to be right here! (what are the odds, lol??!) 

card 33: magic

a loose take on the prompt, with star and flourishes hopefully being a bit wand-like?

 (actually just a great excuse to play with stencils and ink and metallic pens!)

card 34: statue of liberty

another stencil, vintage typewriter, a little hand lettering... yep, that'll work...

card 35: sunflower

i love painting sunflowers! i especially love painting them with colorbursts, then sewing... and sewing... and sewing... on top! 

(plus it's about time SEPIA got a turn in the spotlight, dontcha think?)

card 36: crystal or prism

shocking true confession: i cannot draw a recognizable prism!!! not even with a ruler... not even after a few tries... so please to accept this weirdly shaped carnelian crystal with rune-like markings, made from a combination of painted and sprinkled color burst powders in lieu...

card 37: meditation

i don't meditate, but i do draw mandalas, which is arguably a somewhat related field?

(ps: if you struggle with symmetry and/or hate to measure, gridded cards are awesome!)

card 38: folk art

i was on the verge of going off prompt when i realized there is folk art in EVERY culture, and i needn't stay in the usa; plus i've always wanted to make something that references the "milagros" of mexican folk art!

card 39: lens

i was utterly stumped by this one, to the point where i asked jeff what i should draw! here's the funny thing about that manoeuver: 95% of the time it gets a helpless shrug... but the other 5% results in a slam dunk idea i'd NEVER have thought of. painting the view through the lens of a telescope was definitely a five-percenter. thanks, honey!!! ♥♥♥

and now i'll bid you a fond farewell and send you off into what i hope will be THE BEST SUNDAY of your whole entire week!!! :) but first a question: have you hugged your dishwasher today...??! 

HOW can june be OVER already??!?!

yikes, that was a FAST month. but then, time flies when you're making tiny pieces of art on index cards every day!*

card 27: neon sign

if you've known me for more than five minutes, you know i'm obsessed with typography and also with most vintage things. hence my mini-obsession with old signage. which, btw, is fun to draw...

card 26: off prompt

a night that i sat down at 10:30 with NO IDEAS; usually what i do at that point is grab my book of stencils and a box of inks and just see what happens...

(and yes, for the record, i totally swapped the order of cards 26 and 27 entirely so my favorite could be at the top. don't judge me, kthx?)

card 28: dogs or cats

as you know, i don't really draw representationally, and i have no pets. but having stumbled upon the fun and whimsical art of julia marshall on pinterest, i had to have a little play with my colored pencils and the results are... well, vaguely recognizable, lol, so i'm callin' it a WIN!!!

card 29: swimming pool

i started out with a sensible and potentially quite lovely idea of a pool of water in many blendy shades of ink, and wound up with... SEA MONSTER!!!!!!!! i don't even question these things anymore. i just roll with it...

card 30: trivial pursuit

coincidentally this prompt arrived right after i had found a packet of geometrically shaped vellum stickers at target, which included little triangles almost exactly the same size and shape as the pieces from trivial pursuit. it seemed like a sign. so i heeded it.

(the stickers are part of target's "handmade modern" line of art supplies, they come in one packet which has five colors, they cost about $3, you can buy them HERE; i mention all this b/c i've been asked this a few times since i posted these cards on instagram, lol)

card 31: 100

i wondered what would happen if i layered the vellum stickers in a mandala-inspired design, and how many i'd need to fill the entire 3x5" card. the answers were, "it'll look kinda cool" and, "110" respectively. so know we know.

card 32: off prompt

yep, it's officially a continuing series of geometric vellum sticker patterns now. will i EVER post anything else?? well yeah, sure; but i can't guarantee it will be before i run out of the stickers... sorry...

*technically, i believe the expression is "time flies when you're having fun" but to me it's the same thing, really... :) :) :)

and now for something completely different...

more ICAD, woohoo! sorry if this is boring for non-participants, but in june and july most of my "free" crafting time is spent on index cards: thinking up what to do, doing it, posting it, looking at others' work, etc... 'tis the season; the ICAD season, darlings!

cards 19a + 19b: snowflake

round or square subjects are always a bit dicey in the 3x5 format of an index card, so i'm not sure HOW it's taken me this many years to realize i could spread the design over two cards?!??! 

card 20: the sixties

peace, love and music, pretty much sums it up, right? 

card 21: invent a prompt

i chose "aloha" because... well, because i'm *ME* lol! :)

 

card 22: neon

gelly roll pens on black paper are just sooooo dreamy, am i right?

card 23: winter

a very abstract collage featuring torn and layered vintage paper with a few swipes of the luscious golden acrylics i treated myself to using a serendipitous one-day coupon...

card 24: magenta

magenta and mandalas... perfect together! ♥

card 25: song

i chose "box of rain" the only grateful dead song i really *LOVE*; i was test-driving a couple of new pens, with sort of mixed results, but ICAD is definitely a time to try new things and experiment!!!

meanwhile, sunday is an excellent time to hang out with family and friends, also to do fun creative things... and i hope you're doing just that this lovely sunday! ♥♥♥

now even ICAD-ier!

would you like to see my index cards from week three? before you answer, i should probably warn you that if you say, "no thanks" --as of course is your right-- the rest of the post falls kind of flat... no pressure, tho! :) :) :)

card 12: off-prompt

not to be obnoxious, but i love this one! the irony is that everything i like best about it was something added to cover up a "mistake" of some sort: the harlequin stencil shifted, i got a big navy blue smudge before i planned to use navy blue (so WHERE'd the ink even come from to be smudgey in the first place, we ask ourselves...??!) the pen went wonky, etc etc; the point is that sometimes improvised "fixes" actually turn out cooler than the things we originally PLAN to do, which is why if you have a little extra time to experiment, it's great to keep going rather than start over when things go wrong... just sayin'...

card 13: playground

these clever playful pandas have organized themselves into the world's first panda mandala... or "pandala" if you will? or, maybe not. :0

card 14: venn diagram

after the smashing success (in my head, anyway) of "pandala" i thought venn diagram + zentangle might result in a cool "venntangle"? it's not what i expected, but it kinda works.

card 15: bouquet

not much to say, i was in a flowery mood, i had markers...

card 16: wallpaper

stencils and inks and pens are all quite fun to play with at the end of an evening. so this night, that's exactly what i did!

card 17: landscape

for this one, i had a great idea about "thread painting"... but by the time i came to work on it, lovely husband jeff was sound asleep in the room directly above my sewing machine. so i settled for markers. i must say, this really is a fun and soothing way to color...

card 18: orange

colorbursts in tangerine, orange and burnt orange... with special guest stars yellow ochre and fuchsia! (yes, there are A LOT of mandalas in ICAD; basically if i get to the end of the day without a specific plan or concept for the prompt, the ICAD machinery automatically defaults to its mandala setting, lol.)

hope you're having a lovely weekend, generally; a great father's day, in particular; and that sometime before it's over you get to do something creative and fun! ♥♥♥

ps: it is DEFINITELY not too late to start ICAD; it's never too late to start a daily art-for-art's-sake practice, heck, you could do it in february if you want! if you've been thinking about it, don't worry about catching up or planning ahead or anything else... JUST START! check out the official ICAD FAQ page at daisy yellow art for all the details and check out the #dyicad2016 hashtag on instagram and facebook for some amazing ideas and to make a new friend or two! if you're blogging ICAD, be sure to link up on this post here!