USE YOUR LEFTOVERS TO CREATE


Don't forget to use your leftovers to create art.  These cards were made from leftovers of a journal page I made this week.





           

I cleaned of my stamp I used for the words and the yellow paint onto card stock.  That left a good starting point for some new art cards.  I picked out some stamps.  Went through my letter stickers I have for scrapbooking. And here is what I came up with.  I really like these and think I will now do a journal page using these cards as inspiration. 

You never know what you might come up with using your leftovers.

Welcome

Hi there,

Welcome to my blog.  After sitting dormant for a long time I'm hoping to make this an ongoing thing.  Nothing formal just a place where I post what I'm doing and anything interesting I might come across.

Yesterday I was at Micheals and purchased one of the 7 gypsy's ledgers.  Dede (inkwell) had bought one and I thought it was just cool.  I was planning on using it to keep track of all my supplies but after I got home I decide that I am going to use it to document all my stamps.  I had bought some inexpensive stamps also yesterday and was playing around with them and the idea just popped in my head that it would be nice to be able to see all my stamps in one place.  So I will post pictures along the way as I fill up my ledger.

Here is a page from one of my journals with the stamps I bought yesterday.

January Pocket Letter

I was organizing my art supplies this weekend and came across my binder with my pocket letters. I remembered one of the things I wanted to do was make a pocket letter every month. So I figured I better get started since it's January 30.

I started out using my 12 x 14 Gelli plate to make the background on a 11 x 14 mixed media paper. I used Journal Artista (Paula Phillips) crusty bits technique. You can find a video of this process on her YouTube channel titled "Gelli printing with JournalAritsta Stencils from Stencil Girl Products".  For the first layer I used Liquitex Basics Light Blue Permanent, pebeo Iridescent blue green and goldens titanium white. One the second layer I just used titanium white and on the third layer I used Liquitex Basics Cerulean Blue Hue. Here is the result.














I found that I could make 16  ATC cards from one page. So from that I was able to start 2 pocket letter pages. Using the leftover scraps to make the two extra cards.

So now with some help from some friends Kerri and Lyn.  I am exploring some new techniques and will have the pocket letters done in the next couple of days.

Happy 2016!!!

Hi everyone! Welcome to  my first post of the new year.

My word for 2016 is explore. And one of the things I will be exploring is blogging.  I plan to post at least a couple times a month about things that are going on.  And share my art with you.  Feel free to comment and share any of your art too.

I have been picking a word for the last 4 years and I have finally changed my word this year.  My word had been "do".  A little word but a big word for me.  I just wanted to do art but was having a hard time getting started.  Finally last year I picked my word do and really stuck with it.  I consistently arted for the whole year.  I finished art journal pages and explored new things.  It made me so happy to just do art.  I actually finally felt like an artist.

So now my word for 2016 has changed to explore. And I can't wait to explore lots of new things in art and life.  I hope you enjoy sharing this journey with me and I look forward to seeing what journey your art takes you on.

Here is an art journal page with my word for 2016.

Left Over Artist

I decided to try and start up my blog again.  Two summers ago I actually started a blog and it lasted a couple of months and life got busy and art got pushed to the wayside.  I occassionly did some art journaling or painting but not on a regular basis.  Work on the house, new puppy, hockey (lots of hockey), visiting our daughter in Sweden and my son started high school.  Did I mention hockey LOL. 

So last fall I really made an effort to start arting again.  Not sure if arting is a word it's being underlined by my spellcheck.  I made and effort to make time to do some art.  I started watching my old favorite Ustreams.  Mixed Media Monday, Inkwell, Inky Obsessions and Journal Artista. And I found some new artists to follow and watch on Ustream or Youtube. 

I have really enjoyed using the creative part of my brain again.  I used to scrapbook and spent so much time designing my pages that I never got any scrapbook pages done.  Now that I do more painting and art journaling, gelli printing I get more scrapbook pages done because I'm not using up all my time figuring out colors  making my own embellishments or looking for embellishments that don't exist because I have an idea of what I want.  I have actually been completing journal pages and am trying to finish one journal completely.  I work out of several journals.  They usually start out with left over paint from my gelli plate and other things I have been working on.  Or I'm just experimenting with different medium. 

This got me thinking most of my art starts out from leftovers.  When I'm working or watching a video I will flip through my journals and find starting points for things I want to work on.  I'm sure lots of you do that.  I started putting my leftovers in a journal after watching Paula, Journal Artista.  She would put her excess paint into what she called her leftover journal.  So I'm kind of like a left over artist.  Everything I create seems to have something leftover in it.  There are a few things I start fresh but mostly its from leftovers.  Even a lot of my art supplies when I first started painting were from my daughters high school and college art classes.  I had taken some drawing classes but had never painted before.

When I started my blog I also created a facebook page called Left Over Artist and thought it would be fun to have a group where people could post there art that was created with leftovers.  But since I hadn't really been doing much art it never got going.  But now I think I'm going to see if there is any interest and may start posting pictures on that page. 

Staying with the theme of left over art.  I am going to post some pictures of starter ATC's that I made.  Several weeks ago I made my version of a "pocket journal".  I got the idea from one of Paula's streams.  I have so many gelli prints and was not sure what to do with them.  A light bulb went on.  I could use those for a pocket journal.  So I started my pocket journal which I loved making.  I will post another blog on how I made that.  But what I found out was.  When you make an 8x8 pocket journal pages out of 8 1/2 x 11 gelli prints, you have enough gelli print left over for 2 ATC's.

Pocket letters seem to be very popular now.  Dede (Inkewll) started a pocket letter swap.  I did not join because I was kind of busy and did not want to commit and then bail.  But I also did not know where to start.  I have never done any kind of swaps or exchanged happy mail so I was kind of intimidated.  So anyway,  I was cutting up the paper for my pocket journal and started saving the scraps in 2 1/2 x 3 1/2 inch pieces. 

The last time I was cutting papers there was a pile of small scraps that I was going to throw out.  I used those to decorate the cards.  And now I have starter ATC's and hopefully wont be intimidated to join the next pocket letter swap.