• Art - Blog - Creativity

    Inspired by Summer

    As I sat down to create in the midst of a summer that I hadn’t planned, my mind wandered to the beautiful things. The things that make me appreciate summer. Beautiful colors. Flowers. Birds singing. Breeze blowing through open windows.
    All this had me in the mood for an explosion of color. I used my fingers to loosely apply paint in a tribute to a gorgeous sunrise or sunset. The colors were a little too bold. Too in your face so using a baby wipe I blended and softened the page until it made me happy.
    I pressed uninked rubber stamps into the paint to create some interest on the background as the stamps pulled even more of the still wet paint away with them as you can see above with the grid pattern.
    After heat setting the page I used a harlequin stamp with white ink to lightly stamp randomly around the background using white embossing powder over top to provide a little more kick to the white.
    Digging through my stash I found some rub-ons that fit my theme perfectly. The black really pops against the background.
    A canning jar full of flowers screams summer beauty to me, Casual, simple, perfect.
    I really wanted it to appear that these flowers were indeed inside a glass jar. This gave me a bit of a challenge.
    I stamped the jar twice. One was clear embossed for later use. The first was adhered directly to the page. I then stamped my bouquet of flowers onto tissue paper using black Staz-on ink. I adhered the tissue with matte medium and placed on the page, partially “inside” the jar.
    Next I cut out windows in the clear embossed jar. I cut a piece of vellum to fit and gave that a bit of shimmer with clear embossing as well. I carefully stacked and glued the pieces of the jar over the original stamped piece. Much to my great pleasure, the stems of the flowers shone through the “glass” as I had hoped.  I used a Tim Holtz word sticker to sum up my thoughts.
    The jar seemed to be missing something so I thought about the basket of goodies I carried home from a friends house like Little Red Riding Hood.
    The perfect embellishment was right there.
    I’m linking up today with Art Journal Journey for Inspired by… the theme chosen by this months host Gil from gibbyfrogettcraftations.
    Art Journal Journey
  • Blog

    T Tuesday: the return edition

    Hello…I’m back. Hopefully without a long break again. The break started benign enough. I had a busy schedule with the end of school and just was going to take a week off from T stands for Tuesday. My brain had a whole other idea.

    I ended up in the ER after experiencing a visual disturbance much like looking through a prism followed by the worst headache I’ve ever had. I honestly thought I might be having a stroke or aneurysm. Blood work and three types of MRI showed that I wasn’t having either of my worst fears happening but I did have blood on my brain…old blood. A next day appointment was made to see a neurologist. More tests were ordered to make sure I wasn’t having seizures or had a skull fracture from a blow to the head from a basketball a little over a month before. Everything came back good other than the mystery blood which is irritating my brain causing weird things to happen. So circling back around…the basketball hit appears to be the culprit. Basically a concussion that caused a small bleed that I wasn’t even aware of until later.

    I’m still experiencing headaches and get a pain on the top of my head at times that is separate from the headache pain. I can drive now so that’s a good thing! I go back in September to be rescanned and follow up with neurology. What a crazy thing!!

    In the meantime my garden has been growing and growing!

    All the rain and neglect evidently has done wonders.

    I even spied my very first cucumber today. It’s so cute!

    The deck box garden is doing well too but notice anything funny about my flags….? 

    I caught a red squirrel…well I saw him…didn’t try to physically catch him…stealing my flags. He took a big section and ran with them. I can only assume it was nest building material. Unless they were having some sort of decorating contest which, clearly, he won. LOL

    I have done a tiny bit of creating. A journal page and a half complete dream catcher. I’ll share those another time. I do have one other project I’m just getting started on. Hopefully I’ll get it done as quickly as time demands. Nothing like getting a few weeks behind. Although truth be told, I only thought about it recently. So cryptic I know. It’s a gift and I have no idea if the recipient reads my blog.

    Tomorrows list is long but I’m trying very hard each day to get most things checked off. Having a health scare and subsequent recovery really makes you realize that putting stuff off isn’t the best idea. You may not be ABLE to do it tomorrow.

    What are you doing today?
  • Blog

    In the midst of a blog break

    I figured I should briefly check in since I’ve been incommunicado. I’m dealing with a health issue and have been at appointments everyday. Tests, tests and more tests. Today I feel a little better than I have so I’m cautiously optimistic that things are getting better.