• Art - Blog - Creativity - Outdoors

    T Tuesday: spring break edition

    The calendar says its Spring but I think Mother Nature needs her head examined. It’s cold and snowy. So since the weather isn’t cooperating I figured I’d create something that would brighten the gloomy day.imagine spring

    I pulled bits together from my scrap bucket.

    imagine spring

    I even briefly set up my sewing machine on my workspace to get some stitching onto the page. I sewed this scrap directly into the book.

    imagine spring

    This piece was stitched together before gluing into place. Gosh I’ve missed using my machine! For some reason it inspires me.imagine spring

    Lastly I added the word imagine. I was trying to imagine what Spring should feel like. I’m linking up with AJJ for Spring.

    Art Journal Journey
    With it being spring break so many people are traveling. Mini-me and I did as well. It wasn’t a tropical destination. It was 4 hours NORTH of here for the state archery tournament. caribou
    We drove up on Friday and spent the night in a hotel since she didn’t shoot until Saturday. A snow storm was expected anyway so might as well go early. Thankfully we never did get any snow…just a cold wind.paul bunyan
    We had to do the usual tourist things…amazingly enough there was others venturing into the frigid wind off the lake for a photo op that were nice enough to take a picture of us. That may look like standing water under Babe the Blue Ox but its solid ice.
    After the tournament (at which she beat her personal best score by 24 points!) we headed for home but took a slight detour since we were that far north to visit Itasca State Park. Itasca state park
    As we turned in we quickly realized that we probably wouldn’t get to see the headwaters of the Mississippi as we had wanted. Some of the roads weren’t even plowed. Instead we just took a photo of the map on went on our merry way.Itasca state park
    I really wanted her to be able to jump across the Mississippi as I had when I was a kid…heck, I wanted to do it again now! Oh well…maybe another trip.
    This is typically when I share my photo challenge but I’m woefully behind. I will get caught up though and share them next week as well as the next months challenge.
  • Around home - Art - Blog - Creativity - Outdoors - Photography

    T Tuesday: wonderful week edition

    Last week was awesome! Busy but awesome. I’ve been continuing to do pour painting when ever I have the chance. I did get my step by step process written and posted. You can check that out in the previous postacrylic pour walk through

    The kids had their Spring concert Thursday.

    It’s the second to the last for J. The next one will be sad for me. He’s been in choir since the 4th grade. He plans to sing in college but I won’t be necessarily seeing those performances. His choir sang such a cool song with movement. I wish I had know so I could have recorded it.

    This is the video that they learned the movements to the song from.

    I must say that our choir with the kids in the robes looked much cooler when their arms were swinging to the music.

    The weather has been amazing…so beautiful on Saturday that the neighbor had the first bonfire of the year on St. Patrick’s Day.  Some adult beverages were consumed. One neighbor even put green food coloring in his beer to be super festive. 

    As the sun began to shade the driveway and get chilly even with the fire the decision was made to move the party across the street to a sunny spot. Yep…portable fire. Us Minnesotans are dedicated to being outdoors!!

    The week wouldn’t wouldn’t be complete with my photo challenge update.

    10. Savory…. sausage dip tastes so much better than it looks.

    11. Iconic

    12. Pastel

    13. Ha!

    14. Clouds

    15. Blue & White

    It’s off to work for me. Three days left before Spring Break!!!!

    What are you doing today?

     

  • Art - Blog - Creativity

    Paint pouring process

    I know its taken a while but I’m finally going to show you how I do my acrylic pours.  (This is a photo heavy post)acrylic pour walk through

    Lets talk about the colors I used first off.  I use all brands of paint, even house paint for my pours. I really only care about the color I achieve in each cup. I mixed the 2 browns until the color felt right. I did the same with the 2 reds in the right of the photo.

    acrylic pour walk through

    In all I have 7 colors. As I’m mixing these I add a product called Floetrol, which is a paint conditioner. I plan to use some of this in my paint for the front door…hopefully eliminating my brush strokes.

    acrylic pour walk through I use about a 50/50 mix of paint and Floetrol. I eyeball it…this girl doesn’t measure. If the paint is still quite thick (which is almost always is) I add distilled water very slowly until I get the proper consistency. For me that is the paint running in a thin line from my stir stick. acrylic pour walk through

    Now comes the dirty pour part. I always start with a small amount of white in the bottom of the cup then begin adding streams of color in a varied order. I pour from different heights which distributes the color in the cup in different ways.acrylic pour walk through

    As you can see I tried out colors from my paint drawer on the canvas before preparing my cups. It doesn’t matter what is on the canvas before so feel free to reuse an old canvas. After filling the cup with enough paint or what I assume is enough…remembering that some paint will be poured off the edge in this process….I’m ready to pour or flip as the case may be.acrylic pour walk through

    Some people quickly flip the cup over onto the canvas…I have yet to be brave enough to do that since I am working in such a small space. Instead I flip with canvas over.acrylic pour walk through

    And now we wait a minute or so for the paint to settle. Not sure how necessary this is but its the way I do it. I also tend to put a little paint at the corners to get the pour to flow over the edge quicker.acrylic pour walk through

    Every time I’m amazed by the designs that come straight from the cup.acrylic pour walk through

    Already cells are forming from the paint bubbling up and popping. No silicone used or needed.

    acrylic pour walk through

    I sometimes lightly blow on the paint to pop the surface bubbles before tilting the canvas to begin the flow.acrylic pour walk through

    acrylic pour walk through

    acrylic pour walk through

    acrylic pour walk through

    So much fun!!acrylic pour walk through

    Here is the completely dry canvas. I did drizzle some paint left in the cup at the bottom of the canvas to add interest. Not sure if I entirely like that addition but its all a grand experiment.

    Here is the second one I did with the same colors.

    acrylic pour walk through

    Crazy how different they are from each other. I love this this one…so does Mini-me. The colors work as a perfect accent in her room which was why I used them in the first place.

    Special thanks to Mini-me for her photography during the process.