cherry blossom pink

A digital collage made for the Art Journal Caravan 2013. This month's stop on our around the world tour is Japan. I'm not a huge fan of Japanese art, culture, food, etc. Don't dislike it, it just isn't a country on my bucket list.

However, it has a lot of neat things going for it such as cranes, mountains, cherry blossoms, and haiku.

For this collage, I used 3 background papers from the March kit layered and blended in a variety of ways, then added the various elements.

I wrote the haiku which reads:

cherry blossom pink
sparrows soar in aqua sky
nature sighs softly

abstract gelli postcards

Figured you were getting tired of all letters all the time (I finally was too), so here's some postcards.

I started with gelli printed cereal boxes cut to 4x6, then collaged more gelli printed deli paper and phone book pages, dress patterns, and the tiny filter from a used Keurig cup. 

I didn't even know there was a filter in there, but we just bought a tumbler composter and coffee grounds is one of the things you can put in there, so after S brewed a cup, I ripped the top off and shook out the grounds. 


It looked like there was still more in there, so I scraped at it with a knife, then got real interested and took it all apart. There's a little filter that looks kinda like a small cupcake paper, and a small plastic piece that sort of supports the filter.

Anyway, I cut it up and used it on some of the cards. It's the dark semi circular thing. I like the crinkles in it even after I smoothed it out.

I used matte gel medium to stick everything down cause I've discovered that glue sticks don't hold very well on gelli prints. Don't know if it's the slightly rough texture, or the nature of the paint, or what, but I'm not taking any chances in the future and will stick with gel medium. Don't want all my bits falling off in the mail!

I had a couple random word strips from books lying on my work table (along with so much other stuff right now), and stuck them on two of the cards. I'm calling these done for now, altho once I decide who they're going to, I may add recipient-appropriate stuff.

LL201 lesson 5

What's this - my fourth post today? Can you tell my husband's out of town?? Haven't done a lick of housework so tomorrow morning will be a flurry of dishes, laundry folding/putting away, etc. 

Altho today I did repot the front planters with flowers, so that counts, right?

Struggled making this look like a collage. All the words are supposed to touch, and Joanne's sample is all filled in and co-joined, etc, while mine looks like a crossword puzzle gone bad. Too all-lined-up, altho looking at it small here in the post editor, it looks somewhat better. 

All the words are from a list of the most beautiful words in the English language. Love the way some of them roll off the tongue. Word candy.

But this is my 3rd try at it and I'm calling it a day and going up to read in bed with hot chocolate, a cookie, and the dog, and maybe the cat if she's feeling sociable. The bird's already in bed. Night.

LL201 lesson 4

omg... what a train wreck.

Not the whole thing. It started out pretty good. I had a plan to work from Z to A and it went just fine. Letters penciled in, then markered in - so far so good. (they're supposed to look like they're disappearing down the center. yes? no?)

The wheels started to come off when I got out the paints. Actually the Inktense pencils. And actually, that part mostly went ok.

Until I added a gray and a red to the lovely mix of greens and blues I already had going. Should have stepped away from the table right there. But I didn't, of course. I added more color to the bad parts, then a little more.

Still bad. Maybe worse.

Got out my little Windsor & Newton watercolor set and proceded to really mess things up. Oy.

But then I got kind of into playing with the watercolors and quit worrying so much about the actual assignment.

So... think the next class I sign up for should prolly be painting, except I've tried that and I just don't have the gene. On to lesson 5.

LL201 lesson 3

Knocked this one out during the Oscars. Are they weird this year or is it just me?

Tasteless jokes - "we saw your boobs" set to music? Reeeee-lly? Did you see the look on whatshername's face when they flashed to her? She was disgusted. I got no problem with the word 'boobs', and I guess if you showed 'em to the world on the big screen, maybe you shouldn't be offended by a song about it, but... really?

Flat repartee between the presenters. A couple of them were so stilted that I kept waiting for someone to pop in and say 'hahaha, just a joke, here's the real thing', but they never did.

The musical numbers are great, but the rest of it just seems strange.

Loved the big Les Miserables singfest. I've never seen Les Mis in any form but I'm going to see this one. Anne Hathaway... looks like she deserved that Oscar.

Anyway, back to the real topic of this post. The drill here was to make a bunch of alphabets, vertically, on a two page spread. I lined it out and went to work (after perusing dafont.com for ideas).

Nothing real original here but the exercise definitely makes you think about it. Fat, thin... square, round... straight, curly.

Sub-par pictures courtesy of crummy evening lamp light. Sorry.

Charlize Theron is gorgeous. Just sayin'.

LL 201 lesson 2

This was a fun one. Took me a week of working on the couch in the evenings while DH watched bad sci fi. 

Joanne supplied a whole list of words and phrases, but I had to go my own way, as usual. There are a few of hers, plus movie quotes, song lyrics, favorite foods, phrases I liked from a book - all sorts of stuff.

Dug out my huge box of assorted markers, used some gel pens, some Copics, a white Signo pen.

I quite like it and will do another one of these at some point with a more focused batch of phrases and quotes.

Learning to spell is next on my list...

I wish I had...

That's the Roc prompt for Feb.

I wish I had...

Wow. Where to start?

Grace Kelly's looks, Warren Buffett's money, Steven Spielberg's creativity?  Yeah, that'd work.

However, I hadn't thought of those things when I did my spread, so there are different wishes on the page - some real, some silly.

Used my cost-a-lot-of-money-had-to-have-them-don't-use-them-nearly-enough Copic markers and had fun blending the various color families. It's not a sun or a flower. It's just a many-armed design element. Black marker, pencil for shading, gel pens. 

It was fun and I like how light it feels with so much of the background showing. Also like the black/white dashes around the center. 

Practiced my lettering by trying to make each one different, a la Joanne Sharpe's Letter Love 201 class I'm taking. 

Added little drawings or words to some wishes. (the 'more time to art' comment is 'picasso... monet... leslie...' hahaha) 

Just for the heck of it I added a little spider and web like I used to do on all my crazy quilts. 

Another case of it didn't quite fit on the scanner, so I pasted the 2 halves together in PSE 11 for the top pic.