ICAD 2014 - To the End

July 26 - Turquoise.   I had a card that had been swiped with turquoise acrylic paint waiting to be used.  I used Bermuda Bay ink on the stamped images and found that when I stamped full strength it really bled into the acrylic.  That is why I then took a micron pen and overwrote the sentiment and the largest dandelion blossom and blown seeds.   

July 27 - Carousel.  So I took a little creative liberty with this and turned it into Carowl Sel and her story.

July 28 - Zebra.  An art poster I pulled out of a school catalog along with some samples of zebra striping which I just extended.

July 29 -  I didn't want a drawn angel but rather looked for a quote that could speak to all the angel friends that I've had at late wishing me well through this Pain in My Ass summer.  I said that I didn't want this injury to define my summer but it doesn't seem to be working out that way.  We still have a way to go I guess. 

July 30 - Astronaut.  Meet the crew from Pigasus 3.  They have just taken off on their astronautical mission to boldly go where no pig has gone before.

July 31 - Thread.  I received a package in the mail today from Poland.  It was something little that I had ordered from Etsy but the stamps were so pretty and the box inside was wrapped with some brown twine I just had to use that for today's wrap up.  I layered a couple of pieces of tea bag paper on the index card first - whip stitching them in place then added all the other stitching and stamps.

I thought those stamps were pretty cool although I have no idea what they're representative of.  

So, all in all, I think this was a pretty good experience.  I've tried some things I'd not tried before, including products and techniques.  I'm also pretty proud that I got it done on time despite the physical challenges that I've had.  

Time to find something else to explore my creativity with.  Anyone know of any good challenges out there?

ICAD - Week 7 and Almost All of 8

July 13 - Violin or Cello.  Colored Pencil.

July 14 - Kokeshi Doll was the prompt but as you can see it is not a Kokeshi Doll or anything that resembles it.  I took some bottle caps that were lying on the table and dipped them in my new SU In-Color ink pads and just kept adding circles.  Some of them needed a little enhancement with dots using the markers in the same new colors.

July 15 - Dala Horse.  I really would like to have done a nice painted Dala Horse, instead I was inspired by a pixilated mariner's map I had seen on a weather site on Facebook.  Done in Prismacolors.

July 16 - Formula or Recipe.  I laid out some paper tape strips and then over them I used a quilt block pattern for my initials and did some simple tangling withing the block.

July 17 - Purple.  This started with the dark purple lines that I found on a painted rock I saw on Pinterest.  I then added some periwinkle and burgundy additions to the design.

July 18 - Matryoshka Doll.  Hmmm,  methinks I forgot to use my blending pencil on this.  She looks kind of simple.

July 19 - Pretzel or Knot.  I don't know how much knottier I could have gotten with this.  This goes back to basic doodling that I do when I'm on the phone, just added some bits of color here and there.

Thought it deserved a close up.

July 20 - Elephant.  This was inspired by an elephant brooch I found on-line that was enameled, however, I kind of liked it just in black and white.

July 21 - Octopus or Monster.  The monster is pain.  This is what I saw when I laid down on my stomach on our new mattress and closed my eyes as I willed the pain away and fell asleep if only for a while.  

July 22 - Rainbow.  I have seen this "technique" on Pinterest for the past two summers and have wanted to give it a try.  I think I might have needed to exaggerate the curves on the fingers a little more to give it more dimension.

July 23 - Mushroom.  HWNSNBP said these looked like kumquats, which I knew he meant to mean kiwi fruit as I'm pretty sure he doesn't know what a kumquat looks like.  But given that he is color-challenged, I can see why he might think they are.  But I meant them to be the undersides of mushroom caps.  I cut circles from some brown packing paper and then used some watercolor pencils to add the shading and detail.  The background was just some brown hued watercolors washed across the index card to resemble a cutting board.

Yeah, they probably don't look any better close up.  At least we won't have to eat them!

July 24 - Feather.  Drawn with a micron pen and then colored with Prismacolors.  Then I used a scribbling technique for the background which I kind of like.

July 25 - Jewel.  Well not really following the prompt again but there are some jewel tones in there.  This time I used some wrapping paper scraps from our schools annual fundraiser book and tried a one-staple collage.  Five layers of paper stapled with one staple to the index card.

Well, there are 6 more cards till the end of the challenge and some of the prompts are a little far-reaching for me and also I'm doing a little recuperating from some spinal injections that I had yesterday that will hopefully rid me of the pain I've been having from this sciatic problem.  But I am determined to have them done by the 31st.  I've been out of work since July 11 because I've been unable to sit and I haven't done much crafting other than these cards which have helped a little with my sanity.  It's also been one-level crafting and what I mean by that is I've been mainly using what supplies I have managed to bring downstairs from the stamp cave which has been just a slight bit limiting but challenging at the same time.  

My dining room table is a shambles of things, but I don't care.  An artist lives here.  Not a famous one, but one who makes messes when she creates, saves bits and bobs of things she thinks she'll someday use.  Collects boxes and paper, and bottle caps (metal and plastic) with the hope of finding a use for them other than the landfill. 

There are cameras scattered about and any number of projects in various states of completion, or in some cases actually beginning.  

I'm rambling again, so let me get on to those last 6 cards.  

ICAD 2014 - Week 6

 July 6 - Tag or Label.  I added three little tags of that brightly colored paper tape on a card that I had used as a an experiment for those watercolor flowers a while back.  Then I repeated the colors with the highlighters on the top portion.  

July 7 - Lollipop. Or a bunch of them in Prismacolors.

July 8 - Green.  Positive and negative die cuts in green.  The two branches caught behind some teabag paper and the negative one stitched to it.  My first endeavor sewing paper.  

July 9 - Diagram.  One of the most basic diagrams that I could think of - that of a color wheel using Derwent Inktense pencils and water.  

July 10 - Kaleidoscope.  Overlapping circles of vibrant markers.

July 11 - The Moon.  If you remember the flowers and butterflies from last week that I used the teabag paper over, the basis of this was the watercolors that had bled through the teabag and I had put it aside.  The darker splotches of yellow and blue what was left on the card.  I added some more light yellow around the yellow splotches to make the moon full and then wisped some more watered-down blue throughout the rest of the sky.  Then I took some grey and streaked some clouds across the moon and sky.  It reminded me of the sky as it looked a couple of years ago after the fireworks on the fourth when there was a full moon, though that sky wasn't as blue.

July 12 - Text.  Confession time here.  These last couple of cards were done kind of catch up as I spent another evening in the ER with my sciatic again.  I can't even begin to explain the pain that I've been having and meds are only putting a dent into it.  Out of work again this week and discussing back surgery has been very stressful.  It's not just the sciatic nerve pain.   There are herniated discs and spinal stenosis and time has come to make a decision to improve the quality of my life in dealing with this.  There are options that run from simple to more involved and all of it is a bit, check that, a lot scarier that I would like.  

In the meantime, I am grateful that we put in this kitchen island so I at least have something to lean against and hold myself up as I can't sit without hurting and I prefer not to lay down all day.  

And having these little pieces of art to work on does take my mind off of things of which I am also grateful.  

ICAD 2014 - Week 5

I figured I'd better shorten up these posts from two weeks to one.  So here goes with Week 5 - 

July 29 - California.  I've been to California once with HWNSNBP back in the mid-90's.  He had won an award from work and that's where the ceremony was to be held.  We stayed at the Ritz Carlton in Laguna Niguel which overlooks the Pacific.  One of my most vivid memories was the hillside down to the beach - how it was covered with pink and yellow flowers and it was only April.  We were so high up the surfers looked like seals in the water.  Here is my attempt at that hillside in watercolors.

July 30 - Red.  I just received my Stampin' Up Blendabilities and gave the red set a tryout.  

July 1 - Flower Bouquet.  While not necessarily a bouquet, it is a bunch of watercolored flowers more realistic this time.

July 2 - Tea or Coffee.  I have been saving tea bag papers lately.  Why you may ask?  I'm thinking of a project I wanted to try inspired by Kim Henkel at Letting in the Light.  I used tea bag paper here.  I first stamped the floral image on it with Stazon ink and let it dry.  Then I laid the tea bag over the index card and watercolored it.  The watercolors flowed through the tea bag easily onto the index card.  I'll save that card for another time.  This time I took the painted tea bag paper and mod podged it to a blank index card and the painting looked even better.  The butterflies were punch leftovers that I glued on before the final coat of mod podge.

July 3 - Tomorrowland.  I know this was supposed to be a reference to the Tomorrowland in Disney World but instead, as we had Hurricane Arthur approaching tomorrow I cased myself from a tangle I had done when we were awaiting the landfall of Sandy and added the Jersey coastline with the storm spinning away from us.

July 4 - Flag.  There's an ice cream place we stop at sometimes on our way to or from Barnegat and the cones come wrapped in these flag wrappers, which of course, as you can see, I save.  The mosaic pieces I added were from the label on a Cool Whip Container.

July 5 - Postage Stamp.  I love this series of bird stamps and received a card with the painted bunting on it which you know I couldn't throw away.  I used my Prismacolor pencils to first draw the cancellation markings and then to add the colors that you see in the bird between the lines.  Then with my Micron pen I filled in all the white space with parallel lines, adding the stamp at the end.

I know that some of my cards seem a bit "elementary" but I'm trying to use different approaches and different media and leaving my comfort zone.  I already know that there are a number of them that I'd like to do over, or add to, but I want this to be a spontaneous exercise and not something that I'll have to perseverate over.  And so far, it has been fun too.

ICAD 2014 - Weeks 3 & 4

Here we go with the second and third week - 

June 15 - Stickers.  Rachel was home for the weekend and usually that means a trip to Target where I found these rolls of "paper tape" in the office supply aisle.  I loved the bright rainbow colors and I thought they would make a nice base for some rainbow smiley face stickers I had.  

June 16 - Roll the dice.  Well, it wasn't dice I rolled, it was cherry pits.  When cherries are in season sometimes I'll grab a handful and stand at the sink and just spit the pits into my hand until I'm done and then throw them away.  When you eat the dark red cherries, if they're really juicy they can leave a stain on your hand.  Lightbulb moment!  I've done this with marbles and ink before, but this time I laid the cherry pits on the index card and rolled them around.  I got that nice purple background.  Then I got out some strawberries and cored them and then placed them on the paper where you see the larger marks.  I added a tissue paper cherry "pinata" and a quote.  "Life is full of confusion.  Confusion of love, passion, and romance.  Confusion of family and friends.  Confusion with life itself.  What path we take.  What turns we make.  How we roll our dice."

June 17 - Polka Dots.  Tangled with color.

June 18 - Orange.  The orange pieces are cut from a Dunkin' Donuts giftcard holder and a Stewart's Orange Creme Soda container.

June 19 - Harry Potter.  Dobby, in pencil.  With one of his quotes.

June 20 - Candy Wrapper.  A student gave me a little container of Hershey's Bliss chocolates as an end-of-year gift.  I unwrapped one and flattened it out with my fingernail getting out all the wrinkles and then I used a pencil to make squiggles in the foil.  I cut them into berry shapes and used some black punched bird wings as leaves.  I drew a branch in black and before I glued the berries down, I pencilled in lots of leaves in the background.

Looks like some other-worldly blackberry to me.

June 21 - Repeating Pattern.  I had just picked up these sun stickers at the Dollar Tree and since it was the first day of summer I lined them up on the index card and then drew in the sun in Inktense pencils and blended it with a damp brush.  Of course, it would have been much easier to draw the background first but I didn't make too much of a mess of the stickers.

June 22 - Beach Umbrella.  Here's that paper tape again as the umbrella with a watercolored sky and sand.  

June 23 - Star Wars.  Star Wars had all those Hexagon-winged flying machines long before hexagons became popular.  My son was over and he had just thrown out an empty bag of honey barbecue potato chips so I did some trash can diving (it was right on the top) to salvage a piece of the bag as a stepping off point for the rest of the hexagons colored with my Prismacolor pencils.  

June 24 - Brown. I brushed on some tapioca and turquoise acrylic paint for the background and then added some flowers made from torn brown wrapping paper with tissue paper centers.

June 25 - Maple Leaf.  We have tons of maple trees around our house but when I think of them in artwork it's usually with autumn colors.  That's not what I see outdoors now, so I used a variety of green watercolors for these.  

June 26  - Magnifying Glass.  How about stained glass instead?  I was visiting Sabrina's blog and saw this beautiful stained glass window she posted from her trip to Paris.  I should have probably photographed this one vertically, but the pattern really appealed to me as a tangle and I used my Prismacolors on it with just a blending pencil.  

June 27 - Album Cover.  I don't know.  Do you think it could be a cover for the Moody Blues?  

June 28 - Robot.   The only robot that came to mind was the robot from Lost in Space - Danger Will Robinson, Danger, Danger - arms flailing about.  Those arms that resemble dryer hose.  I know, it's a stretch.  But remember, prompts are optional!  It's the creating that's important.  

Thanks for looking!