Snickerdoodles!

Made gluten-free with quinoa and almond flours!

Greetings from CV MarCom

Looking forward to seeing our colleagues in Southboro!

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving! Hope you are close to family and friends today!

Happy Halloween!

Pumpkin time!

This one I designed for Big Yellow Box by Crayola -- the ceramic piece and the painting techniques.

Hawk Falls

A beautiful day for a hike!!

Pieces together

Did you ever receive some surprising news that contradicted everything you knew?  Here's my interpretation of "trying to put all the pieces together"....

More Fronds!

Having fun playing with the frond stencils.  The first spread is painted  -- I like the color combo: started with violet, lime and turquoise. The second spread is sprayed.  The Tyvec stencil was too thin for the spray paint, it smeared, but it's ok, I like the overall look of the page. I experimented with a cut out of the stencil by tracing it on scrapbook paper - you'll see it lower right.

Frond Chronicles

As promised, here's my version of the Frond Chronicles from the workshop. I glued one of masks right on the cover. The other page is shown on the post below.

CREATE, NJ: Frond Chronicles with Michelle Ward

Here's a sneak peek of a great workshop I attended today! Michelle Ward taught her Frond Chronicles workshop-- full of lots of techniques with gesso, paint and hand-cut stencils! What a fun day at CREATE, NJ.
"Coming soon" -- I will upload all pages.

Affirmations

A recent copy of Cloth-Paper-Scissors encouraged me to "Paint with wild abandon and effortlessly tap into my creativity flow".  We were encouraged to use different color combinations than normal, which I thought I did, but alas, this still looks like me!  So, off to try it again and be a bit more bold this time.

Glam girl workshop with Traci

I never create faces.  I remember doing a lot of portrait work in high school and it was just something I didn't like, but... I thought I would give Traci Bautista's on-line class a try.  Here's my first try at a Glam girl - part I.  Part II to come!

Happy Easter

This year's onion skin eggs!

Green Pepper Press - Crusade #61

Michelle's final challenge for the Team is: Restraining Order. As I often struggle to add more to make things look full, this was a welcome challenge. The challenge was timely as I journaled about a tree meditation during a visit to the beautiful grounds of Walking Winds. We were invited to meditate on a question by going out and wandering among the trees for some answers. I was drawn toward a tree by a small creek. You'll see a little journaling where I my senses took over: I felt the warm sun; heard the birds; smelled a burning fire pit; and saw some beautiful green leaves with tiny yellow buttercups shooting up. I felt answers coming from my mother and paternal grandmother, so you'll see three hearts representing three generations. It was time to return to the house, but a voice told me to walk to the end of the creek by the road. There I saw a mailbox with "1956", the year I was born, so I added it to the page. One of the answers I received was to play more -- so here I am playing in my journal!

BTW, the pink and red squares are copies of another journal page. I added hearts on top. I love having some of my very own backgrounds to play with.

We thank Michelle for all the challenges and understand her taking a break, but there are oodles of archives to find at her site and challenge yourself! Read about the challenge at Michelle's site.

More hearts for Michelle

Here I tried some fingerpaint and doodle hearts. Just for fun-- just for Michelle Ward and her GPP Crusades. We love you!

A great day to doodle

I spent the day creating "doodle art" inspired by Traci Bautista. My first attempt shows the beginning of the page using stencils and spray paint on the right. The page on left shows the result after painting over the images.


My second attempt at doodling is shown in this second spread. It was fun and I hope to do more!

GPP Street Team - Crusade 60: What do you love?

I love hearts. So I took Michelle Ward's challenge this month with the idea of playing with heart pages. The first one has no background prep, just colors sprayed on paper. I found the piece of envelope with postage stamps in a box. I didn't remember where it came from until I saw the city postmark -- it must be from my mother! -- and over 5 years old!
The second one has layers of gesso applied to paper before beginning. It adds dimension and a slower process for painting, more gesso, oil pastels and collage. I wanted to create opposites: white background with red heart, and visa-versa. It was fun! Thanks for the inspiration, Michelle.

I encourage you to try it yourself! Read about the challenge at Michelle's site.

2011 TA DA List

Michelle Ward at Green Pepper Press encouraged us to create a TA DA list - things we accomplished in 2011 - by looking back over the year. It's funny because I actually started this in January 2011!! I created a Milestones Passport with Visa Application - an idea which I borrowed from The Creative Awakenings book, by Sheri Gaynor. I wanted to be more creative, so I made a commitment to a year of creativity and recorded all my creative endeavors each month.



It turns out that at the end of each month I realized I was doing more than I realized to keep the creative juices going. So when you look back and see what you have accomplished, it's pleasantly surprising. You feel a real sense of accomplishment.

Here I share a few pages -- you'll see I completed a spread at the end of each month.

TA DA!






I encourage you to try it yourself! Read about the challenge at Michelle's site.

Inspired by Degas and a walk in the woods

As I mentioned earlier, I visited a Degas exhibit at the Boston MFA. I was intrigued by his use of oil pastels - the blending and combination of colors. As a took a New Year's Day walk in the woods, I came inside to warm up and play in my journal. I never draw, because I don't consider myself an artist who draws, but took the time to sit and try out some water-soluble oil pastels. I love the creamy texture! I drew a tree from downstairs looking out over the pond and then the view out the kitchen glass doors. I feel very brave sharing something that I've drawn - but here goes!! A new year means you have to embrace change and face your fears, right? And I just read that whatever you create is uniquely yours, no right or wrong. What new challenge do you need to try out?