Greeting Cards

Two of my latest greeting cards for personal use. I love being able to do this for friends and family. This style is something I've seen and admired on Facebook and Pinterest and it's fairly easy to do. In this case I used Yupo rather than paper so there would be no buckling. I laid down a layer of indigo fluid acrylic with a sponge roller. When it was dry several small stencils and a few homemade stamps were used to cover the entire surface with patterns using 3-4 harmonious colors of fluid acrylic. I used white chalk to outline my subjects and filled in the surrounding areas with more acrylic, this time in a solid color. After the basic designs were in place I went back in to tweak and clean up. Voila!

About Titles

It's one thing to successfully create a piece of artwork, yet another to find an appropriate title for it. So many artists struggle with this, myself included and titles are so important. They can often mean the difference between selling a painting and not. For instance, several years ago I painted a series of humorous cats called Catitudes. One painting depicted a cat mouth wide open looking as if he was singing loudly into a flower blossom and I titled it 'Caterwauling'. I thought it was a perfect title. When the painting didn't sell I was confused. Finally I asked a good friend what she thought when she looked at it. She told me she didn't know what to think. She wasn't familiar with the term caterwauling and wasn't clear what the cat was doing. I changed it to 'Karaoke Cat Style' and someone snapped it right up. The quest for a good title never ends. I often see artists on social media asking friends to come up with titles for them and in return they will receive a free print or some such. Not a bad ploy(!)and some folks have the knack for titles. Recently I read an excellent blog post by Deborah Moss full of tips for coming up with great titles. It's well worth a read.

This collage is titled 'Signs of Life'. I wanted to include feathers in this collage which then gave it a Native American vibe. With March the harbinger of Spring I thought of the icy creeks thawing and beginning to run again and the bears waking from hibernation. The bear is the Native American heartline symbol which is the breath of life. The three feathers in the circle is my own symbol for family as are the three turquoise circles. This is what it means to me. However someone else could see something entirely different and that's fine. It's wonderful actually.

Origami Butterflies

While I've been working on my latest collage another idea popped into my head for the next and I want it to involve butterflies. I found the best video on Youtube demoing origami butterflies so thought I'd share.

I didn't have any origami paper so I used a sheet of Canson drawing paper. It seemed to be the closest in weight to what was used in the video. I tried making 3-4 different sized butterflies and was surprised that the larger b-flies didn't want to stay folded as well as the smaller versions. I resorted to using bulldog clips in hopes they can be persuaded to comply. I'll let you know how that turns out.

New Collage & Crystalline Paper

May I present 'A Walk in the Woods', my latest collage. This was created with homemade collage papers, found objects, various inks, acrylic paint and charcoal pencil. Really, I'm having way too much fun with collages. Why didn't I explore this sooner. Ah well, no regrets. I've found that things  come to us when we are ready and not before. At this point I've got knowledge of several mediums to bring to the party so it's a distinct advantage. For all the collage artists I follow no one seems familiar with alcohol ink. I'm truly surprised at this.

Referring to my last post, I did go looking for the video demo showing how to stain tissue paper but still could not find it. However I did find videos showing how to create crystalline paper. Lo and behold it's the same thing. There are a few differences. I used gloss medium, not gel gloss which is much thicker and I only coated one side. I also applied my acrylic paint right along with the gloss medium. I used garbage bags rather than freezer paper to work on and let the tissue dry. It's really worth the effort. The result is much like stained glass.

Here's a sample of my results so you can see the effect.