2012 Quotes by Madi & more Sketchbook pages

Christmas break was great. Madi and I spent lots of time in the studio creating and making a wonderful mess. Here are a few pages from my Sketchbook and the new 2012 Quotes by Madi. Enjoy!

We also spent time finishing up some of the lessons from 21 Secrets. One of my favorites was Child Play by Alma Stoller. The idea was to turn old magazine pages into awesome collage pages. Here are a few I made:

I enjoyed the class so much I signed up for the new 21 Secrets that starts this April! Here's the link if you'd like to join us. 21 Secrets: An Art Journal Playground

I also started the spectacular Life Book class this week that I was lucky enough to win over at Dirty Footprints Studio. We started working on a 3/4 portrait "Goddess" page. Madi is working on it with me too. I'll post the photos when we finish our pages.

Wishing you a creative day!

I Won! I Won! I Won!

I am so excited! I won a free Registration to the online Art Class Life Book! Connie from Dirty Footprints Studio blog had a contest last week for the freebie & my comment was picked!!! The class looks like so much fun, pop over to Willowing Arts and take a look at all the details.  Registration for this fun class just started this month. 

Here's a little information that I found on the website:

"What's Life Book All About?

Life Book is a year long course organized by Tamara Laporte (Willowing Arts) starting on 1st January 2012.

The idea of the course is that participants will be creating one or more mixed media pages each month which by the end of the year they will bind together in one big book (likely to be Japanese stab-bound). The theme of the course, as the title suggests, is a celebration and honouring of self. Each month will have a different self- celebration/ honouring theme which will be worked through in the page(s) with all sorts of mixed media techniques and self-healing/ self-development exercises.

By the end of the year you will have a gorgeous mixed media art journal (or Life Book) which captures your journey, growth and development in 2012!"

I am currently enrolled in another wonderful mixed media class called 21 Secrets.  I just spent a few hours on Friday night reviewing a drawing lesson from the fantastic teacher, Jane Davenport. To find out more about Jane read my Artist of the Month post for March.

Here are a few of my sketches from my drawing session with Jane.

I love drawing faces. There is something so magical about them. I am really looking forward to next years new art class Life Book!

"Exciting things are also exciting for others." by Madi

Artist Playtime

Today was a great day. It started off with my daughter and I working (playing) on the Art of Silliness Class that I am taking with Carla Sonheim. She is the author of the wonderful book I mentioned in an earlier post. Well, the class is even more fun! There is a new worksheet to complete each day. The class is all about being silly in your artwork and I have to say we are being silly.

One worksheet the I found particularly entertaining involved drawing creatures from random squiggle lines. Here is the blank worksheet:

 Here is my interpretation of the meaning behind these squiggle lines:

 Here is my daughter's interpretation:

And here is my son's interpretation:

What a fun class! I highly recommend it just for the shear joy of laughing out loud. It's also really fun to check out what all of the other students in the class are creating by looking at the Flicker group photos.

So on to more fun and creativity today. I spent the day with my friend Allison painting, cutting, pasting, drawing and more! We decided to create journal pages using a Somerset Workshop called "Fruits of The Spirit: Lively Layers" from the May/June 2011 issue of Somerset Studio magazine.

It was really fun to do. I have to say it's one of the first projects that involved layering that actually looked layered when the page was complete. Here is my page:

In this last photo you can see one of the really cool techniques of using dye to color a paper towel, accordion folding it, and then sewing it to the page. Here is Allison's page:

I love how the colors Allison used are bold, but at the same time soft and muted. We used an old vintage French text book for the collage portion of the page.

Since I am an on line Ecourse junkie, I thought I'd show you my latest creation from 21 Secrets.  My daughter Madi and I spent mother's day together working on this class called Urban Layer Cake. The instructor's name is Tammy Garcia. Tammy has a great blog called Daisy Yellow a Vivid life with Kids. 

The class explained a process of painting over Fiber Paste using acrylic paints and a credit card. Here is my page:

I love the metallic acrylic paints. I used a embossing heat tool to create the bubbled up look.
Here is Madi's page:

You can really see the metallic paints on her page. She hasn't had the chance to write her words yet. Wonder what she will write? Maybe one of her quotes.

I hope that you enjoyed all of our Art playtime. Hope you find some of your own time to play!

21 Secrets Art Journal Playground Class

I'm so excited! I just signed up for this new class called 21 Secrets an Art Journal playground. I can't wait to get started. There are 21 different teachers all sharing their experience and secrets about drawing, painting and art journaling.

My friend Jane Davenport is one of the teachers. Jane was my March artist of the month if you'd like to read more about her and her amazing work. The class is sponsored by Dirty Footprints Studio. I could definitely get lost on their website, just reading about all the different teachers and visiting their blogs could fill my whole week.

Take a look at the class and see if you'd like to sign up too. Off to the jewelry studio!