More Art Journaling for May

May week 2:

Gessoed these pages, then stamped images from an Autumn Leaves set that I just had to have when it came out, oh, 5 years ago, and have NEVER USED! Can't believe that. This was when acrylic stamps were first hitting the market and I found this one especially appealing. Had to have it! Never used it til now. So when I peeled the stamps off of their backing, they were quite gummy. I find that with acrylic stamps that sit before I get around to using them. They are either gummy, or difficult to remove from the backing  -- they often tear. Obviously, if I'm not using them when I first get them, I don't really need them. I have a serious stamp habit.

It was fun to finally use these, even if the image wasn't as dark as I would have liked, due to the gumminess. I used watercolor and my FC Pitt markers to colour the images. The hearts and the journaling were actually done with some new Signo uniball pens I picked up a couple of weeks ago. I like them.

May week 3:

I finished up these pages upon my return from Canada. I left on Tuesday, solo, for my high school's 50th anniversary celebration, and was also there to celebrate my Dad's 75th birthday. Bonus!

I used some bits and pieces from my travels -- business cards, a coaster, piece from a bakery box, a Canada post envelope, baggage tags -- and adhered them with gel medium. Unified them with a light brushing of gesso, sprayed some Adirondack color wash in butterscotch, red pepper, and sunset orange.. The flowers are SU stamps, watercoloured. The letters I journaled inside are outlined with Pitt brush marker, the journaling is the Signo black pen again. A few more dabs of paint and white laundry pen, and done.

And for this week:

My pages in progress. Gessoed and waiting to add these bits that were among the mail waiting for me. Packaging from wool I received for Nicole's online class, and the postcard is an invite to a friend's gallery opening next week. The piece is called OISEAU ROUGE. Isn't it fabulous?! Here's the link to the invite on FB: Carole's Opening   If you're in the Philly area, its next week, First Friday.

Art Journaling for April & May

Traveled to Canada last week, armed with, among other things, a flash drive with these two photos. I had every intention of writing this post while I was there, using my parents' computer. However, the usb port on their computer was loose and wiggly, so those photos came back home the way they went, and never saw the light of day!

Here's what I did the last week of April:

No gesso on these pages. Just watercoloured a background, tried my hand at a face, painted some circles, stamped some elephants (and the word lucky, which was part of the set) and journaled with my FC markers. I have since watched one of Julie's many AJ video clips where she created a face, and I must try her techniques. Many more layers of colour before she added the features. Mine is flat and boring, but it's my first attempt at freehanding with paint, so I'll keep it!

The first week of May:

Two weeks in a row with no gesso?! I'm happy to report that the pages are sturdy enough to stand up to this treatment. This is a Moleskine sketchbook, so I suppose that's why.

I watercoloured the pages blue, cut the pennant shapes from a small BG paper pack, included a photo of the birthday boy with his cookie cake, and the rest is FC markers.  Oh, and the frame stamp around the photo is Autumn Leaves.

The Birthday Boy

Nick and Gaby's birthdays always start with them opening their family gifts when they get up. If it's not on a weekend, they do that before school. And since Nick started high school, that's pretty early. He's out the door by 6:40. So we were up with him, around six, to watch him open his gifties!

Truthfully, I think Nick would just as soon sleep in a bit and do this after school. But right now, I'm sure Gaby wouldn't hear of it. I think she was up before Nick was!

He doesn't look too awake here, does he?!

A Team Canada jersey from Dad.

A Claude Giroux jersey from Gaby. Sensing a theme here?

Big Flyers fan, our boy. And I can tell you for a fact that this is his favourite gift. Giroux is his favourite player. Gaby, knowing that, informed me months ago that she wanted to use her own money to get Nick this jersey. Locally, they're really expensive. But thanks to the wonders of the internet, we were able to find something more affordable, more within Gaby's budget. And Nick loved it!

The birthday boy had his choice of meal and cake. He requested a cookie cake, and home made pizza for supper. 

If you look closely, you'll see that Nick is holding a thermometer in his left hand. While the reading isn't legible in the photo, he was showing us his temperature of over 101 F. Not the way you want to spend your 16th birthday, poor guy! Jess, Nick's girlfriend, left right after dinner, and Nick had a long hot bath and watched the Flyers lose their game 3. Calls from Manon, Nathan and Pier were the highlight of the evening -- fantastic hearing from all of them!

And don't you know, the day after Nick's birthday, I found the files that I was looking for, with the baby and toddler photos that I had wanted to use in my last post.  Couldn't resist -- one more of my sweetie pie!

Too cute!

Happy 16 Nick!!

 Every year, I relive these special days, the night before my children's birthdays. The story of their birth has been told to Nick and Gaby every year on the eve of their day, for as long as they've been old enough to understand. Up to last year, Nick was still interested in sharing it. This year, he was tired, so we didn't spend any time going over the details. He did inform me that he could tell ME the story of his birth, if I was interested! I'm thrilled that he now has a memory of something that he couldn't possibly have recalled on his own!

From this:

(bad scan -- sorry!)

To this: 

(7 year old at the zoo)

To this:

In the blink of an eye. Truly.

What an honour and blessing to have been chosen to be your mother Nick. You make life richer, infinitely better. I am so proud to call you my son. How'd I get to be so lucky?

You rock Nick!

In SO many ways!

Big big big love!



Where Did April Go?

At this time last year I had been diagnosed with breast cancer and was facing surgery, and I still blogged. Actually started a second blog about that journey, which I refer to as my Lemonade Blog Went through chemo and radiation, and still blogged fairly regularly, on both. Finished treatment just before Thanksgiving, have been on tamoxifen for 5 months now, and have really dropped the ball here. The only excuse that I can come up with is that the tamoxifen causes intense hot flashes, day and night, and I don't sleep well anymore. So I find myself being less productive in the evenings, which is when I would usually blog.

And now, May 2nd finds me catching up with posting some art journaling. I've been adding to the Flickr Group fairly regularly, but it's been more than a month since I've shared here.

Starting with March, week 4:

Working on a canvas for Emily's Got Paint class at the same time, I started these pages in a similar  manner, bits of patterned paper lightly gessoed. TP roll circles with acrylic paint,  bubble wrap circles, also with acrylic paint,a birdie and branch punched from scraps of masking taped and painted paper. A small doily touched up with distress ink, a feather from our budgie and a Starbucks gift card take up all of the space that isn't journaling. FC Pitt markers for journaling.

March Week 5 (a couple of months are gonna have a week 5 and this is one of them!):

Sometimes you do a page you don't like and this is one of those times! I was painting the bathroom this week and used the wall colour for the base of my pages.  I used a mask and some spray mist, but can't recall exactly what. The photo is from a day spent with friends I used to work with 14 years ago. I hadn't seen one of them since I left that job, so it was a special day. They were having a girl's week in NYC, and came down my way for the day -- fabulous!! Back to the page, those two patterned pieces are the tops of tissue boxes. I saw them at Target and figured they'd go well in the bathroom, so I stocked up. They were on sale! Journaled with those reliable FC Pitt markers.

April week 1:

Chose pink over my gessoed pages because I had a mammogram this week. All good, thankfully! The quote was one that a friend had recently posted as her FB status. I like it. I coloured the letters with Pitt markers, painted the heart with some water colours, and doodled and journaled with the markers. The red ticket is from the raffle held at our neighborhood 5K, and the card from LLD was included in an order I received that week. Magic wands for the bubs for their birthdays. I love LL's stuff!

April week 2:

Gessoed the pages, folded the book closed when it was still wet and opened it to let it dry with some interesting textures. Green acrylic, and when dry, a CW template sprayed with PP mist. The turtle is from Turtles, one of my steady and favourite snacks of all time! Mmmmmm, I love Turtles. (that was a song featured in a Turtles commercial, back in the day, in Canada) Doodling and journaling with the Pitt markers.

April week 3:

Spring break, so these pages had to be green! The kids were home all week and we enjoyed some down time. Green acrylic over gesso. I stamped several flowers on the pages, stamped a few on cardstock, and watercoloured all. I also added a couple of flowers made using embosslit folders, and a couple that were punched from the cover of a CAbi catalog. I had used Stazon to stamp the images, but after watercolouring, the outlines were muted, so I went over all of the stamped images with a brush Pitt marker. All of the punches, folders and stamps are SU.

Thinking that perhaps I should schedule blogging days, to try to get back on track. We'll see how THAT goes!! I should also get rid of the frozen tree in my blog header and look for something more spring like. Though my Mom said they saw snow it Winnipeg last weekend. In May! Wacky weather everywhere.

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More Art Journaling for March

Catching up with a couple of week's worth of Art Journaling. During the second week of March, I've been doing some painting for Emily's online class, Got Paint. Had this green leftover, so I decided to use it for this week's pages. We were also stamping with paint. That's where the blue flowers came from, and I added the colour with SU watercolour crayons. This was also the week that Starbucks officially introduced their new logo, and the sleeve worked well on the green background, as did the bracelet from Gaby's school's talent show. The Asian lady is part of a glassine bag from Chinese takeout we had for supper Sunday. Coloured her with FC Pitt markers. Used fine black for the journaling.

Should have saved the green for this week, with it being St. Patrick's Day Thursday! Nick and Gaby got into the green, picking up some items at the dollar store to enhance their outfits for school that day.

These pages were first gessoed, then burnt sienna acrylic. I stamped off some colour using the cut out bottom of a styrofoam meat tray. It had a cool grid pattern, so I saved it for something just like this! I also added a bit of blue paint using the same styrofoam 'stamp'. I like the way it looks.

The Chinese Proverb is a quote I was using to make a card for someone special. I still need to practice 'writing with paint' so I made two backgrounds. Just in case. I used textured cardstock and a bamboo background stamp. After the painted words dried, I used a white Chinese laundry pencil, and have Julie to thank for that. She mentioned it in a recent blog post, and I added it to a Dick Blick order I was ready to place. Love it! Thanks Julie!!

I had also made a green background for a birthday card, and used the scraps to punch hearts to make a shamrock to recognize this St. Patrick's Day week. The hands are rubs ons from Dove of the East. Not sure if Dove of the East is still around. I do love these rub ons and should use them more. The little blue leafy piece is punched from paper that I had covered in masking tape and then painted. Another technique from Emily. Studio G mini alpha stamps for the Rita's title and FC Pitt markers for the rest.

And this is the second attempt at the Chinese Proverb, that was made into a card. The only difference between this and the first one is that I used a Pitt marker to write at the bottom, and I added some white scribbles with that wonderful white pencil!

Art Journaling for March

February and March, actually. These are pages I did the week that Julien left. And speaking of Julien, I don't know why the post I wrote about his visit came out so wonky. Everytime I created a subtitle, the first paragraph that followed was blank on the actual post. Not sure why that happened. If anyone has more blogger expertise and might know why, I'd love to know!

For these pages, I used gel medium as per Julie, who recently mentioned using it for collage. It's similar to mod podge but doesn't dry sticky, so I think that will be my go-to product for collaging also. Thanks for that Julie! I attached a ticket that Marc had brought home from his recent travels, and some torn pieces of newspaper. I added colour with Grumbacher transluscent water colours and I like the way the colours looked on the gel medium. I didn't cover the entire page with the gel medium. There was just residue from adhering the pieces and the paint over that residue left an interesting finish. I also used a couple of stamps from ElvieStudio I found Lori through Julie's AJED group and ordered several of her stamps from her etsy shop. I also used some TH stamps on this page. Some FC Pitt pens for colouring and journaling. Done.