Sometimes Here Sometimes There

A Collage

 

This collage is the only creative thing I did all weekend. I'm honestly not sure how I feel about it. I think my uncertainty stems from this being a very different sort of artwork than that which I'm normally used to and it's simply throwing me off. I've been SO inspired by the collage work of Mark Hearld lately and the other night I just felt driven to get off my bottom and create a collage of my own! So here it is in all of it's maybe possibly glory. I might do more of these if other people like them or if I warm up to this one myself. It's definitely a great way to get through some of the smaller scraps of patterned paper I have on hand! Feel free to let me know what you think of this piece by leaving a comment I could use the feedback!

New Artwork!

Close up taken with Instagram on my iPhone. I LOVE Instagram!!!!

My newest little mermaid is swimming around on an abstract mixed media background! This painting was done on a collaged 16" x 20" stretched canvas. I'm loving this combination of colours!
Notice how all but one of my mermaids so far have had red hair? They're redheads in honour of my own little redhead Elsa.
An acrylic 12" x 12" stretched canvas portrait of my sweet little bunny rabbit Elsa in one of my favorite outfits I've dressed her in so far. I painted her holding her favorite stuffed toy, a little grey monkey.  Obviously this painting will stay with me forever :) The stars are done in metallic gold paint and look super neat when they catch the light!

Another painting made specifically for our home. This one is mixed media on a 16" x 20" stretched canvas. It reads "In this family we PLAY hard DREAM big SMILE often LOVE deeply". I'm going to be adding more inspirational wording to my work in the future.

Welcome Back Scanner!

 
Oh how I missed my dear dear scanner!  It's up and running again after a long and very unfortunate hiatus. Before we moved into our home and while we were living in the waterfront rental in Fortune PEI, our large desktop computer went kaput. Since that time my scanner was residing in a state of constant storage. SO sad! But now, it's back! Which means that not only can I scan things but I can once again make digital artwork out of my hand drawn and painted work.  Today I made the above image using a collage made up of acrylic paint, pen, marking pen, origami paper and paper doilies. I fiddled around with it further on my computer and this is what I came up with. As always, click to enlarge!

The Makeover Collage

I recently came across an 8 x 10 print of an old collage I did (that I've never liked). I thought it would be fun if I could give it a bit of a makeover and improve upon it. So I did! The first photo shows the horrible before and the second photo is the after! SO much better I think! As always, click on the images to enlarge!

 
 BEFORE (above)

 AFTER (Above)

Older Artwork Never Before Seen

Over the weekend Oliver set up my scanner for me and today I got to work scanning a few older works to add to my Flickr photo stream. I thought I'd share a few here! Enjoy :)

A colored pencil sketch I did around Christmas time.

  

A cute colored pencil and marker sketch inspired by my own little bug Liam.

A simple pen drawing of a bird.

 

Mixed-media 8" x 8" collage on canvas board. Dried flowers, antique and vintage paper, acrylic paint and more make this a very busy sort of collage!

 
  This is a mixed media illustration I did on paper.  It's a combination of patterned papers, fabric, colored pencil, acrylic paint, marking pen, pen and paper doily pieces.

 
This is a mixed-media collage on an 8" x 8" canvas board.  Some of the materials used are vintage wallpaper, antique postcards, an antique floral print, vintage seam binding packaging, and even a dried flower I dried a couple years back.

New Artwork and so on and so on

Oh Lord am I tired! Right now I'm staring at my screen forcing my eyes open as wide as I can to try and stop myself from ending up face down on my keyboard. My morning coffee did nothing to wake me up and I'm currently fantasizing about the days when I was able to just go back to bed if I wanted to. One thing I find that does nothing for my energy levels is the dreary white staring back at me from the immense number of windows we have in this house. I love the snow, but I am not fond of when the sky is that horrid bright (but somehow dreary) white haze that is so common in the winter months. I think once I finish my post here I'm going to get right to work on preparing dinner and hopefully being busy will get me going :). Tonight's garlic night and if anyone comes into contact with Oliver and I tomorrow, they WILL be sorry! We only eat garlic on nights when Oliver doesn't have work the next day. Usually Fridays and Saturdays.


So here is the latest in my creative endeavors. Oliver brought home two large wooden plaques from work a while back. They had advertising prints for a plumbing fixture company on them and they were originally headed for the trash. He thought I might be able to do something with them, and I did! I've only used one so far but I like the results enough that I'm looking forward to doing the other one as well. What I did was I glued bits and pieces of scrap fabric (some embroidered and some not) to the surface for a nice textured background. I then painted a couple of coats of white gesso over top and once completely dry I painted it in acrylics. While painting I stopped every now and then to sand various areas and I also added more bit's of floral patterned fabrics and some antique and vintage paper pieces. I did some sketching here and there with pencil and then more paint. The above picture shows the finished product hanging on the living room wall.

These are a combination of Martha Stewart's tissue paper flowers and Pam Garrison's coffee filter garland. The flowery puffs are made from unused brown coffee filters using Martha Stewart's tissue paper flower crafting process.

I found a new (to me) frame from the thrift store to house a pair of matching antique Victorian trade cards featuring birds and flowers. Another happy find at the same thrift store is the yellow enamel broach with a rhinestone center in the bottom right corner of the above picture. So pretty! They're sitting atop the fireplace mantel. The other framed picture of a cottage landscape is an Antique Victorian print I purchased on Ebay some time ago. I was in a picture taking mood today :)

My antique basket trunk from Belgium (above).

New Artwork and Originals on Etsy!

Just a new artwork update this time around! The pink flamingo is a painting I recently finished which is available as an 8x10 print on Etsy. The other pictures are of two 5x7 collages I just finished today. The original collages (not prints) are both available in my Etsy shop HERE. Both collages are priced very low. That's it, for now at least!