The woodsy looks...

The first try was a bit surreal...

This one looked a little closer to real and worked with acrylics added for the little flowers.

This one was my first try at using a credit card edge to make the trees look enough like trees...lol

This is a little 4x6 for practice and came out looking pretty good, so I will frame it, too.

This one I called "Quiet Pond" and was inspired from a pic I found on Pinterest...It is quite large, as it is 11 x 14 Yupo paper.  

Beach Themes....love them

We spend time at the beach in Rhode Island every summer, and at the CT. beaches when we can. 

These yearly trips make for lots of inspiration.   Pushing around the inks to make interesting skies is great fun.  I used liquid mask to make a clean spot to put in the seagull.

The mask idea worked here for the pelican, too.  Really had fun making a vibrant sky and trying to get some reflection in the water.

5 x 7 practice time...

Here is a cluster of small ones I practiced on.  The group I am in has lots of suggestions on what to use to make the various shapes happen.

This one is a scenic attempt...water and sky with a moon.

This is blowing the ink out with a straw to make petals.

Here I tried to make a pond effect and used a credit card to push up the grasses.  Then used a thin brush to make a bit of accent in brown acrylic at the front.

Here I used canned air to push the white up onto the green to give the effect of water hitting the rocks in the foreground.  Rocks made use of the credit card edge again.

This looks so simple now that I have done more complex methods, but it was a good first try at water with waves and foam.

Now the flowers are getting more 'flower-shaped'  

...and this one came out surreal, but pretty cool.

This one has ink for the background, and mettalic gel pens for the dragon fly.  Simple but showing the effect of two mediums used together.

Catching up...again!

I've had a long break from the blog, and a lot has been going on.  I am still doing glass totems, still doing zentangle on plates and paper, still sewing ....BUT I found a new fun thing to play with

ALCOHOL INKS ...  like this

It involves white tile I already had, 91% isophryl alcohol you can by at the pharmacy, and these great alcohol inks in little bottles in so many colors.  

...so I made many sets of fun colors to sell in the shops I am working with...YES I have gotten into The Fantastic Umbrella Factory shop called South County Artisians Loft, down in Charlestown, RI.  

And I am still in a small shop in Old Lyme, Ct.  Then there is a little space in a building that houses many shops, like a mini-mall, in Middletown.  

And I have two local places that are looking good for this year...still trying to see what they might like of my many selections.

I have done a bit of sewing and come up with a cute portable personel mug in a patchwork style case.  Here are a few

I think that might be enough catching up for the moment...See you for more tomorrow.

Recycling at it's prettiest...

I have a fun new project I have been working on lately.  I have to clean out much of our stuff to make an apartment for our daughter who wants to return home from Maryland.  I will then have all four of my children withing walking distance from our house!!

So...on to the cleaning out.  I saw this idea on Pinterest and paid attention to the details of how it worked and thought 'I have tons of plates and glassware and I bet I can do these'  Got the waterproof glue and set to work.  Got a drill to go through glass but that was difficult for me to handle, so I went with the idea of filling a base piece with dirt and rocks before I glued a plate on.  This made for a heavy bottom to keep wind from being a problem.

Then I dug through shelves and boxes, etc and lined up the pieces in order for color and sizing.
I decided that each piece needed at least 3 upright pieces to create enough height.  And the in-between made a layered look in style and color.

I know how to Zentangle, so I used my ink that I used on my Zentangle Plates to add color and design to pick up other piece's color.

I have glass stones, and I have plastic beads, and will probably think of other things to glue on as I go along.

And of course, I know my way to the Goodwill store for anything I might be missing...lol

Judy's Doodle Challenge 20

Posted this plate over on my facebook page and forgot it was one of Judy's challenges.  The thought crossed my mind briefly when I was tracing onto the plate, but by the time I finished it totally slipped away...lol  This is done with a larger tip pen than I like.  I made a mistake when I ordered them, not noticing the size differences.  I did this plate anyway, with simple patterns, as I had started it and didn't want to wait for a new order of pens.

After working with that thick pen, I shifted over to the color pens that had the finer point.  Did a couple fish in the deep blue sea...

A closer view...I will stick with the color til my new black pens arrive----the FINE point ones!!!

Catching up....

I feel like I have deserted my blog lately, as I haven't had time for challenges, and have been in other groups and started my own swap!!  I have some plates to share and a few zentangles... here goes!

This is a medium size plate with my favorite snail, and I learned how to manipulate the ink to cause shading on it.

 Got more involved with the shading on this large plate.  A little trickier to shade larger areas.  This plate also had a raised design in the center and rings raised on the outside edge, so I had to work the design from there.

My little chipmunk kind of goes with the snail plate, but the green is a bit more intense in this work, so when they are next to each other, I'm not sure I like it.


And some tangles....   These are 'Kickstarters' from tanglebucket, who gives us 4 specific tangles to use to kick start our imaginations... Fun!

And a few ATC's that got me going off on a swap of my own.  I am  hoping to get it started by March 1, and have as many as 25 swaps in the group.   So I will be busy...

Postcard Swap

I've been so busy in so many directions, I failed to post my three postcards in the Artist in Blogland Swap.
I left my blog address on the back, but no cards for them to relate to, sorry.  Here they are.....

This one is done with a purple micron 5

With this I threw in some colored pencils and a bit of metallic gel pen

This is blue batik fabric with a gold sun batik, and a cut out gull apliqued on. Machine stitching done in sky and tight double zig-zag on the outside edges and the sun.

As you can see, I chose to make the third one a fabric card.  The swap was mixed media, so I figured I would 'MIX"...   Hope everyone got their cards successfully.  I have just received my second one today. Looking forward to number three.