Summer of Color Week #3

Well here it is Sunday and I had not worked on my choice for the Summer of Color challenge. This week it is LIME GREEN and PURPLE! I do love these colors but have not done much with them together. And as you may have read in the last post, this week has been a busy although non-arty week for me.

So what better place to look for purple and green than in my garden... granted it has been over 100 degrees lately and a lot of flowers are very dead and wilted, but I did find these 2 purple lovelies this morning.

My lovely foxgloves are in full bloom:

And what is left of my hollyhock, which had a very poor showing this year:

Perhaps I will play with those photos in Photoshop Elements 11 this next week when I teach myself about filters and image manipulations...

Linked to:
Summer of Color Week #3

Nothing to do with art this week...

I have been attempting to keep my blog geared towards my arting attempts but this last week I have been so side-tracked by other things that I have done no art! Well having temps over 100 degrees doesn't help either... I am not known for enjoying Sacramento in the summers!

But what I have been doing has been more computer related:

• learning new programs (Photoshop Elements 11).
• finding new online tools (Trello and Workflowy both sort of like Pinterest but for online to-do lists, trying to see which one works best for me.
• trying out Instapaper, a sort of online bulletin board for articles to go back to -- easier than the bookmarks in the browser because it doesn't matter which browser or computer you use).
• transferring my blogs to Feedly now that Google Reader is defunct and catching up with the numerous blogs I lose track with. You need to use Firefox or Chrome with Feedly however as it does not support Internet Explorer.

And then sweltering under the heat of Sacramento, my older car AC gave out last week! It was going to cost nearly $1500 to repair and since my car is no longer even made (Saturn), each time I need a repair it gets more and more expensive. Since it was a 14 year old car I figured it was time to get another one. I thought about a Prius since I wanted a hybrid, then also tried the Camry hybrid and that one won me over! So I am now the owner of a nice new Toyota Camry Hybrid! (And it has great AC!)

So I guess it is now time to get back to doing some art!

Paste Papers...

On Sunday I met up with my friend Leslie and we went to Maria's in Fremont for an art play day. This time we got messy making paste papers and we had a blast! Leslie has already posted about it HERE and posted a ton of photos from our day but of course I have more photos to show as well!

We got to play in this wonderful studio space (thank you Maria!) with lots of room to spread out and make the mess we wanted to make...

With lots of room for our papers to dry...

And yes there was a slight breeze so sometimes we had to chase after our papers!

And finally we laid them all out to see what we had done -- TONS of papers made and equally as many laughs!We used art paste, acrylic paints, stencils, marking tools like combs and other things to make textures, and anything we could think of!

And these are most of the ones I did. I had a couple more still outside drying and a few experiments in my journal as well.

Summer of Color Week #2

Well it was a lazy summer's day and I was listening to some Taj Mahal... and finally got my entry finished for the Summer of Color Week #2 challenge! I could probably do a lot more doodling and maybe I will later but I wanted to get this one in before I go to my art play day tomorrow in Fremont. More about that after it happens, but it promises to be another fun day in Fremont making paste papers this time!

So remember, this week's challenge was to use orange and hot pink. I already showed you my gelli prints from the other morning. Next I cut a bunch of circles from some of the prints on deli paper, stamped letters on other parts of the gelli prints, and glued them all down. Then I did a bit of doodling around everything and added a little more color. I didn't want to get off the color palette too much this time so I limited my additional colors to mostly pinks and oranges. I love the turquoise background, which is color over another collaged page that wasn't going where I wanted it to go.

Linked to:
Summer of Color 2013
Art Journal Every Day
Mandarin Orange Monday
Paint Party Friday

Summer of Color Week #2 Gelli print prep...

This week for the Summer of Color challenge (orange and hot pink for this week) I thought I would start earlier and actually USE the gelli prints I make for it...

So this morning I started gelli printing some papers to use for collage or a journal page. Here are some of the prints. I have discovered my camera doesn't want to give me as bright colors as the real thing, as well as making the photos all have a more yellowing tinge even though I am using fluorescent lights and not regular light bulbs. I am sure there must be a setting on my camera for that but I have to figure that out once I download the manual since I no longer have any documentation (it's an old Panasonic Lumix). There really IS some hot pink in there!

Here are some closeups:

and some music and old book pages too:

Now I have a few days to make something for the challenge and will post it here by the deadline on Sunday!

Linked to:

Creative Every Day
Carolyn Dube's Colorful Gelli Party
Pink Saturday

WOYWW

Well my workdesk is a big mess today! Partly with things I haven't put away yet from my trip, and partly from some spur of the moment ideas I had to do (like yesterday afternoon making a page with the current colors of paint I am drawn to). There is a new lavender eye pillow for yoga class (they smell so good at the studio I thought I would get my own to also have at home). And the usual newsprint paper for under my work that always ends up so brightly colored from gelli print brayers, Oh and some buttons I want to sort through to give to my sister to make button fairies.

Linked to: WOYWW

Owl...

Andy found this owl to put out by the fig tree in hopes to scare off the birds long enough for me to get a fig this year... we shall see!

My big question is why I couldn't share this Instagram photo directly to this blog... when I try from my phone I get a link on the blog instead of the photo. Must do some Google exploring about this I think. Any ideas out there?

Puffin Fabric!

Not only is it PUFFINS (my favorite bird!) but also orange and blue! Just in time for another Monday link-up for Mandarin Orange Monday and Blue Monday (links below)!

When I was visiting my friend in Anchorage last week we went downtown to some arty places, and among them was a cool fabric store called The Quilted Raven. It was there I found this amazingly cute puffin fabric! I had to get a fat quarter just to have it, with no idea of course what to make with it yet... it was just too cute to pass up!

Linked to:
Mandarin Orange Monday
Blue Monday

Summer of Color Week #1

Getting this one in under the wire here! I had forgotten the entry had to be posted by noon on Sundays so since I am not quite back to doing art (as in painting) yet I decided to make a few background gelli prints from this week's colors (which happen to be among my total favorites!): citron and turquoise.

So at 9:15 am I dashed out my gelli plate and quickly made a few deli paper prints -- one can never have too many deli gelli prints right?

I won't worry about what to do with them now, but I have a feeling a few of them might end up in a new painting idea I have... more later!

Linked to:

Summer of Color
Colorful Gelli Print Party
Inspire Me Monday

Home from Alaska...

I am home from this...

Now gotta upload my other photos and get back to the computer! Took a nice week off, didn't even work in that cute art journal after all! I may get back to it and put in some Alaska stuff but when I was there, we were so busy having fun I didn't even have time for the journal! That's what happens when you have a couple of decades of news to catch up on!

Figuring out what art supplies to take...

And WOYWW for this week.

THAT is always the hardest part of a trip for me. The clothes are generally easy but figuring out which art supplies to take often takes a lot more thought and time. Oh, didn't I mention it? I am going to Alaska to visit my friend Evie and her family. Since I will only be gone for a week and want to travel light I won't take too much.

I am starting a Moelskine journal for this trip. Never used one of those before but I have had this journal for years and never used it. It is just the right size for a week's trip to Alaska!

This is how I bring my washi tapes when I travel. Not the big case, that is how I store them here. For traveling I lay out what I think I might want to use (based on the colors in my head the moment I am packing) and then lay them out on a sheet protector, both sides. Light and easy, keeps the sticky going, and I can use the sheet protector for collage scraps on the way.

Then I will take a small bunch of gelli printed deli and other papers so I have some backgrounds and collage fodder. I plan on using the ephemera from the trip as the rest of my collage fodder.

And here are the supplies I narrowed it down to (late last night). You can see I did a pen test in the Moleskine to make sure this time anyway I was taking pens that would not bleed through. The copic and the regular Sharpie bled through so not taking any of those.

All that stuff amazingly fits into this little bag. Not sure where the bag is from either as I have had it a long time. Maybe I got it from Jet Pens, but not sure.

And finally it all closed into this. The bag with the supplies is actually larger than the journal! But it will be just the right amount of stuff to have in my carry on bag for the lay-overs on the trip and when I am there.

Leaving tomorrow and going to test out using Instagram for the trip... this will be a first for me as I am an Instagram newbie! My name there is rhozza. Guess there were too many Rhondas already and my favorite art name rhoz was already taken. Feel free to follow me there!

Linked to:

Ruby Tuesday2
Colorful Gelli Print Party
WOYWW (What's on Your Workdesk Wednesday)

Another glue book page...

Still not too sure what I will do with this gluebook but here is another page in it. For me, sometimes just taking a mindless few moments to glue things in a book without thinking of placement or topic or patters is a sort of art-yoga-zen type thing. So in time for Artsyville's Glue It Tuesday, here is another page!

Here are my other pages so far.

Kaleidoscopes...

It all started when I saw what was happening on Orange Esmeralda's blog and her recent kaleidoscopes. THAT got me to thinking and checking out my Paint Shop Pro program to see if it made kaleidoscopes too and [insert happy feet dance here] it does!!
So this afternoon I played. Took snippets of some of my photos and made various patterns and kaleidoscopes from them. I could have gone on and on... what fun!
For this first one I used the lotus painting I blogged about yesterday.

I decided I needed to make the photos square to start with so the rest I took square snippets of other photos I had and then made the kaledioscopes and a few other patterns.
I have them all on my Flickr page but here are a couple just to show the variety!
From one of my Roben-Marie pages:

Then I tried one of my stencil design photos to see if the blue and white contrast would make an interesting kaleidoscope and a cool pattern:
Then I took a bit of a painting I have been working on:
And made a few different kaleidoscopes by adjusting the numbers of points and angles in the program:

And of course I just had to try this out on one of my gelli prints!

Oh I could play with this program all day!!! Oh wait, I did! LOL Well it gives me a lot of possibilities for cool patterns and pages to print out to use in my art journals to be sure!
Linked to the wonderful colorful blogs here:
Mandarin Orange Monday
June Colorful Gelli Party
Blue Monday
Monday Mellow Yellows
Pink Saturday
Inspire Me Monday
Create Everyday

First day of Summer Vacation...

It's finally here!

Thinking of my intentions for the summer...

• a couple of short trips
• some house and computer reorganization
• eating what works for my body & remembering to take my vitamins
• yoga and other movement
• working on some unfinished projects
• learning some new things (how to make and edit a video) 

And of course...  time for art!

Finally finished this painting, started a month or so ago. It kept changing from one thing to another so I never took photos or blogged about it. But it is done now. Not sure it at all looks like a lotus flower but that is what I am calling it! Was also inspired by the Intuitive Painting idea.

Linked to: Paint Party Friday