It's been a scrambled week...

...and I feel like I've accomplished little in the studio.  I did manage to mangle the last length of painted cheesecloth into a tall vase, with mixed results.

While I do like the colour and shape of the vase (it's about 8 1/2" tall with a 9" flare at the top), the challenges of getting the vase out of the protective plastic around the glass without tearing the cheesecloth were legion, and I may need to leave the vase in there for strength and support.

I did manage to get started on adding greenery to the vases on the Tracy Verdugo Playful Painter lesson, and will likely do more on that this week...there are so many possibilities.

 

I've done a few more collages in my mini journal, and realize there are only six more to do in this final signature  That means it won't be too long before I can go back and start adding embellishments in odd bits of time.  This first one is much quieter than my norm.

I always love seeing these painted dryer sheet backgrounds - the texture just makes me happy.

And of course, I can't help but enjoy the colour on this one.

I'm also putting together a 'Pokemon Poster Kit' for my grandson's birthday on Saturday.  We'll be heading over the pass for a day trip, and I've got my fingers crossed that the larch have started to turn colour.  It's one of my favourite drives when the gold burns against the green.

Happy week to you - may your autumn be as colourful as you desire!  

 

Am I done...

...making papers for the Layer by Layer Demo Days?  Maybe.  With upwards of 30+ papers, possibility of hundreds of combinations, there's more information than my brain seems to be able to hold.  🤯

I painted solid(ish) papers,

painted or printed black on white,

created sheets for the first lesson, and then did the suggested 'photocopy chop and smash option' (my wordage, not hers),

and tested it for a border.  If the photocopies were better, I'd likely glue this one down as I find it rather mesmerizing. 

I took a trip to the dark side, printing on black paper,

on semi-transparent papers, 

and created some wildly painted/printed ones as well. 

I've now got a stash of really interesting shapes,

that I could play with for weeks.

I've started auditioning them just for fun,

and I'm pretty sure this could go on for months and months before I secured any of them to paper.  

Somewhere in there, I did the next layer on the Playful Painting lesson from Tracy Verdugo.  It's a long way from done yet, as 'somebody' needs to put some foliage in those vases. And I'm sure there's a lot more Tracy Verdugo fun to be had in that course.

I sure hope you're having fun in your part of the world, and are as bemused with possibilities as I am.  Nothing beats a creative brain on the run, does it?  

It's madness, I tell you....

...total madness.  I'm always pressed for time in the studio (and isn't that true of all artists?), and yet I signed up for a teaser classs related to Layer by Layer  with Jane Monteith. So I've been scrambling to even watch the videos, never mind actually try them.  The full course will have to wait, I suspect!  ;-) 

That's why my studio floor looks like this:

We started with monotone magic play in the first lesson, creating cutouts and playing with them.

From then on to mark-making in the same lesson, and that's always one of my favourite things to do.

I admit that I am less able with a paintbrush than I am with any kind of writing stick implement,

but I enjoyed the process enormously regardless.

I particularly like this wonky piece of marks.

We moved onto colour in lesson two, and I've barely gotten started.  Given that we're working on a gel plate, that's really surprising.  I've a need to play both with a new palette and with different ways of  playing with the plate, so there will be some hours involved here, I suspect.

I have a pile of scraps, now some of the overpainted, that will definitely come into play in the third lesson, which is about composition.

Already I can tell it will be endlessly entertaining,

and, like Alice, it will be down the rabbit hole for a very long time.  Feel free to click on the link in the top paragraph, and learn more about the full course.  Insanity enjoys company, you know, and when I take it, I'd love to have you around for the ride!  

You'll think...

 ...that I've finally lost my other mind.  I'm back into the mini travel journal, and decided for these last two signatures, I'd set myself some crazy parameters and restrict myself to using what's in one drawer of my rolling storages for each mini collage.  With 15 drawers, how could it go wrong?  

Images are all approximately 3 1/2" high by 2 1/8" wide.

One drawer had layers of peeled bark from a tree somewhere in the world - can't remember where it came from, but it was most unusual.   The other 90% of the drawer was filled with metal findings, most of which emigrated here from South Africa with a friend of mine.  

Another drawer was chockablock full of painted (and as-yet-to-be-painted) dryer sheets in such a range of colours it amazed me.  I want to play more from this one.

A tiny deck of cards and some black gessoed embellishments were the sole occupants of the next drawer.  Somehow the gears seemed to be a good fit with this long-nosed Joker.

 

Another drawer had a huge range of oddments including webbing in various sizes and colours, and some puzzle pieces that seemed to call out to me.

The next drawer nearly did me in, holding only metallic hair foils in bright colours, and some near-dried-out Pebeo Cern Relief.  It was a huge challenge using every hand muscle I owned to get some scribbling done on this.  While it appears to be finished, it'll be a while before it's dried and the book can be closed on it.  ;-) 

A drawer full of  'painted' mop-up paper towels was another one that had me salivating.  More fun to be had in here, I'd say.

It's always fun to find forgotten bits of things - this roll of black relief flowers/leaves is so pretty and seemed a perfect pairing with the fanciful feathers nearby.

I also managed to get much further on grandson Owen's Dreaming Pikachu birthday painting.  For those of you who are Pokemon-challenged, this character recharges while sleeping and uses all that electrical energy for good.

And I'll leave you with a couple of last-days-of-summer images.

I hope you've had a great week, and are looking forward to autumn in your area.  Happy creating, all!