After being away...

...the studio play was great fun.  I gathered some bottles of high flow acrylics and a long stretch of watercolour paper.  After protecting the already-splattered floors (why did I bother?), I had a good splash-and-throw time.  

Snippets follow:

Of course, the whole sheet will get more layers of play, so one never knows what will emerge.  Given the size of the paper, I suspect it may be time to start another large panel.  Go big, or go home!

I did manage, as well, to finish my oldest grandson's birthday painting.  He turns 8 this coming month, and is now well and truly into his drumming lessons.  

I suspect that his real-life drums are a bit quieter in colour.  😉

Edit:  I'll be away from my blog for some time (2-4 weeks or as needed), so try to remain majorly creative until I get back, so I can get my fix!!

Happy Halloween to you if you're celebrating that this year...may your spooks send shivers up and down your back and the sweets be perfectly ghoulish!  🐈‍⬛🧟‍♀️🍬👻🎃

I missed it...

...last week, that is.  Somehow I got caught up in the 'loving the fall' and spent a lot of time outdoors and not much in the studio.   I love this photo I took in town.  It feels like autumn is cuddling up to winter growth, don't you think?

I'm making up for the lack of studio time this week, though, and have managed to create some more vegetation on the 'small vases' piece.  

as well as additional playing on the first large vase painting.  I'm pretty sure this one has already named itself 'The Great Escape'.  I'm wondering where those colourful bubbles are heading.

You've asked where the books currently reside, and here's my answer.  The shelves are jam-packed and higgedly-piggedly.  You're quite correct that Something Must Be Done. 

To that end, I've pulled out the smallest of the books and an idea from the creative hat, and intend to make a mini nest/rest for them.  These four little crates are the perfect size to show them off, but I can already see it will take a miracle to make them look like anything akin to a bespoke shelf.  Wish me luck!!

And with Canadian Thanksgiving just passed this last weekend, my creativity also involved cooking, baking, and a glass of something (can wine be creative if one is just drinking it?).  The only photo I have, though, is our colourful cranberries-in-the-making.  

That's it for this week, my friends, and I may be away next week as well.  If the weather permits it, I'm heading to Penticton and Kelowna over five snow-covered passes to visit family.  I've not yet trained the house sitter to do a blog post, so I'll put that on my mental list.  😉  In the meantime, I'm wishing you wonderful weather, magic in your studio and autumn happy days .  

How can it be. . .

. . . October, already? And yet, here we are.  The days are cooling, we've had some rain, and the flower baskets are waning.  It means, of course, that there's likely to be a whole lot more studio time before too long!

I've got all six signatures in the mini travel journal (5" H x 3 1/4" W and 3 1/4" D), after doing the first layers of collage on each of the six of the signatures. With 8 pages in each signature, that's 48 itsy-bitsy-teeny-weeny collages.

The journal is my usual quiet palette (🤣) and by the time I add more layers to each collage, I'm sure they will be, as well.

I enjoyed working on these last collages,

and I expect adding more layers to the others

will be just as much fun.

I also managed to pull out some older experiments, and audition some full-size vase shapes on them.  They'll be fun to get at in the next week or two.

Here's to a playful and creative month for you as we anticipate the cooler weather and a bountiful Thanksgiving (in Canada, that's October 13th).  Happy week to you!

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?