Weekly Challenges & more Artsy Meanderings

Diva Challenge #353

Heart String Zendala

Well...I went completely rogue on this challenge. I don't have zendalas and knowing that we were in for the last of Laura's heart string challenges I had already headed down to my cafe with a couple of eco-printed papers to find out what the challenge would be, hoping that I could make it work if I translated hearts into leaves.

Of course, I could have gotten the challenge at home and found something I could cut into a zendala but where's the fun in that? It's sort of my thing to wait until I have my coffee before opening up the Monday challenges and get going. I used water soluble Staedtler Triplus fineliners and gave the whole thing a spritz of water after I got all the line work done.

Joey#205/IAST#232 

Duo Challenge

Halfway through this I realized I'd forgotten one of my purposes of these pages is to introduce new patterns to my repertoire once I get the required patterns in place. I find I rely too much on the Fescu thing as well as my habit of using Sandswirl and Crescent Moon all the time. Fortunately I stopped myself, did a quick scan over some Square One postings, found Meshmerize and carried forth. This page did not come together for me at all...until I shaded. 

Here's one of the pages in my multi-media journal using stuff from my travel memento box and a couple of zentangle tiles from my "Dud" pile. There are postcards, Paris metro tickets, train schedules and museum entry tickets embedded on the page before gessoing and painting over them. It was so much fun creating this page and reliving my days wandering around one of my favorite cities.

DIY journal

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Thanks so much for stopping by. Your thoughtful and generous comments delight and inspire me;-)

Weekly Challenges and other artsy meanderings...

Diva Challenge #352

Nestled Heart String

I was really hoping to be done with hearts, though I knew The Diva had hearts planned for the month. Fortunately, I was able to make use of this watercolor page in my current DIY art journal. I'd set this up quite awhile ago. It's funny because I could see a heart at the heart of it when I was looking for inspiration for this challenge, and now I see a flower.

Anyhoo, I started this off boldly with a brush pen. I left the center for last.

Watercolor start

Joey's Weekly Challenge #204

&

It's a String Thing Challenge #231

This was a tough one and it took forever! I loved the Joey string idea. I tweaked it a little because it reminded of the stacked string tiles that I was fixated on for awhile. It's a new series of "Finish my Tile" starts. I've turned everything on an angle  and started with a couple of wavy horizontal lines and placing Hibred on the bottom and top, before leaving it to await the next part of the challenge.

I was happy to see Golven among Adele's choices. I love that pattern and it was a perfect fit into Joey's string. Sandswirl is a fave and Barney was new to me. I did a deconstructed version of it and then added a few other faves for fun.

Other artsy meanderings:

exploring my new set of Daniel Smith watercolors

inspired by this video

Leaf practice

More fun in the DIY art journal ...

Drippy circles

inspired by this video

Multi Media Art Journal

inspired by Maremi Small Art

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Thanks so much for stopping by. Your thoughtful and generous comments delight and inspire me!

Weekly Challenges and other artsy meanderings...

Diva Challenge #351

"Heart of a Champion"

Hearts and the Olympics

Happy Valentines Day my friends! Those of you who've been visiting my blog for a while know that I'm not a hearts and flowers kind of gal and I tend to take a lot of artistic license when it comes to any sort of holiday themes the challenges might invoke...hence my holiday default into the Cosmic Garden. 

It took me a while to let this one percolate but when I looked through my eco-printed papers, I saw a cat's paw holding a bouquet of flowers in the imprint of this one and though I backed off from anything too literal, I thought PERFECT! a Valentine from me and Aimee;-)

I've been doing a lot of watercolor this week and was inspired by a Maremi Small Art video about breaking blank pages:

Heart of a Champion

take two

dripping heart garden in my
"Fearless & Fun" DIY art journal

Joey's Weekly Challenge #203
&
 It's a String Thing Challenge #230
Duo-Challenge

This one almost did me in with all the hearts. I started with the 3 corners of "Eddyper" for Joey's challenge on Tuesday morning before I went to work. Getting to the String Thing challenge can be tricky for me because it's published so late on Tuesday, I can't get to it until Wednesday morning and I like to get my blog post up Wednesday morning...so there's that. It's one of the reasons I've let IAST slip from my practice in the past. I can be a little weird with challenges sometimes, because if it doesn't gel with me right away and I've got other projects going on, I won't force it and I'll move on.

Other artsy stuff:

A short while back, I took the plunge and bought the starter set of Daniel Smith watercolors with a Blick coupon. I added a couple more tubes this week and did a "survey" of all of my watercolor sets whilst practicing my leaves and flowers following along with several YouTube videos:

Daniel Smith blues

inspired by Studio Jess

Roses and Ranunculas

inspired by Authentic Frannie

this one's my favorite

"Put that sticky thing away and give me my lubbins"

Thanks so much for stopping by! Your thoughtful and generous comments delight and inspire me;-)

Weekly Challenges and other stuff...

Diva Challenge #350

Heartstring & "Rimana"

Well, it's that time of year for all of the hearts and flowers and reds and pinks...all that stuff that I avoid like the plague. I was gonna go rogue and ignore the string part of the challenge. "Rimana" is this weeks Use My Tangle part of the challenge and I knew right away that it would grow quite nicely in my cosmic garden. I just had to adapt it a little. I've been inspired again by Margaret Bremner's latest series of eco-printed ZIA's and found a suitable starter:

It seems quite obvious now but didn't even see the heart string until I started penciling in the leaf outlines, so it all worked out just fine;-) Instead of starting with the stem of Rimana, I placed  the bulbs first. I love how this turned out!

Joey's Weekly Challenge #202

&

It's a String Thing Challenge #229

It's my 3rd week of combining these two challenges and I'm really liking the challenge on top of the two challenges so far. It goes off-the-rails many times throughout but I manage to rein it back in and finish with something cool. 

I started Joey's challenge to use Knightsbridge (a fave) within Tangle Patterns string #91. Without thinking too much, I've been trying to lay in the Joey string with an idea of how it might be able to transition into the IAST piece. I do this blindly since I don't know what the IAST challenge will be when I start this, hence the triple challenge;-) 

I stopped after drawing Knightsbridge and the top portion of Mookas and Fescus. Once IAST appeared I married the two strings and then moved back and forth to balance the piece. 

As for other stuff I've been up to...week's back I determined that my art goal would be to "Spend less time watching and more time doing". I've only partially succeeded. In my search for inspiration on ways to fill my current DIY art journal, I stumbled across a YouTube channel called Maremi's Small Art. Marta, the artist, creates mixed media journal pages amongst other things. Well, I've spent the last two weeks binge watching her assemble what at first appears to be hot mess after hot mess of collaging, stamping, stenciling, painting, gluing, gessoing and painting some more...into finished pieces of quite stunning art. This video on using coffee and tea is what sucked me in. Click it at your own risk. Marta is delightful, she's a Polish Bob Ross;-)

This happened in conjunction with my starting a Feng Shui cleaning purge. I'd come across a box of travel mementos...

 and well...this happened:

works-in-progess

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Thanks so much for stopping by! Your thoughtful and generous comments delight and inspire me;-)