A Little piece of Heaven

The Fun Friday Challenge at ECS this week was to use the image of this vintage baby girl, and this is what I came up with.
It is of course titled "A Little Piece of Heaven" because she is a princess and holding a chocolate cupcake, which is, her little piece of heaven.
The background was an experiment. I layered pieces from a collage sheet all over my paper with gel medium, followed by a coat of gesso. I didn't like how it looked so I sanded some areas lightly after it was dry, then I colored over it with a dk pink watercolor pencil, not too heavy, then wet it with a brush. After that was dry, I used two different stamps with my walnut ink pad. I really like how it turned out :)
I glued it onto a piece of brown cardstock just for some contrast and I am going to use it to make a greeting card now.

Altered Halloween Tin

I love creating these little altered tins, although I say that now because I have only made a few :)

This one I spray painted black for the Halloween theme, and I just happened to have some tiny Pudka or Putka Pods (not sure of the spelling) to use for little pumpkins.

I am so grateful for all I have learned from other bloggers in the mixed media and altered art community, and from what I have learned through a lot of Somerset magazines, that I wanted to give back, so if you are a beginner to it all like me, check our my very first tutorial on how I make one of these little tins over at the Play, Create, Share, Inspire blog. I have shown one of my Fairy tins as an example, but you can do so many things with these tins, just use your imagination :)

Taking Flight with Kelly Rae Roberts

I am sooooo excited about this amazing book which arrived just today in the mail. It was just released in Canada online at Chapters. I had pre ordered it and was thrilled when I got an email saying it was being shipped :)
I just love the art work of Kelly Rae Roberts after first seeing a featured article on this very soulful lady in Cloth , Paper, Scissors magazine, now I have this beautiful book to be inspired and to learn from.

I must tell you the colors of the book are beautiful, each page is beautifully designed and Kelly is also a great writer, she has chapters where she talks about letting go of our fears when it comes to art and other things to be inspired by. There are pages with beautiful quotes, and pages called "Winged Thoughts" where there are questions and spaces for us to write our answers. It is not any old work book to follow, even though the projects and photos of each step are very detailed, it is a book which helps you go inside to your creative spirit and learn a lot about yourself. My kind of book , that's for sure.

Kelly even has 5 other featured artist's in her book sharing their own techniques. WOW, this is a dream book for me and being who I am I feel it has come to me at the perfect time in my life, a time when I am growing so much spiritually and creatively.

I love the name of the book too "Taking Flight. Inspiration and techniques to give your Creative Spirit wings".

My first online class is starting on Monday too at Altered Diva's. I am taking her Painting Stylized Faces class and hope to learn a lot and create my very own character. I have never drawn freehand before. I have drawn in a graphics program in the past and did well at that, I have painted from patterns years ago in those country folk art painting books, but this is all so new and exciting to me. Man, life is good :)

I just had to blog about this amazing book right away because I have no one else that may even remotely be excited about it like I am. I showed my hubby tonight and he was " awww that's nice", know what I mean? He has always known me as creative too and is always proud of my work but he still doesn't get how much it really excites me to learn new things.

Thanks for listening, it is so hard to believe that in less than a year I have gone from stock piling shabby cottage style fabrics and chenille and sewing pretty things, to this mixed media and altered art, but hey, I am just going with my creative flow here :)

Have a great night, maybe an art filled night, and lest we not forget, let us all pray for the victims and families, and everyone affected by the 911 tragedy which happened this very day 7 years ago. My heart goes out to you all.

God bless.

Friday Challenge #15

For the Fun Friday Challenge at ECS . Our prompt was to use a house shape and the color red. As you can see I went for dark on this little piece.

"Contented" some fiber art

I just fell in love with the altered image of this beautiful girl, which was created by my friend Gail and can be purchased on a collage sheet at her shop Shabby Cottage Studio. She looks so relaxed and contented to me and the colors are soft and soothing.
I felt like doing something with her in fabric so I printed her on the printer fabric, then I rememberd some wool roving I had in shades of blues and mauves, so I needle felted on a piece of felt for the background. No, I am not a needle felter but I dabble in anything and everything :)

After I was finished adding all the embellishments, vintage doily, vintage buttons and some fibers that have been sitting in the drawer for years, I decided just to hand stitch the piece onto the dark purple wool felt to make it pop out more. I think it worked.
I feel great when I get to use up some of my old stash too, I bought a ton of roving and wool felt over a year ago thinking I would like to get in to the needle felting, but it got put aside, soon after, yeahhhh, now I found a use for it :)

I didn't have any time at all to get in my studio last week because we had hardwood put in some of the rooms here, so the guys were here two days, lots of dust and cleaning up to do, I also put my back out, so I couldn't sit for long, or stand either ,and then there was the holiday weekend and my daughter was here visiting, so yesterday I decided to spend the entire day and just create whatever I felt like. "Felt"... get it? wahhhhhh bad joke.
Now I have some challenges to work on , so will be back to share those later this week. Please click on the photo and see it full size, it looks so much better. I took this picture outside this morning on a white background but it looks almost blue to me. I think I need to learn how to use my camera better :)

Hope you can find some alone time today and be creative, have a good one.
Lynn