March 8, 2016 ~ A Walk in the Woods - Art Journal

"The person who knows how to laugh at himself 
will never cease to be amused."
~Shirley McLaine

A Walk in the Woods

Genie Happily Walk Home after Her Day at School

I grew in the city and always wanted to live in the country in a house way back off the beaten path. Before Buddy and I were married I did rent a place off the beaten path with both indoor plumbing and an outdoor privy, and a spring well. Well, I finally got my dream 37 years ago, but we are living on a 10 acre not-used-as-a-farm-farm that unfortunately happens to be on a main road. So, in my picture I pretended I was living back in the woods. Here I am skipping (as a chid I was always skipping everywhere I went)  home after school...my books in my little basket (the basket reminds me of the little basket I had on my tricycle).  As you can see, I am very happy and cannot wait to see my Mom and have my usual milk and cookies. 

I have just begun using distress inks. I did not even know about them until I started reading other girls' blogs where they said they had used them. This is one of my first attempts working with this new medium. Using the inks was really difficult at first - even after watching lots of You Tube presentations - but it is getting a tiny bit easier and I am getting a wee bit better at not having the inks ending up so dark. It's been a fun experience, but I always enjoy learning something new. Each day I look forward to experimenting with them hoping I will finally come up with something of which I am really happy about.

Below are some changes I made to my picture using PSE 11.

I love this one. I t makes me think I was at a friend's house and was skipping home after the sun went down. My mother had turned on the lights so I would not trip and fall of the path.

I am linking my post today with Art Journal Journey.

The prompt was "Into the Woods".

February 18, 016 ~ The Music of Love

Blogger has given me nothing but trouble today. To create this post has taken hours. It would not accept my pictures, and then after I finally got them to post I was left with these little boxes. I moved the pictures around in order to delete hoping they would go away, but NO luck.When I got up this morning it had printed my journal page five or six times at full size all over the post as well as the drawing of my granddaughter. I have deleted all of those and hope it is working correctly now.

This is another of my art journal pages.
I made an attempt at using watercolors, but it leaves a lot to be desired.
I have a long ways to go. It looks easy, but it's not!
I used watercolor paper that I pasted into my journal, watercolors, stamping,
pen and ink, cut and paste, and embossing. I intentionally scraped off some
of the embossing because I was trying to give the piece an aged appearance.

I am participating in the Creative Artiste-Mixed Media Challenge,

the  Lunagirl February Challenge, and  Art Journal Journey Monthly.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Here is another shot of eloise and Sage sketching.
Of course, they are watching TV. I have them trained to watch 
House and Garden Channel with the Property Brothers and Fixer Upper.

This pen and ink was done by Eloise this weekend at age 10.
It is all freehand. 
It looks like she inherited her grandfather’s and dad’s art talents.

February 17, 2016 ~ If Music Be the Food of Love ~ Art Journal Journey

This post is linked with The Art Journal Journey.

This piece is made up of multiple layers combined in PSE 9 - my favorite. The girl with the violin was a free stock photo from the internet and the two textures I used were “Music” from the Internet and Kim Klaassen’s Doodles and Stitches. I used “hard light” to mix with the colors.