SOWING ROSES AROUND THE STUDIO...

My nose and I thank you all for your sweet concern and we are both doing just rosy. It is not serious and I will heal in a few weeks time. The bruising is much more faint than I anticipated and some concealer does the trick quiet well for a trek out in public.

I have been sowing a few roses around the studio. The globes I ordered on Ebay for the new light fixture finally came in and I love them. To me they look like creamy roses blooming out of cut glass bowls...They finish off the fixture nicely. I wish they stood up a little higher out of the bowl but this is the best it gets as far as fit goes. I love their soft creamy glow. When I am working and need more light I can just pop them off so I get pretty and practical all in one, a very rosy solution.I have still been fusing with my window treatments too and decided to add a few vintage millinery roses plucked from an old tattered hat...The rest of the plucked blooms fill a decorative jar...Vintage mink roses drape gracefully from a shelf...
I picked up these great rose covered vintage hat boxes not too long ago and I am using them to hold collage papers, small left over bits in the small one and larger pieces in the other...I have begun working on decor for the sewing wall and added this old iron hat rack with a yellow rose motif just above my sewing area...I love saving flowers I have been given and drying them. I bundled a few roses my husband gave me with some cockscomb my daughter gave me and let them dry, tucking them into a little vintage silk handbag with a dainty hanky, vintage postcard, and a found birds nest nestling a pale blue speckled faux egg...As you can see, I am making very small strides of progress to get the pretty part done in the studio. I so wish I had more time to share and visit with you all here today but duty calls and I must answer. How about I leave you with a pretty thought on friendship and how beautiful I find yours to be...

But friendship is the breathing rose, with sweets in every fold.
-Oliver Wendell Holmes-

And a pretty background I designed that you can use in your artwork...(FREE BACKGROUND IMAGE)

I hope your day is a sweet one!

Many Blessings,
Miss Sandy

GOING NUTS...TUTORIAL INCLUDED!

"There's a very fine line between a groove and a rut; a fine line between eccentrics and people who are just plain nuts."

-Christine Lavin-

Thank you for the feed back on the blogger issue. I have done this post three times and somehow I think I have finally gotten it to work, fingers crossed. Talk about an appropriate post title - Blogger is making me nuts and I didn't even need a tutorial for that! Anyway, lets move on to nuttier issues...

OK, it is official...I have fallen off the deep end, gone around the bend, yes, I have gone certifiably nuts! You know you have been cooped up in the house way too long when you start using snacks from your pantry to craft with. No, I have not been crushing cookies and scattering oats on glue to make scenes on paper nor have I reverted back to my kindergarten days of macaroni necklaces or pasta covered cigar boxes. Although, have mercy, my mother does have a lot of those! No, I went straight for the nuts, pistachio nuts to be exact.

Handy Hubby happens to love those little green gems so I bought him a bag for Valentine's Day. The other evening he was snacking on them and I cracked a few open to taste them. I was holding the shells in my hand ready to toss them in the trash but as I was about to cast them away I noticed how they looked like tiny halves of bird egg shells. And this my friends is always how one of my nutty adventures begins - with an idea.

Instead of throwing them away as most normal people would do, I let the idea brew while I thoroughly washed the shells and lay them out on a paper towel to dry. Handy Hubby meandered into the kitchen to see what was taking me so long to return only to find me standing at the sink with a toothbrush scrubbing away at empty nut shells. Bless his heart, he did not say a word.

(FREE BACKGROUND IMAGE FOR YOUR ART)

After I came back and sat down beside him, he put his arm around me and asked me if maybe I wanted to go out to dinner the next night. He even threw in a trip to my favorite book store AND he offered to accompany me to the place he most intensely dislikes to go with me - Michael's! I wrinkled by brow and asked what was the occasion. He kissed me on the forehead and said, "Honey, I think you need to get out of the house, you are going a little nuts."

I was not about to argue or try to explain that I was inspired by the shells. I heaved a huge sigh and agreed that he was probably right and I probably did need (want) to drive into the city to browse in a real live coffee smelling book store and spend lots of time cruising the aisles of Michael's, especially those dollar bins, not to mention a stop at my all time favorite sandwich shop topped off by a picnic in the car by the lake. Oh yeah, I would so fake nuttiness for that!

Anyway, the next day after Handy Hubby was conveniently stashed away at work, I gathered up my nut shells with glee and headed into the studio to turn them into mini bird eggs!
These "eggs" are the perfect scale and dimension for small projects. They are so easy to make that I thought you too might have a nutty kind of day where you might feel the need to craft from your snacks, or maybe not, but anyway, below you will find the step-by-step instructions.

To make your own nut shell eggs you will need:

*Pistachio Nut Shells
*Acrylic Paint - I used Folk Art brand in Coffee Bean, Hauser Green Light, and Jamaican Sea
*Water
*Small Paint Brush
*Old Tooth Brush
*Small Piece of cloth - I used a snippet of muslin
*Brown Ink Pad - I used Stampabilites Brown
*Hot Glue and Hot Glue Gun

INSTRUCTIONS:

*Thoroughly wash empty nut shells to remove any salt or hulls.
*Lay shells on a paper towel to drain. Allow to dry completely before moving to the painting process.
*Place nut shells hollow side down on a protected surface. You will only want to work with three or four shells at a time as they dry rather quickly and you will need blending time.
*Dip paint brush into water then into brown paint to make an inky puddle, coat back of shells.
*Immediately rinse brush in clean water and make an inky puddle of green paint. Dab onto shell randomly leaving some brown areas showing.
*Repeat above process with the blue paint.
*Take the snippet of cloth and very lightly dab the paint to mottle it slightly so you blend the colors but be careful not to over blend or muddy it up too much. Do not allow shells to dry between paint applications or they won't blend well. Allow to dry.
*Dip the tip of an old toothbrush into brown paint and swish around to load brush with paint. Flick end of toothbrush to fleck paint spatters over the shells. Allow to dry.
*Once shells are dry, make a very inky puddle of brown paint by dipping paint brush into water and mixing in a tiny bit of paint. You want this to be very transparent. Brush a thin light coat over the shell to antique or tone down paint colors. Allow to dry.
*Once dry, use the brown ink pad to ink the edges of the "egg" shell.
*Turn shells over and fill hollow side with hot glue and allow to harden. This will give you a solid surface to make adhering it to your projects easier. To steady the shells while filling them and waiting for the glue to harden, I taped down two bamboo skewers to make a channel to hold the shells upright.
NOTE: It is not necessary to seal the paint on the "eggs" but if you so desire, you can use a little clear coat of spray or brush on sealer in either a matte or gloss finish depending on how you want them to look.

Here is how I used one of the eggs on an altered shipping tag:
For a little added egg painting inspiration I am referring to one of my favorite books, Bird Egg Feather Nest by Maryjo Koch.


Maryjo has a whole series of these magnificent nature inspired books that she has filled with her paintings.
Titles include:
Pond Lake River Sea
Seed Leaf Flower Fruit
Dragonfly Beetle Butterfly Bee

I really admire her painting skills and her new book, Vintage Collage Journals: Journaling with Antique Ephemera is out!

Have fun going nuts!
(I'll bet you never thought you would need a tutorial for that!)

Happy Blessings,
Miss Sandy

Applying Principals of Design to Your Artwork (Nest Assemblage).....

assemblage: a gathering or collection of several things grouped together in one place or considered as a whole

Yesterday I made time for some creative play. I recently purchase a couple of tutorials from Dawn and I wanted to try one of them out. Even though my project is not yet complete I thought I would give you a peek at it thus far. I also thought it would be fun to break down the design and show you how a few simple principals of design visually enhance your artwork.After printing out Dawn's clear easy to follow instructions, which include wonderful images for use in the project, and assembling supplies, I was set to go. I have had this small drawer for quite some time and I thought it would be perfect for creating the nest assemblage in. For a background I chose to use a scanned image from an old flower drawing book that featured Queen Anne's Lace. Here is the background I used, feel free to save it to your computer for use in your art work.TIP: You know how when you buy something fragile at Hobby Lobby and they wrap it in that off white thin protective paper? Don't throw it away. Cut it into 8 1/2 x 11 in. pieces. Using a low tack removable double sided tape, secure it to a piece of card stock. Print your background or image on it just as you would any paper you run through your printer. Allow the ink to dry and gently peel it away from the card stock. The outcome has the feel of a beautiful thin old delicate book page. If you want it to be more sturdy, you can use a spray glue and adhere it to another piece of paper or card stock before printing.I made one little alteration in Dawn's design when covering my box, choosing to leave the inside top and sides uncovered, instead, covering the outside of the box due to some unsightly scribbling on the exterior of the drawer. I intentionally left a border around the exterior paper because I rather liked seeing the nail heads which to me gave it a more rustic appearance.TIP: Don't throw away those fake plastic credit cards you get in the mail or save those old used plastic gift cards. These make a great tool for smoothing out your paper backgrounds. They get out any excess glue and air bubbles while adhering your paper to your project!I used parts of several of the images she provided to decorate the box inside and out. Little speckled eggs float around the outer sides and bottom of the box...Even the back is decorated with a sweet little wren, egg, and one of the quotes included in the tutorial.I didn't have a nest the right size to fit my assemblage so I made one from wire and various fibers using a basket making technique I learned years ago. The flower pods, twigs, and dried hydrangea blossoms were gathered from my grandmother's garden from a recent trip I made up there. I found the feathers in my yard.The persepctive of this artwork would be considered Nonlinear Perspective. This method uses techniques of position, overlapping, size variation, color, and value to show depth.If you notice, there is a triangle to the design, dark dried flower pods in the upper corner, mini pine cones in the lower corner, with the nest resting in the opposite lower corner. In the elements of design this would be called an implied line which means that the shape or line is not actually drawn but created by a group of objects. The colors in these elements used in an odd number are similar and balance each other out. The same design principal applies to the placement of the photo and feathers which are all similar in color family.Applying simple design principals to your artwork makes it visually pleasing so that your eye does not have to make the uncomfortable jump to link the groupings. The over lapping of these two triangles gives the artwork a symmetrical balance, which means equal weight on each side of the focal point object. The focal point, an object or area where you want the viewer to look first, of this design is the bird image. There are also three color sources to round out the design; the speckled eggs, the dried hydrangea blossoms, and the bird image. The color harmony, certain combinations of colors that create different looks or feelings, for this grouping are cool colors. They give the feeling of coolness for example blue and violet are the color of water and green is the color of cool grass. Color is the most expressive element of art. It reflects light, creates depth, and draws attention to your artwork.Value, the range of lightness and darkness used in your artwork, creates interest through highlights and shadows. This piece uses value contrast, where light values are placed next to dark values to create a strong contrast or difference, by placing pops of color next to the dark or neutral colored objects.Since I wanted my assemblage to be dimensional I added an odd number of layers to make the box interesting and to draw the eye forward. The background of Queen Anne's Lace layered with the little egg print serve as the first layer. A curled copy of an old photo at the back of the box serves as the second layer. The third layer that fills and balances the box are the little handmade nest and egg on one side and the wooden spool filled with dried naturals on the other. The bird image draws the eye to forefront in the forth layer. Lastly, the little trio of mini pine cones and moss serve as a stopping place for the eye. These layers serve as texture and are a very important element in artwork.This design has both physical and visual texture. Physical or Real texture is texture you can actually feel with your hand for example the smooth photo, the rough pine cones and pods, the soft moss and nest fibers. Visual or Implied texture is the illusion of physical texture created with the materials you use, in this case it is the staggering and layering of objects that gives visual texture.By playing with the composition, the organization and placement of the elements you are using, and creating a focal point surrounded by color and texture, you will be creating unity in your artwork. Unity refers to a sense that everything in the artwork belongs there and makes the piece whole even if the objects used are unrelated.While these principals can certainly be practical applications in your artwork, don't forget the most expressive and creative principal of designing by experimentation. Experiment with different shapes, objects, textures, materials, and methods to create a work of art that is uniquely you.

Blessings,
Miss Sandy