Glue It Tuesday

hi from northern ny where it is mostly sunny and 50 degrees, yeah, almost all of the snow is melted!

recently aimee at welcome to artsyville started a "glue it tuesday" on her blog. while i have done a lot of gluing lately i have not linked to her site before. you can see pics of some of my recent gluing at this post good morning.

mostly i just glue on what ever is handy, cardstock, loose journal pages, index cards, etc. and while i am really good at starting projects, hehehe, i  don't finish a lot of them. i like to make backgrounds but i'm not really a journaler. hence, i have a lot of lot of loose sheets of collage/paintings started. they are all over the place so i decided this morning to make a small book to use just for glue it tuesday.  i started with an empty box from my latest treat, aka unhealthy indulgence. i cut off one side and the top and bottom and had this:

 

then i started gluing. i used pieces of wrapping/found paper, ledgers and pieces of my art work for the cover.

i used a piece of deli wrap from a gelli print session for the inside. loooove it. i have really come to like the red and aqua/turquoise color combination lately. i want to use it in my house.

now i just have to find some papers to make signatures and sew them in. next week i will be ready to rock and roll.

p.s. please forgive the pics. the sun is not around to this side of the house yet and i was too lazy to get up and go somewhere else.

Hoarding 101

hi from northern ny where it is sunny and a windy 25 degrees.

i've decided i'm very fickle about my art projects. i like to do everything from sewing to painting to gelli printing to jewelry making, etc. the problem is that i don't have a lot of room (i craft in my bedroom) and i am not very organized. i had paint, fabric, books, papers, inks and everything spread all over as i go from project to project. but, you know when you get to that point where you just can't stand it any more? well i reached it this past weekend. this is what it looked like.

what a mess, just try to work in that!!! so, i went to town and got a new batch of sterlite containers (what would i do without them). then i started pulling everything out and sorting. i should have taken a picture of what that looked like. the bed was piled high. the poor dog scooted over and over and finally had to abandon the bed altogether. but i got all like objects roughly sorted. all scrapbook paper together, all full sheets of paper, all partial sheets, add-ons, etc. this is what it currently looks like. a big improvement, but a long way to go.

 



here i am today wanting to gelli print (i got a bunch of new tools when i was at the dollar store the other day). and it's not like i "need" to gelli print (i have two magazine boxes full of prints). so, what wins: gelli printing, more cleaning, printing, cleaning. you'll have to come back to find out :)

i love this photo

from northern NY where it is sunny and 35 degrees (supposed to 40+, yahoo

well, as you can see i still am bad about blogging. i admire those of you who do it every day. so, as i was surfing around this morning i happened upon this site lorik art where she hosts a mandarin orange monday post. while looking at the links there i realized i had the perfect photo for this. it is a photo that my daughter took from the ferry where she works.

pretty dark photo so i played with it some and this is what i got:

 

 

i love this photo of the sun coming up over lake champlain between new york and vermont. hope you enjoy.

 

eta, okay my daughter said the sun was actually going down. i have no sense of direction since we moved to ny.

 

looks can be decieving

hi from northern ny where it is partly sunny and 45 degrees (we're having a heat wave, a tropical heat wave.....)

over the weekend i had the urge to put together a new book. i wanted to use a new binding stitch on this one and decided i liked the cross stitch look.

after studying it a bit i thought "that looks simple enough, just basic cross stitches, right?" i was eager to be stitching and just through together a basic cover (still needs detail work) and that is another story. i found a basic diagram and got started. oops...... didn't work, pulled a couple of stitches loose and tried again. still didn't work. took it all out and started completely over. still had problems. the column were numbered on the diagram and all the stitches were numbered in the order to sew them. i finally figured out that the diagram was looking at the stitches from what would be the outside of the cover and i was trying to sew them from the inside. took it completely out and started over again. it went better.

the stitching looks a little wonky. i marked my stitching holes on the inside of the cover. but because the two fabrics shifted while i was sewing, the stitches really need to be marked on the outside to get them to perfectly lined up. gotta get a new blue disappearing fabric marker.

when i was gelli printing i used everything i could lay my hands on from my work table. that included some half pages of a manila folder (the larger, back half was used to cut stencils. worked great. was able to make an 8x10 window with my stencil pattern in it. fits perfectly over my gelli plate and is easy to file). i used the printed half folder in half again for small journal covers (ended up to be 6 x almost 9 when folded). here is a picture of that journal cover and a pic of one of my stencils i made.

any way, there are a few pictures of the inside pages on my flickr site. mjkcreations flickr photos.

still cutting and pasting

hi from northern ny where it is cloudy and 41 degrees.

OMG! i am still stuck on cutting and pasting all these little pieces of swap papers and leftover scraps. it is an obsession. i get that way, i get stuck on one thing whether it is crafting, food, tv or whatever and i just have to keep doing it until it naturally wears off. this may take a while as quilts and paper are two of my favorite things.

any way, i was in my own little world yesterday, cutting and pasting. when i was working up close on the text ones i was not totally happy with them. i thought they were blah looking and there wasn't enough variation in the colors. today when i got home from work and looked at them laying in the floor and were more of a distance away i was much happier with them. tomorrow is my day off and i think i have some ideas of what i want to do with these. for now here is what i did yesterday.

i'll let you know tomorrow what i come up with. ;)

good morning

happy sunday morning everyone. just a quick post before i get started for the day. it has been so longed since i blogged that you can see that i forgot how to insert a picture in a post. hmmm, there is a little icon up there for a picture, duh. note to self, use that instead of the "link" option.

yesterday i found a new blog. http://tofuart.com/ i immediately fell in love with it. just my kind of art (no drawing required, lol). the collages are to die for. love the map art, love the quilt designs, love the stamp mandalas.

soooo, immediately my mind began going. i had this pile of scraps left over from the latest ROD journal i am working on.

small strips, but not small enough. so i cut them down into smaller slivers and got this.

then came the fun/messy part. out came the mod podge and an 11x14 drawing sheet and the 4x6 index cards. i spent the rest of the afternoon creating these.

 

 

and these

 

 



i'm not sure where i will go with them from here, but will let you know what i decide. now i'm off to collage some more.

 

 

 



well, hello there

as you can see i have been a total failure as a blogger. ummm, two years? recently i have been wishing that i had documented certain things so here i am to give it another try. a lot has happened in those two years. 16th birthdays, graduations, first jobs, first boyfriends, going off to the army only to return with a medical condition, starting online college courses, etc.... life goes on.

so, i am here to try to make amends. share family and friends, share my stories, and share my "art" adventures. i say "art" because i do not consider myself an artist in any shape, form, or fashion. i am a great crafter. if i see something i can usual make or reproduce similar results. i want to get to where i am making more art from me. what i see, what i feel, not the choices of others. the problem is i like only parts of arting, journal, painting, etc. so i've decided to embrace what i like and not feel like i have to go further, to "complete" it as someone else would.

here goes my second round of blogging. cross your fingers and hope i make a go of it.

p.s. here are a couple of photos from my yard today.
view from front porch
view from back porch
another view from back porch


have a good day, mk