Rainy Day Art

It's raining here so I am painting an acrylic portrait. I am reviewing acrylic painting techniques so I can get serious about selling my artwork. I am focusing on shading and skin tones on this painting.

 I went to the swapmeet today. I found a beautiful handmade bracelet made out of silver forks. The lady who made the jewelry was so nice that she invited me up to her house to see how nice the area and weather is. She lives in the White Mountains. I will check it out when I get back to Phoenix.

Most people stay in when it rains so the streets were pretty clear today. It is still strange driving here. The old people drive extra slow and the young people drive the speed limit and everyone is polite so it is hard to tell when to pull out and when not to. It is taking awhile to adjust.

Here's a Phoenix photo to share.  This was taken at the Boyce Thompson Arboretum outside of Phoenix.
Well, it's time to get back to my painting!

Arizona Side Trip to the South

I'm getting my camper repaired in Phoenix. I had to leave the camper overnight so I decided to take a trip to southern Arizona. When I got into Tucson I visited the DeGrazia Art Studio. Here are some of my ideas I got from there.
Above is the entrance to the visiting artist studio. Karen is a mixed media artist. Check out her website at karengodfrey.net.
The flowers on the entry are made of metal and painted. I will print out this picture and use it as a post card and then I will use the card and family photos on a page where I make a post like in the photo around the top of the page. I will add my own hand made, painted flowers to match. I will enlarge and cut out cacti like in the lower right side of the picture. I will overlay the cacti in the lower right side.
With the photo above right I will also use it as a post card. I will use it like it is, sepia tone it, and enhance it on my computer so I have a lot of different post cards of the same photo. This photo is in the chapel of the DeGrazia Studios.

DeGrazia had a great feel for showing action in his paintings but he could also show other feelings such as this priest riding a horse in what I felt was a religious parade. I really felt like I was in the experience with the priest. I will try to convey that feeling on a scrapbook page. Maybe my theme will be my pilgrimage to the DeGrazia Studios. I will use the signature of the DeGrazia studio for the title, I will do a chapel page with the chapel as the main photo. The priest on the horse and the photo below will go on the layout too. Of course, I will add a little journaling, the place, and date.

My goal for the scrapbook page or layout is to convey a sense of calm like you are walking into the real chapel. I will choose the cool calm blue of the sky for the background and I will shrink the back photo of the shrine so it is smaller and in the back of the layout. That way the movement of the other pictures will give a feeling of depth.

Try out these ideas and I will see you all soon!

Side Trip to the Grand Canyon!

This is a photo of me on my way to Phoenix in search of sun and warmth! I decided to take a side trip to the Grand Canyon. It was cold and snowy but sunny and beautiful for all of 24 hours! The Rangers were telling everyone the weather report of 5-9" of snow coming in so I opted to go on down to Phoenix. It was a 3 hour drive through huge beautiful snowflakes and winding roads. It was beautiful but exhausting.
The weather is a little cooler than usual in Phoenix but beautiful. The forecast is for upper sixties and seventies this week. It's going to be hard to concentrate on my book I am writing for All About Scrapbooking. Wish you were here! Love, Candy

Denise at CHA 2010

This is a photo of Denise taking photos at CHA. She was having a ball photographing every idea she could see at the Graphic 45 booth. 

Zentangle at CHA 2010

Zentangle is a hot new art form spreading across the country. Find out how to do it from these Suzanne McNeill books by Design Originals! They will be on our All About Scrapbooking online store. Suzanne is always on the cutting edge of new ideas in the craft world. The books will be available after February 1.This is a photo of my second zentangle. It was very relaxing to make and I will soon be making shapes to zentangle and incorporate in my scrapbook pages and canvases.

Social Day with Sandy and a Little Scrapbooking

Sandy is my new friend in Arizona. She came and picked me up and showed me around Apache Junction. I now know where the shopping, the hospital, and, of course, a scrapbook store is!
The store was twice as big as ours and had an awesome class area. I hope they will still be in business when I come back. The manager said they were having a very hard time of it.

Sandy and I ate lunch at Olive Garden. She is a nurse for the VA and loves it. We had a wonderful time driving around. We ended up at her house where I met her husband who is very nice. We used the Cricut to cut things out. I didn't know how to use a Cricut so she showed me how. Denise is the expert on the Cricut at the store and I am the expert on the Xyron Wishblade so I had never used a Cricut.

This first photo is of the managers camp site where I am staying. They have a small scooter that their young granddaughter rides on for a couple hours a day. She loves the scooter and knows everybody in the park. It's very cute to watch outside my window.

The other picture is of my camper. It is a 1983 Winnebago Warrior. I bought if off EBay a few years ago and I still love it. I plan to come down every year from now on in January and February maybe longer if things go well.

This is the owl I cut out with the Cricut . I made him 10" tall. I don't have my scrapbooking supplies so I don't have a specific theme but I could use him for an outdoor hike, a zoo visit, or a Harry Potter page. If I were using it for a Harry Potter page I would add more of the orange gold colors their illustrations show especially around the eyes. Sandy had some small envelopes pre-made so I used them but it would really look better with larger envelopes or something that looked like a post card. I would also put names on them. If it was a zoo page I would put names of different kinds of owls. For a nature walk I would put owl names and then add at the bottom of the page info about that kind of owl. A Harry Potter page has all kinds of possibilities. If you were at a movie opening or in line to see the movie you could put the names of the friends you went to the movie with on the envelopes. For the Harry Potter page I would add a little brown and maybe use some glitter on him.
Well, that's all for now. I think I will go for a walk.

Amore Valentine ATCs

These are the cards I took to our January ATC gathering. The backing and heart are left over felt from another project. I like to embroider so I took some left over yarn and stitched it around the edges. I used DMC embroidery floss. I hope you like them. Remember you can also put these on cards and scrapbook pages. Last minute thought! You could also applique them onto a quilt with different words or family member names.