Presenting Isabella The Fairy

Meet the real cutie Isabella the Fairy of Friendliness.

The Displaced Fairy Adoption was a perfect match made in Fairyland!

I'm still practicing, here's my latest watercolor drawing, this one is 11x14. I'm particularly fond of this one and found I definitely prefer painting on smooth paper as opposed to cold press watercolor paper with more texture in it.

Wistful

Fairy Adoption!

Meet Isabella the Fairy of Friendliness!

Her home was once in the woods, but a storm cast she and many other fairies to the winds and they became part of the Displaced Fairies. Only humans that are kind and loving will the Displaced Fairies show themselves to. Isabella has found the perfect loving family who will be welcoming her into their home soon!

And The Winner Is...

Congratulations Lori on winning the art apron! Many thanks to everyone that participated I put all your names in a jar and had my son Spencer draw a name out.

Lori send me your mailing address, please :-)

More drawing practice

I got in the groove making some Halloween gifties using cardboard Slide Mailers.
I was excited to finally get to finally play with my cool Coffin Cards using the new Skeleton stamp and Trick or Treat Stamp Set that just arrived. I used my new Halloween Color Mists on a part of them its too bad you can't see the shimmer in the scans.

Click or scroll
down and enter
the drawing for an
art apron.

Door Poetry & Contest Reminder

I was gifted with a small box of goodies today from my good friend Christy who is one of the most generous people I know. One of the items in the box was a sheet of magnetic poetry words....something I've been wanting to get to use on a metal file holder I have hanging on my side door for when people leave notes and things when we're not home. Since the file holder is metal I thought what fun it would be to put some of those poetry words on it to play with!

Door Poetry

Thanks Christy!

Don't forget to enter my drawing (see previous post) to win a cool Apron, I've received a ton of emails, thanks everyone! Either way will work emailing me or leaving a comment just don't forget to include your email if your posting a comment and a link to some fun Halloween art!

Contest, Mermaids & Halloween

I finished another mermaid painting, it's taken me all week to finally get her done. Due to lack of time and then having to fix her face (we won't talk about that!). She still has a bit of the deer in head-light's look but what can I say I'm still a beginner :-) I do however, like how her body/tail turned out and did contemplate just cutting that out and using in some art, but decided against it for now.

Sorry, but I couldn't hold true to my word I did another Halloween Postcard! The little girl and boy image was just sitting there begging me to do something with them. I had already painted them previously with Gouache Paints and since I was making backgrounds on photo paper using the new Limited Edition Color Mists for Halloween, it all just fell together, I love when that happens!

**BLOG CONTEST**

Since it's my birthday tomorrow I've decided to give this really cool NEW Art Apron to a lucky blog reader.

Do the following 3 things:

1. Post a comment with your NAME & EMAIL

2. Include your email address (I'm not psychic)

3. Leave a link to some cool Halloween Art (can be yours or someone elses) or a fun Halloween Project.

Each person that leaves those three things will have their name entered in the drawing. Send this blog contest to a friend and for every friend that posts a comment and mentions your name you will get an additional name entered into the drawing!

The Sky's the limit!

Drawing will be held on Sunday Sept 23, 2007

**Just remember if you don't leave your name and email I can't notify you**

Before you ask the contest is open to International blog readers as well :-)

Apron is made from canvas and is adjustible to fit all sizes

Halloween's Just Around

I just finished adding a new Spooktacular
Halloween Goody Page with unique embellishments, charms and more:

http://www.outsidethemargins.com/bones.html

If your anything like me Halloween will be here before you know it and then all those good intentions of projects are out the window and next thing you know Christmas is here! I'm getting a jump start this year, how about you? I plan on making some goodie bags using my canvas baglets and I'm really hoping to do a Halloween Charm bracelet using the Vintage Halloween charms I'm offering...I especially want to use the top hat charms they're just too fun! What cool projects do you have in mind, I'd love for you to share?

Here's some dictionary pages I did for my Altered Art Divas' group. The idea was to pick a word from a list of words that were coined by one of us and then give a dictionary definition and create some art to go with the word. It will be a 5x7 size book that we will bind ourselves once we get the pages back.

Here's my pages:

Fall ATCs

I think I'm done with Halloween for the time being here are some ATCs (Artist Trading Cards) I did for a new yahoo group I'm participating in as one of their sponsors. Check it out if you get the chance, (a lot of fun treasure hunts for prizes and gift baskets will be given away):
TheLatestTrendsinMixedMediaArts@yahoogroups.com

More Halloween...

Hey no groaning I know it's early yet for Halloween, but these cool themed creations are paying off! It's suppose to be cooler yet again today, YAY!


This is a 4x6 post card size piece for a monthly lottery. Again, the background was made with glossy photo paper and Color Mists. The fairy is from my Halloween Collage sheet and there's an edge with a transparency on it using brads. I also used some rub-ons and ribbons.

Mermaids

In keeping with my theme of trying to stay cool I did some Mermaid paintings this weekend...Hey it must be working it's only suppose to be 91 today whoo-hoo!!

I've never actually had a drawing class and know there's a lot I don't know yet, but I keep practicing and this time around I can actually see improvement, hey wonders never cease! I'll tell you originally the book that helped me the most was the following book By Linda Ravenscroft:

In the beginning it was easier for me to try and draw fantasy because then I didn't feel like it had to be perfect. Since then I have practiced drawing from looking at catalogs. I was okay if I had something to look at to draw but didn't feel comfortable drawing from my own imagination. This time around I'm pleased to say I drew both of the mermaid paintings from my imagination which to me is a big deal, I feel like I over came a block I had. I confess I've always been a little envious and in awe of people who could pop a drawing out of their head!

Both of the mermaid pieces were done on 8x10 cold press watercolor paper....I used Color Mists with a brush for the backgrounds and then used gouache paints for the actual mermaids and then went over it with pens to give detail. What I love about using Color Mists is that they have a shimmer to them like you'd expect to find on a mermaid or fish scales, unfortunately the scans never do the shimmer justice and just does not pick it up but for those of you that have used Color Mists, you know what I'm talking about :-)

Below you can see my before and then after I turned them into cards using photoshop and adding some text and borders:

So the moral of my rantings is to keep practicing, it will come :-)