Goodbyes and Hello!

We said our goodbyes last weekend to Spencer as we dropped him off at college. I'm proud to say there weren't any tears from me....at least until the next day :-) but I'm fine now and adjusting to not having him here.

School also started for Mr. Morgan so Hellooooo art time! I squeezed in some small increments of creative time and managed do another painting. The mermaids were calling to me again, so here's another mermaid painting. I used cold press watercolor paper and a mixture of Chalk inks and my Color Mists for the background. I then sketched out my drawing and filled it in first with gesso and then once it was dry I used gouache paints and once it dries which is quick I add detail with the pastel sailor pens. I love using these pens they really make things pop!

Put your own flourish on things...

This week's Gothic Arch challenge is Flourishes so in the process of making my challenge this week I got to thinking how the altered artist in me can't help but come out. I tend to look for things that are versatile where I can put my own flourish on things so to speak or alter it if you will to what I need at the time.

Recently I was gifted by my buddy Kris with some fun paper flowers. Of course I couldn't just leave them as is so I misted them using my Color Mists using Copper Kettle , Monterey Bay and 22 karat gold . I then dried them with my heat gun and watched them puff back up which was very cool!

Here they are all dried .....if you click on the picture you might be able to see their shimmer.

Check out the paper beneath the flowers I sprayed them on, I thought it turned out very cool looking it will go in my stash to use later.

Next I decided to ink the edges with chalk inks (love chalk inks because they dry so quickly, I think they're would probably be one of those supplies for me that I wouldn't want to be without them, I use them that much!). I then added some rub-on flowers to the centers of the paper flowers. Along with the flowers I altered I also altered the chipboard letter "B" by adding inks and rub-ons and also the bird, it was originally light aqua and I used brown chalk inks on it to change it's color. So the moral of this long winded post is don't be afraid to add your own touch to embellishments.

Happy Altering!