Draw a house

I glued in some paper I made using the Gelli Arts printing plate. That always seems to make a good starting point!

The prompt this week at The Documented Life Project was to draw or collage a house. I already put my house in the book earlier, so I decided to use one of my favorite houses ever... I had an old sketch of our family's cottage that I cut down to size and added some color to it with Inktense pencils.

Then I glued in lots of pictures of our family at the cottage over the years. Wish I had space for more of them....that's when I sometimes wish I'd picked a bigger journal to do this project.

Blind Contour and Gelli Prints

 This week started out with a trip through the Shawnee Wine Trail in southern Illinois, so I took a piece of paper I printed with the Gelli Arts printing plate and drew a blind contour of a wine glass and some grapes. A beautiful background paper makes a simple drawing look like something special.  The Documented Life challenge was to use embroidery floss, so I embroidered the word "wine."

I added a tip-in, cut shorter than the page, to add some photos to my week.

Putting Pictures in my Planner

This was a very full week with Mother's day and traveling!

 I put many miles on my car during that week, but I also had a great time! After I got home I printed out some pictures and glued them in. I also used pieces of the Magnolia Blossom Festival program. That is one well put together festival, and if you love steak, it's the one to attend!

I was going to do this week without a tip-in. hahahahaha. I ended up with a tip-in with a tip-in! That last little tip-in is a pocket and contains more pictures.

Scarlet Lime Pen...

 I've heard so much about the Scarlet Lime pen that is supposed to write over practically anything. As much as I looove Pitt pens, I've ruined many of them by writing over acrylic paints. I doodled some coneflowers over a envelope that was printed with acrylic paints on the gelli plate. So far, so good! I hope these pens are as good as they say, and they just might be the answer to the pen problem. I'll still stick to Faber Castell Pitt pens for drawing and watercolor sketches...I love the Indian ink.

Documented Life Project...use a rubber stamp in a new way

  Well, I use rubber stamps a lot, but usually only the alphabet stamps to write, so most anything I do would be "new" to me. The trouble was, I was at work and wanted to start on my page, and I didn't have any rubber stamps at the shop. I started with a background of Inktense pencils, spread around with a wet paper towel. Love the colors.

 Then I had to find something to stamp with so I cracked open a Coke, and used the lid. I had a stamp pad that was dye ink, instead of the Staz On that I usually use.

Filled in the circles with Inktense pencils and wet them with a paper towel. That caused the ink from the stamp pad to run as well, but I kind of liked the look. I then inked up the Coke lid again and stamped over them again.

 I used numbers punched from an old calendar to mark the days....

...but I still needed a rubber stamp. I looked around, and found the shop's return address stamp. I've only ever used it on envelopes and our receipts, so using it in the planner counts as "new!" Now my week is ready to go! I'll post a pic once it's all filled in. No tip-in this week. I'm trying to do some pages without them because my planner is full to bursting and it's only May!

Three Rivers

This is a piece that was commissioned. I wanted to incorporate elements of the recipient's Native American heritage. All the elements have meaning, the ledger paper I drew the Indian on, the map, the stars, the 7 feathers, the arrowheads.  It was interesting trying to get it all to work together. The customer was very happy with it, and that makes me happy!

I wanted to use the 7 feathers, and I also wanted to make them look a bit magical, and the "zentangle" or doodling seemed to fit the bill. The little dots and circles are to represent the wind....to make them kind of swirl around the piece.

I loved making these feathers and will be making more of them, I'm sure!

I drew this hunter from the image on the website. I tried to find multiple images to work from, but the one on the Sappony website was the only image I found of a Sappony Indian. I went ahead and drew from it, since I wanted the Indian to be accurate for that tribe, and not a generic image.  So, I did him in ink on vintage ledger paper, and antiqued the edges a bit with ink from a stamp pad.

Feathers and pressing on

I was going a bit crazy last night. I'd been trying to do the background for a piece that I need to have done soon, and nothing was going right. I kept muddying up the colors and...well my mojo had left the building. So I covered it all in gesso and started over. I decided that maybe simpler was better, and I picked 2 greens and a yellow and applied them with a credit card. I like it! Especially since I've started drawing over it with the white. I need to work some antiquey papers on to it as well, and I'm not sure how that's going to work, but think I might be able to mesh the two somehow. I have a couple ideas floating around in my head.

Random Act of Kindness

This weeks prompt is to document a random act of kindness. I have a few in mind for this week. Sometimes it's as easy as giving someone a smile, and sometimes more complicated. So far, I've just paid for the car behind me at McDonald's so that's what I drew.

I used Inktense pencils for the background, and some circles I received in "happy mail" for the dates. The other circles were from happy mail too, and I just colored them with the inktense pencils.

More calendar pages...

The first week was a busy one and does not include a Documented Life Project prompt, because somehow I did two on previous spread.

I had to have a go at drawing the great vintage sign at Merichka's in Joliet. We had a great dinner there, and I'll be drawing that sign again one day, I'm sure.

 This last week the Documented Life Project prompt was to use a quote you like. I chose one about mermaids, because if I were some kind of fantasy being, I'd be a mermaid, of course.  This was a busy week of traveling with my dad to deliver things to Jeff's new home. It was a whirlwind trip, but fun to see where he will be living and also to see parts of Arkansas I'd never seen before. We took the train home, which I rather liked!! I learned that I was not far from the boyhood home of Warren Ludwig and his wonderful mother Miz Dee. Someday maybe I will get to stop in and meet Miz Dee in person!

Dad and I stopped at the Pink Elephant Antique Mall on Route 66...what a great place. Visit there if you get the chance!

I almost feel like I cheated on this spread. Why? Because all that beautiful background and the cool stickers came from some "happy mail" I received from Lorraine Bell. The background was the envelope! Check out her website. She does such beautiful work. Thanks Lorraine, for the beautiful package!