Gifts of Imperfection - choosing comfort

Working on my art journaling for my Brene Brown ECourse - The Gifts of Imperfection!!  I have used a fine tip black sharpie to create my letters - both using negative space and positive space.  I watercoloured the title with orange - not a "go to" colour for me. It has been super fun to see what I can create and not feeling that it has be perfect.  In this exercise we need to discover what drives us to numbing - taking the edge off the pain!!!
For this title I used a large marker and just wrote the letters free hand!!  Too easy!! I stamped over it in blue ink using a stamp I created using leftover rubber from trimming some stamp sets. I cut the scraps into small pieces and glued them to a small block of wood.   I love the randomness of this stamp!!  Needless to say, it is beneficial for all of us to know what our "go to"s are when we feel pain or stress - food, drugs, gambling, acting out, rage, shopping, etc, etc, etc.

For this title, I created the letters using a pencil, traced them with my fine tip sharpie and filled them in!!  I love the way they turned out.  I have been using my Creative Lettering book by Jenny Doh as inspiration for all of these hand lettered titles.  Comfort Wisdom is about learning what calms and comforts you and choosing that instead of numbing.  It is about consciously choosing your thoughts, words and deeds in order to create the life you want to live.
You can check out my previous pages here, here, here, here, here and here.
You should give hand lettering a try!  There are so many techniques out there that can be executed with a minimal amount of supplies - pen and paper in most cases!!

Therese

Fall card!!

I hosted the girls last night and it was a wonderful time as we all caught up with each other about our summers and our activities since the kids have headed back to school!!
This is the card I made as the make and take in our Shoe Box.  I made the background paper using brown paper, acrylic paints and ink!! The brown paper was given to me by my SU demonstrator - Catherine.  They receive all of their product packed with this paper so they have it around all the time.  It is strong and thin - love it!!  I started by adding large brown dots using brown acrylic paint brushed onto bubble wrap and stamped on the paper!!  COOL!!  Next, I added smaller orange dots using a smaller bubble wrap and orange acrylic paint.  Afterwards, I added leaves using a foam leaf die cut (TH Tattered Leaves die) which I painted with acrylic paint and stamped in an all over pattern.  I used a mixture of gold, copper and brown paint.  It still needed a bit of something so I added script using a stamp and Old Olive (SU) ink.  To help connect all the design elements I just used a foam brush with clear water and painted the whole surface which caused the green ink to run just a little and it did the trick - a nice cohesive collage!!  Cut it up into quarter sheets and paired it with brown or green cardstock.  The focal element is a digital stamp I downloaded from Meljens Designs and printed on white cardstock with my laser printer.  I watercoloured the images, layered them on coordinating cardstock and adhered them over the fiber I tied to the card front.  I provided a variety of different greetings but several of the girls decided not to a greeting.  They will add an appropriate one when they use the card!!
We have been enjoying the fall colours but with the rain and cooler weather last week they are duller and starting to fall!!  Still seems like a pile of treasure when I walk through them!!

Therese

Paper decorating!!

I started on a new project last week and decided to use the backs torn off of old commercial cards as a base because they were good heavyweight cardstock.  I picked the largest ones because those  worked best for the final result.
Are you asking yourself what I did with the card fronts?? You can see the cards I have refurbished and donated here and here.

For my project all of these needed to be scored at 2.5" so I used my "new to me" Martha Stewart scoring tool - Thanks Carol.  That was easy!!

For my project both sides of the cardstock needed to be decorated so I decided to use alcohol inks on the glossy ones!  Worked really well!!

 For the matte ones, I decided to create small collages using decorative papers.  I just dug through my stash of papers and picked pieces that seemed to work well together and glued them down.

So that took care of all the backs of these pieces of cardstock.  Now,  on to the fronts!!

Here is my set up for doing the fronts.  I started with this cool looking piece of packaging that I found as I  was going through my "stuff".  I coated the edges of the open weave with gesso to seal it before I started using it as a stamp.  I sponged acrylic paint onto the edges with a foam brush and stamped it on the cardstock.  Repeated 3 or 4 more times until the whole surface was covered, not worrying too much about how well it stamped because it was just going to be texture in the final project.

   Once they were dry I started adding colour using watered down acrylic paints.  Just painted them on pretty willy nilly and covered them with wrinkled plastic wrap to help create interesting patterns. I waited only a few minutes before removing the plastic wrap and discovered that the stamping was resisting the washes better than I expected, so combined with the random pattern of the plastic wrap, some of the backgrounds turned out pretty cool.
I have taken digital photos of all of them so I can use them in my art later on!!

Decorating paper is so much fun!! I love the randomness of it all and it is fun passing the day just mucking with paint and paper.  In this case, it is even better because I started with cardstock that was headed to the recycling bin!!  Now, that is upcycling!!

Therese