Living in a chunky world

Before this year, I had never really done any chunky books or pages. Now that I do them for swaps, I am obsessed with them. I sign up for way too many swaps but I love doing this kind of artwork. One of those swaps is a House Shaped Chunky swap. I wanted to do something with my houses and not just collage and paint over them. So I cut out the windows with an exacto knife and then layered a piece of printed transparency over each of them before covering the surface (with the window's hole cut-out first of course) with a piece of patterned paper. But that wasn't special enough for me so I also added images of doors (from ArtChixStudio, where else!) and made it so they can open to reveal an image inside (also form ArtChixStudio.) The rest of the house consists of stamping, inking and collaging different things. These are 2 of my 8 houses, before adding fibers and dangling elements to the right-hand side. Now, I have to work on chunky book pages on a Halloween theme and Skinny Book Pages (same idea but they're 3"x8" instead) on a Day of the Dead theme. Should be fun!

Art Journal Love

Remember a few posts ago when I said I didn't like my art journal? Well, after a few weeks of leaving it on the side to gather dust, I decided to pick it up again and force myself to work in it. Last week I was browsing on a few of my favourite blogs and got inspired by one of my favourites: Emily Falconbridge. This girl has so much talent and I like the way she uses and reuses stuff from everyday life even in her scrapbooking. I read through all of her articles at Today's Mama and I just had to try one of her projects. I didn't want to do it 12X12 so I thought my art journal would be the perfect place for it. I found a bunch of photos my mom had printed for me after I got my head shaved last year so I took one of them for this page. You can see that I also started adding things to the other page but I haven't done anything else yet.

I'm still on my quest to get rid of stuff. Last week, I spent a good portion of a day sorting through all the papers I had accumulated in the past 5 years (since I've been living here.) About 3/4 of the pile went to the recycling bin. The rest I plan to use to make messy journals (again inspired by Emily... I think this girl is my new muse! ha!) and collages. I still have a lot of stuff to get rid of but I'm slowly getting there. And I've learned to say NO to saving some things. I find that it's actually OK to throw away some stuff and recycle some other. Really, it's OK! Of course, I still buy things but I try to limit packaging as much as possible. For one thing, I always have my cloth bags with me and use them all the time.

On another subject... It took me one year to complete my first 100 posts. Well, I'm now closing in on 200 and it hasn't been one year since #100. So there might be a small giveaway before I go back to work (late August.) I'm thinking maybe 2 prizes this time. I'll have to see what I can come up with... Stay tuned!

Glitter Toe Day

My friend Mahala declared today to be Glitter Toe Day! I had to go buy some nail polish to do this. It brought my inner child out for a few hours. I actually bought 2 kinds of glitter nail polish but the one on my toes has big pieces of sparkle in it. Perfect! The other one is a sparkly pink which is now on my fingernails. And since it was raining all day, this was a perfect "activity" to partake in! When was the last time you painted your nails, just for fun? Or any other "silly" thin like that? Why not do something fun this weekend? Let your inner child out to play!

Keeping Busy

It's been a while since I updated my blog. Well, I'm keeping busy most of the time. Creating ATCs and Chunky Pages for swaps. Cleaning my brother's apartment (doing it for one year to pay him back for the Nikon camera he sold me.) Helping my mother getting settled in her art room. And creating cards in said art room! This is one of those cards. I wanted to use more masculine colours and used new stamps that mom bought this week. (Bird is from Sandylion and sentiment is from Magenta.)

Alberta and Ava have nominated me for an award. Thanks!

Just a quick note

I'm still alive. And enjoying life.

Today I was awake at 5:45am and just couldn't fall back asleep so I went for a walk. 40 minutes of pure bliss. Well except for my ankle starting to hurt but that's my fault (I wore sandals instead of walking shoes...) And then I created and cleaned and created some more. I caught up on some projects I had almost abandoned. I worked on cards for swaps. I even opened my art journal. I tried to do a page and realized I really hate working in that journal! The paper. It's just not working for me. Maybe it's time to start a new art journal... Time will tell...

Getting your name out there

This Mixed media Owl ATC has been published in Art Trader. Page 33.

You too can get published. Just submit your artwork. You never know!

Today, I went to the movies with Anik. We went to see Sex and the City because we're both fans of the series. It was fun. Too bad she couldn't go out for coffee after. Maybe another time.

Yesterday, I was very productive. I started and completed 4 cards for a swap (they're ready to mail.) I also worked on some cards for a round robin and other cards for another swap. I'm really having fun with these swaps.

Alright, that's all for now. Go check out that zine. There's a lot of interesting art in there.

Found poetry

One of the swaps I'm participating in is about reusing/recycling and Found poetry. I've always loved writing poetry but it's been quite a few years since I've done it so I thought that doing this swap would be a good way to play with words again.

The idea of the swap is to use discarded papers or left-overs from another project to make the background. Some people have used images from magazine. I personally use a lot of patterned paper and cardstock so I just picked a few pieces from my big baggie of left-overs. The tarot paper is a wrapping paper I've kept for many years because I loved how it looked. I had used pieces of it on chunky pages for another swap so I decided to use some more on these cards. The text is from "The house at Pooh's corner" which is, for those who don't know, a Winnie the Pooh story. The text itself was already full of poetic words so it was easy to create beautiful found poetry.

I liked making these cards so much that I made a second series with different papers and a text page from an old National Geographic about rock climbing/trekking. Completely different for the poetry but a lot of fun too. I plan on doing even more of these types of cards so if anyone wants to trade Found Poetry ATCs with me, don't be shy and contact me. It's a good way to get started with ATCs if you've never tried them before: a simple background collage and assembled words/phrases to complete. The only thing I added other than that was inking the edges for a more uniform look but even that is not required.

Well, I'm off to create more ATCs for swaps and for fun. Happy Canada Day to all my Canadian friends. And if you're moving today or helping someone move, stay safe!