Can I really craft everyday?

I sure do want to craft everyday.  When I woke up on January 1, 2014 I had big plans to go into my art studio and make a card.  Well I spent the day sitting around, cleaning, chatting with friends on FB.  I am alive, God is great, my needs are met, but today I feel blah.  So by the end of the day I just went into the art studio to grab my travel mixed media kit.  Thanks to the inspiration from Sandee one of my fellow artists on FB; I got in bed and did some 'zen-dangles' before I fell asleep.  

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Today I WILL make that card and clean the studio for 15 minutes.  Well if I ever get off of this here computer...then I have to clean the whole house...then I want to go to the gym...oh I think my scrappy friends are taking a road trip to Hobby Lobby in the neighboring state...I better make a few calls. LOL 

see the vicious cycle!!!!!

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More hand drawn postcards

I have been seeing doodles and pictures in magazines and drawing them.  Here are two postcards that I made. I used scraps to make these.

These look like the birds from the Partridge Family Television Show

I plan to color these postcards before I use them.

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Drawing faces

When I was younger I would always draw animals, but sometimes I would draw people.   I mostly drew movie stars, singers and famous people from magazines and books.  The people I drew from my mind were often comical, cartoon like and whimsical.  My mother taught me how to do that.  As I do and view more mixed media pieces I really wanted to learn how to draw faces.  I even called my brother.  I recall him taking art in school and I can remember seeing many portraits he drew. I think my brother is a good artist and if we just didn't have to make money to survive he might have pursued his art more.  Well, as it turns out he couldn't recall much from his drawing days(LOL).  Still he gave me a few verbal pointers.  I was telling him that I knew nothing about shading, drawing hair or drawing ethnic faces and couldn't seem to find that much help online.  Nothing that I drew looked like me.  Here is my first attempt:

I just grabbed a lined note pad from my office...

My Caucasian cousin

Then I stopped being lazy and went ALL the way on the other side of the house to the craft room and got a sketch pad (LOL-the house is not that big) 

My second attempt has a kind of Latina feel...

 My third attempt looks African American to me.  YAY! 

 

This looked like a little boy until I added the hair.

I just had to add cowry shells to her headband.

I wish I could afford to take art classes, being self taught has it's drawbacks.  I look forward to learning and practicing.  I have so much to learn.  I really am thankful to those who put tutorials online: Jay French and Milliande were the two artist that gave me assistance and guidance.

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Sketch inspiration

It is rare that I uses sketches.  I was checking out this blog post and there was a sketch for a card.  It was very straight forward and would allow me to play with paint and doodling.  Check out the post and the sketch on Julie Fei-Fan Balzer's blog.

Here are the cards I created:

I painted  squares using acrylic paint and used inchies to stamp inside random squares.  I then outlined the squares with a black pen.  The word banner has glitter alphas.  The edges are inked with TH dusty concord distress ink.

The circles are a stamp from ditto/hampton arts.  I used watercolor crayon on the edges and random circles.  A stardust jelly roll pen by Sakura and a CTMH brown marker was used to make the doodles.  The 'smile' sentiment is stamped and punched out with a fiskars punch.  This was fun.

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Doodles

This is what I was doing while watching someone make a mini album on USTREAM. Just fooling around.

Materials:

pigma micron pen

MS marker

sakura glaze pens

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Zentangle inspired earrings

I made these earrings as taught by Julie Fei-Fan Balzer.  I used to watch her on Scrapbook Memories all the time.  Unfortunately, the TV show is no longer broadcast in my area.  I was not sure that I would like having a pair of earrings with two different designs, but I am embracing their 'lovely mismatched uniqueness'.

I neglected to photograph the back, but it is zentangled also.

Hmmmm I NEED a bracelet (LOL)

White cs

pigma micron pen .01 black

Anita's glossy polyutherane

eyelets

Jewelry findings

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I could've been a professional doodler

Remember in school when you would zone out during a boring lecture and doodle all over your notebook?  I did that all the time.  Many of my tablets were sprinkled with pages of my mental wanderings.  I had no idea that I was actually making art.  Today these controlled doodles are cleverly called Zentangles.  I believe the phrase was coined by Rick Roberts and Maria Thomas.  Zentangles are so relaxing to do; hence "Zen".  I carry scraps of paper in my purse so I can doodle when I am waiting at the doctors office or anywhere really.  Then I use the back of the finished work to write a  note to include in RAK packages or as tags on gifts.  Other possibilities for using them are endless: mixed media, altered art, greeting cards, decoupage, art journals etc.  Now if only I had kept those notebooks from school...lol

I made this one last year, this was my first one.  Yeah..uhhh..my sharpie marker was way too thick.   Now I use a pigma micron pen.
                                                                          

I did this one while I was on the phone and added a splash of color.

My online buddy, Sherry inspired me to try this art form (thanks Sherry).  She creates wonderful Zentangle inspired projects. I first saw her Zentangle inspired work in another forum but I later found a few examples on her blog too:  http://gotart4u.blogspot.com/2010/08/psychedelic-girl.html  and http://gotart4u.blogspot.com/2010/01/oh-oh-new-obsession.html  It would be nice to really be good at this, like some of the projects I have seen;  but for now I just keep having fun doing such a relaxing art form.  Here are a few more:

Thanks Angie from the http://www.theblingtheory.blogspot.com/ for inspiring me to revisit this art form and I plan to try using the zig markers.