ICAD 2014

I have joined the Index Card a Day at Daisy Yellow. It's a simple project: buy a pack of plain ole index cards in the stationery section and draw, paint, or whatever you want on one every day. There are daily and weekly prompts to follow if you want, or you can just do your own thing. The point is to get your creative muscles some exercise and to just DO a little bit of art every day. Check out the website here: Daisy Yellow ICAD 2014

I have tentatively decided to go with a simple sketch and watercolor theme. I want to increase my drawing skills, and figured this might be a good way to do it. Who knows, my crafty ADD might kick in, and I might change my mind and decide to do a different theme next week. :0 

So, here are my first three.

Daily Prompt #1 Prism. 

It can be anything you want. Everyone's own interpretation is part of the fun.

Day #2 Circus Tent.

Day #3 Hello. My name is: 

There. A simple blog post. I am starting to like and really enjoy my frequent blog posting!

Happy creating to all of you. Thanks for stopping by. :)

♥♥ Anna ♥♥

Gratitude Challenge

•  The Documented Life Project  •

Week 23 Challenge - Practice gratitude - write what you are grateful for each day this week.

"Let us come before Him with thanksgiving." - Psalm 95:2a

• I choose to be very specific with my gratitude list. Wrote down Sunday's, will continue with each day as the week progresses. Really love this challenge. 

• Gelli-print on an old sheet of music.

• Cheap craft paint in neon pink, yellows and oranges.

• Doily die cut for texture.

• Sewed around edges of background with random zigzag and straight stitches.

• Printed off the letters for my title in my digital layout software (I use Lumapix FotoFusion) using fonts Janda Happy Day and Fishfingers.

• Cut them out leaving a small white outline and glued to page.

• Heart and dots and little scallop border with Montana acrylic pen.

• Wrote part of the bible verse on a scrap piece of the background in a random style.

• Cut seven uneven squares of white cardstock and doodled edge for my journal spots.

• Lastly, I changed up the washi tape edge with a plain neon pink paper tape from Target, and added white dots with my Signo Uniball gel pen.

This is my first tip-in! Meaning, adding another page to your existing pages in your planner for added room. As you turn the pages in your planner, you can expand it to a three-page spread, instead of the usual two in any book. Clear as mud, I'm sure. Lol! You adhere the extra page with washi tape, as this project's artists demonstrate on their blog. 

Happy Creating to you! 

♥♥  Anna  ♥♥

Listfully Happy

I have a lot of purple going on here. Usually it's pink. Sorry if this disappoints you. lol I follow a very inspiring snail mailer on Instagram by the name of Papered Thoughts. See her feed HERE. She regularly posts artsy lists and hashtags them with #listfullyhappy and #listography. I loooove those terms. My daughter has a cute journal called My Future Listography: All I Hope to Do in Lists, and it's filled with list prompts. What's not to love about that? 

little thought: why do I like to make lists like this but not to-do lists? hmmmm...

Anyway, was inspired to create my own list: Favorite Artists. Pinterest has opened up a whole new world of finding the things you want on the world wide web. Many of these artists listed I have discovered the last few years on said site.

I had made the purply backgrounds using my Gelli-plate. I added layer after layer of purple, pink and pinks, and whites. Used stencils for the textures. One of my favorite stencils is a diecut doily by Stampin' Up.

The title was done on a piece of cardstock with Montana acrylic markers, then cut out and glued to the gelli-print background. I doodled with a white Signo Uni-ball pen. 

The names were written with my Sharpie marker on watercolor paper, and then I added watercolor in an oval shape, then cut out the shape. 

I wanted more purple on the right side of the page to balance things out better, so I just brushed some on with my paintbrush. 

♥♥  Happy creating!  ♥♥

Anna

Color Swatches Tutorial

Lately I have a thing for color swatches. It's a guide as to what colors you have in your stash of each art product. If it's a set you're collecting one at a time, this is perfect. Add the new color as you bring them home. Pictured below I colored in a circle for each Crayola pencil crayon I own. (I just bought a mega set of 60 pencils from Walmart.) If you want to know the steps in creating this, read on. :) 

I drew these on old book paper, punched them out, then glued them down in my Documented Life Project art journal. You could add them to any book. Maybe one dedicated to swatches would be cool!

Supplies:

- Book paper torn out of an old book (I tore mine from one of my art journals.)
- pencil crayons (or whatever medium you want swatches of. Examples: oil pastel set, watercolor pan set, watercolor pencils, Golden Acrylic fluid set, etc, etc.)
- 1 1/8" circle punch
- Sharpie marker Ultra-Fine point or any other fine-tipped pen or marker
- medium sized brush (a dollar store brand works fine)
- color wheel
- circle maker (a lid works too.)
- matte medium (I have the Liquitex brand.)
Note: If you're documenting water-based products, you'll want to use a fixative spray instead, as matte medium would make them bleed.
- glue stick
- art journal

Steps:

1. Take your circle maker or lid and draw as many circles as you have colors in your art set with the Sharpie. I drew 60.

2. Scribble another few circles around the first one.

3. Punch out your circles with the punch.

4. Glue them with a glue stick to the page of your choice. Arrange them according to the color wheel if you want. That had been my intention with mine, but I ran out of room, so it's a little disorganized. Make sure you have enough room to expand. I didn't, so they migrated to my other art journal pages, hence the mixing in of a different project I did. lol

5. Taking each pencil, color in each circle. Label color name (my favorite part) underneath the circle. I also added the name of the medium to the top of the page.

6. Take a brush and apply matte medium to the page to seal in the circles. (See Note in the supplies list. )

And you're done! :)

I created pictorial notes while reading The Book Thief, and glued the sketch paper to my art journal.


Happy Creating!
♥♥ Anna ♥♥