Life Book April Weekend Bonus Lessons

I got busy this weekend and created two girls from Tamara’s bonus lesson.  She talks about creating in different size of journals.  This is a FREE YouTube lesson go see it it’s Linked Up!

It looks suspiciously like the previous girl I created for Week 17, but I made a second one using my own imagination and I think you will see the big difference.

Well, get a cup of coffee and relax by looking at a few pictures.

The difference between this one and the one I did last time is the face.  The other one was 3/4 and this is full front.  I followed along with Tamara, but it ended up looking too much like her work.  Never the less, here are a few closeups.

This is the upper left with my whimsical town and flowers.

In the lower right, I used my own handwriting to write Live Lightly and Love your Life.  The flower on her neck is on that Tamara used – I like it and will use it again in another project.

This is the closeup of the girl.  She has such a sweet face – so serene.  Don’t you think?  I used my white paint sharpie and added doodles as well as my black pitt pen to add the black zentangles on the upper left.

The next day, I pushed myself to create my own girl and I just went with the flow.  While I was talking to my sister, I drew some zentangle doodles on the upper part of the page.

I used an older watercolor piece I started but never finished.  All I had on this page was the drips in different colors.  I used clear gesso after I drew the face and finished it up with acrylics.  I also used some transparent paints on her hair and love the effect!

You can see I used my black pen and outlined the drips creating segments where I could zentangle.  The doodles on the top are called dangle designs.

I colored each segment with different colors and wrote words to create a mosaic.

You can see the house with the dangle designs and the word FAITH.  Isn’t that bird cute?  Yes, it’s a bird, I know it looks like a fish LOL!

I think the little bug on the upper right corner looks like an ant!

This is the closeup of the face.  I have a thing for green eyes and red hair.  I must have Irish in my blood!!

I hope you enjoyed looking through these projects as much as I did creating them!

Until next time, happy crafting!!

Carmen

Life Book 2015 Weeks 16 and 17

Wow, it is almost the end of April!  Where did the time go.  I was so busy with family matters last week that before I knew it another week passed by.

For this week’s post, I combined two Life Book lessons because I didn’t have enough information to fill up two pages.

Week 16 was with Alena Hennesy.  She is such a sweet girl – I just loved the way she led us through her “Quick Be Here Now” lesson on intuitive painting.  This was a bonus lesson so it wasn’t very detailed, but I got to spend 15 minutes just using color and making marks.

I used all kinds of paints on this – fluid acrylics, watercolor crayons, and black and white markers.  She said:  “just pretend you are a little girl coloring in a state of abandon.”

This is what I created in 15 minutes.

For Week 17 Jenny Wentworth showed us step-by step how to create a portrait in an intuitive way.

I was really surprised how fast I was able to create this girl.  I’m thinking that because I have taken so many different classes on drawing and coloring whimsical girls, that I intuitively and automatically put down color and shading.

I didn’t think too much about it, just went with the flow.  My husband and my crafty friend, Maria, were very impressed!

I started out with a painting I didn’t finish on watercolor paper and applied gesso to cover it up.  She only used a handful of  supplies and I tried to do the same.  I didn’t have the sepia color she used on the background and for the shading; so I made my own.  Sepia is a mixture of dark brown and black.  I don’t like using black too much, so instead of using black I added ultramarine blue to burnt sienna.  It was a bit too dark, but I watered it down.  I also used watercolor pencils, soft pastels, fluid acrylics and regular acrylics.

Here she is!!

And the closeup:

Don’t you just love her eyes?  I hope I remember how I created this piece because I wasn’t thinking about what I applied first or anything, I just made a circle here, a line there and added color here and there.

I hope you have enjoyed looking at my creations today and I thank you so much for stopping by.

Happy crafting!

Carmen

Life Book 2015 Bonus Lesson from Tamara Laporte

I finally had the time to work on this lesson by Tamara that she shared at the same time Jane Davenport gave us her fabulous lesson on drawing and painting whimsical girls.

Both artists are amazing; and both artists have their own style, so it was great to try both ways to draw the girls.

Tam shared a lesson from Life Book 2014 where she went in-depth and step-by-step on how to draw an angel.

I followed her step by step and this is what I created.  I think she came out very sweet!

I love the serene look she has.

I used Canson 11×15 watercolor paper, acrylics, watercolor crayons, graphite pencils, gesso, and Dylusions sprays on top of a few collage papers.

A close up of her face.  I added a few butterflies to her hair and shoulders.  I started out drawing flowers, but they turned into butterflies, LOL.

This is the close-up of her left wing.  I really liked the way the graphite pencil enhanced the feathers.

Go and sign up for Life Book 2015 – there is still time, and you will learn many, many different techniques!!

Thanks for visiting, and happy crafting!!

Carmen

Life Book 2015 Week 15

A new theme for this months is “honoring the here and now” with Tamara Laport.  She went on to write in her introduction that “We were to think about “exploring concepts like grounding, honoring the little things in our lives, staying present to what is alive in you,”  Tamara continues:  “responding to and having a conversation with what is” and putting it down on a journal page.

I was really looking forward to this lesson because  she included three in-depth videos showing us the process of incorporated a 3/4 face and experimenting with black and white.  I don’t like black so I used dark purple – and it worked for me because I was able to use coordinating colors that made me very happy.  We also used our intuitive creation and looked at shape contrast.  A new concept for me.  So I enjoyed this lesson very much.

Included in this lesson was a meditation video on grounding and being here now.  A very calming and much-needed video.

So on with the show and tell, LOL!!

We created a two page layout where the main focus was on the girl.

I’ll go over the different aspects of this project because there is so much detail.  We started with the lesson of the 3/4 face and made the face pale to contrast with the boulder colors.  I was a bit scared to do this because I didn’t want to run it, but I’m very pleased with the way she looks.

After I wrote down  all the little things that make me happy, I covered the words by layering different products such as Dylusions sprays, acrylic paints, markers, pencils and I personally used some of Tamara’s stencils.

This is the details of the upper left hand corner where the banner is.  I also added more words on the banner and zentangled the leaves.

After I finished the girl, I started intuitively adding dark colors around her face including the flower on her face.  Then I used a Crafters Companion stencil for the face then turned it around and applied it to the left hand corner.

In the lower left hand corner I added some whimsy houses and more flowers,

For the neck, I also added more intuitive splashes of color.  I really like the different colors that came out.

Interestingly, I used the same stencil that included the hearts on both sides of the watercolor papers using Dylusions sprays by picking up the spray from my craft mat using a round brush and they changed into such beautiful hues.

The whimsical flowers are from Tam’s Whimsy Series stencils by Artistcellar, aren’t they cute!!

Here is another look at those hearts.

I finished it all up by adding stamping around the circle where the girl is and on the edges.  I think it really adds a nice finishing touch.

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So there you have my pensive girl!

Thanks for visiting today and until next time,

Happy crafting!

Carmen

Life Book 2015 Week 14

The lovely Alisa Burke shared a lesson with us today on how to draw inspiration from our local environment in Field Journaling.  If you get a chance, go visit her, she has beautiful projects and classes.

She taught us how to draw a ‘feather’ but I decided to draw and color a Dutch Bantam Rooster I saw in a calendar.  What better subject for a feather than a rooster, don’t you think?  Tamara had a lesson on drawing a feather in one of her other classes, but her approach was very different.

As usual, I used watercolor paper and my new QoR watercolors – they are fantastically vibrant, but I think I already said that in a previous post, LOL.  I first started with a watercolor background then drew the rooster lightly with a pencil and started adding the different colors.  I’ve always wanted to try the technique of using acrylic paints on top of watercolor inks, so I went to town with different brands, like Lumiere light body metallic acrylics and Viva Precious Metal Colors so the feather would have that shiny look I love so much.  I outlined everything with my black micron pen.

I also decided to add a red and a blue feather so I could use my metallic paints.  The picture does not show the beautiful effects, but I think you get an idea.

Here are close-ups of the blue and red feathers:

I stamped another feather that has script on it and “Shake a tail feather,” a Unity Stamp.

I hope you enjoyed this post and I will be posting Week 15 this same week.

Happy crafting, and thanks for visiting!

Spring Time In Paris

Michael’s stores is having a trip to Paris giveaway on their Face Book page.  You can read more about the contest at Michaels.com.  Today is the last day to enter!

I’ve been working on this mixed media project for three weeks.  I took it to my acrylic painting class and worked on it while my teacher gave me pointers. I googled Paris in the Spring time and this is the picture I chose.  It’s a picture of the Eiffel tower taken from a park filled with flowers and trees.

It’s a 16×18 canvas.  I used acrylic paints for the background as well as tissue paper, stencils, stamps, and molding paste.  For the inside of the tower I used speckled molding paste and black acrylic paint.  For the metal around the tower I used a bronze acrylic paint marker by Sakura and bronze acrylic paint.  I also added different color stickles to the flowers and trees just to give it a bit of “shine” all around.

I may not win anything, but if I don’t enter, I’ll never know what the judges think!

The first picture I took inside and I like the way the tower shimmers so I entered that one into the giveaway.  The second picture was outside next to my lavender bush.

Thanks for stopping by!  Let me know what you think!

Happy crafting,

Carmen