Sample Art

Here is a samples I did using some of the new rubber stamps from

Art Girl Designs. The stamps are deeply etched red rubber and come on sheets

that are 6" x 9" or there abouts.

New Stamp Designs

I'm so proud to announce that my good friend, Dawn Burrows, who is a talented graphic designer by day and an equally awesome mixed media artist by night, has just produced her first two sheets of rubber stamps! She's selling them via her Etsy site so please go check them out! Some parts of these designs began life as her family photos, but they then underwent a lot of tweaking and fluffing to get them just right. LOVE the little girl reaching for the star and the little boy sitting on the building blocks. There are some great architectural pieces too that will make for some really great ATC's as well as greeting cards. I'll be posting some pics in the next day or two of what I'm doing so far with these stamps.

Bandana Prints

These were a natural next step with the "doodling" I've been doing for
some time now. Saw the technique online at: PearlEsq a blog by Robin Beam, who is the
education director for Ranger Industries. I guess I'm behind the times because she has been doing this for some time now it appears! Oh well, better late than never! I've been having fun with this technique making backgrounds for cards, etc. and even did an envelope on a momentary whim last week. I love sending a little bit of art in the mail to perk up someone's day. Just wish I had more time for that! The technique in a shortened version is:

1. rub Distress Ink pads (or any dye ink pads) on a teflon sheet - don't overlap colors or they will muddy

2. spritz inked sheet with water - pretty heavily

3. drag a piece of watercolor paper through the wet dye once, then dab here and there into remaining wet dye to cover entire piece (easier to work with 1/4 sheets or so) of w/c paper

4. I found you can go back direct to paper with the ink pads adding a dab of ink here and there, then spritz the area with some more water to make it run and blend with the existing colors.

5. set aside to dry and do some more backgrounds

6. when background is dry (can speed with heat gun), stamp flourishes or any stamps you want to fill in a random pattern. Robin recommends the black acrylic paint dabber by Ranger. I tried it and preferred the Stazon black pad for clear, crisper images.

7. high light here and there alongside the stamped black images using a good, opaque, white pen. Here again, I prefer the Signo pen, but my friend Dawn let me try her new Extra fine white waterproof Sharpie marker and it is pretty great too!

8. I added some random dots here and there, but that is just me and I never know when to stop doodling!

Thanks Robin for another great technique!

ATC's for Lill

This is the second set of ATC's I've exchanged with Lill Mederak in Canada. I waited to post these until I knew she'd have received her package so as not to spoil the fun. I do love this little format - both for it's ease and quickness to complete and for it's tradeability too. I just organized all my ATC's in a three ring notebook with those clear vinyl baseball card sleeves and arranged them in groups - lots of eraser carved ones from my early days with the Carving Consortium and then later groups in various swaps. I also have enough from a few dear friends to make a whole page of work by that one artist, which is fun to see. My style has certainly changed and I think, improved too, over the years.

Tribal Inspiration

Isn't it fun to get inspiration for something you love to do from the most unexpected places? I was recently looking at some lamp worked beads on line and came across some that are done using various aboriginal designs. No - I'm NOT going to try my hand at lampworking on top of everything else I can't seem to say no to! But the swirls and circles and undulating snake-like shapes really spoke to me so I just had to doodle with them. Here's my first attempt. This was done on white watercolor paper using the Faber Castell Pitt Artist pens in both the brush size and the S size for the tinier detail stuff. I think I'll have to play more with these sort of designs and I think I really want to try doing it on top of some of my hand dyed watercolor paper too.

Doodle ATC's

Here are some of the ATC's I've been doing in spare moments. I do these in the car at lunchtime while listening to books on my MP3 player. I even keep a few blank ATC sized cards next to the phone at work for those times when I'm on perpetual hold! Now my boss won't have to wade through my doodles on the sides of all the invoices we pay! The eyes may look a bit odd and truly are not my normal thing to draw, but I saw another artist drawing eyes and thought what a good way to build your skill at drawing parts of the body...and DOODLING at the same time! The colored ATC's here were done with more of the ColorBox Cat's Eye pigment ink pads. I did find though that if I put the colored ink on last, it sort of greys out the nice black gel pens I'm using. And if you put it on the card first, you have to give it a few days to dry really, really well, or the gel pens don't want to write over it.