Secrecy is Not My Forté

I have actually been making some art! And after a month long dry spell, yesterday was a particularly productive day.

I've been working on the latest round of the sister journals (a project with two of my sisters where we exchange moleskines on a monthly basis, choosing a different theme per round). It's tough to share about here though, because it's all very hush, hush, each of us wanting the delight of discovering each new page and theme as we hold the journals in our own hands. But I'll show you one page recently completed, because I love it and I have to! Hopefully this won't breach the bonds of secrecy too badly.

To any of my sisters reading: *spoiler alert* Don't scroll down if you want to be surprised, but it is just one leetle page.

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It is nothing fancy, but is aesthetically satisfying to me...the image, colours, textures, words etc. come together to evoke the feeling I wanted, but in a way that doesn't feel forced or self conscious to me, just simple and unstudied. This is what I am after (especially in an art journal page), so to find it occasionally is nice. The image of the vulture is a transfer of a drawing of mine from a long time ago manipulated in photoshop. I have been learning about transfers in my Complex Collage class. Very useful little trick. I hadn't ever done it before.

I have been working on several collages for the class, none are finished. I am finding it very difficult to play along, to pace myself with the teaching of the class, and not to just grab a paintbrush and do my own thing with these pieces in progress. But I am staying the course, knowing that I will learn so much if I stick with the process.

That damn wire painting is still in progress. It is not working at all at this point, and may end up becoming the first canvas that I scrap completely. We shall see. I am not done wrasslin' with it and may just lick it yet.

Another thing in the works right now is The Very Elegant Tea Party, which will take place on May the 5th. Invitations were sent out last week, replete with faux wax seals.

Carved a stamp out of a pink Speedball rubber block, then made the seals with hot glue and painted them. I wouldn't want to do a large quantity with this method (the glue starts to disintegrate the rubber stamp after awhile), but for a small batch it worked like a charm. Unfortunately I don't have pics of the finished invites, since I was rushing to pop them in the mail, but they were, of course, Very Elegant.

And it is finally Spring out there. The grass is starting to green up, and it has been most pleasantly, unseasonably warm. Allergies are in full swing, but the sunshine and the blue skies all but make up for it.