an artful day

Dan watched football all day so I was free to play in my art room!  I admit I did some computer work as well, but I felt artfully satisfied by the end of the day.

I made mail art - I've got quite a packet going to Karen for her MMSA (mail me some art) challenges this month.  There is a new theme for each week (postmarked by Saturday) so there's lots of time or themes to interest you.  She makes it super easy - you send her cards, she matches them up with other participants and mails them out! :)  Some of these go to her swaps and some to people I owe cards to.....

Then, I finished up a spread in my journal I'd been working on to remember our vacation.  I used some of my photos, some ephemera (tickets & stuff), paint and the usual fun stuff.  Here's how that turned out:

Folded the center 2 pages in half so the outer pages had to color coordinate -have finally realized this color combo is just not a fave - I keep trying it in various permutations and I rarely like the results.  I need to stick to brighter, more cool colors I think.

The two folded pages opened to the center -listing the places we visited and practiced some writing.

Added some maps, also folded to get them to fit.

The inside of the folded list pages changed color palette - like it better.

This was a fun way to include lots of pics, some ephemera, some comments so I remember the highlights of the trip.  Washi tape holds stacked photos in place so they don't take up as much room.

And finally, I added the next steps to my large canvas WIP.  I've shown the various layers I've worked on over the last few weeks, today I added blue stenciled letters, then circles, covered it all in matte medium and waited for it to dry.  Can't decide if I want to gesso it a bit before the next step or not so will live with it a day or two before moving on.....I'm mostly liking it - we'll see how it progresses compared to what's in my head.

Wanted an underlayment of some letters and teal.

Lots of gesso and white and gray paint.

Even more paint, then circles in 2 sizes and lots of shades of yellow/gold.

Circle detail - dictionary pages and music from Get Back by the Beatles.

Hope you all managed to fit some art in this weekend as well.

I'll be sharing this with Artists in Blogland.