I'm so bananas.

I had this idea on April 1 that I would TOTALLY have time to participate in Effy Wild's blog-along.  HAHAHAHAHAH oh man I'm hilarious.

As you can tell by the lack of posts this month, that obviously hasn't happened!  Right now I'm in the middle of prepping for the Art Trunk at Art-is-You next week - if you're in the Memphis area, you should come see me!!

I'm on a needle felting kick:

And as soon as I make one more I have to clean up real quicklike and start working on my Artistcellar blog project.  and then make 10 journals.  And then more dolls.  And then.. then.. then.

BUT.  In the meantime, I got two awesomes today!  I won a spot in Micki Wilde's Imaginary Creatures class - I went right to the creepy section and watched her make a super cute wee creeper.  It is a really fun class, you should check it out!

Thanks Micki! :D

Then, I saw that the lovely and talented Denthe gave me a Liebster Award.  Thanks so much, Denthe! 

These are the rules for the Liebster Award:

1. Link back to the blogger who nominated you.
2. Answer the 11 questions given to you by the blogger who nominated you.
3. Nominate 11 other bloggers with less than 200 followers.
4. Go to the blogs you nominated and notify them of your nomination.
5. Give your nominees 11 questions to answer.

Denthe happily 'adjusted' the rules (thank goodness!  11 questions is a lot!), so I'm going to do that too.  But first, I'll answer her questions :D

Which kind of art do you like and why?  I like art that has a lot going on.  Whether it's patterns or textures or a bunch of crazy cross-hatching, I am most drawn (har) to art that is full of surprises.  Plus anything with florescent pink or painted by Jesse Reno.

Is there something you really want to do in your life that you haven’t done yet?  There is SO MUCH.  From visiting The Louvre to the pyramids to firing a crossbow and mastering the rice-on-the-outside sushi roll. 

How would your best friend describe you in one word?  Funny.  (I think that's what she says most, anyway.. haha)

Do you do any kind of sports? (just want to see where I stand compared to other people ☺)  hahahahah nooooooooooo.  I do love yoga and just remembered yesterday that I really like badminton, but I don't think they count as sports!

Do you sell your art, or would you like to?  I do!  I'm staring down the barrel of Show Season and freaking out a little already.  I sell on Etsy, too (link to the right!).

OKAY, so now, my nomination is YOU.  If you're reading this, I would love it if you answered these questions - you can do it in your blog or in the comments here, and you can pass it along according to the rules above if that turns you on. :D  I'm only doing six questions because OMG I HAVE TO GET TO WORK. ;)

1.  What is your favorite quote?

2.  What would you love to learn to do?  

3.  Have you ever gone sky diving?  If not, would you?

4.  Coffee or tea?

5.  What word makes you cringe?

6.  What is your favorite art-related tool or technique?

WOYWW: Always a mess!

It's the story of my life.  I live in an environment of barely-controlled chaos, probably just like you.  I have this constant need to be organized which is constantly warring with my desire to not waste time putting stuff away.  It's a conundrum.

Here's what's on my workdesk this week!  For more info about WOYWW, click here!

Wednesday is my design team day on the Artistcellar blog, so this is the remnant of that.  You can go there for a walkthrough if you're interested.  That paper hiding under the skull pouch is my to-do list, which has grown exponentially just in the last 10 minutes, I swear.  The nasty-looking orange mug is actually my brush-cleaning dish, which means I have to keep my coffee/tea FAR AWAY FROM THERE.

Now I have go clean that mess so that I can record a video.  No rest for the wicked.  

Happy Wednesday! xo!

Hip Hip Hop You Don't Stop

So much busy!

Issue 22 of Art Trader went up today, and my little bunnymonster is on the cover!  SO exciting!

I have full instructions on how to make him plus an article on stenciling (shocker) and a sum-up of Chronicles thus far.  There is also TONS of awesome from Sal, Ann, and Annie, so you don't want to miss it.  PLUS IT'S FREE SO JUST GO DOWNLOAD IT ALREADY!

Tomorrow my first Artistcellar post goes live - I've proofread and checked and rechecked and inserted commas and deleted commas and tried hard for the awesome, so I hope I succeeded!  Right now I'm sitting in a daze staring at this pile of mess next to me where there used to be a clean table.  Once more into the Fray!

Here's a sneak peek at my project:

My post goes up at 6:00 a.m. on the Artistcellar blog.  You should check out what everyone else is doing and jump on the blog hop to win free Sacred Heart stencils.  These are seriously cool stencils.

Now that that's out of the way, I need to figure out what to do for 50 Canvases this week.  The Manflesh also goes back out of town tomorrow - he usually works out all over the country and is home about 4-6 days a month, but he has actually been working close to home for about six weeks.  It has been like a vacation for him and awesome to see him relaxed and happy, hanging out with the kids and annoying me endlessly.  ;)  He says he purposely annoys me so that I won't miss him so much when he's gone.  I think he just can't help it.

Exciting news!

OMG.  Ok.  Last time I talked about exciting news that I couldn't actually talk about.. NOW, though, I can!

I am ecstatically excited to announce that I'm going to be on the Artistcellar design team for the next six months!!  Every Wednesday I'll share a new project on the Artistcellar blog using stencils and other awesome goodies.  The first stencil release during my time is SACRED HEARTS, which is extra awesome.  They're doing a blog hop right now, so you should totally check that out.

• Saturday, March 29th – Artistcellar Kickoff
  
• Sunday, March 30th – Jill K Berry
• Monday, March 31st – Chris Cozen
• Tuesday, April 1st – Effy Wild
• Wednesday, April 2nd – Tamara Laporte
• Thursday, April 3rd – Guadalupe Brizuela Cabal

SO MUCH AWESOME already!

Here is the information about the team - they're all awesome, and I can't wait to see what they come up with!

Team:
Gabrielle Javier-Cerulli is an artist, art journaler, and archetype consultant (are you the goddess? the rebel? or the storyteller?) She’s the author of No Ordinary Woman: Tips for Conscious, Creative, and Healthy Living. She is also the creator of the iPad/iPhone app Archetypes4U. Her favorite colors these days are fuchsia and vermillion orange. Her new best friends are ink sprays, however, her long time companions are acrylics.  It’s all about texture, color, and abstract flow in her mixed media work.  She also holds a M.A. in expressive arts therapy.
Websites:
www.GabrielleJavierCerulli.com
www.KnowYourArchetypes.com
My name is Jackie P. Neal from Upstate, N.Y. Since I retired last year, I have renewed my love and passion with Art. There are so many new and cool things in this wonderful artsy world, that I am attempting to try each and every technique and product! What I have discovered, is that my favorites at this point are stenciling, doodling, BRIGHT colors, and collaging with papers and elements. I like to get up around 5 am grab my tankard of coffee and head for the studio- usually not reappearing until 2 or 3:00pm-earlier if a tasty snack is announced! I look forward to creating with you and hopefully inspiring your muse to dance with your creativeness! and remember- Art Is Not Optional.
Website:
www.creatingwithoutcrayons-jackiepneal.com
Renee Zarate: I am a mixed media artist living in New England.  I have been married to my very supportive husband, Joe, for the past 20 years.   My favorite art medium changes often but right now I am working a lot with spray inks and acrylic paints using stencils to achieve unusual backgrounds for card making, art journals and other projects.  I love a challenge so I have been submitting my art work to different magazines for many years now and have been published in 5 different Stampington publications.  I also teach classes sharing different techniques.
Website:
http://renee-boltonhouse.blogspot.com
Sarah Trumpp is a mixed media artist known as ‘that weird girl with the tattoos’ in a teenytiny town in rural New York where she lives with her husband, three kids, six fish, and a tiny goofy Chihuahua.  She has an almost frightening stencil addiction and enough art supplies to open her own store, but she is especially drawn to water-soluble media, spray paint, and acrylics.  She loves circus sideshows, zombies, old mythology, toasters, and glitter nail polish.  She blogs regularly with her BFF at wonderstrange.com and less regularly at wonderstrumpet.blogspot.com.  She thinks you’re awesome.
Website:
Wonderstrange Arts
Theresa Plas is a long time resident of south Florida who works in a variety of media.  Her art is inspired by the brilliant hues and textures of nature. Theresa’s artwork ranges from representational to abstract.  She has developed several series related to the human form.  Recently, printmaking has been added to her body of work.  Theresa’s exhibits include the Arts Arena Gallery in Delray Beach as well as the Boca Museum of Art School in Boca Raton.  She has been selected to be published in the May/June 2014 issue of Cloth, Paper, Scissors.
Website:
http://studio48tango.blogspot.com 

Stuff.

MAN.  Life is crazy.  I have exciting news to share, but I can't share it yet.  Suffice to say, IT IS EXCITING!  SO EXCITING!  OMG!

While waiting for the time when I can talk about this exciting news, I have been making journals with some of my 50 Canvases pieces:

I have two more in the works and about four more on the back burner.  They have all sorts of different pages, including pages from comic books, music sheets, nursery rhymes, Shakespeare, etc.  They are bound with coptic stitch, so they open flat and have little half pages like the one I use for my Chronicles project.  I reallllly love binding books.  Even when yanking the super long string around makes me dump my tea on my laptop.  Whoops!  It survived, though, so yay. 

I found this picture on Facebook with no information about the creator or design, and I love the pattern but can't actually find it anywhere, so if anyone has ANY information about it, I'm all ears.  I can probably figure out how to do it, but I'm lazy.

It looks like a Chevron afghan with spike stitches every two rows.. until that top row where it looks like there are more than two rows.. so confusing.  I love it though.  

Thanks for stopping by!

WOYWW: Stars

I have been doing 29 Faces this month, and I have been tying in Greek Mythology as much as possible with it.  I drew these girls on stars to represent the Pleiades a couple of weeks ago, but I finally got around to finishing them last night and today - each one takes forever to color since it's colored pencil.  They're finished off with acrylics on birch plywood 5" stars.

So this is what my workdesk looked like when I woke up this morning:

I sealed them with fixative, piled them up and then immediately started working on a canvas for my 50 Canvases video.  I was sitting here typing this and checking for shiny on the canvas (to see if the gel medium was dry yet), and I thought this was a cool view, so this is what's on my workdesk right now:

The two most important things in this video:  Tea and lipbalm.

So yeah!  That's what I'm up to today.  Now off to see what everyone else is doing.

Learn more about WOYWW here!

WOYWW: A mess!

I was looking at this mess and trying to figure out how I could finish this moleskine spread I am working on without having to clean it up when I remembered it's Wednesday and time for WOYWW.

I am trying to get this moleskine out the door since it was due at the beginning of the month and I am having serious problems with it.  I am also waiting for ink to thaw, which is awesome.. haha!  AND I need to upgrade my computer from 32 bit to 64 bit windows, so that's why those discs are there.  IT NEVER STOPS being overwhelming around here. ;)