history:
Printed images and background page. I often choose to use recycle type paper for printing if it is something that the back does not show.


Just the paint colour I happened to grab after gluing most of the images down and adding words I had written for the piece. I could tell immediately the colour would need MUCH toning down.


For the next layer I used a fave stamp and red ink to cover the whole page.


I did transfers of the image of my aunt Winnie and the words I had written. More of the images from the collage challenge were added. I glued on the piece of fabric trim which I had dyed the pale yellow. I tried to further embellish the collage with vintage buttons of which I have very many. I had also painted over with a light yellow glaze.


I had used a very pale oil pastel for some edging and in a couple of other places.


The final version - I used pale yellow paint on a leaf stamp around most of the edges and tiny bits of the same colour for further yellow around the very edge.


Just a note about the words and my aunt Winnie. Winnie was my auntie on my Dad's side. This young lady had diabetes and died when she was 13 years of age due to the diabetes and complications of the availability of insulin. My dad was a few years younger than she. A number of years later when I was 3 1/2 years old I was found to have diabetes. That was 47 years ago.


I will be blogging much more in next days. At least that is my intention. There is much I need to catch you up with.

Angels be with you dear friends.

TRYING *** HAPPY THOUGHTS and LAUGHTER







I ran out of time. I did not use all the elements. I am also not really pleased with the final result. I really liked the background. I was also very happy with the transfer. If I'd had more time I would have liked to do transfers of all the elements except maybe the birds. I would have used larger stamps for the words.
Regardless, I had a great time doing the journal page. I truly do find art to be healing.

canvases and plans:



Above is a photo of a canvas I started working on last Friday night. It measures 16 x 20 inches. I want to put some words on it and more texturing before I put a person on, blah, blah, blah.




Last Friday I purchased this book by Claudine Hellmuth. I got it at the arts and crafts store, you know the one I mean, in Saskatoon with my 40% off coupon.



I had borrowed Claudine's more recent book from the library. They actually brought it all the way from Nova Scotia to Humboldt, Saskatchewan for little old me. I was impressed. But I had to return it after only three weeks. :(
I would have liked to purchase that book, but of course they wouldn't have it at Michael's yet.

That's OK. I'm really impressed with the book I purchased. It has in one book lots of techniques which I've been trying to learn from Cloth, Paper, Scissors magazines and online, from videos and tutorials. I've been really chomping at the bit to try some encaustic work - with melted wax that is. A time ago I was thinking I had a small crock pot for melting the wax. Uh whoops - it's a fondue maker - getting my utensils muddled. I asked Greg to look for one for me when he was taking stuff from the house in Regina and the farm to Value Village but he didn't see one in the quick glance he made. Patience, patience Wendy. I was thinking yesterday of trying to melt some tiny bit of wax in the microwave but no, no, no google search says DO NOT. I really must have melted wax on this canvas. Oh well. I don't have the mini iron yet either. Wednesday - back to that arts and crafts store for another week's 40% off coupon.

Here are a couple more of the canvases I started. They are a bit smaller - 8 x 10 inches and 5 x 7 inches, I think. I won't take time to run downstairs now to measure.

These are more textured but I'm not certain of the colours.

Other than gel medium I don't have a lot of Golden products and I know they are recommended. Some day after I've sold lots of my art I'll be able to afford more of those beloved Golden products. Wait a minute - I think I did buy one tube of Golden paint the last time I was at Art Placement. With all the moving and organizing and phewph - busyness - I totally forgot. Next time.
I love the creations of Misty Mawn whose original texturing I encountered in probably the very first Cloth, Paper, Scissors magazine I purchased. Someday between Misty Mawn's teaching, suziblu"s most recent video and the techniques in the book I purchased, I might even learn how to do transfers.

ANGELS BE WITH YOU

THINK HAPPY THOUGHTS:
I am so very excited. I have put my very first video on youtube. I had so much fun making it. I hope you will take a few minutes to watch it. I would be very pleased. As always, any comments are very gratefully appreciated. I should point out that the windyangels on youtube is not me. I'm known as windyangels4u.



You can find "Don't Cry for me Argentina" on The Romantic Guitar of Liona Boyd.

As some of you know I was encountering some challenges again later last week. I was also feeling kind of tired with this ongoing attempt at cleaning our basement and my art room. I decided I needed to do some art. I needed to do something simple. While cleaning I had come across a studio scrapbook with "durable manila paper". Unfortunately it had met some water along the way so every page has a stain at the top left side - no matter. I will choose to call these journal pages even though the pages are large (35.6 x 27.9 cm).





I decided to do a video surrounding the piece because I had many ideas to go along with it and I had written a poem in my head also. Perhaps the main reason, however, was the fabulous compliments that my friend Karen has been giving me on my collaged boxes. Ah, I should not fail to mention suziblu who first gave me the strong desire to create an art video. If you have not seen any of suzi's videos I would strongly advise you to take a moment.

Those same boxes and my hand carved stamps had created interest from two new parties ~ Valerie and some folks at the Bliss Guild. I was very honoured to have them comment on a previous post. Other dear friends to comment on that post were Suze, Susan and Janet. I am also pleased to announce that a friend I discovered online, from Saskatchewan, has started a new blog and has invited me to put a link on my blog. Welcome Lisa. Lisa does fabulous photography.

Leah never ceases to amaze me. Not only is she the creator of creative every day 2008, she also leaves frequent comments. Thanks Leah.

I cannot close this post without noting that I have been very privileged to have the fabulous Liona Boyd look at my blog and very kindly permit me to use one of her songs on my video. I am deeply honoured. Thanks Liona. Here's the link: www.lionaboyd.com/ I found the following video also on youtube. "Moorish Dance" is from The Spanish Album.





I would like to close this post with the words "I LOVE ART".

Angels be with you,
Wendy

True to November we are having many dull, grey days. Some of them have started sunny but it doesn't take long and the clouds dullen my brain AND the skies of course.
We are back to Saskatoon for an appointment AND I'm going to the Artisan's Craft Market. I thought it's about time I tried to investigate more the local scene. Hopefully I'll have a drop of time to tell you about it.
Meantime I'll show you quickly these couple of creations. You'll have to read about them at flickr as I'm on the run.





Angels be with you,
Wendy

Autumn 4x4s: For this week's prompt at Inspire me Thursday the word "square" was chosen. If you are an artist you know that this opens numerous possibilities. I've decided to go with 4x4s. Because I love autumn textures and colours and feel so blessed at this time of year, I've decided to go with an autumn splendour quartet. The fourth is quite different from the rest in that the background is blue and the picture is different. I happened to already have it cut to a 4x4 size.
This first one was done on a piece of yellow cardstock. I printed my own background of rust onto it and then applied gold ink. After a couple of minutes I rubbed the ink with a baby wipe. Next I applied a stamp over the entire piece. I used the printed photo and sewed it on. I finished it with stamps for the words and the addition of the brad.











The background for the second was done on watercolour with acrylic and water. Then I used inks which I again rubbed off with baby wipes. I used stamps and I think some walnut ink spray. I glued the picture this time and also used a sakura goldie for some of the words. I did a tiny bit of sanding on the photo edges.

















The third was just done on a piece of decorative paper.
For this one I tried using a gel transfer for the words. Same picture, same sewing, same application of brad finalized this one.



















The fourth was using a blue background done with acrylic and water on watercolour paper with a bit of salt. After it was dry I printed some of my own handwriting which had been scanned and stretched a bit, onto the paper. Different picture, same treatment. I used a gold ink pad and pencil eraser to do a couple of gold stamped images.

Here's a little book I made for the ar-TEA swap hosted by MaryAnn: I finally finished this at about 1:30 a.m. and popped it in the mail today to my swap partner in Finland. I had so much fun making it. The size is 4" x 4". The cover and right hand pages are done with fabric. The back and left pages are done with collaged watercolour paper. I used decorative papers to do the quotations and photos.

I must leave my computer as I am exhausted. Much has been going very well the last few days and I will be freed to do more creating.

Till tomorrow - "angels be with you".

And thanks for all of your kind comments and observations. I'll be back to you soon.

Moving up to her dreams: 8 1/2 x 11 on blue paper.
I can't remember when I did this - last time we were at farm - maybe 10 days ago. I can't seem to settle into one specific thing these days. Perhaps I'm just needing a tiny HA! break to rejuvenate my energy and leave some comments on others blogs. I took a few moments this morning. One of these days I'll get back to you.

Much love,
Angels be with you,
Wendy

swirly, twirly: major play time with fractals and corel photo paint

Words: For inspire me Thursday's theme this week we are to choose some words and be inspired by them. I chose to do a bit of a different twist on this and created around the meaning of all words in my life. I tended to be more of a writer in the last few years and only within the past year have been trying to merge into the visual arts while still using words, usually my own, within my art.
The collage is blue paper with handwriting applied to 81/2 x 11 card stock and then stamped with ink. The larger words and image are done digitally and then printed onto the card stock. The buttons - chosen to add some whimsy.


These are the words found in "my tiny treasury".

May words inspire you with every step you take.
Angels be with you.

Journal Pages and "Woman" for Artwords:
The second page of the journal pages refers to Pauline. You can find her blog here. I also posted about treasures that I received from her at this post.

"Woman" is the theme for the 50th week of artwords. I have chosen this stamped image photo of Greg's Auntie Dot, a wonderful lady. There is also some old german writing which I turned into a stamped image. I especially like the idea of "soft yet strong" for woman. I think this portrays much in only a few simple words. Some of the words I've chosen are not quite as universal - such as "exotic" but "beautiful" fits the majority - beautiful inside and out. If you think you are not beautiful - I would ask you to think again. I think you are beautiful. And there are probably many others who think so too, even though they neglect to tell you.
Collage on watercolour - acrylic background. Letters for "woman" are from the very creative "Artsyfran"

"Oh beautiful woman -
Love yourself".

Angels be with you.

Eco Art: This is the theme for Inspire Me Thursday this week. I reuse many materials for collages and hope to get into altered books much more. I've only just tippy-toed into the area so far. For "Give me wings" I started with a piece of cardboard from a cereal box. I applied acrylic paint dots which I spread about with an old credit card. For the final images I used pictures and words from old books. the stamp is scanned from an old document in my family's possession. The wings were from an older photograph I'd taken years back and scanned. I then did adjusting on the corel photo program I have which is recycled from another location also. The faces are scanned images from old photos of my mother. If you know what I look like you will feel quite certain you are looking at me - not the case. In the larger happy face my mother is actually expectant with me. I love that glow. It perfectly suits the message.
"Give me wings that I might fly".

God uses his children: This piece was inspired by the work of Misty Mawn. I love Misty's art. The background was done using an article by Misty in Cloth Paper Scissors magazine, Summer, 2006, Issue 7. I did this last June. Other parts of this were also from planned projects not yet completed so I am also doing part of the craft challenge with this piece besides just creating. It is not quite finished. I will be adding more parts - maybe covering some of my handwriting. Not sure when I'll finish it. The next few days are quite busy. It took me a long time to actually do any creating today - feeling quite wasted because of the school and difficulties with communication. I did quite well the last couple of days considering but today I felt extremely unproductive. I'm glad I thought of this background and looked up the magazine and some of Misty's recent work.

Angels be with you.

Creativity allows my voice: collage - mulberry paper on card stock - digital image I created last fall for "voice". 8 1/2 x 11
Angels be with you.

Art - new year; old year AND tagged:
I'll start by explaining that I've been tagged by Suze. It's a book tag. You are supposed to pick up a book that's close by. Turn to page 123, go down five sentences and then look at the next 3 sentences. Oh yes, and be sure to say the name of the book and its authour.

Well, I put a bit of a twist to it. I had signed up for the quilt journal group, an off shoot of the CPS group. Each month I, and many others, are to create a quilt journal of, I think, 8 x 11 inches. Since I signed for the group things have changed a bit for me but I have decided I would still like to try to do this. With all of my art I've been having much difficulty trying to choose from many possibilities, ideas, what I would like to do or perhaps focus on. I am hoping this will give me some direction. Maybe I shall try to focus more on using fibers. We'll see. I'm not even sure if I'm still part of the webring I had joined last fall.

But back to being tagged - I have a binder with a number of Cloth Paper Scissors and Quilting Arts magazines. I decided to use this binder as my book. I didn't have the challenge directions in front of me and I accidentally went to page 213 in my binder. On looking back I found that page 123 does not have the required number of sentences, so I'll just stick with page 213, or I guess it was actually 212, after having added together the pages from the first magazine in the binder to the second magazine. So I found myself in a Quilting Arts magazine, Fall 2006, Issue 23 .

"I'm pretty sure they didn't use a MacBookPro, with dual Intel processors, nor did they use Adobe Illustrator, because, well, all they had were pencils back then. And maybe some nice technical pens. And a compass."

In these particular "Ramblings" by Robbi Joy Eklow she is discussing how she loves Art Deco. A particular piece inspiring her was finished in 1929. Robbi writes about the minimal tools used to develop the piece initially.

I started to think too, about the tools which I use and how technology has changed what we are able to do. I appreciate how there are still needs for hands, hand stitching, painting, sketching, moving the mouse of the computer. Though technology has greatly enhanced what an artist is capable of, there must still be the planning, the creative eye, the dreams, sometimes visions, beliefs and imagination in order to develop art.

I'm rambling. The top piece, 8 1/2 x 11 inches, is the newer one completed, anyway I think it is completed, just yesterday. I started it at the farm. I had some purchased pieces in the letters, bird and cut outs. I did the main background with wax crayons and then did some scratching of the swirls with a nail file. Later I pulled out the gel pens and started to go over the swirls and add more words. The fabric was at home. It is quite modern - meshy and metallic. So this piece was started with some pretty basic tools and then added to with more modern pieces.

The second piece I did last summer. I was playing with tape transfers. The size of the taped piece is 7 x 8 inches. It is of a cat we used to have named Doby. He had a wonderful face. I miss him still. I am quite pleased with how the transfer turned out. I'm not sure if I should play with it or just leave as is.

I want to say more about the particular magazine I chose for the tagging. As I had pulled it out of the binder to do this post it was sitting available for me to look at otherwise. Coincidence, luck, I'm not sure. On the cover I find "The Art of Journal Quilting". Leaps of joy. I discover information about how journal quilts actually started. I find yet more examples of journal quilts and I discover that I've made a good choice in joining this group. The authour speaks of play, of not worrying so much about perfection, and of going beyond the fear. These are things which I have been trying to deal with the past few years and I think I've been doing well. But this may be an extra little nudge to remind me to keep working in that direction.

If you are reading this and want to be tagged please feel free to accept. I will personally tag Fran, Darcy, and Terri.

Our daughter, Cat, on watercolour - collaged, incomplete. This is the piece I had started on Saturday. I took a photograph and because it was leaning against a background I decided to digitally add black and charcoal around outside.

Yesterday Cat had a tiny seizure. She is fine. About 8 - 9 years ago she had been on medication for epilepsy. Then she had been seizure free and was able to go off the medication.

I believe this seizure was totally stress related. The transition to the huge high school has been very difficult. The program Cat had been in at the public school was very specialized for her. One could say she was spoiled. One said she deserves to be spoiled. I agree. At the high school they do not know how intricate her complexities are. They need to learn.

If you want to see the pictures of Cat in more detail, or more of them, go to either "Cat - now" or "our daughter - then".

Your prayers would be greatly appreciated at this time.

I love you Beautiful Angel.
Mommy