“You need chaos in your soul to give birth to a dancing star” Nietzsche
During the move I realized that I haven’t used my acrylic inks in a long time and I really love them so time to pull those guys out again and play with them more. I used my new ATC MixupStencil and shifted it around while loosely painting with a brush through the stencil with the ink.
This doesn’t of course give a nice crisp image but I wanted a more loose, almost watercolor like effect with the same pattern that I later traced through the stencil with a stabilo pencil.
I added a calendar page from the sold old almanac calendar (sorry guys)- this one shows an older painting of mine (still available for sale here) and blended the page in by adding some of the ink in the same color family to the page as well to the background. That was a lot of fun!
I love everything about this! The quote, the colors, and the background design.
The quote especially speaks to me during a week of family chaos.
Happy Saint Patrick’s Day Nat!
Hello from my Creative Squad! Today we have a post from Robin Seiz who is sharing a project that will have you thinking about Spring! She is using my Small Circle Jumble, Floral Tile Small, Fan-fare, and Mini Motifs rubber stamps and our theme: My Kindred Spirit – Animals are often symbols of qualities that we humans identify with, so let’s take some inspiration from them this month. Do you have an animal whose characteristics you identify with? Maybe it changes depending on your mood or what life throws. Who is your Kindred Spirit in the animal kingdom today?
Hello friends,
This month’s themed project, Kindred Spirits, was lots of fun for me to do. Although I live in the Northeast, I’m a warm weather person (Go figure!) Gardening is my outdoor passion. I have a big vegetable garden and a property with lots of native plants. Butterflies are a critical part of the ecosystem. I love watching them fly from one plant to another doing what they were meant to do – move pollen from one plant to another. While they love nectar they drink from puddles to supply the minerals they need. I, like butterflies, am attracted to bright colors. We are both nearsighted but they can see ultraviolet colors invisible to the human eye. I absolutely love the Monarchs, who live a few weeks longer than most butterflies. Their colors are so beautiful and they blend into their surroundings to avoid predators. All and all, they are a beauty to appreciate and a true helper in the garden.
We are using Nathalie’s rubber stamps this month and when I thought of the butterfly and the garden, the Small Floral Tile set, the Mini Motifs set, and the Small Circle Jumble Set all immediately came to mind as they remind me of flower heads. The Fan Fare Cube has the perfect designs for both the butterfly wings and the leaves of the flowers. This months project has more whimsy than I usually create, but it was fun to push myself out of my normal comfort zone.
I started the project with a 5” x 5” piece of Clayboard as the substrate. I was reminded during Creative Jump Start that Clay Board can provide some dimension and texture.
Since there is quite a bit of masking required for this project. I planned out the placement of the flowers on a piece of paper, marking which ones would be stamped in the front, which were 2nd, and so on. This helped so much when I was ready to actually do the stamping.
I stamped several of each “flower” and cut them out as masks and then I began stamping on the Clay Board with Versa Fine Clair Ink. The most important thing about masking is that all stamps that are in the foreground go on first and then you work your way back into the background with masks in the foreground so the 2nd row of stamps look like they are “behind” the other stamps.
Once all the “flower heads” were stamped I began to embellish them with Posca pens to bring out the colors and make them pop. I drew stems with Posca pens, and used one of the “leaves” in the Fan Fare Cube to place “leaves” on the stem. I quickly realized that once I painted the background with watercolors, the stems and leaves would disappear. (oops) The wonderful thing about clay board is that the smooth surface is very forgiving. I took a baby wipe and erased all the stems so I could lay down the background of green grass and blue sky using Qor Watercolor paints.
Once the background was completed, I drew in the stems again and then scratched around the stems with my utility knife. This gave the green background a texture and added quite a bit to a dimension to the piece.
To finish off the flowers, I stamped one leaf, over and over, onto the stem from the Fan Fare Cube. In order to get ink on just one portion of the stamp, I covered the rest of the stamp with a stickie note (but you could use any paper) I continued to embellish with the posca pens.
Finally, I took my butterfly die cuts and stamped them with a stamp from the Fan Fare Cube and the Circle Drive Positive Small from the Small Circle Jumble Set; both perfect for the wings. I attached my butterflies to the flowers with two sided adhesive dimensional tape which completed the whole scene.
This project makes me smile because it reminds me that spring is right around the corner and I’ll be planting seeds and watching those butterflies before long!
One of the greatest lessons for me in doing this project was how important it is to stay open to seeing the stamps in new ways. A circle, square or even a triangle can easily become a flower!
I hope you chose the animal (or insect :o) ) that resonates with you and try something new. Please tag me with what you create.
Thank you Robin – your technique for organizing your layers is a great idea. And we love your beautiful stamped blooms and butterflies!
Give it a try: you can find all my Rubber Stamps in my Online Shop and here are some of the supplies Robin used:
Looking for more projects? Follow the Creative Squad on Instagram here.
Hello from my Creative Squad! Today we have a post and video from Riikka Kovasin who has created a mixed media artwork featuring a raven, using my Fan-tastic Small, Love Knots, and Queen Anne rubber stamps and our theme: My Kindred Spirit – Animals are often symbols of qualities that we humans identify with, so let’s take some inspiration from them this month. Do you have an animal whose characteristics you identify with? Maybe it changes depending on your mood or what life throws at you. Who is your Kindred Spirit in the animal kingdom today?
For the Love of Ravens
Hi there! It’s Riikka Kovasin here today with my take on the “Kindred Spirit” theme. I’m not sure I identify with a raven, although there are some similarities. But I do love ravens and crows and feel drawn to them. I also have several pieces of art on the walls with ravens and I also use the theme in my own pieces. So, I decided to go with this raven or crow theme.
I had quite a vivid mental image of the project from the start. I had this idea of a printed bird with different toned feathers, kind of like a woodcut. I first thought to make the look by cutting several pieces of paper using a craft knife, but then realized I had another solution, too. It was to use my electronic cutting machine. That way I could make several birds, if I’d like. So, I sketched a bird and instead of using that as my template to cut the pieces for one bird, I scanned it to the Cricut Design Space and turned it into a cut file.
I saw the bird more like a blueish black, than just pure black. Kind of oil on the water, with different blue and green tones mirrored from the black. I first thought to colour the pieces simply by stamping repeatedly onto them but was worried that it might leave too much white showing. So, instead I laid a priming layer with gel printing. I used four different acrylic paints to have a varying layer of colour as the first layer, but in the end those different tones get lost underneath everything.
I started with gel printing and a more or less a solid layer of colour but added pattern later. Again, I had two options, pattern the print before cutting or then after cutting. Before cutting would mean that I’d pattern the pieces blindly, not sure what would come and where. But if I’d add patterning after cutting, I could be perfectly in charge what pattern and where. The only possible problem was then to keep track of each piece to get them to their places again. The solution proved to be easy – just cutting the bird twice and using the other cut as a stencil!
As you could see from the video, I used three different ink colours when patterning the pieces as well as three different stamps or stamp sets. When I wanted a darker spot, I used a more solid stamp and when I wanted lighter texture, I used a more detailed, more like a line design version. For example, I used the “Love Knots” for the black parts and “Queen Anne” for the down-like details. I also placed some stamps from the FAN-tastic set in particular places, like the “Broadway fan” in the wing and “Van Vorst Fan” to the legs. As you can see from the finished piece, I chose to do the wing quite dark, using black ink, legs pale using blue ink and other parts with grey or mix of two inks.
Like I say in the video, after making the bird almost just the way I saw it in my head, the whole thing looked too clean for my taste. Luckily, there was an easy solution of splashes! I opted for watercolour rather than acrylic as I thought it to be more forgiving and lighter. Also, I could remove some of the splashes on top of the bird as the acrylic blocked the watercolour from soaking in. While I wanted the stamped texture to be as much visible as possible, I did add some drawn details here and there as the last touch.
The bird turned out quite ok. It’s a bit bluer than I originally thought and the beak is too narrow for a raven, but still, I like it. Yet another raven piece for the living room walls!
Thank you for stopping by today! I’ll be seeing you again next month!
Xoxo Riikka
Thank you Riikka – love how you used the stamps to create shadow and texture in the raven. The end result is very magical!
Give it a try: you can find all my Rubber Stamps in my Online Shop and here are some of the supplies Riikka used:
Looking for more projects? Follow the Creative Squad on Instagram here.
Not only do I love creating artwork, I also love hanging artwork that I enjoy on my walls, and I bet you do too! That’s why I’ve had prints made of many of my paintings – I’d love for my artwork to be available for all who may want to hang one in their space.
These prints are Giclee Prints – brilliant and true colors printed on high quality paper that you can frame and hang and enjoy just as you might an original piece, but at a price that is accessible to everyone. That is the beauty of collecting prints and I thought it might be nice to look at some of the prints that I currently have available here in my shop.
The first piece is called “Whose Front Yard” and I painted the original shortly after moving to the US and Jersey City. I was and still am very much taken by the cityscapes around NYC and the drama and grandeur of the Statue of Liberty in the NY Harbor. I thought it might be interesting to consider this view from another perspective :) This print is available in both a small size and a medium size.
“Fallen off the Edge” is another take on the NYC skyline, as seen from the Jersey City side of the Hudson, arguably the best view of NYC that can be had. This piece combines cityscape with layered imagery and suggestions of past stories to be uncovered… something that is a big part of what inspires me to create art. Here is a link to this print in my shop.
When I first moved to Jersey City, I lived in a converted pencil factory that wound up becoming my muse for several paintings, including this one called “1.25.2016”. This is a winter scene, capturing the winds and driving snows of a blizzard that hit us on January 25th, 2016. It’s always magical while it’s snowing in the city and for a few hours after it’s over and then… it’s a total mess and a lot of hard work to dig out lol. I wanted to preserve the magical time, before the plows and shoveling. Here is this print in my shop.
We have a couple Shepard Fairey murals in Jersey City but there is one in Downtown that grabs you right when you come up from the Path train station. It’s pretty intense and I had to capture the whole scene in my painting, called “This Too Shall Pass”. I will let you ponder the combination of mural and setting – a place in town that is just about 2 feet above sea level in our changing climate… and you can find that print here in my shop.
You can find all my giclee prints in my shop here and there are more to choose from – I just pulled a few to talk about today. I hope you find something you like and remember there are also original works to browse through in the Artwork section of my shop. Enjoy!
A Look Back – As artists we are obviously very aware of the visual world and that means it’s easy to get caught up in getting things to look right… maybe even perfect… but what is perfection and who sets the rules anyway? I thought it might be a good time to give perfection a hard look and maybe we’ll see that it isn’t such a great idea after all.
For A Look Back today let’s take a stroll through my art journals from the past and tease out some gems that reveal my Thoughts on Perfection.
Let me just come right out and say it, “Perfect is boring.” When you’re perfect you’re not pushing boundaries, exploring the uncharted, or challenging yourself and that’s the spice of life! I think when you stop trying to be so perfect in your art, all those messy adventures that turn out a little different than anticipated are pretty interesting. You can see this art journal post from 2014 here.
Perfection and fear seem to be very close friends… so I’m thinking if you say bye bye to trying to be perfect you may not be so afraid of what happens next. So what if your art journal page is a bit wonky, or someone thinks it looks less than lovely? The goal was never to be perfect, the goal was to create, and no one can tell you that you didn’t accomplish that. Here is that original post from 2019.
“To be imperfect means to be real!” It’s hard to argue with that – after all, no one is perfect. And don’t we all feel our best when we can just be ourselves, “warts and all”? I think the same goes for creating artwork too – its power comes from authentic expression more than some achievement of perfection. Here is the post for this art journal page from 2018.
Bottom line? “The middle is messy but that is where the magic happens.” There are probably going to be some major messes, some mistakes, maybe even a few dramatic failures BUT taking those artistic risks is how you move forward, grow, and keep things interesting. I think that as long as the goal is to Make Art and not To Be Perfect, the journey and the destination will be much more fun, exciting, and satisfying. You can find this art journal page post from 2020 here.
I hope you enjoyed this and are ready to say “So long” to the limitations of perfection.
A Look Back is a blog series to show you some projects and posts that you may have missed – sometimes going WAY back in the archive. I think it’s fun to revisit a few ideas that we haven’t seen for a while. I’m excited to see how a little look back might inspire something new in the future :)
Here are some of the supplies I used in these projects:
Hello from my Creative Squad! Today we have a fascinating post from Maura Hibbitts using my Floral Tile Large and Fan-Fare rubber stamp sets and our new theme: My Kindred Spirit – Animals are often symbols of qualities that we humans identify with, so let’s take some inspiration from them this month. Do you have an animal whose characteristics you identify with? Maybe it changes depending on your mood or what life throws at you. Who is your Kindred Spirit in the animal kingdom today?
My kindred spirit animal is a bear. I’ve known this for many years. How do I know this? Well, the bears told me…in a sense. I’ve had a number of encounters with both black and grizzly bears in my life, up close and personal, and from a distance. One of the most memorable meetings took place about 3 in the morning as I headed to the outhouse (we were tent camping in the Beartooth Mountains in Wyoming). Well, there was a grizzly bear about 20 feet away from me at a picnic table – that stopped me in my tracks. I think we were both surprised, and thankfully, it turned and walked off. Luckily all worked out in my favor. I figure they keep meeting me to tell me they are my kindred spirit animal. They send me messages in the dreams I have of them. Somehow, they have worked their way into my psyche.
I love to work in an art journal to tell stories with my art, so that is where I headed to begin this project.
Begin by brushing on some luminous paints – lemon, yellow and orange (or neon) leaving open areas. Take some white gesso and add a bit of water to create a whitewash. Apply this in some areas. Once dry, brush on luminous opera in a random fashion.
Apply some luminous Violet paint to the gel plate and use a brayer to smooth out. Stamp into this with the Versailles Positive stamp from Nat’s Floral Tile Large set and “ink” on the pages in a grid fashion. Note – be sure to clean the stamp right away so the paint doesn’t dry on it. (I use a baby wipe to do this.) Then, mix white gesso with the luminous violet on the gel plate, brayer smooth, and stamp with the Versailles Negative in the open spaces on the page.
Stamp across the center of the pages with the Hamilton Negative stamp and Cadette ink color (blue).
Next, use the Fan-Fare rubber stamp set and Pearfection ink (green) to randomly add some images to the pages.
Sketch out an image of a mama bear and a baby bear, then transfer these to the art journal by tracing around the shapes with a graphite pencil.
Now, mix a “whitewash” with black gesso and water. Paint this everywhere on the pages, except inside your images. Let partially dry, then wipe back some areas of the background with a baby wipe.
Use the Fan Fare stamps and luminous yellow paint to add a few “stars” to the dark background.
Outline the bear images with a black Posca paint pen. Draw swirls inside their bodies. Write across the bottom of the pages with a teal Posca pen (I walk with the spirit of the bear each day), and sketch a bear paw print.
I chose to represent my animal with both the mother and cubs. I drew the cubs to represent my two sons, and like the mama bear, I will do anything to protect them when needed. Just like the bears, my family is happiest in the natural world. And yes, in winter I feel like hibernating too, lol.
Do you have a kindred spirit animal? What’s the story behind yours? Have you had real life encounters or found them in dreams? I am grateful the bear chose me. Maura
Thank you Maura – loved hearing about your connection with bears and the resulting spread is both powerful and tender… just like that mama bear :)
Give it a try: you can find all my Rubber Stamps in my Online Shop and in addition to gelli printed papers from her stash, here are some of the supplies Maura used:
Looking for more projects? Follow the Creative Squad on Instagram here.
Hello from my Creative Squad! Today we have a post from Jordan Hill who is sharing a cool series of ATCs using my ATC Mixup stencil and our theme this month: Time for Texture – Visual texture or actual texture is an element that can give dimension, depth, and touchable interest to any piece of art. Let’s play with texture in a series of ATCs and see what emerges!
Hello everyone! I’m excited to be back with this month’s prompt of Time for Texture! I really enjoy playing with layers and textures in my work, so I had a lot of fun creating this little series of ATCs. I hope you enjoy following along with the process!
I’m starting off this week with a piece of thick white card stock as my base. I have chosen the type of card stock I use as the paper in many of my hand bound books, but you can use any thick paper that will hold up to mailing. I dropped a couple of different colored craft paints onto the card stock and used an old library card to scrape it across the surface.
Next, I wanted to add some paper bits, so I selected a piece of vintage graph paper that I liked, tore a few pieces off, and glued them down randomly to my page using an Uhu glue stick.
I then wanted to add another color of paint. This time I chose a dark blue for contrast, and added a few dots of it to my card stock. This time I scraped the paint around with a palette knife, since I wanted to play around with different types of texture. You can see the variation in the way the tools apply the paint to the page; this variation is what makes things interesting!
Using a Marabu Art Crayon in white, I then added a series of dots over the portions of the card stock where I had added the dark blue paint. This adds a bit more interest to these areas.
For my next layer, I really wanted to incorporate this month’s theme of Time for Texture a little more, by adding some actual texture as opposed to just visual texture. Though I primarily work with craft paints, for this layer I selected a heavier body paint (Blick Studio Acrylic in Bright Aqua Green) and applied it with a paint brush in thick layers.
I tried to focus on portions of the card stock that were either still white, or that I didn’t really like. I then used the back end of my paintbrush to scratch into the wet paint in order to create some fun textured lines!
At this point, I was ready to cut down my card stock into ATC bases. You could simply use a paper trimmer to achieve this, but I chose to create a “viewfinder” by cutting an ATC sized hole (2.5″x3.5″) into a separate scrap of card stock. I then used this to find interesting bits of my painted paper, before tracing the outline with a pencil and cutting them out with scissors.
Now it was time to add Nathalie’s ATC Mixup Stencil! I chose a different part of the stencil to use on each card in order to get a good variety, and I applied it to my bases with white acrylic paint and a makeup sponge. I tried to focus the stenciling on portions of the cards that were a bit darker, so that the white paint would show up better.
Next up were the focal points! For my ATCs, I used a variety of different illustrations from some of my collage sheets, selecting ones that were on the smaller side so that they would fit. You could also use stamped images or die cuts to create focal images as well! Once I had determined which images I wanted on which cards, I again used my Uhu glue stick to adhere them to my ATCs.
Finally, to finish off my cards, I used some Tim Holtz Small Talk stickers to add words. I added extra adhesive to these stickers using Aleene’s Tacky Glue, as they don’t always like to stay in place. I also used an Archival black ink pad and rubbed it around the edges of my ATCs to make them feel more finished.
After signing and dating the backs of the cards, they are now ready to send off/trade! I hope you enjoyed seeing the process of creating these cards and that you give some of the ideas a try!
Thank you Jordan – love your color palette and the empowering sentiment of these!
Give it a try: you can find all my Stencils in my Online Shop and in addition to an old credit/gift card and collage material from her stash, here are some of the supplies Jordan used:
Looking for more projects? Follow the Creative Squad on Instagram here.
“But I don’t give up. I forget why not.” – maybe Dorothy Parker – not sure as there are so many misattributed quotes for her. Regardless of who said it, it’s a pretty great quote :)
I used Golden and Liquitex Fluid and soft body paints and just played around a bit in my vintage ledger journal, feeling inspired by a wallpaper I had seen.
I created my drawing on deli paper and used some markers to spruce it up, then adhered it with gel medium.
I used one of my Fan-fare rubber stamps to go with the loose, abstract floral background.
Strolls through my hood get me out of my studio, they help me get unstuck and often I get inspired by what I see and get new ideas to create something. It is part of my philosophy about Artful Adventures in Mixed Media – which is the subject of my book. Here are some photos that I gathered in the last couple weeks.
When I say Stroll Through the Hood it was mostly a stroll through the hood to our new home and that is where I spent most time as we are moving in one week – wwahhhhh.
The fire place above is my favorite one – the color is just making me so happy!
The inserts of the fireplaces are also not too shabby- isn’t that a gorgeous pattern? And practical too as the plates store the heat and reflect it to the room – things you learn while renovating and talking to different contractors- I love it!
Speaking of pattern – StencilGirl Products was so sweet to make a Wall Stencil out of my Art Deco Summit Stencil and I stenciled this wall in my future office. I would do a lot of things different in the future- there are mistakes but can live with that for now and will fix the oopsies later :) Also …if you are here for perfection, you are at the wrong place LOL
The Color scheme was pretty much inspired by this fireplace and the wall we painted purple :) Left over paint is a nice thing.
We went all color this time- which is really unusual for us – we are usually very bland white wall person but this old lady as we call our new house screamed for some colorful oomph and I think she can wear it.
BTW- this is my new Fainting Sofa …I mean…you gotta have a Fainting Sofa, no? I love it so much and it is actually very comfy – I cannot wait to faint ..eh …read on it …I wonder if this will become the cat’s favorite spot.
Other than that most of my days nowadays are consumed by cleaning or running last minute errands. Even though we did big renovations in serval of our former homes, I seem to be still caught off guard by how much construction dust is clinging around forever.
I have been MIA for the past couple weeks and will probably be another 2 weeks until we moved and unpacked most stuff, but I see light at the end of the tunnel and I cannot wait to live in our new sweet home. Wish us luck for a smooth move :)
Oh my gosh!!! I love everything about it! The fainting sofa is to die for!!!! Congratulations! It’s amazing what happens when we put our dreams out there!!!!
Comments (2)
Sue Clarke
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I love everything about this! The quote, the colors, and the background design.
The quote especially speaks to me during a week of family chaos.
Happy Saint Patrick’s Day Nat!
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nathalie-kalbach
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awee thank you Sue! Hope you had a gorgeous St. Paddy’s day and a very relaxing weekend ahead!
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