Jessica Brogan's Inspirational Card Deck Swap: Done!

Last year when I received my card deck in the mail from Jessica Brogan's Inspirational Card Deck Swap, the redheads immediately went rummaging through, trying to steal all the cards I received! So this year, I told them that if they wanted to receive cards, they had to make their own deck to send to others!

Above are some samples from Sarah's deck. She went with a fun quote stamp that said, "If you are feeling blue, try painting yourself a different color." Love that!

Above are some samples from Olivia's deck. The stamp quote she chose is "Count your rainbows, not your thunderstorms." Good message for my emotional girl.

And lastly, here are samples from my deck. I stuck with our family awesomeness theme with a "Stay Awe Some" stamp I found on Etsy. If you'd like one of your own, it was created by A Sensible Habit. This is my second time participating in this swap, and I can't wait to see what little beauties arrive back in my mailbox! Here are the cards I created last time around.

2015 Documented Life Project: Weeks 1-3, Sarah

Last year, both my redheads started out doing the Documented Life Project with me. They got through about week 13 and then lost interest. Olivia's discovered she really doesn't like paint, so lately she's been using markers and colored pencils and has fallen in love with a series of advanced coloring pages by Thaneeya McArdle. I'm happy to just see her art-ing in some fashion!

Sarah's tackling the DLP project with me this year. She's decided she's going to do just the pages she wants when she wants, and that's fine! I'm glad she's giving it another shot! She was super excited to do her cover (above) after watching Roben-Marie's videos in the Cover Story class.

Above is Sarah's Week 1 "book pages" challenge. I like to see the little light bulb go off over her head when she gets an idea and tries a suggestion I give her.

For Week 2's gesso challenge, Sarah coated her pages with gesso before using water color crayons to draw a sunrise. The sunrise was inspired by week's quote, "The beginning is always today," by Mary Shelly.

Sarah's Week 3 color wheel was also done with water color crayons. (Can you tell she's fallen in love with my water color crayons?) The quote is her own. Hopefully we'll spend in a little time in the studio today working on our journals! Get all the details of this project from the Art to the 5th gals here!

Sweet Little "Recycled" Journals

The redheads and I created these fun little journals with some techniques learned from the always-inspiring Roben-Marie Smith. We shared the basic process with the moms and daughters at Mermaids and Mamas, and it was so fun to see each and every one take her own spin on the book.

Kelly's Front Cover

Kelly's Back Cover

Kelly's Interior

I created mine (above) using my painted newsprint underpapers as Roben-Marie did in her tutorial (click on photos to see larger versions in Flickr). Saving those underpapers to use in other projects is a technique I learned from Roben-Marie several years ago! These pieces are actually photographed on one of those underpapers that still has lots of room for more juicy goodness! Essentially, you use a piece of newsprint to protect your work surface while you are working on a project (or many projects). After a while you end up with a beautiful piece of newsprint with all sorts of random yumminess all over it.

Olivia's Front Cover

Olivia's Back Cover

Olivia took a completely different tack (above). Instead of using underpapers, she actually painted her own! She took a sheet of newsprint and then just painted these beautifully random colors all over it. I think hers was actually my favorite out of all I saw. I liked it more than I liked mine!

Sarah's Front Cover

Sarah's Back Cover

Sarah oriented hers vertically and added quite a bit of embellishing to it (above). Instead of using underpapers, she used some of her stencil and spray paint pieces. I love how both my girls really made the project their own. It truly shows their personalities. If you ever have an opportunity to take a class with Roben-Marie, I highly recommend it! She is so generous in sharing her knowledge and her talent, and her classes are just wonderful. Just like she is!  

Artful Growing and Mermaids and Mamas

For years, I've dreamed of being an elementary school art teacher.  I just think that would be the coolest job!  I've actually researched getting a second master's degree in Art Education but have not had any luck finding a program that will accept me. It doesn't appear to matter that I've already earned one bachelor's degree, one master's degree, and have more than twenty years' teaching experience.  In order to be accepted into every program I've researched, you must have a bachelor's degree in Studio Art. We self taught artists are apparently not talented enough.  Phooey.

So instead, I have to get my fix seeing what my girls do at school and through Mermaids and Mamas.  Livvie created that awesome tree painting above. It's hard to see in the scan, but it's actually pretty textural. She first painted the background stripes and then painted the three background trees.  From there, she drew the fuller trees on other paper, painted them, cut them out and collaged them to her painting. The topmost branches are free floating.  Sarah did the landscape below.  It was a bit large to fully fit on my scanner, but I love how she's shown depth of field here!

Speaking of Mermaids and Mamas, we are in our last few weeks of registration!  If you have some young ladies in your life, we'd love for you to join us. Hop over here for all the details.
  

The Documented Life: Challenges 11 and 12

Back with more of our Documented Life project! Challenge 11 was "Put a Bird on It." Part of my goal with the project is to use only things I have on hand. And I have a ton of scraps and stuff on hand! I've had these sticker letters around for a while and you've seen them pop up on other pages as well. The background here is some painted deli paper I used to protect my work space while journaling. I pulled the bird from a pile of collage bits I had (above).

Olivia already had a pretty piece of scrapbook paper as this week's tip in, so she added to it. The two birds are fabric birds I found on Etsy at least two years ago. Finally getting used! I also found the stickers on Etsy and use them on random mailings (above).

Sarah also used two of the fabric birds I had and drew a tree for them to live in. We talked a lot about backgrounds this week and the importance of taking our time and not rushing through something just to get the "assignment" done. Lots of lessons there, both in journaling and even more so in life (above).

Challenge 12 was "Cut Up a Magazine." Magazines are definitely not in short supply around here, so we had plenty to leaf through and cut. I started with a bowl of strawberries as the base, which you can hardly see anymore. Then I added the pink flower, then the cat, and then the green flowers, cut with a punch. I topped it off with a little rhinestone collar for the cat and a white Sharpie paint pen for highlights (above).

Olivia went with her favorite theme: animals! She started by coloring the background and then added a collage of dogs (above).

Sarah went with a Despicable Me theme. We love Despicable Me! Great movies if you haven't seen them. She started out by coloring the background and then added her collage (above). We'll be back next Wednesday with Challenges 13 and 14. See more posts from The Documented Life project here.

The Documented Life: Challenges 9 and 10

The girlies and I got caught up on our Documented Life project this weekend, so here's two more week's worth of challenges!

  

Challenge 9 was to collage something you recycled. I used a paper towel I had been wiping my hands on. You see my favorite colors in it! (above)

 

Olivia used a box piece from her favorite Pop Tarts (above) and collaged a flower on the back (below).

 

 

 Sarah pulled some things out of a magazine flyer we got in the mail that day (above). 

 

Challenge 10 was "What Makes Me Me?" I'm a beach loving, shell collecting, mess making Mama who loves her family, loves to explore, is addicted to her morning McDonald's large sweet tea/half cut, and is always late (above).  I tried Terri Kahr's background tutorial on the dates pages. Still working on getting the feel for that!

  

Olivia's is pretty easy to read! Elmo is her lovey, her favorite pillow. And I love that she put foster mama on there and drew a couple kittens and a dog (above).

  

Sarah included her lovey too, Bunny. She also included Girl Scouts and Greek and Roman Mythology because she is immersed in the Rick Riordan books right now. She's finished the whole Percy Jackson and the Olympians series and is on book three of the Heroes of Olympus series. She has been powering through those 500+ page books about every 10 days! 

I post Challenges 11 and 12 next week. Thanks for stopping in to visit!

Monster Art

Is this not the cutest little monster you've ever seen? Olivia made this in art class and brought it home to me yesterday. Love this little guy! She was so proud of it. She's always seen Sarah as more "artsy," but I think she finally felt like with this piece, she found her place. I'm looking forward to a whole family of monster art!

Design by Olivia....

I got this lovely necklace for Christmas from Olivia.  She picked out the super cool charm and all the beads herself, and she came up with the design herself. The challenging thing was that I had to help her put the clasp on pretty much with my eyes closed because she didn't want me to see it! 

This girl's got her jewelry design skills rockin'.  I don't wear my own pieces as much as I should, but even when I do, I don't get as many compliments as I do when I wear this one Livvie made me.  Who knows!! Maybe she'll have her own store soon!

Happy Easter to You...From a Little Redheaded Artist

Easter around here means the celebration of Jesus and a trip down to the lake.  Benny's family has a lake place down in Keystone Heights, and ever year, tons of cousins and friends gather down there for Easter.  We have a huge Easter egg hunt and lots of good food with friends and family.  This year Sarah wanted to paint a picture to take to the lake for the lake house, so this Easter holiday weekend also involved some painting!  I hope you are enjoying a wonderful holiday weekend.  Be blessed.

I Have a Songwriter on my Hands...

I have a knack for song lyrics.  I can hear a song once, and then the next time I hear it, I can pretty much sing along with the whole song.  Being the family chauffeur, I've noticed that Sarah has this same gift.  I hear her singing in the back seat behind me all the time. Now the funny thing about this is that not only can she sing the kind of music I primarily listen to (country and lite rock), but she can also sing the current bubble-gum pop she hears at school and her father's hard and classic rock.  (Picture a cute little red-headed eight-year-old singing AC/DC's Hell's Bells!)

I've recently discovered that as she's been assimilating all these lyrics, she's also been absorbing the flow of song lyrics and how to put a song together. And, TA DA!, she's written her first song!  She sprung it on me recently.  It's not completely finished yet (I'm still teaching her the benefit of a "bridge"), but she's well on her way.  Here's her first verse of "Walkin' Across."  (Warning: If this Mama sees these words stolen by anyone, she will hunt you down and shoot you BEFORE she hires a lawyer to sue you. And then she will feed your dead body to Bigfoot.  I hear he's been spotted quite a bit recently in NY. :-)

I'm walkin' across the bridge

I'm walkin' across the sky

I'm walkin' across your heart

Now can't you see me fly. 

I'm walkin' across your soul

I'm walkin' across the seasons

I'm walkin' across everything

Can't you feel me breathing. 

Taylor Swift may soon be seeing Sarah in her rear-view mirror.

Cute Little Owls and Project 365 Cute Little Legs

Late last week, Benny came home early so I could get an afternoon of shopping by myself. He and the girls made a trip to the 100 Acre Wood and these were Sarah's shoes and socks of choice for the trip. I couldn't resist them! The girl's got style!  Click here for the rest of my Project 365 photos. 

 

And as for these cute little owls, we painted these on Monday at Yes You Canvas, one of my favorite places to play here in town. That's my friend Dana with us. We love our little owls!

Eight-Year-Old Computer Graffiti Art

Sarah has discovered the Paint program on my new computer! Here's her first shot at her graffiti art. In case you can't quite read it, it says "Sarah and Mommy Warren."  My last day in the office and the girls' last day at school before the break was last Friday so we've been enjoying our time at home. My dad, his wife Kathy, and my sister Kim, brother-in-law and baby niece were here this last weekend, so Kim and I spent a good bit of time in the kitchen baking. The girls are I seem to be subsisting very well on Snickerdoodles, Molasses Sugar Cookies and Buckeyes this week! Hope you are enjoying the holidays!

Hoot! Hoot!

Happy Thursday! Since I haven't had time to photograph any of my own artwork lately, I thought I'd share another note from my girlies (a scanner is a wonderful thing). Olivia had left this for me on the door when I got home this past Tuesday night. She loves owls, loves drawing owls, and has at least five owl t-shirts. 

Now, this has probably come from some subliminal owl promotion from her Mama. I'm a Chi Omega (no, the sorority/fraternity experience does not end when you graduate from college), and our mascot is an owl. I have a whole collection of owls, both two-dimensional and three-dimensional, and am currently sporting the latest addition to my collection on my arm: a fun little cuff bracelet I found at the cute little shop where I met a friend for lunch today. This morning, Olivia sent me to work with not only this drawing, but also a larger drawing that she did inside the bottom of a bottled-water crate this morning over breakfast. That, I'm afraid, I cannot fit on my scanner! However, I can tell you that is it a drawing of a tree with four owls, each colored the favorite color of the members of our family: purple for Olivia, blue for Sarah, crimson for Benny (Alabama fan), and green for me. I think my preference for green has something to do with the fact that Benny tells me that my eyes are like two pools of green algae, and I choose to take that as a compliment.

Making Books with the Girlies: Olivia

Olivia's Front Cover

I mentioned in Sarah’s book post below that Livvie definitely likes to blaze her own trails when we’re making art. She’s always liked to do her own thing, but I wonder if in regards to art, this trait might be related to an art project that she was working on a couple of years ago. She questioned herself so much before she realized she really could do her own thing. I wrote about it here.

Olivia's Inside Front cover

Her book is an expression of our family. On the cover, she’s painted herself and her sister; I particularly love the curly hair she’s given Sarah. Inside the front cover are Molly and Isabelle, our dogs; inside the back cover are Tink and Savannah, our cats; and on the back cover are Benny and me. We are all in our own castles.

Olivia's Inside Back Cover

Raising twins is a very fascinating experience. My girls’ personalities and approaches to the world are so very different, yet they’ve been raised with the exact same experiences: same house, same parents, same teachers from day one. As I’ve shared with you here, Sarah’s becoming quite the fashion diva and loves to really stretch her fashion boundaries, yet when she’s making art, she follows very closely the steps that I’m taking. Olivia, on the other hand, is not as adventurous when it comes to getting dressed every morning, yet chooses to go in a completely different direction making art. I love their contradictions!

Olivia's Back Cover

Making Books with the Girlies: Sarah

Sarah's Front Cover

My girls have completely different approaches when it comes to make art with me. Olivia completely does her own thing. Sarah follows what I do step by step. Both methods have their merits because I know they are both learning something no matter which route they take. This is Sarah’s book from our booking making session. Look a tad familiar? (see my book in the previous post)

Sarah's Back Cover

With every step I took in creating my covers, Sarah did the same, just not necessarily in the same colors. I layed down a light colored spotted background; Sarah layed down a light colored spotted background. I used a stencil to add some acrylic paint in a fun pattern; Sarah used a stencil to add some acrylic paint in a fun pattern. I took another stencil and some spray ink and added another layer; Sarah took another stencil and some spray ink and added another layer. You get my drift?

Sarah's Spine

While Benny was out of town, we only finished our panels and didn’t do the signatures until later. When Benny got home, I had all our cover panels layed out on my book-making table, and I asked him to tell me who did what. “Well, these are definitely Olivia’s,” he said, pointing to Livvie’s two panels. Then looking more closely at the remaining four, he asked, “Sarah didn’t do any? These are all yours.” Nope, those weren’t all mine. :-) Two of them were Sarah’s. She’s definitely learning quickly. Now that she’s getting more confidence, I think she’ll break out with her own ideas pretty soon. Olivia's book is up next!

Mix It Up Monday: Mermaids Spray Paint and Stencils

I’m finally weeding through all the Mermaids and Mamas pictures and getting ready to write the wrap up post, but I wanted to share a few things from my girls with you. Sunday morning as a wrap up, we do a “show and tell,” letting all of the girls take center stage one by one, sharing all the art they created over the weekend and telling everyone what their favorite activity was. To a one, the favorite was the spray painting with stencils. I learned this technique from my artsy friend Martha Lever, and I became instantly addicted! It was so much fun to watch the Mermaids do it!

These two pieces are Sarah’s and Olivia’s spray paint stencil art. Since they’d had some practice at home, they did a little better than most of the girls, but everyone had such a great time, I don’t they think they really cared how they looked in the end. To make a spray painting spot for us, my trusty assistant Whitney taped down two large plastic table cloths under the pavillion walkway so we’d be in the shade but still have some airflow to keep the fumes at bay. We left everything there to dry, and then about lunch time, a huge storm came in! Whitney ran over and at least grabbed all the art so we were able to salvage that, but the girls had a great time later picking stencils out of the woods. The rain was very heavy and blowing sideways, but at least all my stencils survived! Thanks for the inspiration, Martha!

Hands On for Christmas

Merry Christmas Eve to you!  I helped the girls create these little art pieces for their Granddad and Papa.  There were really quite simple and came out so cute.  First, they painted their canvases.  They are 5' x 5'. We used basic Apple Barrel craft paint from Walmart.  Once that first layer dried, they stenciled the letters.  We let that dry overnight and while drying, the art talent fairy (I understand her name is Artie) outlined the letters in pencil to give them a little pop.  The girls really liked what Artie did when they saw them this morning.  :-)  Next I painted their hands with off white paint, and then they placed their hands down on the canvas.  Pretty fun, huh?  Great little last minute gift for grandparents. 

DH's father, brother and his kids are coming over tonight for a small family celebration.  I've baked Jesus a chocolate layer cake with cream cheese and orange zest frosting for his birthday, along with my favorite pumpkin cheesecake on the side.  We were going to make some oyster chowder tonight, but I've convinced DH that we should just keep it simple, so I currently have a big pot of spaghetti sauce simmering on the stove.  I may be a green-eyed Irish girl, but I make a wicked good spaghetti and lasagna, using my mama's recipe.

I hope you and yours are enjoying a very joyous holiday, whatever type of celebration you may be partaking in.  For us, it's the celebration of the birth of Christ.  Merry Christmas to you.    

Saying Goodbye to 1st Grade with Art

Tomorrow is the girls’ last day of 1st grade. Last day of 1st grade! Where does the time go? Over the past couple of days, we made some keepsake postcards for their teacher as an end-of-the-year thank you. I finally got around to mine last night. I’m having fun with these little postcards. They’re a fun way to do something quick, but still play with a little art (see, I’m listening to your 15 minutes advice, Leah!). Of course, my studio is back in a shambles after making one because the girls and I have paper and glue sticks flying everywhere for these short little sessions. That’s mine up there. On the back, I glued a big green and white gingham heart and wrote, “Thank you for helping Sarah and Olivia blossom and grow this year.” The substrate is a cut up cereal box. I’m becoming the queen of the cut up cereal box. And yes, we like bright colors around here. Probably doesn’t help that I took these pictures in direct sunlight on the back deck before we lost the sun last night.

Here’s Sarah’s. She really fell in love with the paper flowers during Mermaids and Mamas and now glues paper flowers to everything she can. Anyone have a source for bulk wholesale paper or fabric flowers?

And here’s Olivia’s. I’ll tell you a secret about this one. This is actually not the one she gave Ms. Nolan this morning. She made that one over the weekend. This one she made while I was making mine last night, so you may see some similarities. She was so proud of it, she wanted to keep it for herself but she asked me to share this one with you instead of her other one. I love how she put her name in there.

I made a fun envelope to put them all in and included a $40 gift card to Outback as an extra special thank you from me and DH. Ms. Nolan really has been wonderful this year. Do all moms get as attached to great teachers as their kids do, or is that just me? ;-)