Are you ready for some football????????

I discovered a significant advantage of digital art particularly on a laptop computer. Today is Sunday which means football on TV most of the day. Now; I don't mind football especially when my team is playing (Dallas Cowboys). By the way; they kicked major butt today by beating the Rams 35-7-woohoo!!!

After the Dallas game, I was getting a little "itchy" so decided to get my laptop, bring it in the living room while my husband watched the football games. I think you know where I'm going with this right? :)

I started playing around with Photoshop Elements, practicing my lessons, and discovered that I can work on art right in the living room and appear somewhat aware of not only the football games but my husband as well :)

This is my latest digital collage during football today! Score!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I wish everyone a good rest of their day and a safe and happy upcoming week.

Love to all........................Marilyn

More Photoshop practicing.................

I try to work on a little bit of Photoshop Elements each day. Perhaps because of my short-term memory and not wanting to forget what I'm learning :)

But; I'm becoming more and more comfortable with the layers concept and having fun with it.

I like the fact that I can use some of my art stash and scan images, papers, even lace and such to create elements for a digi collage.

I don't think I'll turn to digital collage as a constant as I can see where I would miss the tactile part of creating collages as I do with the hands-on approach to a collage on canvas, ATC, Little Fat Book page; whatever the substrate. I would also miss not incorporating rubber stamping.

But, it's a new area for me to explore, and I do enjoy the little strides I make in trying to work with Photoshop Elements. I love the fact that you can edit photos and alter them to your liking then using them in artwork. I have quite a collection of old black and white photos that I will enjoy altering and editing in the program.

Thank you all for visiting my Blog, your lovely comments and support mean so much to me.

Love to all..........................Marilyn

Halloween Fun.............ATC's :)

I can't say that Halloween is one of my favorite subjects but when it comes to art, I decided to give it a go. :)

This is a picture of ATC's that I did for an exchange with a Halloween theme.

My very favorite inclusion, in my art, is beeswax so I decided to add some to the bottom two ATC's.

I came across these sweet images, in my art stash, and they really helped me have fun with Halloween :)

I hope everyone has a great weekend. It has just cooled off, here, in upstate New York. We've been experiencing some very unseasonable temperatures. We broke a record on Wednesday. It reached a whopping 93 degrees! Love to all.......Marilyn

Photoshop Elements 5.0.....another baby step :)

Well; I'm getting there - slowly, inch by inch or should it be pixels by pixels?

These are my recent projects for Photoshop Elements 5.0. I'm taking an online class from http://www.joggles.com/ and it is really great. I had an opportunity to attend an open Digital Scrapbooking workshop, last night, conducted by Doris Castle. I decided to go and this is just what I needed.

Through Doris' guidance and observing others, in class, I was actually able to get layers!! It's only taken me about 4 months! :) I even was able to blur edges on one of the images along with coloring in some areas. :)

I decided to sit down, this afternoon, and do some practicing and I think this is the only way I'm going to get this. There's so much to this program but I am not going to give up and finding when I make little steps, like this, I just got so excited, I had to share.

I named the one piece, First Day of My Journey, as this was the first time that I sat, alone, and actually got layers!! Whew! The other digi collage I named Butterflies are Free and I decided to try my hand at an overlay layer with a low opacity (music sheet scan)!

Love you all........................Marilyn

The wedding...........................

These are some beginning pictures of a very special wedding that my husband and I attended over the weekend. As in previous posts, I shared with you, that I had the opportunity to create wedding invitations for the happy couple, Nicole and James. Well; yesterday (Sat., Sept. 22) was their day and they are now husband and wife; Mr. and Mrs. James Doig. The wedding was held in Manchester, VT at a beautiful B & B called The Wilburton Inn. The weather couldn't have been more perfect, the colors of autumn, on the trees, were just starting to turn. What a beautiful setting for their wedding. I thought I'd start with some pics of the grounds including the wedding trellis and area. Nicole's Mom gave Nicole away. My son was best man and there will be more pictures to follow. I just wanted to give you all a little "starter" feel to the wedding.

Photoshop Elements homework ....baby steps

These are pictures of my first Photoshop Elements homework pieces.

I enrolled in an online Photoshop Elements course and I am finding it to be much fun. This was an exercise using a black and white photo and using the Paintbrush tool; getting comfortable with choosing foreground colors, and adding text.

I also added a Filter touch that is called Rough Pastel and it was instant love.

I just had to share with all of you! Please feel free to use image(s) in your art!

Have a great weekend ahead........Love to all, Marilyn

I'm Movin' on Down............................

to the basement! I've come to the conclusion that I just have too much art stuff; can't take any more clutter in the main part of our house!

My husband and I have been working diligently on cleaning up our basement, throwing things out and we painted the walls and floor and we decided to take part of the basement and make it into my art room! With the shelves and all, it boils down to about a 10 x 12 room.

These are some pictures, I took today, of the first set-up for my art area. I will probably change my mind a few more times until I get in the comfort zone. I still have much more to sort out and put up on the shelves and this isn't even the stamps yet! :) I apologize for the pictures being a little dark but my husband was working on the lighting at the same time. I'll have more pictures once things are set up more.

I haven't really had much desire to create art down the basement but I guess I had to get to this point where I just had to do something. It's a balancing act. I will love the idea that all my art supplies are in one area. I have wheels on my chair, even, so I can kind of "skateboard" around the floor to get to things :)

Eventually I will get some things up on the wall, I want to hang some of my artwork up as well as beautiful art pieces that I've received from friends. This will help a lot.

We will be working on getting a space heater for the area, too. I have to thank my husband and my son for helping me accomplish this. Without them, I just couldn't have done it alone!

My husband's only worry about this, is he'll never see me again. I'll be spending most of my time down in the basement. I've tried to assure him this will not happen.......hmmmmmmmmmmmmm. Will it?

Inch by Inch....................

These are called "inchies" or Moo cards! I recently engaged in a one-on-one exchange with a very dear friend of mine Patti Gramza. She is from Wisconsin and it's been awhile since we've engaged in an art exchange together. It was her idea that we have fun with a 3 for 3 exchange of "inchies" or Moo cards as they are also known. These are pictures of our creations for our exchange. The one on top is Patti's for me and the one on bottom is mine for Patti. I just LOVE what Patti did for me! She's an amazing artist and she really jam-packed these little "canvases" with her beautiful artwork. Thank you Patti Sweet! Don't you just love her art?

"Inchies" or "Moo" cards are similar to ATC's except they are about half the size! It's amazing how much art you can create on these little canvases.

For my "inchies", I discovered in my stash, I had these cool vintage cigarette advertising cards that I picked up a long time ago in an antique shop in Burlington, VT. They have pictures on the front of flowers but on back is the advertisement for a brand of cigarettes. I discovered that these cigarette advertisement cards are just the right size for the "inchies". Neat, huh?

I sanded the front of the card, had fun scribbling Lyra Watercolor Crayons, dipped part of a paper towel in white Gesso and swiped that over the scribbled crayon marks. I stamped over that, collaged some cool images, added more Gesso markings, and fibers!

I really loved working on these little "canvases". Would anyone else like to engage in a one-on-one exchange with these? Email me if you're interested. I'd love to do more. :)

Patti's Blog: click on link below :)

http://pattis-creations.blogspot.com/

Fun with Crackle Paint..........

Here's a Little Fat Book page (4 x 4) that I did. For the background I used the new Distressed Crackle Paint (Ranger Product) that Tim Holtz has introduced. I discovered it when I attended his workshop in Topsfield, MA about a month ago (previous posts). I think the product is hitting the stores in October.

I love the paint; it's a one-step application and the colors all coordinate with the Distress Inks and Embossing powders :)

Love, Marilyn

Unzipped!!

This is a picture of a wool purse I needle felted. I love needle felting! It is so relaxing, to me, and I don't have to count anything while I'm doing it. Knitting and crocheting never worked for me but this felting! WOW! I just love the colors of wool; it's like painting and all you need are a handful of tools :)

This particular purse took me a bit to do; due to my schedule, this week, and I'm getting ready for an art show and thought it would be cool to add some felted purses as fall is approaching.

I finished felting the purse and I even felted the little ball decoration that is attached to the zipper handle. That is a challenge.

My problem arose when I discovered, while taking the picture of the purse, that the zipper is broken!! Geesh! the slide piece is off the track and I cannot get it back. This is very frustrating, to me, as I became rather attached to this piece as it did take me awhile to felt it plus I love the image that I transferred onto fabric. Darn it!

Does anyone have any ideas on how I can fix this? I don't sew and I'm trying to come up with an imaginative way to make a closer for the purse. I think I can rip the zipper out okay.

I'd appreciate any suggestions you have! I just thought this would be a fun little challenge on my Blog. I love the interaction, with others, and thrive on your art!!

Have a great day! Love, Marilyn

These are some pictures of what I've been working on lately. I'm in an Art Deco round robin with some special friends and we've decided to create a tag-journal of sorts. I made my cover from canvas paper using oil pastels and acrylic paints. The theme for this tag journal is Autumn Texture. My two tag pages, that I did, are also shown here.

I am going to participate in an art show, in my area, at the end of this month and have begun to work on some things. I always like to include handmade greeting cards with my other offerings and the last picture, here, is of two cards that I worked on. I'm having fun with gel medium transfers. I love the "shabby chic" effect I get from the transfers.

That's all for now! Love to you all-Marilyn

What's Cookin'??????

This is a picture of my ATC's for Art Connection's September ATC Exchange. The theme is Favorite Foods.

I can honestly say food is not my favorite subject; particularly when it involves having to cook it. So, I decided to apply a little humor to these!

I hope they make you all smile!

Love, Marilyn

This is a picture of a Deco page I did for a friend of mine. It's approximately 4" x 6" and the image is from a vintage Easter card that I found at a flea market. I instantly fell in love with this sweet little girl!

It was funny because I copied the image on my printer and was running out of ink and I ended up liking the effect. I added some color to her face and flower pots with Prismacolor pencils and touches of color to the flowers with Gel pens. Underneath the image is stamped decorative paper using a script stamp; I over-stamped some of the script on top of the image in the bottom right-hand corner, too. For final embellishments, I added some organza ribbon and word pebbles.

Love, Marilyn