Inspiration..................

I do believe as long as I can have days with Sophia, I will never run out of inspiration. :)

Last week I was under the weather and could not spend my two days during the week with Sophia as I did not want to infect her with the nasty bug I had.

This week, I was able to get back, to her, and oh how I missed her. I do feel she missed, me too, and we had such a wonderful reunion! The first day back, the sun was shining, fall colors were surrounding us, and we started our day with breakfast. I captured the picture of Sophia, here, eating breakfast and I really feel she decided to entertain me this whole day beginning with the giggles while eating. She spread food all over her face, and she was giggling and laughing and she had me laughing so hard; what a moment together. Of course, I had to get a picture of this. I took this shot with my phone, too. The rest of the day was spent playing with her toys, we took a nice, long walk as the air was just delightful, I read to her, she napped and what a perfect day I thought. I truly felt it doesn't get any better than this!

I came home, that night, to a new lesson for my online journal class I am taking with Pam Carriker. I just completed the page, today, and wanted to share it.

It is, of course, Sophia inspired. I was on a high from that first day back, with her, and this journal lesson was perfect timing. We had to use newspaper as a background, choose some words that jumped out at us and outline them, choose an image and go from there with white washing and adding more text,paints, etc.

I couldn't find anything inspirational in terms of newspaper that I have here, so I decided to use some text from a very old childrens' book that I have here. Sophia loves to be read to; particularly nursery rhymes as she loves the "sing, song" of the words and Grandma always over-accentuates the rhyme, with making the animal sounds, etc. I used Little Bo Peep for this background and outlined some words that had meaning for me. I used one of my favorite pictures of Sophia that I have; copied that as that was part of our lesson. We could use a person, a pet, any image that we wanted and had to make a black/white copy of it, sketch around it and white wash it.

I found the words Today is a Picture Perfect Day in a magazine and felt they were perfect for how I was feeling from spending what I thought was a perfect day with Sophia. I collaged them on the journal page, and blended them into the page with paint and shadowing.

I hope you and yours are all well and I wish you a safe and happy upcoming weekend!

Much love, Marilyn xxoo

A ladybug????????

Happy Halloween!

Well; I was anxiously awaiting a "cute little ladybug" to come visit me, today, and instead a "cute little devil" made her way to my home :)

Sophia's Mom and Dad decided to take her on a tour to visit family, today, so we could all get to see her in costume. Sophia originally was going to be a ladybug but her Mom said the ladybug costume did not fit her so they had to regroup and think of another costume.

I just had to share a few pics of Sophia in her costume! What fun!

Hope you all are having a good weekend and a safe Halloween.

Much love......................................Marilyn xxoo

Journaling......................

This is a picture of a journal page I have been working on this past week. I try to keep up with some portrait work, from time-to-time, to incorporate in my journals.

I collaged the dress section with paper that I made and will be sharing a short video tutorial in near future of how I did it. :)

I am going to add some writing to this journal page, perhaps in between the strips in the background but the words aren't surfacing at the moment.

If I'm a little quiet, the next few days, it's because I will be resuming spending time with Sophia this coming week (I've missed her), getting to some art projects,which includes the video tutorial I discussed above.

Halloween is this weekend and I wish you all a safe and happy one. Sophia is going to be a lady bug and I cannot wait to see her in costume. I will get a picture for sure :)

I can never say thank you, enough, to all of you for your friendships, support and lovely comments you leave here. I couldn't do what I do without you!

Much love - Marilyn xxoo

ATC's..............................

This is a photo of Artist Trading Cards I created for a Sacred Relics exchange I am participating in. It's a series, of sorts, and each time we are challenged with a new twist within the Sacred Relics theme. This time it is Sacred Symbol. I chose the fish as the sacred symbol and wanted it to appear fossil-like so I used a Fred Mullett stamp with light molding paste. If you click on the picture, you can get a larger view.

These are pretty much the same and for the background, I used one of my serendipity pieces from the mono printing workshop that Kerri and I did. :)

I saw some of the awful effects of that monster storm in the mid west, on the news, and hope everyone is safe who lives in its path. Reports indicated that the storm has a span of 3,000 x 2,000 miles; that is huge! Anyway; prayers go out to those who have been effected by it.

Much love, Marilyn xxoo

Wistful Waxed Tissue Books/Pages

I do subscribe to Somerset Studio magazine and during the summer received their Jul/Aug 2010 issue. In this issue, an article just came right out, at me, as it deals with one of my favorite mediums; beeswax! The article is written by Rachel Emilie Jackson and her offering is called Wistful Waxed Tissue Books. I read the article and knew I had to give this a try.

A few weeks, back, I decided to try this technique and tweaked it as I wanted to use what I had on hand. The photos, here, are pictures of my playing with this technique. Part of me felt like I was at a health spa taking in the aroma of the beeswax as well as the natural botanicals, and herbs, that I collected and dried to work on the process. To this day, when handling, these delicate waxed pages, I can still smell the beautiful scents.

Note; the photos are not the best. It was a little challenging to get a really clear picture due to the glare of the wax. But; hope these give you an idea. They are much more "vintagie" in person. The last sample is actually my favorite piece.

This technique actually is a "sandwiching" of tissue papers, wax, botanicals, herbs, ephemera, transparencies; whatever! Some of these I decided to leave just as pages that I can make into window hangings as the transparency of them against the light - well - it's just beautiful! I did make a little book out of some of the pages as you can see in one of the photos that has the words "dream of things" - that is the cover of the book. The possibilities are endless and I just had so much fun working on them and I intend to make more for some holiday gifts.

I wish you all a great beginning to another week. I thank you all for your well wishes. I am on the mend; it's a little slow but feeling better with each day. I will be spending time, tonight, catching up with your Blogs :)

Much love to all - Marilyn xxoo

Deco art

I've been a little quiet, here, this week. I'm a little under the weather; caught a nasty bug. It's frustrating as it leaves me with low energy and not much motivation to work on art. But; it takes time and I'm not the most "patient" patient :)

I thought I'd share these pages, here, with you. These are pics of a front and back page of what I created for a friend's Deco book. The pages are approx. 4 x 6. The front page is Sophia inspired and the #1 symbolizes the fact, in about a month and a half, we will be celebrating Sophia's first birthday! WOW!

I wish you all a wonderful weekend and hope you're getting some time in for yourself.

Happy and peaceful thoughts for all of you....................Love, Marilyn xxoo

Elastack Monoprinting Workshop-photos

I thought I would upload some pictures from the Elastack Mono Printing Workshop that Kerri
and I did over this past weekend. Check out Kerri's Blog (highlighted above) for more pics. It was a blast and everyone had such a good time! I'm the one behind the camera - hahaha in the first pic :)

The students did such a beautiful job with their prints and I just wanted to share with all of you. The rewards with teaching are always the smiles on the students' faces as well as seeing their creativity come through with their own individuality.

Kerri and I are going to offer another mono printing workshop sometime after the holidays; perhaps with some new techniques to incorporate.

Hope you all had a lovely weekend! Much love - Marilyn xxoo