Category Archives: Challenges

Something This Way…

I love Halloween and perhaps I even like Fall. Actually, I do love the smell of fall leaves, wood burning stoves filling the crisp air and the colors of bright reds and oranges that fill the trees and skies. But I hate the dark, cold and wet, which is what fall mostly is around here. I have always loved Halloween because I love making costumes, becoming someone else for a short time. I love dark stories and poems. Like Poe and King NOT Saw and chop them up type movies.

This Fall has been a roller coaster of ups and downs for me… The teaching has been going so well, but physically I have been suffering from an endless cold for almost a month now. It has been hard with the increasing bad weather to get in the needed healthy exercise and nutrition (don’t you just crave those comfort foods that are oh so bad for you when its cold?)

What is your favorite season? What do you like about Fall?

Today’s Mandala is about Fall. Photos are some creative commons photos (one, two) altered in Adobe Photoshop Elements along with some of my own. I have a really simple mandala tutorial that my students use to create this type of digital art. If you are interested in giving it a try yourself. be sure to share the results!

ArtSoMoFo October 2008

These are my first couple arts for this year’s challenge of making some art everyday for the month of October. These are just some quick examples I was doing for students in class as I showed them how to use Photoshop. But I pretty much make art everyday at school, so I might as well show it off here too.

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Although the above were made at school as examples… this one was made at home. The girl in the center is from a photo shoot I did in the early 90’s when I was actually still developing my own film and printing my own photos. The other images are from a great photo sharing flickr group that posts images to be used in collage.

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The Start of October’s BJP page

The beginning of October’s Beaded Journal Project page. This has pieces from 5 different fabrics pieced together and using some cool decorative stitches on my machine. I like the eyelash type stitch that I did on the edge of the glow-in-the-dark eye fabric, which will also be the backing for this one. (Click to see a larger view, or make it a favorite at Flickr.) This is also my art for the day for ArtSoMoFo. I need to post my other work from this month so far as well. Now to select some beads and begin that phase.

Beaded Journal Project September 2008

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So this is the first of my 12 alter/door style journal pages. I am still up in the air as to how I am going to finish/back them. If I will do the sculptural approach in which case I will need to do more work on this one.

So I am a teacher, a middle school art teacher. September always means fresh starts, new kids, new lessons. I like endings, but more I like fresh starts. that is why September is one of my favorite months EVER. perhaps this was wired into me at an early age, since we moved every 2-3 years and I had to start over, make new friends. I always thought I would reinvent myself and start over. becoming the me that for some reason I had not been in the place before. We always moved in the summer with September being that moment of the fresh beginning…

This piece is 11″W x 8″H at the peaks. It is made from a ‘novelty’ fabric (one with the teachers, combined with a separate one of the flowers and edged with a third of the measuringtape. I included the tape because I have been working hard and lost 13 pounds over the summer. Plus it looks like a school type thing.

The ‘crazy’ art teacher has red hair (like me) and I added a fuzzy yarn to give it dimension. She also wears funky shoes, apron and glasses…like me too now (the glasses are new)

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Now to go figure out October’s page….

PS I would LOVE to hear feedback, as I am pretty much new to the beading thing…

Message In A Bottle

Message in a Bottle is a Mail art project started by Lisa Vollrath. These pictures are some of the fun goodies I have recieved in my bottles. I got a new bottle today from Corrine with some great handmade papers.

The project is no longer accepting sign-ups at Lisa’s Site (due to people not following directions.) BUT as the directions say, check the blogs of current participants to get included in the project. I am ready for 4 new addresses to add to my next round of bottles.

How do you play? If you send me your address via EMAIL (shebaduhkitty at yahoo dot com) then I will add your address to my out going bottles. This will result in you recieving a bottle from the next person. This will then GROW by two bottles for every bottle that you send out, so BE PREPARED! You need to be able to make cool little items of art, and add some extra fun art supplies and then pay up to $2 per bottle at the post office for EACH Bottle. Coming up, some pictures of my outgoing bottles.