Tejas Art Club

Greetings from Texas!  I hope everyone had a blessed Thanksgiving and are now happily gearing up for Christmas.  I've not been here in a while, Grandma duties, flu and life has a way of interrupting our routines, but, it's all good and everyone is healthy again, thanks to God above.

Just starting out, my first try with oils.

Okay, I just discovered that I love oil painting.  Like watercolor, I never thought I would or could paint anything at all, other than the trim around the house, but, I love it.  I found this wonderful, local club in town, called the Tejas Art Club.  It was started by a lovely woman and talented painter, Olga Ibarra.  She is very much like Jim Street, you met him a while back, he is  the instructor for the watecolor workshop I attended, encouraging, with an easygoing style of instruction.  I began with a simple, "girl in the garden" subject, no face, and easy sweeps of color.

I found oils easy to use and mistakes easy to cover.  I'm anxious to start a new one, so , I will stop here for now, get my oils out and be adventurous today.

Free Watercolor Painting Tutorials: How to paint, Hints, Tips, Techniques

© Susan Harrison-Tustain - Watercolor Painting on 140 Lb hot pressed Arches Watercolor Paper

Free Watercolor Painting Tutorials: How to paint, Hints, Tips, Techniques:

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Another Altered Book

In one of my earlier posts, I shared a picture of an altered book that I am working on, made from an old hardback book found at our local library give away pile.  I covered the front with felt, and did a mini collage on the front.  I then worked at gluing pages together on the inside and painted, colored, glittered, collaged and glued those pages, it's a bit time consuming, but easy and I like that kind of "tedious",  as my husband would say, work.  Then, taking inspiration from a collage workshop I attended, I wondered how it would work with an old children's board book.  It doesn't matter if it's bent or written on or coming apart, glue stick and modge podge handy, not to mention really cool duct tape, and I have to say, it has become a wonderful base for this book.  What's fun,  is that it gives the whole meaning of a scrapbook an altered twist, I love that you can paint, use just about every medium you know in one book.  

What I did was to find an old board book for start, and then glue scrapping paper on top, and just let the ideas kick in.  There's pencil drawing, collage, modge podge and glitter , and that's only the front, I can't wait to get to work on the inside.  

art-e-zine, play with art

art-e-zine, play with art:

What a cool blog I happened to find....it has all sorts of mixed media ideas and projects.....I have to go back and check out a few things before I get back to my newest altered book project!

FaveCraftsBlog.com | A Craft Blog With Projects, Ideas, Tips and More!

FaveCraftsBlog.com | A Craft Blog With Projects, Ideas, Tips and More!:

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Coffee Filter Christmas Tree

Here's a great crafting blog I found while looking for a quick and easy project to share with a small group, tomorrow afternoon.  We only have about an hour, so I needed something fun and quick and easy, and I found lots of ideas here.  Enjoy!

Little Watercolor House

Dreaming of Home

When I began watercoloring, only a few weeks ago, I was given a nice piece of watercolor paper to use, courtesy of our instructor.  Jim started us out using basic and  familiar techniques(I write about this a bit more in my post, Jim Street, Watercolor Workshop), wet on wet, painting a sky,dropping color, dry brushing, and so on, and this house is on the side of the paper where I first began.  I couldn't bear to throw the paper away, so I decided to try to "make" something of it, just to practice.  It is, part of a bigger scene, I started out with a floating head, and added the house to the bottom.

I call it, "Dreaming of Home", I cannot decide if her head is in the clouds, or she's lying on a pillow, which begs the question, where's the rest of her body, or if she has one of those winter coats with the fuzzy hood and the bottom is part of it.  That's remains to be decided, as I go along.  

Creative Chaos, Vintage Girl, Altered Journal

Along side my washer pendants and a new found love for watercolor, I started creating "altered" books and journals, which also,  is painting and collaging, which, when I type it out, makes me realize I do have a lot going on all at once....anyway, how cool is that, altered books,  another form of scrapbooking, but for me, this makes it really personal, to take written pages and transform them into a piece of art be it decorative or other, it is all about you and what makes you turn those pages.

The inside cover, vintage fabric and lace, paint and a hot glue gun

My altered book, cover:  felt, vintage postcard, ribbon, glitter flowers