Profusion Confusion

This is the photo I meant to post earlier. It's a very similar piece, except that for some of the leaves, I used a fill pattern made from a scan of some metal that I embossed, giving the leaves a distressed gold-tone effect.

Profusion I

While cleaning out my former jewelry-making room, I found a book of floral stained glass patterns by Dover. I colored some of them in with Pitt pens (it was fun, like in kindergarten!), scanned them into PSE, and made some of them into fill patterns. Then I created new designs by filling in some of the areas (leaves, flowers) with the new patterns and other colors/techniques. Here's one.

Spring Birds at Night

I couldn't resist inverting the colors in PSE. These birds don't look like they're going to sleep anytime soon...

Spring Birds

My latest digital collage.

Earrings and Life

Yesterday I sat down to do some colorful doodling, intending to use some of my earring shapes as inspiration for the designs (hearts, open circles, elongated triangles, etc). The TV was on, and the Discovery Channel was running several episodes in a row of the gorgeous TV series "Life." Soon I began incorporating some of the images I was seeing onscreen into my "zen doodle"-- strange insect shapes, sea life, butterflies, waterfalls, even an open hippo mouth. I added the blue background in Photoshop. Fun!

Spring Collage

This piece started as a page for Carol Zika's Artful Journaling class. We were challenged to create a design using pieces of paper in different shapes, colors, and patterns that were contributed by other class members; as well as items we had gathered on our own. I managed to fit them all on one page, which created a colorful (and rather crowded) floral-themed piece. I liked it, but decided to scan it into PSE and play with it some more. For the version shown here, I limited the color scheme by converting the collage to black and white, and then incorporating a range of green and yellow hues. Cool!

More Zentangle-Inspired Art

Here are 3 more of my creations inspired by Zentangle (http://zentangle.com). I don't think I can really call them "Zentangles" because I don't follow all the "rules" closely. (I don't like rules :)). In fact, lately I've been coloring them in with Pitt pens as soon as I draw them, rather than leaving them in the traditional black and white. I seem to get more satisfaction from creating them in color, and I think it helps me with the overall design of each piece.

More Alphabet Effects

This is the same "mixed" alphabet I created back in January, for my 16-page journal. I've since discovered how to take any pattern image (including one I've created, like a zentangle) and use it to "fill" parts of an image in PSE. Here I used a colored zentangle pattern I created, to fill the letters.

Cigar Box Project

The "offshoot" group from my Artful Journaling class (we call it "Artful Adventurers") got together recently to alter and embellish cigar boxes. I couldn't attend the session, but worked on mine at home. I tried to give it a bit of an Asian flair so I could display it in my family room with some decorative items from China. I decoupaged scrapbook paper onto the top, painted the rest of the box with acryclic paints, and embellished it with Asian-style jewelry components I had left from my jewelry-crafting days. The "feet" are goldtone beads antiqued with some black ink to dull them a little. I let the original cigar box printing show a little through the paint, and left the inside mostly unfinished because I liked the look of the bare wood.

The box sits comfortably on a dark red table, in front of three embroidered Chinese folk-art embroidered pictures that we bought in Shanghai, and next to the small terra cotta warrior reproduction figures Ryan sent us from China while he was there.