Bloom Into Your Best Self

   Yesterday was such a dark and rainy day that I knew I had to get playing with color. I grabbed a favorite color combo of paints in red, orange, magenta and yellow-such happy colors- and painted, stamped and stencilled away!

 

 

  The sentiment was on a slip of paper on my desk waiting to be used on a journal page so I started with that. I also had my favorite hand carved stamp right there and was thinking about a blog post I recently read by Dina Wakley regarding using a motif in your art and finding different ways to use it. My "pea pod" stamp is my motif.

 

  I chose to stamp it on the page but I also made a stencil of it and then decided to cut petals from a monoprint I made using my new Gelli Arts Plate (LOVE!!!). You can see my first prints and links to this product on this post. I also have links there to other artists blogs along with their wonderful prints.

 Products used on this page: gesso; Liquitex Quinacridone Magenta, Golden Diarylide Yellow, Anita's Nasturtium, Americana Primary Red acrylics; Dylusions ink spray in Black Marble; Dylusions Basic Backgrounds UM Stamp Set; Stamper's Anonymous UM Alphabet Set; Dylusions Dotted Flowers Stencil; and for other mark-making: bottle caps, corrugated cardboard, my hand carved stamp, Signo Uni Ball pens in red and white for doodling, and Liquid Pearls in Buttercup by Ranger.

 I'm happy to be linking this up to Art Journal Everyday, Paint Party Friday, and a new inspiring challenge blog -Artists in Blogland Fall Fearless and Fly. It is hosted by two talented artists Jessica Sporn and Carolyn Dube.  They also have a great line up of guest artists, and there are prizes involved!!  Basically you are given three prompts-a headline prompt, a color prompt, and a quote prompt. You can use one, two or three of these prompts. For my first entry I already had  the color prompt and tho I didn't use the specific quote they had as a prompt I did use one of my own. It looks like you have about 15 days in between each session to create something and link it up. Please go to the "Fall Fearless" blog(which I have linked above) for all the details. Hope to see you there!!

 And here's an update on my very first monoprints which you can see here. I went to the next step and tried some of  the techniques listed on the Gelli Arts Blog. I used one of my reworked sheets to create the flower petals on my page above.

  On this print I applied Golden Gold glaze over top-sorry it's not really visible here.

  This print was only  magenta on white paper. I added color with  Dylusions ink sprays in Fresh Lime, Squeezed Orange and Pure Sunshine for added color. Pretty cool, huh?

 

  And on this basic print I swiped Distress ink Pads over top in Picked raspberry and Peacock Feathers-what a difference!

  It's such a treat to be inspired by so much talent in this world. I hope once in awhile I can pay it forward and inspire someone too. Many thanks for your comments and support. Mwah!

               "To look up and not down, to look forward and not back,
                 to look out and not in-to lend a hand!"  Edward Hale