This week has really flown by for me and every night I went to bed a bit grudgingly for want to stay awake and keep creating. I am jumping from idea to idea and rushing through at times because I can’t seem to control myself.
Perhaps inner energy is kicking to get out and making me jittery – or maybe it’s just the coffee…eek! Either way my mind is totally swirling…telling me to go and make art but in a million different directions. Forget about the world, you can go 24/7 and just follow your musings, right?
It’s funny how creativity comes and goes in waves, like we have no control. The TED talk by Elizabeth Gilbert about the creative genius really comes to mind as I think about my feelings this Friday. Sometimes I feel bad when I get into a creative trance, because I’m in my own little world and shut everyone else out. My husband knows to leave me alone in these times, but I do feel bad for missing out on family time and I’m sure I must seem a bit standoffish-crazy-lady-I’m-into-my-own-thing-weird.
Sigh…I also feel a bit scattered in attempts to clean and organize my space. The process is slow and I keep getting myself sucked into past projects and ideas rediscovered. For today I’m going with my painting creative trance and following through with a vision. I see it in my mind, now I just have to execute…from blank white pages…
to colorful musings…
I hope to share more soon…I know I have the weekend to get lost into creativity. Hope you have a lovely Friday!
Sometimes I get into a major drawing mode and start depicting whimsical ladies in my work. My husband was watching me draw this one and wondering what it was all about…what’s the story?
Hmm, sometimes I’m really not sure at all. The images come to my mind in a flash or sometimes they form slowly through the lines on the page. I suppose it’s just a mix from all the thoughts in my head…subconscious mind telling me something? Hmmm…I decided that it’s perfectly fine to just do and not understand completely. Today will be all about doodling, going about whatever feels right and embracing creativity. I must have faith in myself, right? Thanks for stopping by and checking out my creative space!
Happy Wednesday to everyone! Today I decided to get hands-on and carve some rubber stamps. It can seem like an intimidating process, but it’s not too difficult to create your own little designs for printing and there is always great satisfaction in creating something personal by hand. You can carve into everyday items like rubber erasers, art gum or even corks! I happened to have linoleum blocks lying around and started making a quote journaling stamp for a scrapbook page. I decided to finish the job and carve another stamp to test out printing.
I use a little table jig thingy when carving that allows you to apply pressure into what you are carving without the work slipping away – not sure what you call that. I think I’m pretty heavy handed anyway, because I’ve chipped off pieces of that white plastic thingy and certainly have had my share of slight injuries! I have to tell myself to slow down all the time, so be careful with whatever tools you are using.
After finishing up the quote journaling stamp I decide to carve another one with words. I printed out the word “smile!” on the computer first, so then it was easy to trace and transfer with pencil onto the block backwards. Remember you have to carve the mirror image of things! My little happy sun design turned out to be really detailed and a lot harder for me to carve out – what a challenge!
I didn’t have the tools (or maybe the patience) to get all those little parts of the letters and I also accidentally took off the dot above the letter “i” and the dot below the exclamation point as well. I decided it was okay, because I would add little hearts with a gel pen in their places instead. Don’t forget that you can always work with your mistakes.
In the end you have to go through a process of inking up your work and trying it out to see if you need to fix any parts or clear out certain areas. I like the grungy look of a hand-carved stamp and sometimes keep it very loose on purpose. Stamping with rubber stamp type inks worked okay, but wetting a bit of distress ink was nice also. I tried to use some paint but it was a bit too thick, so I think the trick is finding the right consistency for whatever you use to stamp. I ended up with a bunch of random stamping all over to test colors and consistencies. Either way it was fun to think of an image, get it carved out and then printed…so satisfying! I hope you will give carving a try as well…even if it’s just a little heart to stamp on the outside of your envelopes – that would make cute mail art 🙂 I think I’m going to do that now with a cork!
Ciao ciao everyone! This lovely Tuesday I invite you to art journal with me… yup! Let’s start a journal together and really experience the freedom of expression that art journaling can bring. I’ve been thinking about sharing my art journaling for a while and was really inspired to start this week because I finally received my Art Saves canvas panel in the mail and want to use it for the cover of a new journal.
If you haven’t already, be sure to check out crescendoh.com to read all about how Art Saves from the life stories of real-world artists. In fact, I will also be a guest curator in May – sharing my story, art photos and fabulous links to artsy crafty goodness. Previously I never shared my art journaling because it was very personal and not something I wanted others to see. However, the process helped me to turn my focus around and what was once a way to vent and release all the bad things has now become a place for play and happy experimentation. My art journaling is still personal, but much more positive and so I am now ready to share it. I’m taking a fashion catalogue shown above that seriously has really nice sparkly thick paper. It’s really perfect as a base for my journal and you’ll be surprised what you can find around the house that can become an art journal. Having pages that are NOT blank also helps you beat the blank page fear as well! First thing I like to do is decorate my cover, so here goes…
I sketched out a little happy drawing on watercolor paper first…
Then I slapped on my blue watercolor for the background…
Then coloring in my drawing, one color at a time and letting it dry in between. (I cheated with heat to dry the paper faster!) As you can see, I am not a trained watercolorist at all – I’m really messy because I’m impatient at times, but try my best to color in the lines and just fill in the colors I like.
Even though the watercoloring might be messy, I try to neaten it up by adding black outlining to my drawing…pretty cute, huh? You can see above how I plan to attach everything to the cover of my journal.
I’m not really done with the image yet though…I like to look at it from afar and add details with colored pencils and my latest craze – Copic twinkling like stars pens! Can’t resist some sparkly-ness and I guess it’s influence from Italy, because a lot of designs and clothing here have that added bling bling.
Above you can see how I went crazy with the sparkly pens and thickening the lines to add definition to the drawing. I couldn’t help but add hearts hanging from the top in silver pen too…
Glue everything down securely and tah-dah! A finished art journal cover…yay! Now you are going to do yours, right? Or perhaps you already have an art journal and just want to play along with a happy image? Go ahead and share in the comments section as I always like to see what folks come up with. Until next week for another art journal with me post!
I’m going through a period of Spring Cleaning because frankly, I need it! When there’s stuff all over the place and it actually impedes your process of working…you know you really must clean up. So now I’m trying to balance this tremendous task with everything else in life as well as my runaway ideas that usually derail any schedule I might have set down for cleaning. Who wants to clean when a fanciful idea pops up and you want to go experiment instead!
I decided to help myself by organizing my runaway ideas into loose notes. I made myself a lightbulb sketch above (feel free to download and use for your personal organization) – I printed it out 6 on a page to make little notecards. Of course, you can just use scraps to collect little sketches or words bubbling inside of you. I’ve put mine in a goodie jar to draw from at a later date. I feel that these types of ideas can often get lost in a big journal or lists, that’s why the loose leaf method is nice. I can save all of them in one place, but pick at random when I’m ready. I also have really crazy ideas at times, so it’s not like planning a painting in my journal. They are things to experiment or one day think more about. I just don’t want to lose or forget about the idea completely and I don’t want to dismiss it just because others might think I’m joking…maybe… 😛 Happy Spring Cleaning!
Hi folks! This week, I decided to go through the process of making a card from scratch using digital and real elements. I suppose you would call it hybrid and since I’m really looking forward to Spring weather, I decided to use the Tuscany landscape I live in for inspiration. Although I feel like all cardmaking is hybrid, given that someone printed pattern papers or those embellishments you are using…I guess you can say that it is all mixed media. You do and use whatever needed to achieve the look you want, right? Here’s the finish card and I also incorporated a bit of paper piercing given the current digital tuesday challenge.
I started by sketching out a design for my card with simple pencil and paper. Once I decided roughly what I wanted, I went onto the computer and drew the hills and printed on watercolor paper, then drew the sunflower and clouds and printed them on cardstock. I actually wanted to print everything out in color, but I ran out of yellow ink…so I had to improvise. The hills were actually watercolored in but the clouds already had blue when printed. I also added some sparkle via heat embossing to the clouds. The rest is regular cardstock, stamping and embellishing. Although I also spent a whole lot of time cutting a slice of cork and gluing the string to it! I could have added some faux stitching with a pen, but this time around added the paper piercing for the border to add a different look. I think it’s pretty cool to be able to create a card from scratch and that enables you to really match up the colors and elements. I love digital cardmaking, whether all digital or hybrid, because it gives me to the power to create what I need. A digital stamp image, a background or some embellishments maybe? I can print things out in color to match perfectly as well…the possiblities are endless. I hope you will try hybrid card making as well. If you want to use my images, feel free to download below…although that sunflower is pretty tedious to cut out, I must admit!
Happy Monday! I wanted to share some old school drawing lessons by Jon Gnagy today. It’s such a lovely reminder of old TV programs and the style of presentation back in the day. Here’s one lesson on the drawing of an old oak tree.
You can visit Gnagy’s webpage and check out more broadcasts from the past. Pretty darn cool, the way he talks and presents the lesson. So encouraging and reminds me of Bob Ross and watching shows geared for children as well. They are always so nice and I’m a sucker for the old fashioned anyway. Things can be presented in a simple and charming way – that’s the best. Hope it provides you with a bit of inspiration today.
Even if you don’t recognize the name Mary Engelbreit, you would probably instantly recognize her work upon seeing it. She has been in the art industry for a long time and her work is all over. I have loved her illustrations since childhood, ever since receiving one of her lovely illustrated greeting cards. Her work is not only cute and sweet looking, but also always carries a great message. Wise words of wisdom or a life lesson type of saying and subject. I’ve always been inspired and in awe of every little thing that was Mary Engelbreit. She started out like most artists – a child who just loved to draw. Now she is a famous and successful illustrator with her artwork in books, calendars, greeting cards, home accents and much more. People refer to her as a trailblazer and pioneer in art licensing, an industry in which I am excited about and working towards joining.
All artwork copyright Mary Engelbreit
I hope her work can inspire you as it always does me…her artwork is especially happy inducing this gloomy Monday.
Hello lovelies – Happy Wednesday! Thank you so much to everyone who entered my journal giveaway, I am so surprised and honored by the volume of responses. I hope the winners will enjoy using their new journal sketchbooks…
Congratulations to Emily and Jen C.! You’ll each get one of the journals at random (more suspense!) Please email me your mailing addresses so I can ship them off – linda [at] tortagialla [dot] com. For those of you who didn’t win, no worries. Art journaling is really fun or just doodling, whatever you feel like creating and really it’s as simple as stapling a bunch of papers together. If you don’t want to make your own though, I do have exciting news. I just listed my first journal for sale onto Etsy – my very special silver leather covered art journal!
Although I am still a beginner in bookbinding and have seen many masterpieces that are so refined here in Italy, I am still happy to create these little handmade journals myself. Totally handmade in every sense, every single one different and special in its own way. I also love thinking how wonderful it is to create something for someone else to create inside of! The multitude of ideas and thoughts that will go in these journals…that’s pretty darn awesome.
So why do I think it’s so special? Besides the fact that I made it…tee hee… all of the pages are individually sewn together, instead of the common signatures (bunches of paper folded). This one has 30 spreads, so the binding is sort of loosey goosey. See the difference when you push it around from the photo above and below?
However, I bind all the pages individually so they can all lie flat for ease of use as well as for the space it creates between each page. See below how the journal looks like an empty photo album from top view? You know what happens when you put photos into the album? It lines up perfectly and doesn’t poof up…so that’s another cool thing. The spine height gives you room to collage, add ephemera and use layers of medium with everything still fitting inside nicely.
I also put some elements in the inside front and back covers. I always liked how composition books had a place to write your name or journals that have little encouragement quotes inside.
I’m happy with the results of using leather in this way for the covers, but I still have some more experiments to perform and lots of leather to go through. I just got a sample of a pinkish coralish colored leather today, sooooo cute! It’s funny that companies here have to throw away their leather pieces that are inconsistent or too small to make purses, shoes, etc. Those scraps are actually precious to me because they are unique…and really we shouldn’t waste leather…or anything!
Yay! I am participating in sfgirlbybay’s blog it forward and it’s my turn to share a bit about what inspires my art, craft and musings. Thank you to tiny-ass apartment for passing the torch to me.
I am originally from Los Angeles, a total SoCal valley girl for the first 20+ years of my life. Long story short, I was ultimately driven by love to quit my soul-draining corporate job and pursue my dreams in a new land. I moved to the Tuscan hills of Italy, got married to my love and now living my dream. I design, craft and create art…and really loving my new life! Yup, I know it sounds a bit like those mushy love abroad, cliché life changing movie plots, but it’s really my life and through this blog I share it with all of you!
My experiences in this foreign environment inspires me every single day. I am constantly learning new things about the history and culture of Italian life. It’s amazingly uplifting to be presented with a different way of thinking and living. Some ideas are refreshing, others can be annoying but overall it’s an eye-opening way of living. In the end, I choose how I want to live, meshing my new learnings with my existing culture. Everything inspires me… or perhaps I should say, anything can inspire me, because it’s how I decide to interpret what I see and experience. From the landscape, to cool bikes to crafting with my 4-year old niece to random textures and patterns to the details of nature… all of it…
You can check out my Flickr stream for more random photos. I hope you enjoyed a little look into my dolce vita! Thanks for stopping by and I now pass the torch onward to two brunettes who will post tomorrow. Enjoy and be inspired – by anything!
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Yay! I am participating in 
