Liberate Your Art Postcard Swap

I joined the Liberate Your Art Postcard Swap. I am so excited about this. Signup has closed down for this year but look out for next years swap. I just had to print 5 postcards with my art on them and write a note to the person who is going to receive it. Then send the postcards with stamps and self addressed labels. She swaps the cards after March 15th and sends you 6 postcards back from different artists. I just love the idea of sharing your artwork with other artists.

Here is a picture of my swap materials. I plan to do another blog post on the cards I receive when I get them.

February Adventures

February has been another busy month. Almost so busy I was starting to feel a bit overwhelmed. Work has been crazy busy. We are also still working on fixing up the back porch. I plan to show that off when it is done. I am hoping for the end of March.

At the beginning of the month we took a trip up to Titusville and went to the Kennedy Space Center. We had a great time although it didn't seem as big as what I remembered when I was a kid. It was a rainy and chilly day.

This was the front entrance as we were getting our tickets.

They call this the Rocket Garden.

The place we had the most fun was the Atlantis Building. We went through a little movie explaining how the shuttle program was started. Then we moved into another room were they showed a launch.

We then walked into a room where the Atlantis Shuttle was hanging. It was awesome to see it. I really miss seeing the launches. They also had places in this building where you could see inside the shuttle cockpit. There were also some games to simulate working on the International Space Station.

They also had a replica of the Hubble Telescope and this suit hanging from the ceiling. There was also a Shuttle Launch Experience. This was pretty neat to kind of feel what the astronauts go through during a launch.

Overall we had a really nice day!

This little guy stuck his head out of the bushes as we walked by to go do some shopping!

Here are my sunsets for the month! The first one was a picture of a pretty bad storm that was getting ready to hit us.

Toward the end of the month there was a Rocket Launch. I tried to get a picture but they didn't come out really great. I need to invest in a tripod. Plus the launch was about 90 miles north of us.

I have fallen so behind on my LifeBook class. I was only able to finish one lesson for the month.

This is my week 5 lesson. An idea had popped in my head for this one so I took my time doing it.

I did start on the Week 6 lesson, but it turned into something I want to share for St. Patrick's Day so look forward to that.

Also I am going to fall even further behind in LifeBook because I am working on a birthday present for my cousin's daughter. She asked me to paint her a heart for her birthday in April, back before Christmas. It took me a bit to come up with an idea for it. She was looking through my sketchbook and saw something I had sketched for my Sun A Day project. She really liked it. I didn't want to do the same thing so I came up with a similar concept but changed up the design. Here is the sketch for that. Look for a post on the progress of the painting for this.

That is it for February. I look forward to next month because it is my birthday month.

Life Book 2014 ~ Week 5 ~ Sugar Sugar

Wow this one took me a bit to complete. This lesson the teacher was Marieke Blokland. She had us create a Cotton Candy Diva to celebrate what makes our life sweet. Of Course I ended up making it a bit more complicated than what it probably needed to be, I have a habit of overthinking things. When I started drawing out the sketch for it a story came into my head. All I could think of was how the Evil Queen tempted Snow White with the poisoned apple. Then I started thinking what tempts me most and it's chocolate. My Cotton Candy Divas are an Evil Candy Queen tempting the innocent princess with all of her favorite chocolate treats. I am starting to find that when a story pops in my head my drawings and paintings turns out with more character.

Spring Titles Ad for School Library Journal

This is an ad that went in the School Library Journal to announce our new titles that came out last spring. I love the colors of this one.

January Adventures

January had been pretty busy! Especially with starting the LifeBook 2014 course.

We have started doing some work out on the back porch. We got the screen redone, but some other things popped up that need to be fixed out there. Isn't that the case with home ownership. I have taken some pictures but I thought I would wait to post them until we are finished.

I actually didn't get many sunset pictures this month. I have just this one:

I was in Orlando yesterday and decided to stop at Ikea on my way home. I had never been there before and there was this cart I had been seeing around the internet. So I decided to stop in and get this cool cart.

The store was huge and I could have spent hours in there if I had more time and money. I also bought a little succulent plant, that I need to find a little home for it. I also got this cute little night light that changes colors in the children's department.

I have so many ideas for when one of my spare rooms becomes available for my studio space. Here is my little studio space right now, it's a little corner in my master bedroom:

Oh and Murphy says "Hi" to everybody!

I thought I would recap my finished projects for my LifeBook 2014 Lessons:

Well that is it for January! I hope everybody has a wonderful February!

LifeBook 2014 ~ Week 4 ~ Be True to You

I am now officially a week behind on my LifeBook lessons.

Week 4 was a collage lesson with Kelly Hoernig. She had us pick 3 things that we love and make a mixed media collage and paint with the items we choose. For some reason I couldn't come up with anything right away. Then in the video she mentioned what attracts your attention when you go to the stores. For me those things are anything to do with skulls, converse, and stars. She used a lot of found items on her page. I don't have a lot of those kind of things around, so I drew the skulls and printed pictures of a couple of my pairs of converse. I love the grunginess of the way it came out.

LifeBook 2014 ~ Week 3 ~ Mixed Media Envelope

The last part of Week 3 with Carla Sonheim, we had to make a mixed media envelope to house all our little exercises we did. It took me a little bit to decide how I wanted to do this. I ended up buying a 11x15 paper and decided I wanted to do it in a landscape format. When I watched the first lesson I realized they were working in a 9x12 portrait format.  I just decided to keep going in the landscape format and my envelope is quite big.

I decided to glue down the fox and the flying dog because they were my favorites of all the exercises.

I now realize I am a week behind in my LifeBook lessons. I have thought about what I want to do with Week 4, so I just have to create everything and come up with how I want to put it together. We have to pick 3 things that we love and make a page with that. A new lesson is posted tomorrow so hopefully I will be able to catch up this week and get back on track.