ColourLovers.com

My cousin recommended a site to me called Colour Lovers. It is so amazing. It is basically a social networking site, but with a twist. You get to make art on it. It is all about color, color palettes and making patterns with those palettes. It is really addicting, so you are warned!

This is my favorite palette I have made to date. Just something about it.
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It was made with one of CL's "advanced" palette making tools. It pulls photos from places like flickr and user added photos from the web as well, and lets you grab colors off of them. It is called PHOTOCOPA, it's sister tool is COPASO pro Palette Tool, where you can use photos off of your computer that it will pixillate for you.
This is a palette I made in COPASO. p


Here are a couple that I made using my own photos. This was called Weathered Monument and this is the photo that inspired it. It was a wonderful monument in the parking lot at a Lighthouse my Aunt took me to see in Oregon.
I love the colors in it. Really great.


This I called Bricks, and was inspired by the wonderfully vibrant bricks and art, at the Fort Worth train station. I love the pink stripe. Fun thing about using
the "advanced" palette tools at CL is that you can play with the widths of the colors you are using. A palette looks very different when the weight of the colors is all equal. Here is Bricks with equal widths. Not the same effect at all. In fact it looks really wrong like that. It throws the balance off to allow all of the colors to have equal weight.

Here is one made with out using widths effects, that was designed that way using CL's regular palette making tool. It is called Olives in a Dish. All of the colors, are colors I made, that are named after different kinds of olives. It works well with equal widths.

Anyway, check out colourlovers.com . It really is fun, and addictive. Next time I will post some of my patterns that I have made and a few of my favorite colors.

Oregon and Washington Trip Pictures

I went to Oregon to visit my Aunts for a week and then to Washington to visit my best friend and her family for 2 weeks. It was wonderful!

It took me for EVER to get the pictures uploaded, but I think I got some really great shots.

A lot of art inspiration! These rocks just tickled me. They were gorgeous!


You know it' s cold when the rocks are frosty. I think these were taken on the way up to Mt. St. Helens. My best friend is so wonderful about stopping every where so I can take pictures and collect...things...


And here is the lovely lady herself! It was amazing up there. We could not get all that close, the roads were closed at Clear Lake. But we had lots of fun trying.












This is Clear Lake. It was GORGEOUS, even under all the snow. I will be curious to see what it looks like in the summer. There must be lovely trails. We had to forge our own, and were up to our hips in some areas in very wet, cold, snow.We thought we were going to have a picnic here, not really all that practical, the picnic benches would have had to be excavated.
The "No Swimming" sign, even though I knew it was for summer, seriously cracked me up. That sign is posted on the dock... looking over the water... brrrrr

Holy Moly Mackeroly

I was talking to my Dad today, and something he said made me think of this page spread in my Journal the Journey journal. So I thought I would share.

I did this spread after receiving one of my favorite, inspirational how to sell your art books, Holy Moly Mackeroly. It is by Gloria Page. If you can get a copy of it, it is just marvelous. Her writing style is so engaging, and funny, and personal. She made me feel like I could do it too!

The spread in my journal has nothing to do with the book. The title tickled me, and sparked something semi creative. So do not judge her book by my cover!

Gloria Page kept a blog for a while, that I found while researching the links for this post. She was battling cancer while she kept it, so it is a tearful read, but inspirational. It is called the Creative Edge, click for a link.

Art House Journal-Random Pages

These are just some random pages in My Art House Journal.



In one of them you can see my frustration at the doctors office. I kept have these test done, where they stick needles in you and then, run electricity through the needles. Not fun! I was waiting to go in after x-rays and dreading the needle portion when I did this page.

Both of these pages, I had painted the backgrounds on, long before I journaled and drew the hand, and the page ideas.





The other, is some ideas I was running through. Just brainstorming, while sitting at the doctors office. I also was making lists of things to do. I think, by looking at some of the list here, that I must have been preparing for a surgery date.

I almost always bring a journal and supplies with me to wait, and usually some bead work. I sell a lot of my bead work at doctors offices and physical therapy offices. A good tip, if you sell your work. Work on it everywhere! It gets people to ask you questions, and if you are good at talking to people about it, it can lead to sales. To see my bead work visit TCDesignsStudio.blogspot.com.

Dallas Arboretum Photos

A friend and I went to the Dallas Arboretum for her Birthday, and just had a ball. I had never been, and it is so beautiful. I took lots of pictures.

I like the flower pictures, one for their beauty, and two because they give me ideas for jewelry. I am a bead artist, you can see some of my work at TCDesignsStudio.blogspot.com.

I love getting cool pictures of
sculpture. I like to see if I can capture it in a way that was maybe not intended. Some large scale sculpture has such

great lines, and nooks-and-cranny's, for lack of better words (sorry about that!). Also, if they are outdoors, they can get the most amazing texture.



I also really love any photos of just plain texture that I can get. You can do so much with a photo like that. They are great for
backgrounds for artwork, they are great torn up and used in your journals, and some of them can stand alone, and just be framed.

Painting

I painted this picture from the porch of my Granddaddy's house. It was the view at night. It is very badly done, but I needed the distraction at the time.

Blurred Art Journal

This is the front of one of my journals, Blurred Art. I have been gluing things to the front of it for years. I have had some really wonderful things donated by friends that I attached as well. I always wanted to cut a window in the front. Never have, and now the inside cover is fairly decorated, so maybe it is not an option.

This journal was the very first of my art journals. I still work in it. Water Table was painted fairly recently in it. I have a hard time finishing a journal. I find I do not want to. They all have varying amounts of blank pages at the end, or in some cases, the middle. I might find I want to say something that is relevant to the journal!

The Kimbell

Here are more pictures from the same trip to the Kimbell Art Museum. I love this statue in the open air eating area. She is so relaxing to look at. Great food there too, although it can not compare to the food at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. I had one of the best meals of my life there!



This is a picture of the open air eating area, that has a tree growing in the middle. It is so pretty. Not so good when it is raining, but lovely otherwise.



When we went to the museums, we took the train from town, to Fort Worth, then a city bus to the museums. At the Train station there are these amazing sort of bas-reliefs, on the wall outside. They are just gorgeous, and full of wonderful history!

Zipper Mural

This has to be one of my favorite murals of all time. Although, to be honest, I really like most murals I see.

This is in Fort Worth, somewhere... It was taken from the bus window on the way to the Kimbell Art Museum.

I can not tell you where exactly, I do not know the area well enough.

I just love it! I want to reach out and unzip more of it. I think the artist did such a great job, it is so real, and it leaves you wanting more, but does not leave you frustrated.

I wish it was possible to get a picture of it minus all of the cars and the fence. Problem is, the cars are parked right up against the side of the building, so no go.

More Dad Pages!

I love this spread that my father did in our joint journal. I get a kick out of the actual train tracks on the page, every time I look at it. Plus he talks about ancient history, which I love to hear about. On the left is a picture of my Dad with Uncle Richard, his best friend, and he talks about their trip to the Amazon.

Eagle Feather Amulet Bag Journal Page

For Father's Day a few years ago, I made my father an amulet bag with an eagle feather on it. I thought he might like to see the process of it being created, so I journaled about it, in our journal. I had kept all of my research printouts so I used them, and I photocopied the charts I made for it, and documented all of the minutia that went into it, like thread, and number of beads, and so forth. For a picture of the finished piece, front and back, go to TCDesignsStudio.blogspot.com, or just click on the link.

August 29th, 2005

I sat in front of the television for days, in complete horror.
We were so close, and yet too far away. How did this happen?

Same Day Different Journal

All right, so this is a little redundant, but the two journal spreads turned out so different, and I like them both. I had done this spread in my latest journal, no title yet, and liked how it turned out, so I thought I would share with my Dad, and did a spread in his (see post from 6/2/08).

I used both pictures I took with a digital camera and then printed on matte photo paper, matte is my favorite kind, and pictures I took with my IZone camera. I love that little camera, and it is getting harder and harder to find film for it. It is a tiny Polaroid camera, that often comes with sticky on the back of the picture for ease of journal use.

You will notice that there is a large stain over the pages. That would be because I spilled an entire cup of coffee into my backpack in which my journal was packed. You will see that most of the pages look like that. Oh well, no use crying over spilt... coffee?

Shelling Peas

This was the first spread I did in the journal I am doing with my father. I love the swirl on the right side, and I am kind of proud of the pea pod drawing. I am a terrible sketcher, and have a hard time with perspective, so it is not great, but I think, for me, it was pretty good. I did some others like it in an earlier entry in my Journal the Journey journal, that did turn out even better. Often, my second attempt at something just does not equal the first. Something to do with working intuitively, I think.

Spilling Open

I love the look of a book
Spilling open
From all of it's treasures.

It looks so rich
and so full of life and love.

A living, breathing treasure.

Every time something new is added,
It accepts it,
and opens further,
To expose more of its self.

T.C.R.

My Art House Journal & page

So this is the page in my "My Art House" Journal, that inspired Home (on previous post). I really liked it, even though it is kind of silly with the swedish fish label (one of my vices).




This is the first journal I made for my self. I had done lots of book-binding previously, but had made nothing for myself.

I cut the book board covers and the Bristol pages in the house shape, and I cut corresponding shapes out of mauve silk book cloth. Before covering the boards, I cut a piece of unbleached muslin, to fit, and cut windows and doors, then sewed buttons from my Great-Great Aunts button box on it. Then sewed the muslin to the silk book cloth and then covered the boards.

I took all my pages to Kinkos and had them punched for coil binding and had them give me their largest coil. Since Kinkos would not punch the cover for me, I took it home and used a punch set to do it my self. This was before I had a Japanese Screw Punch, the most miraculous of tools. Then I just wound the coil up and away I went.

The funny thing is, I did all of this one armed. I had just had surgery on my shoulder, and was still in a sling and bandages. Don't know why I had to make it just then, but for some reason I had to have it now!

Home Collage

I did this piece a few years ago. It was inspired by a page in one of my journals. I will scan that tomorrow and post it.

This I called Home, and it was done on a 2" gallery wrap canvas. I love using deep gallery wraps, you can do so much with all four sides as well as the front. Unfortunately you can not see that in a scan! Take my word for it, it is cool!

It hangs over my bed, with a little white wooden dove I bought at an artists garage sale, perched on it.

I used this image on my business cards, although I really need to redesign them and put a piece of jewelry on them instead.

Dad Journal - 2

These are wonderful pages by my father, in our journal. On the first page, you can see my Dad's best friend, my Uncle Richard, "preaching" away, and some of my father's wonderful poetry. You would never know that my Dad has not done this before. He does such great pages.

On the second side there is a picture of me in my late teens, some more of my Dad's photography and a great example of some of his digital art, a nail head cat. All of this was digitally manipulated and some of it printed on acetate! Really cool.