Magic Lanterns

Just a very quick post to show off some great pics we took of the Lantern Festival at the Missouri Botanical Center in St. Louis.  The colors are amazing as is the workmanship.  I highly recommend that you try to attend this if you are at all close to St. Louis.  I will post the link.  We arrived at the park around 6:30 pm, ate and then walked around.  They turned the lights on at around 8 pm.  Absolutely stunning.  I don't think that we left until 9:30.  I hope you get to see this marvelous exhibit!

Lantern Festival

This fountain is right at the beginning of the display.  They have turned the water dark blue and it is a wonderful effect.

There were two very large dragons in the reflecting pools outside of the Climatron.  They were made entirely of china using ancient tying techniques.  Oh, yeah, 40,000 pieces of china!

The dragons on this display were animated!  

I just love that the pandas were in actual bamboo at the center!

At around 9:00 we heard a gong and all of a sudden, the dragon heads started to turn and smoke started to pour out of them.  Amazing.

The wishing tree.  For $2.00 you could buy a 'coin' and throw it into the tree while you made a wish.  Then you got to bang the gong.

More Polka Dots and a Bit of Recycling

When your friend names your studio room for you and she calls it the Batcave, you may be in trouble.  Thanks, Kelly.  I am a bit of a supply hoarder and a found objects hoarder.  I did a page of polka dots last week and mentioned that when I was cleaning off the ink from the stencil, the ink went onto the paper towel underneath and left a cool pattern.  I kept it.  I was going to use it.  Yea.  Right.

Well, guess what?  I did.  I have some pics of an art journal page on FUN that I made this weekend and I used the paper towel for the flowers.  I just randomly cut out some circles, hot glued them on and voila!  Flowers.

Here are the actual remnants of the paper towel.  Should I save this?

I wasn't sure if the paper towel would take rub-ons, but it did.

The stems were made by cutting up an old hand crocheted doily style  furniture cover.  It was ripped and I think that I paid a dollar for it at a garage sale.  The leaves are the scallops from the same piece.

I colored the stems and the leaves with alcohol inks.

This quote is from my nephew and I want it to be said about me after I have left this world.  "It's like she isn't even a grown up!"

FUN  yup that's what it's all about.

Friendship Balloons

In doing this page for my art journal I thought of the different types of friends that we all have:  forever friends, good friends, crisis friends, etc.  I also thought about balloons for some reason and how they are kind of like friends.
The pics were taken outside on a cloudy day.  I should have put the camera on auto, but I am trying very hard to do this myself.

I couldn't help using some lyrics from one of my favorite songs, "For Good" , from Wicked.

I kind of love the way the bumpiness of the layers of tissue paper take the paint, pens and watercolors.  It gives it cool texture.

I used light blue tissue paper only for the background.  I rubbed a smidge of blue and yellow paint around.  I tried to use more translucent paints (Claudine Hellmuth and Golden Fluid Acrylics).  The balloons were done with a stencil (remember, I can't draw) and the little ones were done with a stamp.  I used a lot of paint, Faber Castell Big Brush Pens, watercolor pencils and Neo Colors for shading.  Lots of rubons, a little bit of texture from stencils and a music stamp and some doodling.  That's it.  I like it.  I like the balloons especially.

Pearls, Polka Dots and Waves

Two new art journal pages are finished.  I know, it's like I'm not working this summer or something.  The first page is a cool take on the ocean.  The page is gessoed and the waves are different colors of alcohol ink, blending solution, Faber Castell Big Brush Pens and a bunch of other stuff I can't even remember.  I put the blue inks on a blending tool and 'waved' it across both pages to make it look like the water.  The pearls are just for a fun look of sea foam.  It made me think of mermaids and if I could draw, she would have been in there.  I wish that I had not used modeling paste for the sun as I think the look is too harsh.  Fabric would have been better, but live and learn.
The second set of pages is a result of my love of polka dots.  It is done on a gessoed page with a stencil and alcohol inks again.  You need the gesso to make the inks move.  I framed off the page with some canvas tape from Scarlet Lime (see sidebar) and there you are.

This word gave me fits and I had to re-gesso, re-ink and do it over. 

The circles were just a bunch of lids and things dipped in paint.

I love the way the ink kind of bled a bit through the stencil.

Cool Footnote:

When I was cleaning the stencil (I don't usually do this, but when you use alcohol inks you have to or they will reactivate), it left polka dots on the paper towel that was underneath.  I plan on using that paper towel some day.  Hoarder!