ICAD WEEK 4

Hi Everyone!

It's Week 4 of the Index Card A Day (ICAD) challenge, we're into Day 29 and  I'm still pumped up about the remaining 32 days!  

It's been a pleasure spending time with my daughter and grandson, taking walks, caring for the baby and spending time with my granddaughters.  I love being with them and seeing my older grands loving on the newest one. It has been a great week.

My art time has been limited this week. The challenge has been to find a block of time to make some art, write blog posts, update Facebook and Flickr with the latest photos, etc.  Guess I didn't realize how much time it takes to do these things each day and the amount of time I spend on the computer. Not complaining, just sayin'.  You all know what I'm talkin' about don't you? 

Anyhow, I've put together the individual cards for your viewing pleasure, just click the tab (Index Card A Day) on the right side bar. 

Happy Doodling!
Suzy

A Walk In The Park 2

Hi Everyone!

WELCOME BACK. Are you ready for another Walk In The Park adventure? Last week we visited the Indian River Park and this week we are taking a trip to Shepard’s Park. The best place I know to be at sunset is on the little wooden boardwalk that meanders along the river. Several benches for watching the sunset. The setting sun is always a big attraction at this park. 

Located off a very busy main drag near a quiet neighborhood, Shepard Park offers one of the most scenic views along the St. Lucie River, a favorite painting spot of mine. With the many sailboats moored in the river and nearby there's always something interesting to paint. 

 You can see by my sketches, I've been drawing and painting here for many years. 

 There's a cool wooden boardwalk that runs around the riverside and lots of people go there to fish or watch the sunsets. 

 I love the little houses on the other side of the park too and often attempt to paint or draw them.

 This house has a wonderful screened in porch and a tin roof, I love trying to capture the old time look of this place. 

 And the pink building has always fascinated me with its unique architecture. Then there are the sailboats moored near by that totally captivate me. 

Pencil Sketch Pink Bldg.

Thanks for stopping by to take a stroll in the park today!  Next week is July 4th and I'll be on holiday.  Returning on July 11th with the third in the series of A Walk in the Park. I hope you will join me! 

Happy Painting & Sketching!

Suzy

TAKE TIME TO SMELL THE CRAYONS!

Hi Everyone!

  I found the tin my children kept their crayons stashed in.  It's old and rusted, a bit beat up and has a Teddy Bear Picnic scene on the lid.  I couldn't pitch it, really, the memories were too strong, taking me back to simpler times when they sat at their little wooden table. I could see it in my mind, then I opened the lid and I was a goner. Sigh, the smell of childhood....crayons! I LOVE crayons!!  Come on, you KNOW what I'm talkin' about.

The crayons weren't in the best shape but I decided right then and there that I would make a page in my journal using these crayons. Out came the applique iron (never used for applique by the way) because I had bought it for this very purpose of melting crayons. Sorting the crayons by colors, piles of beautiful colors!! 

Have you tried melting crayons? The smell is divine...crayons on high! Dabbing the melted goodness, smearing it with my trusty iron had me giddy as a kid! Here's my sample pages.


 

Greens 

I love the coolness of the greens so reminds me of deep summer when leaves on the trees are so full and luscious.

Autumn Splendor

I call this page Autumn Splendor, it reminds me of the mountains in fall.  

Spring time

This reminds me of spring's soft colors. Aren't these yummy? 

Melting Wax & Stamps

Here I'm playing with the crayons and stamps to see what happens. My notes say the stamps become transparent with crayons on them. 

 Ok, well that was fun! Hope you will take time to smell the crayons this summer and remember what it's like to be a kid again.

Happy Coloring!
Suzy

ICAD WEEK 3

Hi Everyone!

This post is a bit late today but better late than never, right?  I've been getting things spruced up around here for my darling daughter and grandson to arrive this week (DSIL will follow soon).  They are in transition, moving from Texas to Michigan and will be staying with us for a month.  We are looking forward to spending time with our 3 month old grandson, DD and SIL. Jackson is growing so fast! He is smiling and getting such a cute personality, we are certainly blessed to have them stay with us.  

It's been a wonderful week making index cards each day, so much fun! My plastic bin of goodies sit under the table waiting to be sifted through for just the right tidbit to add to the cards.

If you'd like to read more about the details of each card for this week and any previous ones you might have missed, just click on the "Index Card A Day" tab on side bar to your right. 

Thank you so much to all who have left such kind comments, each one makes me feel so loved. I can't wait to share the cards with you!  Please share with me which is your favorite and why. I love hearing your thoughts.

Happy Doodling!
Suzy

Linking to : Daisy Yellow; Paint Party Friday; Art Journal Everyday

DOWN MEMORY LANE: MORNINGS IN THE PARK

Hi Everyone! 

Welcome to the Down Memory Lane Series Part 2! Last week we meandered through The Neighborhood. If you missed that walk down Memory Lane you can find it here.  Today we will visit one of my favorite parks! 

Located on the Indian River on a lovely stretch of land, this park has been through a tremendous renovation and revitalized over the last decade. It offers a something for everyone, a place for families to come and picnic, fish, walk the dogs and play. There is an interactive water fountain that kids love to play in a Children's museum and a lovely historic Mansion on the hill.

This sketch was done when they were first developing the park and I was developing my love for drawing there. 

A group of friends often got together for a day to go to the park to sketch, paint and go to lunch. This page reflects the day's adventures of sketching in the park, going to the art supply store, having lunch, a stop at the bookstore and some fun doing gesture drawings in my living room! It was a great day and each time I look at this it brings back a wonderful day spent with friends.

A quick watercolor sketch

 Over the years I've spent many pleasant hours sketching and painting this area. It is my favorite quiet spot away from the crowds.  There are walking trails that travel around the pond filled with tall trees and flowers.

Watercolor of pond

I could happily paint here a hundred times and still not be tired of this little piece of paradise.  Up on the hill is the mansion called Tuckahoe. It was built on an Indian mound  (there are many of these in the area). The mansion has been restored to it's former glory days, but in my sketch below it was still in disrepair. For many years the place was fenced off and not accessible to the public. Once we had a church function at the park and we were allowed to take a tour before it was restored. OH! It was so awesome, I could just imagine how grand it was back in the day. 

Tuckahoe Mansion

Well that's our Walk in The Park for today.  I do have more park adventures to share with you, so please stop back again real soon!   
Happy Sketching!Suzy

x

ICAD WEEK 2

Hi Everyone!

Happy Weekend! Happy Saturday! 

Time for the ICAD (Index Card A Day) reveal for Week 2.  This week was even more fun than the second week because I've learned a few lessons:

• go with the flow
• don't over think it
• have fun

Check out the entire week's ICAD by clicking the tab on the right side bar to read more. 

Here's a peek.

Thank you for stopping by! 

Happy Doodles,
Suzy

Linking to : Daisy Yellow; Paint Party Friday; Art Journal Everyday

New Travel Series "Down Memory Lane".

Hi Everyone!

It’s Travel Thursday again! Who’s ready to come along?  Today we’ll be taking a different path than usual, but don’t worry, I know the way having tripped down this lane often.  Curious as to where we might be going today? The good news is No Passport Needed! We'll be tripping down Memory Lane! 

We're keeping it LOCAL during this mini Travel Series.  Over the next several weeks I'll be walking you though a series of places: The Neighborhood; A Morning in the Park with Friends; My Own Backyard sketches and In The Studio.  

Ok, so let's see what's happening around The Neighborhood! 

Each morning I would get up and don my walking shoes and start down the road from my house, following mostly the same route everyday (creature of habit here).  Upon returning home I would sketch or draw or paint interesting things I saw along the way. 

I passed this gorgeous white picket fence each morning on my walk, the yellow Alamanda blossoms that cascade over the arbor and down the fence take my breath away. It is a lovely sight to see! This particular morning it is hot and humid and the bright golden yellow daisies catch my eye, as well the appropriately named Firecracker bushes exploding with their red-orange colored blooms. 

I hear a rat-ta-tat noise coming from the woodpecker rapping on the metal streetlight and wonder whether the bird realizes 1. that he's tapping on metal and 2. it is waking up the neighborhood at this early hour!  A bit later I'm walking along and spot a giant raccoon, he sees me too and we both freeze! Yikes. And my neighbor has a new pineapple growing on his plant! There's a small sign "please do not pick". 

This morning a little box turtle has crossed the busy street from his pond and is wandering on the black top of a church parking lot.  Poor little fellow seems a bit lost. 

The weather is turning cooler and the neighbors are decorating for fall with pumpkins and scarecrows.  The bushes are producing these luscious berries in deep plum and purple colors, and the turtles are huddling on the fountain in the middle of the pond warming themselves with early morning rays of the sun. 

Please join me each Thursday for a journey back in time through my journals. What do you see on your early morning walks? Do you take time to record these moments and how do you keep these memories? I'd love to know! 

Happy Travels!
Suzy 

ANOTHER PEEK INSIDE.....

Hi Everyone!

Last week I gave a sneak peek into my new Moleskine journal and I've a few more pages to share with you today.  But first take a look at some pre-prepped pages I made at the end of the journal.  

 See that half moon shape on the right?  Using a glue runner, I stuck two pages together on the short edges of the book, then punched the half moon shape with my circle punch. This handy dandy little pouch stores my watercolor pencil palettes.








What you ask is a watercolor pencil palette?

Inktense watercolor pencil palette

 It's a palette that holds watercolor pencil blobs!  It's made by heavily rubbing watercolor pencils in a crosshatched pattern on watercolor paper (300 gram), building up layers of color. 

Neocolor watercolor crayons

 You can learn all about this by visiting Jenny's Blog and watching her Youtube video here.  
 

Ready for journal entry or sketching

  Here's another pre-prepped page (s) ready for a journal entry or a sketch or painting. I stenciled the edges and used watercolor pencils to fill in some of the design and not being happy with the pages, I used gesso to cover them over and leave a hint of color in the background. 









Some days I'm stumped for ideas and other days they just flow out of my hand easily, this particular day while eating lunch the design just jumped out at me! 

 I had pre-prepped these two pages with a bit of Dylusion spray inks and alphabet stamp and thought it would make a great background for my plate drawing. 

I painted the second plate the following day and journaled about my mother  because she was the inspiration behind this plate collection.  

This just goes to show the simplest every day items can inspire our creativity. Look around today and see what inspires you! 

Bee Creative,

Suzy   


LINKING TO: Jennibellie Studio ; Paint Party Friday; Art Journal Every Day

ICAD Challenge Week 1

Hi Everyone! 

Last Saturday was the beginning of the Daisy Yellow Index Card A Day challenge. I thought you might enjoy seeing the weeks work as a collection rather than individually, beginning next week I will be posting them under the ICAD tab on the right.  Just click on the tab and you'll get to see the entire collection each week with the "behind the card" commentary on how they were made. Today I have posted them below. 

DAY 1: Rainbows

My first index card I used an opaque watercolor (gouache) by dabbing a bit of each color on the edges. Just a little water to disperse the paint, making a wash and learning about the stability of index card. When the colors were completely dry, I doodled around the borders, drew the flowers and little angels. I added the black and white stripes in the flower stems and the text.  

Later I learned the prompt over on Daisy Yellow was Rainbow & Zebra. Hmmm. I had the rainbow part down and guess you could consider the black & white to represent zebra....the pattern in the number 1 was inspired by a coloring book design I spotted while coloring with my two little angels, Sunshine (Lyla) and Lollipop (Brianne)!

Day 2: Candy Land 
Continuing with Rainbow colors, black and white stripes and the prompt Candy Land. This is my version of Candy Land. I drew my favorite candy corn and lollipops, candy canes and gum drops with a black Micron pen, colored in with Inktense and Twinkling H2O's to add the sparkle effect and deepen the colors. 

Day 2 Candy Land

Day 3: Vintage Love 

Found our Wedding Guest Book crumbling and falling apart in a drawer and was able to rescue a few bits from the front cover. The paper was very brittle, breaking off into small pieces which made it easy to use for collage.  We had  traditional scalloped edge cocktail napkins with golden wedding bells and our names printed on them for our wedding in 1975. I used the scalloped border on the edges of the card and our names (the are barely visible) and the wedding bells which are painted yellow with a glitter pen. Spritzed (orange & teal) Dylusion ink over the card, added black stitching to edges. 

Vintage Love

 Day 4: Mama said there'd be days like this. It's a Hair on Fire Kinda Day! 

This piece started with orange acrylic paint applied with credit card and the  image of sunglasses and checkerboard I cut from an old piece of stationary. When I laid the sunglasses down, I saw the face.  Continuing the black & white theme along the edges.

Mama said there'd be day's like this! 

Day 5: A Daisy Day
I love cutting images from magazines to use for collage. Going with a Red theme today and only natural (to me!) to add black and white. I drew the background grid of lines and stamped daisies over them and added the black and white checkerboard to mimic the red squares. 

Daisy Day

DAY 6: Dreaming of Blue Skies

After a week of rain every day I am longing for blue skies! I used leftover circles punched from scrapbook paper for the flower designs, shadowing them with circle punches of orange, purple and lime. The background is another yellow floral paper design painted with raindrops using a bit of twinkling H2o's. Rhinestones in the center of each flower for sparkle. Again, I'm continuing to use the black and white stripe them to ground the piece.

Dreaming of Blue Skies

DAY 7: Lifetime Friends
 I received a lovely Stash Giveaway from Tabitha Lenox last week and with a package of pink tissues in it among other goodness you can check it out here.  The napkin design inspired me to use a black and white photo of my grandmother (middle) and great aunt (left) and a friend taken in 1927 to super impose and give the illusion they are dreaming of a lifetime journey. I used acrylic and gouache paints for the highlights on the side of the card, added cream colored floral tape (from TL giveaway) and black and white diamond washi tape. 

Lifetime Friends

It's been a great week making index cards! Here are a few of my observations and promises I made from the week:

• They don't make index cards like they used to, they are quite thin &   rather flimsy.
• It is challenging to work in a small format.
• It is hard not to compare your work with others.
• To be honest after Day 1, I almost quit the challenge when I saw the incredible work posted.
• I'm not a quitter.

After a good talking to (as we say in the South), I promised myself I wasn't going to look and compare my work to others.

• I will be happy creating whatever each day brings. 
•  As promised, I create my daily index card and post to Facebook & Flickr before I look at any posts! 
• So far, I'm pleased with what I have done.

It is what it is and that is a good thing. 

Thanks for stopping by! Look forward to sharing more Index Cards with you soon! 

Happy Doodles!
Suzy

Linking to: Daisy Yellow; Paint Party Friday; Art Journal Everyday

Moleskine Journal Preview

HI Everyone! 

This is my first Moleskine, always wondered what the big deal was about these journals, and finally I found out! The smooth and creamy surface, soft parchment colored pages just waiting to be used.  I'd like to share a few pages with you from my new Moleskine  journal:

 

May Day

Usually I'm pretty intimidated by the first pages of a new journal but not this time, it was May 1st, May Day when my journal arrived, I thought it was only right to fill the first page with thoughts about this special day. 

Playing with Brianne-Night & Day

Often inspiration comes from spending time coloring with my granddaughters Brianne and Lyla. This particular day we were talking about day and night time and I was showing Brianne how to draw a house.  I came home and did this page in my journal.  I loved her comment when we were coloring "grass has many colors, add more to make it interesting." 

Win Place Show

Kentucky Derby

On the first Saturday in May we gather together with other horse racing fans to watch the Kentucky Derby.  This year we were home and I did a little sketch and then transferred the images of the day into my journal.

Orchids in the window

This particular morning I was up making coffee and the sun was coming softly through the kitchen window illuminating the massive white orchid blooms. I grabbed my journal and sketched the flowers and finished them in the studio. These orchids were from my daughter Amanda's wedding last July.

I hope you enjoyed these pages, please join me again next week when I will share more from this journal.  Ya'll come back now, ya hear! 

Happy Doodles! 

Suzy

Linking to: http://paintpartyfriday.blogspot.com/;Crafty Thursday Obsessions; Art Journal Everyday

I WON! I WON! TABITHA LENOX STASH GIVE AWAY!!!

HI Everyone!

Oh my! I was flabbergasted to open my email a few weeks ago to find out I had WON a stash give away at Tabitha Lenox!! Pretty exciting and amazing news considering I was new to Kim Smith’s blog! Kim is a regular on Paint Party Friday, that's where I saw her fantastic mixed media works! 

Kim sent the most awesome box of goodies, it’s like she knew me! 

THANK YOU KIM!! 

Awesome Goodies crammed packed into this box!

I feel like I won the lottery!! Woo Hoo! My Magpie eyes lit up when I saw the  sparkling gems and razzle dazzle flourishes, stick ons and rub ons, OH MY! Alphabets and journal cards, paper ribbons on spools, napkins (I heart them) and a Bo Bunny paper pack (Mama -razzi).  OH OH did I mention there were BOOKS!?! a mini composition note book, we all know how much I love Composition books <wink> and a beautiful journal and a Artistic Fitness book (no, it has nothing to do with physical fitness (whew!) but daily drawing practice!  AND if that weren't enough, Kim included two wonderful books I'll be adding to my  library: Dreaming From The Journal Page by Melanie Testa and Collage Couture by Julie Nutting.    One of my favorite things was the darling bird box Kim included (I'm a bit of a box freak too), it was filled with the gems and pearl flourishes and a fabulous tag from Kim.  I just love it! Can't wait to play with all these goodies!!! Thank you Kim!! 

Oh,  and what is that white floral thing in the box you ask? Well it is a super awesome garland of white roses on organza ribbon! Uh huh, it IS quite fab! 

Kim you are the best! Thank you so much for cleaning out your stash and have such an awesome give away! 

I'm still doing the Happy Dance over here and I wish you all could come over to play!  

Happy Happy Happy!
Suzy

Link to: Tabitha Lenox, Paint Party Friday

INDEX~CARD~A~DAY 2013 KICK OFF

Hi Everyone!

The Index-A-Day Challenge begins today! Go check it out at Daisy Yellow.  Tammy Garcia is hosting this Index-A-Day (ICAD) challenge during the months of June and July (61 days). Tammy will provide optional prompts and I might take her up on some if I get stuck or maybe like today, I will just incorporate a hint of the prompt. 

My intent is to do a Index Card A Day for 61 days. I'll post them on Daisy Yellow and Daisy Yellow Flickr Group and here. 

Ok, I saw Tammy's post and the prompt today was Zebra. I added black and white pattern to represent "zebra".

As for the entire challenge there really isn't a theme in mind, I’m taking my cues from Sunshine and Lollipops (aka my grand-daughters Brianne and Lyla). 

The plan is to post their cards weekly and that will most definitely depend on their “willingness” to co-operate (you never know!) on our days together. Yesterday, both wanted to paint and draw on the cards mainly because it was something new and different. Who knows what next week will bring!?! Lollipop (almost 4 yrs old) made two cards (she was excited):

Brianne (aka) Lollipop

I love her confidence in putting the colors together and after a minor mishap with her mom’s hairdryer catching on fire (really!) we let the paint dry on its own and then she drew her flowers.  

Zebra Tail?

 Little Miss Sunshine Lyla (almost 2) was having some difficulty with the size of the card, she prefers paper plate art.

Lyla (aka) Sunshine with help from Lollipop

 Big sister Brianne helped finish up the index card with a butterfly, sunshine and flowers while Sunshine napped.

Why not consider joining the ICAD group and join in the fun!

Happy index art!

Suzy 

Linking to: Daisy Yellow