Christmas Watercolors

Once upon a time, I used to send holiday cards. I loved doing it actually but my perfectionism tended to make me procrastinate mailing them and often I had handfuls of beautiful cards... that I never sent out.

I still love Christmas images though. So this year I played with some of my favorite Christmas things and made mini watercolors.  I really only love the pinecones but they were fun! :)

I posted them as a collage on instagram. :) People like them. That always makes me happy. 

Do you send Christmas cards? If so, how many?

Sorry about yesterday, EEK!

I did get a post up, such as it was in the hopes of letting you know  and the blogger issue appears fixed today , so phew! I hope you still got something awesome done!
Here's a little bit of coloring I did.

AND I got a fun new coloring book! If you haven't seen it yet, you should check it out, it's a LOT of fun!
I bought mine at amazon. (I'm pretty committed to my prime membership!)

Then this is still a work in progress. It's some tangling on a beautiful hand marbled tile made by my friend and fellow CZT, Diane Yaciuk! Her work is SO incredibly beautiful!

So that's some fun stuff. Also, a few little announcements.
I was commissioned to do 20 pieces of art that will be included in a coloring/activity book. 
I am almost finished creating my coloring book and hope to publish it early next year. 
I have a new product launching in beta test in the next 6-8 weeks. I'm really incredibly excited about this and some of you may be receiving protoypes in the mail for your feedback and I'll be giving one away here as a giveaway too!

So that's why I'm so busy!!! Keep creating. Keep making awesome art!
Lots of love friends!!!!

Messy is fun!

Today was fingerpaint day in the studio, which is always delightfully messy and I love to see the kids get into it!

I got the chance to finish up some awesome sculpy earrings that I learned how to make from my awesome friend Diane! I'm working on a cool little box but I have a shirt that will match these colors perfectly so I had to give it a shot!

I hope your day is filled with as much fun and laughter as was in my studio this morning and that you make something awesome.
And maybe a mess too!

Fingerpainting fun!

On Saturday mornings I do a fingerpaint hour for little ones.

Lots of messy fun!

So, now I need a nap and I'm going to do some tangling today as well.
Hope your day is gorgeous and full of beautiful things too!

Goofy dinos!

Yesterday was a fun family day. So while I did do some creating, it wasn't of the traditional sort really.
My friend Elena introduced me to a fun app called Jurassiac Paint a week or so ago (it's free). Yesterday I spent some time taking a lot of pictures of the yards to use as inspiration pieces for my botanical watercolors when it hit me.
These are dinosaur habitats.
Soooooooo.........
I spent some time placing dinos in my photos.
I know. I'm a total nerd.

There were a few moments of concern when my adorable niece (who's less than 2) looked at my phone, then stared at the yard with concern. So we went on an adventure and I let her create the one in the top left corner.
The look of complete delight when she realized that it was pretend and that SHE had made it made it all worthwhile!
So some silliness but sometimes you need that and boy was it fun!

Watercolors

I struggle with watercolors, but I've been playing with my watercolor pencils a lot lately.
Here's something that will go in my sets of cards.

Today some of my pieces of Zentangle pottery go up for sale at the Glen Park art festival where my friend Sara of Goldhawk Pottery is participating. It's pretty exciting!

I hope you have a wonderful weekend and that you are doing something great.
My brother is making me my birthday dinner tonight. YAY for birthday dinner!

Do something awesome today ok?

Rocking sneakers

I have been waiting a bit to share these with all of you, but these were a custom order for an up and coming musician! You can check her out here...
http://www.joceliendanee.com/

Some work in progress pics

 

 

                                                

 And then a little collage of them as a whole.

I'm really pleased with how these came out.
Fun, funky and all kinds of soft and edgey at the same time.

Today, it's chairs again. I think they might get finished today. :D I can't wait to show you the chairs. I love color!

Chalkboard art...

I have a large number of chalkboard areas in my studio.. so getting my quotes and chalkboarding just right is high on the list of things to do. There are a couple that I'm doing permanently (because they'll be up high.. and I'm short) so I especially want those to be right.

So lots and lots of practicing.
I love the look of mixed fonts though, so I'll keep playing til I get it right.  I like this one but it's not just right.

I love the way wet chalk stays n place once you put it there! :D

I like the way the letters turned out but it was only for practice. I don't like all capitals on it.

I have a ton of quotes, yet I feel like I need more... because I haven't found one that is PERFECT so if you have a favorite quote or inspirational saying please feel free to share!!!! I'd really appreciate it.

Some cards

Just some cards for today! I have some upcoming birthdays!

Quick and fun!
Happy Friday! I hope everyone has a great weekend!

Something different

I have been playing with the Jamberry Nail design studio to create some fun nail wraps. I signed up to be a consultant because beta test for consultants seemed like a fabulous idea to me.... and even though it's open to everyone, I stayed on as a rep and just haven't done much with it. The fun part though is I just teamed up with another CZT (Hi Denise! Denise Henkle Owen who just started her Jamberry business) to really dig in and play with some Zentangle Inspired nail designs. So, since I got sidetracked on that, I thought I'd share with you. A lot of these are images from paint palettes, playing with watercolors,etc as I learn what I'm doing.

So, if you're interested in checking out our facebook group where we'll start posting our designs, please do! It's Tangleberry Designs!  and we're happy to have any artists that want to share designs or get some input or help on theirs or even just check out what we are doing join us. 

It's fun to step outside the box once in a while and try something completely new!

Week 1 is over!

Remember how I said everything had to be posted by Sunday night? It's because today, my project was to give you this.


It's a showcase of the artwork submitted by everyone this past week and I really hope you enjoy it. That amount of creativity and amazing stuff was fantastic and I love to see what everyone is doing.



I tried to get everyone in here, if yours is not here for some reason, shoot me an email at whimsybykelly@gmail.com and I'll make sure to add it to next weeks when I do that one. There were a couple that lead to nowhere.


So that's my creative thing for today... my prompt for you today is to find something in there that inspired you, whatever it is and use it to create something new. If you can't get to it today, then sometime this week.

The rules remain simple.

• Create something. Doesn't matter what. Just do it.
• Post your creation 
• Put your direct link in the linkey thing
• Leave me a comment. 
• Be nice

Past due entries may be posted up until the Sunday of that week, otherwise they can't count. You can still link them but that's the cut off for the video and the contest.

Let's have fun this week!

1 week in! Day 7

Today's challenge should be pretty easy I hope!
 Don't worry about trying to finish something. Pick a project you know you can't do at once or work on something you've had in process for a while, but don't stress yourself out trying to make something start to finish. It's the weekend and this is supposed to be FUN! Today I did a little on something I hope to finish by tomorrow, but I've been working on it here or there for a couple days. Here's the corner I did this morning while having my tea.

 So take a quick pic of something you work on today, feel free to make it "just a peek" and save the big reveal for the day you finih it! For more rules and to see the prizes if you are new here... click here

I look forward to seeing what you do today!

I finished this earlier this morning.. Day 5!

So I've been working on a project ever since I saw the whole sharpie on mugs phenomenon take off and I loved it.. but I was skeptical.
I made sure to find items that rendered my finish project food safe because..
1. I want to make an entire set to match the kitchen decor I've ALWAYS WANTED BUT NEVER BEEN ABLE TO FIND!!!! (Strawberries are NOT THAT WEIRD people!)
2. As soon as I mention it I had people want to buy sets. Ok then. I'm not going to sell them if they can't eat off them so began my quest until I found items that would be fine.

Here's my test piece. I started it yesterday and finished it up today. It's not terribly intricate because the next step is to pass it around to every member of my family with the explicit directions to try and destroy it, and I knew I'd be sad if they were successful and I'd spent tons of time creating it. Plus, this is a favorite design of mine. (I do promise to update on how it holds up!)

So that is what I did to be creative today.
How are you coming along in my 30 day Kreative challenge?
( Update because I forgot to add a prompt earlier, Thanks Bev for the reminder!so here it is!)
For your project today, consider doing something you've been wanting to try for a while, a new pattern, a new technique, a new project! 

Rules and prizes can be found here... 

Some questions I'm getting asked a lot...
Q:Can I jump in even though you are in progress?
A:Yes, please do!

Q:Does this count?
A: Did you feel like you were creating something? If so.. yes!

Q: Can I submit something for a different day?
A: Yes, but only until the Sunday of that week for it to count towards contest entries.

So add your link to wherever you posted what you made in the linkey, leave me a comment so I can come check it out and make something fun!

Creative weekend.

I got some new tools this weekend and I've been having so much fun with them.
I wanted to share some of what I've been doing in the interest of beating my perfectionism as well as just to let you know how much fun I'm having... and isn't that what the whole creative thing is about? Having fun with it anyway? None of these are my "usual quality" or really anything I put any REAL effort into. And that is kind of the point of this post.

So I got 2 sets of Aqua markers, which are watercolor markers. I've not really played with any like these before, and it's been a lot of fun, but I didn't use watercolor paper so I had a lot of pilling, which kept things from going clean and the colors didn't photograph right... so there's that.

I also spent less than 10 min on each of these, cause I'm just seeing what they do. :) (I tell people all the time, just do it! Don't hesitate to post it! Just DO it!)
Neither of these is any good (can you hear my inner critic??? She's a loud mouth isn't she?) and yet I really love both of them, mostly because while I was making them I was having so much fun just PLAYING with my markers. I wasn't worried about making art, it was making itself, I was just having fun.

Earlier this weekend I posted about my spiral art set, which I just love. I've played with it ALL weekend!
And then my I did this with my spiral art set... again... just something really quick to see how it worked.
Again, not more than 10 minutes and it was after midnight when I did it!

Then our other project was creating homemade ice chalk. (and erupting ice chalk!) It's finally going to be gorgeous out and we love chalk here so we thought we'd try something new.   I didn't take many pictures because we were still experimenting... but I will share some of our creations if it worked out right.. and if it did I'll do a post on it. (NOT my creation ... and I will find where I got the idea originally to share with you as well!)
I did snap this shot as I was mixing 1 batch though. Isn't that gorgeous?

Well... What did YOU do this weekend?
I hope you are doing something great!

The rest of my day is going to be spent playing with erupting ice chalk in the driveway with the kids and then making ribeye and shrimp kebabs... YUM! so I think my art with take a backseat today, although I will probably be posting the recipe for my kebabs on my other blog if you're interested. I don't post there very often, but I try and post fairly easy, really tasty food.


In case I don't post tomorrow, Happy Memorial day.
Memorial day is... well... I'll post about that tomorrow ok?
Please remember what the day is about and take a moment at some point to remember.




Only a few days til the challenge kicks off here! Do you want the details in advance or should I post them on the 31st like I was going to?