This space is my creative playground where I post whatever bit of fun is keeping me busy at the moment. If you’d like to keep up with my more serious original oil paintings, I invite you to follow my Facebook Artist Page. To see everything else, just scroll on down.
I had a little play in my art journal last night. Technically, these are porpoises, so not really fish, but when I found this strip of text in my magazine text box, I couldn’t resist using it here. 
Click to enlarge, as usual.
When the mail brought this new art journal with it’s plain brown cover, I couldn’t wait to decorate it. It’s been a long time since I worked in a journal this large. This is Ranger Dylusions Dyan Reaveley’s Creative Journal, 11.375 by 8.25-Inch. My last one this size was hand stitched by me and I loved the size but hadn’t had time to make another. This has nice heavy cardstock type paper, similar to a manilla folder or the paper in a Moleskine sketchbook but not so yellow as that. It’s not as thick as in my handmade one, or as white, but I think I’ll like it for mixed media collage. I put a coat of Golden Polymer Gloss Medium over this to protect it so I was restricted to media that wouldn’t smear when varnished. This has collage, acrylic paint, colored pencil, Stayzon ink (for my hand carved bee stamp) and I used a Faber-Castell Pitt pen for the designs on her clothing and other details. Even on the shiny magazine paper, the ink didn’t smear. The “Hello” in the top corner is a welcome mat from a catalog. I’ll probably think of this as the Hello journal from now on. 🙂 Do you name your journals?
It’s almost Halloween so I thought I’d do a little haunting in one of my altered books. This book is Lost Interiors, a beautiful and HUGE book full of photos of abandoned interiors. This old crypt seemed perfect for a haunting! After some collage, painting, and colored pencil work, this is what I have now.
As usual, I was in such a hurry to start that I forgot a “before” photo until I’d already glued down a magazine image.
I’ve joined Dede Willingham’s Society of Idea Collectors so, of course, I needed a new notebook for all those ideas. I wanted something that worked like a Midori so I could add to it as I went but it would still be portable. I made my own with a vintage book cover and Moleskine Cahier inserts. I love vintage hardback books with book cloth covers and old readers are some of my favorites because I love the art style in them. This one happened to belong to one of my brothers, way back when. Don’t tell him I swiped it. I used pages from the inside to line the inside cover and to decorate the fold-out folder I put inside. I’ve got 3 cahiers in it now, 2 lined and one blank paper, and at least 3 more will fit in there. I can switch them out if they get full.
Isn’t these the cutest pages on the inside covers? I just love the art in this one. I’ll end up using all of it somewhere.
Dede suggested we carve ourselves a personal rubber stamp to use and I already had 2 I use a lot that I carved years ago. The bee is because my name, Melisa, means honeybee so I use that for myself a lot. The flying fish I use a lot on larger things. It’s a little bit odd, just like me. 🙂
A few more of my Drawlloween ATCs. Check my Instagram to see the individual cards. These are all colored pencil.
I’ve been making ATCs for Drawloween this year. Here’s what I’ve done for the first 12 days, somewhat out of order to get them to fit. I skipped a few days because I didn’t like the prompt or just didn’t have time. I’ve been posting them on my new Instagram feed individually, if you’d like a better view of any of them, or if you want to see new ones I as make them.
