Good to Grow!

I met many amazing people at Art is You, and will be telling more about them as weeks go on.  One of them is Mary Beth Shaw, a mixed media artist and founder of the company StencilGirl.  Although I wasn't able to take a class with Mary Beth, I really admired her work and loved her stencils.  One of the coolest things about them is that they are designed by artists for artists.  We talked a bit about my licensing work, and when I got home, I sent her some patterns I had created and ... YES! I am going to be a StencilGirl designer!  THANK YOU to my roommate, Judy Shea, who brought me down to the Art is You trunk show after dinner and introduced me to Mary Beth.

Stay tuned, and I will give my readers a first peek at the new line as soon as it is ready, and also a giveaway of one or more of them. 

This great news prompted this journal page yesterday.  It started out with the lettering on white card stock because I was thinking about Julie's and Nathalie's second floor challenge.  I ended up cutting the lettering out, and then creating this page in my journal.  Here were my steps:

• Use my own handwriting to write "I'm Good to Grow."  To do so, I used Joanne Sharpe's "thick it" technique;
• use spray inks through several stencils and then mush the colors around with some water;
• tear stems and flowers and circles from old dictionary pages to create the beginnings of flowers;
• make some colorful collage pages -- reds & pinks, and greens -- using Jane Davies' scribble paint techniques;
• cut up these papers to make petals, leaves, and hearts;
• glue it all down with my favorite adhesive these days: Elmer's art paste - thanks to Cindy Wunsch for that tip!;
• Stamp around the page with a hand carved stamp from Julie Balzer's class at CREATE;
• Doodle around the flowers, leaves, and rest of the page with white and black fluid acrylics and a teeny brush;
• more doodling with white and black gel pens.

So happy to memorialize another chance to grow!

SCRAPPING THE MUSIC:

I hope you're still with me because Scrapping the Music has two amazing prompts up on it's page.  I blogged about the first prompt here.  The second prompt is to make art around a song that brings out the rebel in you.  After thinking about a bunch of my favorites, like "Devil with the Blue Dress," "Honky Tonk Woman," and Parliament's "Give Up the Funk," I chose Ricky Martin's "Livin' La Vida Loca."  I love the latin beat of this song, the combination of Spanish and English, and the lyrics -- the describe a sassy, devil may care, lady.  It's fun to pretend sometimes!  I hope you'll join in this fun challenge!

We're almost at the end of the first week of the second Fall Fearless & Fly challenge.  Check out the links at Artists in Blogland -- the work is amazing! 

Linking up with Paint Party Friday and Creative Everyday, as well as the links above!

Thank you for visiting! If you are so moved, please leave a comment. Hearing from you means the world to me.