Happy New Year!

Hello Everyone!

Well, it's a new year, with a new focus...

I've been hard at work creating a new website that features my art, as my art process is leading me in the direction of mixed media work and away from scrapbooking, which was the original focus of this blog when I first started.

Please visit my website: www.paintedpinecone.com to follow me and my healing journey there. Hope you will come visit me there and take a look at what I'm up to now.

Wishing you inspiring adventures in your creative process and may you find peace in the beautiful mess of creativity ♥

Happy Trails!

Fearless Art

I'm featuring an art process featured in Lifebook 2016 by Annie Hamman called Fearless Art.

I chose a picture from a magazine and started from there, creating a portrait.

As a part of one of the Lifebook 2016 exercises/prompts, you are to create a basic portrait then allow a child to come and add to it (which will feel like messing it all up) and then must try to incorporate the elements as best as possible and add to them to create your painting.

Unfortunately, I didn't take pics along the way, but this is how it ended up...

She is some sort of mystical creature, with a flower in her hair, a feather hanging from her nose ring, stars for freckles, and choker featuring a giant green stone around her neck.

This was a great exercise! It's hard to let go of the outcome when you create art, and this forces you, it forces you to allow influences into your painting that change the entire end result. It forces you to let go of realism and attachment and view the world a little more as children do, without the boundaries that keep one inside the box. It creates art that is more about the process of art making than the finished image.

I didn't have a child around at the time, so a friend of mine who does not consider himself artistic, came to the rescue and agreed to "mess up" my painting for me.

I will be trying this with a child soon and show you what comes of it. I'm very interested to see the difference! 

Moonlight Sauna

Another piece from my Art Journal.

 I re-use an old voice coaching book from my brother-in-law. He has gifts me a wealth of old music related books that I scribble and release my worries into, or use as pieces in my mixed media art.

I took three pictures in different lighting, the one below is most true to the original.

However, here it is in a different darker lighting, and I think it looks cool too, with the silver pen shining on the edges of the women.

My friends and I coming out of the sauna into the fresh air to cool off on my friend's land, and are surprised to find a big giant moon shining down on us!

Here She is

!

A great moment in time ♥

Aurora Borealis camp

A piece I created in my Art Journal last year, women dancing by the campfire.

 Something I created after a weekend at Long Lake Provincial Park with some truly amazing souls. A gorgeous little place that was equipped with cabins that had these tiny little wood stoves, so cute!

A lovely lake, beavers abounding, serene and so rejuvenating.

Transmute

One of my earlier pieces...

Created over old calendar sheets, many layers creating textures of all kinds throughout.

The steam that rises from the embers of the depths of our darkness transmutes and creates a new dawn

Used my die cutter over a mixed media piece I created with re-inkers, glitter, and layers to match the painting.

Close up of the texture in the dawn portion of painting.

Thanks for visiting !

April's Robin

I recently mounted some of my work onto cardboard. I sometimes do so when I've painted on old calendar sheets since they are an odd shape and rather floppy because the paper is thinner than watercolour paper.

This post would have been more on the mark had I posted it during spring, but I bring it to you during summer instead. Oh well!

Here is my Robin. I remember painting it this past April, but specifically using an April calendar page from a previous year's calendar, so the word April could be in the picture. Fun times! Stuff like that makes me pretty happy. I was also so excited to see the return of the Robin, flying in and carrying Spring to us in her song.

She has some cool symbols and markings in her wing.

The grass she walks through includes music paper, but also facts about the Robin as a Spirit animal.

Robin shows us how to ride the wings of passion within and she shows us that any changes can be made with joy, laughter, and a song in your heart. Some of Robin's other messages are:

• tomorrow is a new day
• excercise compassion and patience
• exudegrace, tenacity, perserverence, and assertion
• find pleasure in the simple things
• become independent and self-reliant through change
• incorporate new beginnings with faith and trust in the process
• stimulation of new growth and renewal
• it is time to sing your own song
• letting go of personal drama
• find contentment in all types of circumstances

...and here is the song she carries in her heart.

Welcome back Robin!

Jade Water Lily

Just a quick post to share another mixed media piece. I made this a couple of years ago onto an old calendar page. 

I have a jade necklace that was piled up on my dresser, made of round beads in varying sizes, and that's where this all started.

Yes, I have a lot of circle punches of different sizes, which came in handy!

I would like to get all my pieces up here someday and have them all nicely catalogued in one spot..

Blue Rock Mountain

An older one again now. I just love the colors on this one. I let myself use pink and turquoise and just plaaayed!

Can you see the figure at the mouth of the cave?

This piece has a lot of layers and texture to it which are more visible from the side. I layered and layered, it was meditative, and created shapes within the painting.

Hope your day is sunny!

Earth Energy

 This piece is from a couple years ago but I realized I hadn't posted it yet. 

I have depicted the energy from the Earth rising into a tree and then into the sky. It's what I created while I was reading the book Heart Yoga. I have been exploring a new side of yoga (for me), a more spiritual and restorative side, where we focus on feeling the energy rising up into you and uniting your body, heart, and mind.

I used old book pages for the background and a map for the "heart" section.

 Something I'm really enjoying is playing with my reinkers (& some acrylic medium) because whatever is behind still shows though. (It's like a being able to change the opacity of something in MDS.)

A spark as it reaches the top and branches out in many directions as it sparkles with orange glitter.

I was going to put a figure in Tree Pose...but then this Tree showed up instead and it's is so much better this way.

Moose Spirit Animal

This is what Lifebook does to me, it inspires me to create pieces that are not part of any lesson. That's great! I won't complain about having too much inspiration.

I often like to paint over old calenders. Take the staples out and off I go! Creating on different shapes of paper can bring out something different.

. I was reading an article on moose and their traits and habitat and how those elements combined founded the animal's essence as a Spirit Animal.

So I filled my moose with words, the traits that She represents as a Spirit Animal.

• camouflage
• instinct
• solitude
• strength
• confidence
• noble
• protection
• gentle
• adaptable
• perception
• agility & grace

I got some new watercolor crayons from my aunt and had fun with these. After adding in words, I added some stamped leaves, and some swirling retired SU rub-ons on Her "crown." Yes, I'm aware that only male moose grow antlers but it's ART so I can make her with an elaborate swirling crown if I so choose ;)

A little blue bird rides along with Moose as if she is sitting upon a throne. I ♥ animals.

Zentagle Butterfly...

Making the background for this lesson was freeing, just having fun spraying through some stencils, adding in bits of book paper, using my SU reinkers, & adding in some random stamps.

The butterfly is meant to be filled in Zentangle. Other than doodling on my pages during class, I haven't really ever tried to incorporate Zentagle into art. It really is calming, the way coloring is for some people.

The butterfly's trail that she is leaving behind, incorporates what I want to leave behind this year. The swirl of a sun she is flying towards incorporates words of things that I wish to grow and keep with me this year.

Lifebook returns for 2016

Hello Everyone,

Happy New Year! I've started 2016 off with Lifebook once again. I'm not too proud to say I sorta fell off track last year, which well, it happens. Anyways, I'm back following Lifebook's inspiring prompts, working on retaining all the positive messages and seeing where those items take my art.

I take in the lesson but make the pieces my own since our styles are all different. For this first one, I took photos along the way as the piece progressed that I'm grateful for now.

We were to pick two animals as companions to a figure who is going on a journey. I chose the white horse because I do see him in my dreams. The baby duck, well, I had one as a kid and they're so soft and cute.      

 

So, week 1's lesson took me a couple of weeks but was lots of fun!

See you soon!

Ribbon Trees at Yuletide

I collect the bits and pieces of leftover ribbon throughout the year(s) and sew them into ribbon trees. 

Forgive my fuzzy photo of this pink tree, but it's the only one I had of it, and it was one of my faves.

 Big trees, fancy trees, small trees, simple trees, disco trees...fun times!

Winter Solstice and Yule Blessings to all my Pagan friends on this day!

Enjoy preparing for your Christmas or which ever Holiday traditions makes you happiest!

Stay safe and wishing you good health over the holidays. 

Paisley Angel

I don't know what it is about the paisley design, but I just love it (obviously) Its teardrop shape that is ornamented with flowers and symbols all around it and throughout. They were a favorite of mine to doodle during class, a secret creative outlet that fully took over during math class, lol.

I enjoyed myself recently by playing with a paisley stencil and went to work adorning it. With the holidays everywhere, my paisley looked like a wing, a beautiful angel wing adorned with jewels and colours, flowers and symbols of life and love.

I'm into wings also, mainly birds but I don't discriminate, if an angel wants to come and own these wings, I can be open to that.

So here they are, some angel wings framed in a shadowbox.

The supplies are mostly Stampin' Up! and I used colours of Baja Breeze blue, Pool Party blue, Real Razzleberry purple, Bravo Burgundy, and Close to Cocoa soft brown, which I find to have a pink undertone.

The popped up flowers alternate between Real Razzleberry and Bravo Burgundy ones. I coloured the rhinestones to match and alternated them too.

This picture shows all the little paisleys in the background on the Close to Cocoa designer series paper. Ack! I love this paper!

Here the flowers alternate between Baja Breeze and Pool Party.

Her dress and halo are made of Brushed Gold cardstock. I added a decor element at the bottom.

♥ It was my "secret Santa" gift to a friend. ♥

Wishing you sweet paisley dreams...

Lifebook wk 5: Affirmation feather

This lesson is considered a bonus, and although it could have been skipped, (since there really are soOo many lessons that you get as a part of Lifebook,) but it was such a cool idea that I had to try it!



I had an actual feather kicking around the house that I used as my model. Yay! Since as soon as I started trying to draw a feather, I forgot what they looked like!?

The very base layer is watercolour. Then we are again creating a collaged background but this time it is overtop of the watercolour. The final layer is paint and paint markers.

I let my work air-dry in between each layer, which can drag things out a bit, but I do not find that drying with the heat dryer or a blow dryer works very well when it comes to collage. Plus it lets me work little bits at a time, and I seem to make better progress that way.

I love how encouraging Tamara is, what makes this course Uber special, is that it is so very inspiring. It really has this entire "honouring and celebration" of the self and the processes we are working on in our lives as a very important journey.

Week 5 completed! Hope you are enjoying fall!