Dream

This is another journal page using the week 4 session of Sharon Tomlinson's class. 'Finding the faces'

I did a layered background and pulled out images that I could see amongst the mess :) It's a very creative process and I hope you try it!
It was so fun and you'll know......deep down in your heart......it's YOURS! There's nobody's face shape or dress or hair that you're trying to recreate. It comes to you in pieces and it's a wonderful little adventure!

SO VERY FUN! Thanks Sharon for a fantastic class!!


Today there is a free ZUMBA class being offered to see if there is enough interest in our little town to start holding regular classes. I think it looks so fun! I hear it's a blast! I'm pretty sure I won't be able to keep up with the young girls, but I'm up for the challenge.

So, at 2:00 pm CST while you're relaxing with a book or your paint brushes, just imagine a 50 year old grandma gettin' her latin groove on. I know it will bring a chuckle to your day. If I can move afterwards, I'll be sure to report back in :)

God be with me!!!!!!!! LOL

Hold your head up and be proud

I painted this journal page tonight after watching Kirstie Alley on the Oprah show. I know she struggles with her weight and the paparazzi will NOT give her a break but I really like her! I like her spunk and her sassy self :)

She said something today that I can relate to and I'm sure many others. She said she KNOWS she's a good mother and she KNOWS she's a good actress and she KNOWS she's a good person and she has decided to NOT let them (tabloid magazines) bring her down anymore! Good for her! I don't have paparazzi hounding me but I do hear negative voices IN MY OWN HEAD! That's the worst kind! Need to change that ASAP!

She has a new show starting March 21 on the A & E Channel called Kirstie Alley's Big Life and I'm excited to see it.

I'm going to try and 'Hold my head up and be proud' of who I am, what I've accomplished and what I've yet to do in this life. I hope you do this already, but if not, please join me! ♥ It's time.

G'night,
Darla

p.s. Yes, she's orange. haha

Less is more perhaps?

I had time to finish this girl in my art journal last night. Looks like I had a little toooooo much time on my hands? I think I got carried away :) It's a 12 x 12 page and it just seemed like so much empty space to fill up and boy, I filled it up didn't I?

I used photo transfers for the garden arch and garden chair and then added a bit of glazed white to the image to make them pop a bit more.

Hopefully you won't think I totally ruined this, but it is just in my journal and that's where we're supposed to play and learn, right? :)

Thank you all for being such a special part of my art playground!!

Darla

OMG, this makes me giggle every time!

I also painted a little in my art journal last night. She's nowhere near finished but I'll share her anyway :)



It's my daughter-in-law's birthday today! HAPPY BIRTHDAY JENI! I offered to watch the kids if she and Derek would like to go out for a nice supper. If so, I probably won't get back to this girl tonight, but I will soon.
Have a wonderful day!

Food is fuel.....repeat after me!

Boy, when I'm trying to lose weight and get healthy, I can NOT quit obsessing about food! It probably doesn't help that I'm not busy at work this time of year and I basically have this to look at! Yes, it's the mountain of snow outside my office window. It's rather depressing isn't it?

I've been searching for healthy recipes, planning meals and watching the clock in anticipation of my next allowed snack. It's so frustrating! I'd rather just be naturally thin and not give calories a second thought! Oh well.....it is not to be.

I did see a recipe on a show called 'Just Cook This' the other night and I tried it. It's really not too bad! I LOVE pasta!


Sorry....can't remember the title :)

Brown:
5 links Jennie-O Italian Sausage links (meat removed from casings and crumbled)
2 cloves crushed garlic
1 tsp. red pepper flakes

Bring salted water to a boil and stir in 10 oz. of Ronzoni penne pasta and cook 14 minutes.

After sausage is browned, stir in:
1 can fat free evaporated milk
3 Tbl reduced fat Parmesan cheese

Drain pasta and stir into sausage mixture.
This makes approximately 7 cups of the pasta dish for a total of 2000 calories or......

285 calories per cup. Today I had 1.5 cups with grilled yellow squash for lunch, which makes about 450 calories and quite filling :)

Next time I make it, I'll be sure to take a photo so you can see!

I have a large angel sketched out on canvas and am hoping to start on her tonight. She's so big she's intimidating me right now......therefore I cook! LOL

Have a great day!
Darla

EDIT:

Thanks Rhomany! This helps so much! :)

Rocky Mountain Oysters

Dale loves these. The Bronze Boot serves an ALL-YOU-CAN-EAT buffet every Saturday from 11:30-2
For those of you who aren't familiar with these.....they are BULL nuts. Testicles. Or according to my search on the web:
balls, nuts, plums, rocks, bollocks, nads, gonads, sack (collective), nuggets, Cracker Jacks, stones, kerbangers, marbles, tenders, cullions, bells, pelotas, nutsack, bollocks, family jewels, gems, cojones, junk, package, manjigglies, Man tonsils, Knackers, Cods, love spuds, hanging brain.



Needless to say, I order salad or a turkey sandwich :)


Oh and guess what........I painted a girl. Sorry if I'm boring you to tears with these and I promise I'll change things up again soon. Dale suggested I try painting a full-body girl....nekkid. Go figure. LOL


I'm going to try check out the consignment auction today and will hopefully have something way cool to share with you all. I hope so anyway. Sometimes they really are a bust though.

Enjoy your Sunday♥

Darla

Nostalgia

Maybe it's the antique tones I did with the shading here but Nostalgia / Nostalgic really comes to mind when I see this girl.

5 x 5 canvas

A week with the girls

I've been having quite a blast painting these little canvases!
Here is the girl I painted last night. Instead of napkins, I painted a few little roses in the bottom corner. Probably not as pretty, but I find it much quicker to whip out a few flowers than cut out napkins. ha!



Another



And here they are.....the girls!


I hope you all have a wonderful weekend! I think I'll go shopping for a bit tomorrow and will try and hit a consignment auction on Sunday. I'm hoping there's a box of assorted napkins that sells for a quarter! ha!

Happy Valentine's Day!

I finally made it to Grand Forks and snagged some of the 5x5 canvases! I bought 10 so I'm all set for awhile :) Here are the two girls I started last night and finished up this morning.





Well, I need to do my workout, shower, clean house a bit and make heart-shaped cookies for this special Hallmark Holiday! Dale told me he's taking me out for supper and a movie but I don't know if it will be locally or out of town. It all depends on the beautiful, unpredictable winter weather today :)



♥♥♥
Darla

Another

I painted this girl on a wooden plaque. When I taught One Stroke painting I bought several of the painting kits for students and couldn't get rid of them! The paints finally went bad, but I did pull out the brushes and surfaces to save. Glad I did and remembered I had them.

I did this earlier this week but wasn't too happy with her so I kind of forgot about her. Now she's grown on me a bit. I spent $3.50 for a package of napkins with hydrangeas on them and was so disappointed when I adhered them to this, they were just dark blobs! So I added highlight strokes to make them look like a totally different flower.

I'm still struggling with loosening up my strokes but it's getting better I think. I'm learning :)

Happy Friday!

What a week! My boss is in Cancun on business......how nice huh? There's a national bean convention :) How come they never need clerical support at these things????????

Anyway, I stayed back and kept the office going. Not that I was asked to tag along anyway.
I've had an auditor in for the past couple of days doing a semi-annual audit so I haven't had much time to visit or check up on anyone.

Tonight I painted over another canvas. I figure if they've sat here, unwanted for a year, it's time to give them another try. Unless, of course, they have special meaning to me, then I'd keep them ♥

You can see in the bottom left hand corner there's a butterfly! I might have to putz a little more on this one. It's funny, but I can work on something for 2 hours and NEVER even notice one nostril is higher than the other! It's SO obvious to me in these pics! ugh!





Oh and since Easter is fast approaching, I thought I'd share a picture I found recently!


I don't know what is in my hand there because I can't believe my finger is that long! Yikes!
This is my older brother, Harold. We used to have a bunny cage and always had baby bunnies at Easter time. I don't know what ever happened to them, and I don't dare ask :( Hopefully they were set free to romp in the fields in the beautiful, warm sunshine♥ Check out our matching socks and shoes! Not sure if Mom dressed me in boys footwear or vice versa? I do know she cut my hair. She always got a little scissor happy in the bangs department. :)

Have a super weekend everyone! I'm off to finally get some shopping done tomorrow. I HOPE! We're due for some more snow which seems to always come on my weekends.

Darla

Another :)

I tried another piece using Sharon's technique. Of course, since I didn't have small canvases, I had to recycle a wooden plaque. I was also out of soft gel medium so doing transfers was out of the question. Instead, I adhered scrapbook paper with Mod Podge :)

I wanted to find a quote about going home or memories of home but most of the ones I found were too long and I just haven't found the right one to sneak in there. Or maybe I should leave it.......not sure. Will think on it some more.

We got about 6+ inches of new snow yesterday. I'm so very tired of winter. I want Spring and all the good feelings that come with it.

Off to do a little blog visiting myself..glad you stopped by! Have a great week!
Darla

First project completed :)

I wish I had additional small canvases to practice a little more but it's snowing here today and the wind is supposed to pick up so my anticipated 40 mile trip to Michaels is probably out of the picture :( I may try cardboard!

I used a 6x 6 canvas that I had painted before and just gave it a makeover, but Sharon says that Michaels has 5x5 canvases for $1 in the children's art section which I MUST go check out! They have designs on them but you can gesso over them and start fresh!

By the way, if you are interested in taking Sharon's class you still can! It's an open registration class so you can jump in anytime!

Thanks so much for all the encouraging responses to the step by step post from yesterday!! I've never taken the time to do that and I will definitely try to do more of that. I know I sure appreciate when others share the steps......don't know why I didn't think to give back a little myself! I will though ♥

Have a great SUPER BOWL Sunday!
Darla

Step by Step class project...so far :)

Hello everyone! Sorry it's been awhile since I've updated my blog, but it's been a long week. Dealing with a few areas in my life that need some attention at the moment :)

As I mentioned previously, I'm taking Sharon Tomlinson's class and here is my first project at this current stage. I believe we'll be doing more shading, etc. tomorrow.



The first step was to cover an old canvas with paper. She gives a really good tip about using the inside of security envelopes! There really are some cool designs in those bills and bank statements! I NEVER noticed that until now :)



Next was to sketch out a face on paper. I have my paper folded here over the canvas to line it up when transferring the design.


I just did a quick wash of different colors that I thought would match with the napkins I have on hand that I'll adhere in a bit. I also didn't have a laser printout of an old house so I printed an image onto inkject transparency film and tried putting it on the canvas that way. Not so great....but this is practice I guess :)


The face is coming in. I took this class because I want to learn to be more loose with my strokes and not so tight with definite lines. It's VERY hard for me to let things be and not putz with them more and more!


More color added


Napkin flowers added


More shading and hair!


Tried to add a butterfly on the neck with transparency film and it was awful.......so, another flower!


Hoping you are all having a wonderful and creative weekend!

Darla