Something About Nothing

Dragon Blood tree (day 75) is named such because it has dark red resin! I really like attempting to draw twisted trunks on trees from my head. (Day76) For day 77 I decided to take the tree from top to root! Day 78 I would rather not talk about. It's not my favorite. Mostly because my cliff was so steep that it left nothing to draw on a third of the page! I suppose I could change that. But sometimes it's just better to move on.  Day 79 is a carved stamp of a Northern Pin Oak leaf. Day 80 is a carved stamp of a Blue Gum Eucalyptus. Day 81 is a leaning lemon tree. A repeating carved olive branch brings around day 82, and day 83, is just a simple tree from my imagination.  "Old Tjikko" is a Norwegian Spruce and thought to be the oldest living tree - or at least the roots are. Click on the link to learn more about this old tree.  Day 85 is a Shagbark Hickory. Such interesting bark. Day 86 is a crazy doodle. A Cedar of Lebanon  brings us up to d...

Sometimes things look like other things and it cannot be helped. I have a tendency of seeing things in things all the time. Car headlights and tail lights always look like eyes to me. I imagine the attitude of the car based on their "eyes", and other lines from the hood, grill and bumpers which complete the faces. Thus when I create drawings I often find unintentional things in them. Days 30 has little ghost faces in the branches. Days 31 to 34 were pretty straight forward leaves, all carved from Eco Karve and then stamped in a pattern. Although that Ginko leaf (Day 31) seems to be a mummy face on one side. Anytime I create a tree with multiple folds and holes I inevitably find creatures and faces. What do you see? Day 30 to 38 I was having a jolly good time drawing and perhaps even improving in my drawings, when my daughter pointed out that Day 36 looked a bit phallic in nature. Well, once I saw it, I couldn't unsee it. Both are natural, right? Oh boy. I did...

I started my first 100 day project on April 2nd. The idea was to create 100 drawings of trees using ink. I wanted to improve my drawing skills with ink and I felt that trees, always a favorite of mine, would be a subject I could accomplish.  Two of the kraft paper notebooks I purchased from Paperchase  stationary store while in London. I picked up a couple of kraft paper notebooks from a beautiful stationary store in London called Paperchase. I wanted to use the smaller one for this project because it had 100 sheets of paper. However, I quickly learned a number of important things. Rectangular pages don't post well on Instagram, especially if all you want to post is the drawing.  Also, I started out posting the drawings without a logo or name on them. This opened up the images to being easily used without my permission, and didn't give people the ability to find me if the images were posted elsewhere.  I needed easy solutions....

It's the middle of winter with no leaves in sight in Utah,  but I guess the green of California inspired me to create some leaf stamps.

Still thinking about the polka dots and repeating flowers.  I want to make more repeating designs to go with them.  I have played with a few different ideas. I decided to try leaves. They stamp nicely over the polka dots, just like the flowers. Time to try them out on fabric!

Since this month's theme for The Printed Fabric Bee was Insects, I thought I should start the piece with lots of leaves and a little sun painting using Setacolor paints.  I placed plastic over the leaves as it was a windy day and everything inside cooked very nicely. After creating a stencil or adorable lady bugs with my Silhouette , I painted them using black Setacolor  transparent paint. And lastly I used a Zig Fabricator Pen to add little white dots to all of the black lady bugs.  I don't know if there are really any ladybugs that look like this but I just enjoyed making them! There are a lot of beautiful Insects in this months collection: If you would like to win a collection of the twelve 6x6" pieces then leave a comment at either of the following blogs: janedavila.blogspot.com theprintedfabricbee.blogspot.com Thanks for following along!   There will be an exciting announcement about The Printed Fabric Bee in the next couple of month...

I wanted to create a few cards and decided to use my Gelli® Plate , a few lovely found objects to create texture, and Strathmore Mixed Media paper .  I really like the weight of this paper (140 lb) and it will take layer after layer of paint! I used my 8x10" plate.  This is one of the simpler pieces. I then purchased a cd wrap pattern from the Silhouette Store.   I cut a few cards using this design and my Silhouette Portrait. I also played around with some pens on the design after I cut it out. Unfortunately I forgot to take a photo of the card I gave to my son, which I like a lot more than this one. I also bought another pattern called a  pentagon petal fold card ,  which folds up like this. . . These have become my new go to for gift cards and money.   I gave one to my sister for her birthday and one to my son for his graduation and they both really liked them.  I need to make more!

Queen Bee, Carol R. Eaton, chose a Woodlands theme for The Printed Fabric Bee March theme.  She wanted the hive to explore the woodlands around us on fabric.  I live in the high desert country of the Rocky Mountains in Utah.  Most of the woodlands around here are made up of what is "lovingly" called scrub oak. It's not as pretty as the big oak trees I remember from back east, as it is more a bush than a tree, and it is not my favorite tree. I decided to search for another tree through my "neighborhood woodland."  We have lots of birch, which are lovely, and there are some gorgeous black walnut trees, and some beautiful  Mountain Ash  but I kept finding myself drawn to the leaves of the maple tree.   I created a stencil with my Silhouette Portrait , and painted it onto the fabric with some color magnet, then did a quick, very diluted dye of chartruese procion dye .    Once this was dried I stenciled on several more laye...