Another Intense Week

This week has been pretty intense again.

I'm settling in the flower shop and practically living in this corner of a supermarket entrance for the most part of my waking time. :)

Thank goodness, they have a free WiFi there and our old ASUS notebook works well enough to keep me online for the boring time, when nobody needs my services.

As I have to work long hours from Sunday to Thursday, there is not much time for anything outside the shop.

But being busy always makes me super prolific. So, not only does our home look cleaner and I cook regularly, but I even reorganized my room and put up an extra table for jewelry stuff.

For now, I don' t actually find the energy to make anything. So, my plan is to use the hours that I will spend in the gift shop for making jewelry. Let's see, how it works. ;)

Because of the life intensity I didn't add anything to my diary for 10 days, but, yesterday, I resumed writing in it again. I feel a real need to do it.

Yesterday, I stumbled upon this article. Seems, like writing has many great benefits not only for me. :D

And playing with art supplies, most definitely, has them as well.

Last Saturday, I gathered leaves in the town and, since than, have experimented now and than using them and acrylic inks on the canvas I started last week adding some texture.

To see more inspiring creativity jump over to these sites

Paint Party Friday

Creative Every Day

And you know I'm always happy to hear from you, right?

Please, feel free to leave a comment here or contact me at ritajc(at)inbox(dot)lv

The Feather Project

Do you remember my post from last week about starting to work at feathers for Yanik's project. They are finished and on their way to Canada now.

As I often do, I chose a different technology than suggested. That made my process pretty challenging. :)

At first, I just splashed and spritzed inks and acrylic paints onto pages from my kids' old school workbooks. Layer after layer.

I had 6 sheets going on at the same time, but didn't want to flood Yanik's project with my feathers. So, I chose 2 of them to draw stylized feathers on with a gold marker.

I selected 6 I liked the most, but, when I started to glue them down, they all started to scrunch and bleed.

Obviously, the very fluid acrylic varnish I used was not the best for this type of paper.

When the sheet was dry, I was happy to see, that most of the feathers looked still usable.

So, I grabbed my scissors ... only to discover, that the good heavy cardboard was too sturdy for them. And my punch turned out to be too weak for the job as well. :)

If I wanted to give my feathers any good chance to reach their destination in time, waiting until I get new supplies was not an option.

So my old paper knife and awl had to do the job.

At the very end, I refreshed the gold marker, inserted a fuzzy yarn into the holes, and sent them out to Yanik. I really hope they arrive in time :)

(Sorry for the poor quality of the images, but day light has been scarce here lately.)

To see more inspiring creativity jump over to any of these sites

Paint Party Friday

Creative Every Day

A Piece A Week

And you know I'm always happy to hear from you, right?

Please, feel free to leave a comment here or contact me at ritajc(at)inbox(dot)lv

Besides: there is still time to join Yanik's project, if you would like. ;)

Playing Again!

In one of the Facebook groups I am in, there is that challenge "What's On Your Desk Wednesday". And, after months, I can show an image of my studio desk, where I am playing with recycled paper, paints, and inks for the first time after months. YAY! :)

I'm not sure, why it took me so long (but I have some theories). But I am sure this artist collaboration project initiated by Yanik Falardeau got me starting again! There is still time for you to join in as well.

To see more inspiring creativity jump over to any of these sites

Creative Every Day

A Piece A Week

And you know I'm always happy to hear from you, right?

Please, feel free to leave a comment here or contact me at ritajc(at)inbox(dot)lv

Another Experiment - Eco Printing

A couple of days ago, one of the participants of the A Piece A Week challenge, showed us an image of her hand bound journal with eco-prints as covers. I had never heard of eco-printing, but being an eco freak I couldn't help but do some research, if and how I could try this method as well. After I stumbled upon these detailed instructions by Cassandra Tondro, my hands were aching to try it out. As usually, I didn't have more of the suggested supplies and tools than I did. Besides: after the long winter, we still don't have green grass not to speak about colorful leaves or flowers. But today, I found tiny spring flowers during my morning walk with the dog and just had to give this process a try. So I did, what I could with what I had :)

First, I tore some water color paper in smaller pieces using the suggested method: folding it back and forth and dampening the folds.

Then, I soaked the paper in warm water for more than an hours (honestly, I forgot about it).

After that, I arranged the tiny flowers and leaves on one of the pieces of paper (sorry, forgot to shoot a pic), covered it with another piece of paper, put a folded newspaper beneath and on top of the "sandwich" and ... ironed it for a while.

When I could not stand the suspension any more, I stopped ironing and opened the sandwich. Ta-dah! Behold my first ever eco-prints!

An additional plus from the ironing: the prints are almost dry by the end of the process. A minus: need to clean the iron of the black newspaper ink now. Next time, I will put a piece of paper towel on top of the stack :)

To see more creative spaces and join the fun, visit Creative Every Day

My Creative Space

Last week, I continued to create hand painted papers using monotyping, stamping, stenciling, and other techniques. It evolved into a "Four Seasons" series, and these two are my faves from Fall and Summer.

(sometimes, I really hate blogger)






Now, I'm seriously considerng to sell them as surface designs and even taking the first small steps towards it. And I have started a new series, a less colorful and organic and more grungy and urban one.

But, tonight, was a very special occasion: I could help my youngest son to do his homework in arts. He was surprisingly willing to follow my directions and we had much fun together.  Although, that still didn't beat the awesome news I received in the middle of last night: my first grandchild was born at 1am London time! :D

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My Creative Space

Last week, I had only a couple of small translation jobs. Money is tough and might get even tougher, if I don't get more work very soon. And my body decided to play naughty and jumped into a fibromyalgic flare as well. The constant pain and foggy brain makes me tired, but it's bearable.

Even more than that, talks about printing and gel plates in some of the art groups I'm in, and, especially, some videos about it inspired me to create some lovely paper sheets (20 to be precise) using monotyping for the first time ever and a couple of other techniques on top of the print. These are some of my favorites so far, but I haven't stopped working even on them :)

I really love the process (especially, the unpredictability of each print) and the fact, that I can use just what I have and get results I really like. Most of the sheets are pages from my kids' old school work books and I do the printing on my kitchen table (round 90 cm in diameter) just covering it up with some pretty thick plastic sheet. :) And creating series comes all natural with it as well, as there is always too much paint for just one sheet of paper :)

The creative juices are flowing even more at ease after I stumbled upon really inspiring and down-to-earth videos by the American artist Skye Taylor. This is the one I like the most so far.

To see more creative spaces visit this site and be inspired

Or even join us for A Piece A Week or Creative Every Day