Clare Davis Etheridge

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Weekly Photos 28/52

This has been a week of art and printing and colour! Just how I like it.

It has also been a week of homegrown tomatoes, once they are ripe they need eating, so tomatoes have been popping up in salads, pizza and sauce all week!

1. My first beefsteak tomato which went on a pizza!

2. I thought this van looked like the Scooby Doo Mystery Machine.

3. My first foray into printing this week, I started with a roller print and ended up with gelli plate prints too. I printed onto lots of paper including this vintage music.

4. Dusk at the end of a dog walk and Pokemon hunt.

5. There are lots of mushrooms in the woods and I liked these star shaped fungi.

6. We had all the weather including a massive storm which we had to wait out in Starbucks, but we were rewarded with this ace rainbow as we walked home.

7. More printing, this time with the gelli plate and some dried honesty seeds. It has been a painty week and I am hoping for more of the same in the next few days.

We have a heat advisory here in the oven which is the mid-west until Friday, so sun screen for the win with a side of iced water!

Happy Monday x

Get Messy Thursday. Season of Introspection Week 6.

Published by Clare at CatsEatDogs

This was the last week of the Get Messy Season of Introspection and I am really happy with the final three spreads of my altered book. I now have a book which started as a guide to growing avocados from the avocado stone and is now a full and splendid art journal.

I made these three pages pretty much simultaneously once I had the back ground to the butterfly page.

This background was a total experiment with a cardboard tube and cut up foam stickers to make a print roller. I used my gelli plate as a palette to apply paint to the roller and it worked really well!

As you can see in the pictures I ended up printing lots of things once I got started and once I had used the roller as much as I wanted, I pulled a few prints directly off the gelli plate. One of these prints is also used on the butterfly page at the edges. I printed on dry deli paper because I like the translucent quality. My dining room table was awash with colour and paint and mess! Of course I had to clear it all up so that we could have dinner, but I got lots of great prints to use.

This page was inspired by one of the Get Messy prompts this week. I took a scarily close up selfie with my Instax camera and used it on the page with words, drawing, outlines and splatter paint. I used another gelli print on deli paper over the whole left page.

This final page started with the blobby background which I didn’t love, so I covered the whole spread with another gelli print on deli paper (are you spotting a theme yet?). These deli paper prints or even just plain deli paper are great for calming down a overly loud start to a page or a rather harsh background beginning which was the case here.

While I was waiting for the background to dry, I looked through my clippings and found this fantastic sign and the little bird. So I chopped them out of their page and added them to this page. The song lyrics seemed appropriate to the developing sarcastic theme of the page!

If you want to join the Get Messy Community, now is a great time because this season has finished and the new season won’t be starting for a week or two. Follow the link for more details.

Happy Thursday x

100 Days of Altered Cards 71-80.

Published by Clare at CatsEatDogs

We are almost at the home straight of The 100 Day Project and I was thinking why I like it so much. I like challenges with prompts and instructions which are usually a month long, but this is a different beast. Over three months of the same (ish) project which you thought up yourself and only really have yourself accountable for.

I post my cards on Instagram every day using the hashtag #100daysofalteredcardsbycatseatdogs and that is pretty much my accountability. I know, I know, it could have been shorter!

So, here are ten reasons I like The 100 Day Project so much.

1. The time frame is huge but so satisfying (especially once I got into double digits).

2.The body of work you make is going to be fairly big and hopefully useful

3. You can’t help but land on a style or a way of working which you enjoy.

4. I have learnt to work small.

5. I have learnt to take off the pressure to create something amazing each time. There is always another go tomorrow if today’s doesn’t work out.

6. Imagination is essential and gets exercised each day with new experiments.

7. Ideas come flowing because I have a creative focus.

8. Many of the techniques and outcomes I have used on the cards, I have also used in other areas.

9. The community feel is great and there are so many amazing things being created and achieved.

10. I will be a very proud bunny when I am at 100!

Here are my cards alongside the original playing card from 71-80. Onwards and upwards to 90 and 100!

Are you doing The 100 Day Project? Feel free to share your hashtag and I can follow you on Instagram.

Happy Wednesday x

Weekly Photos 27/100

Published by Clare at CatsEatDogs

It has been a week of humidity (no surprise there!), early morning dog walks, drawing and Pokemon catching with ‘Pokemon Go’. Is there anyone not playing this app!? Wherever we go there are kids pointing their phones at random points and swiftly heading off to the next ‘catch’.

I snapped some pics to share my week with you. What have you been up to?

1. On Monday I went with my husband to the Missouri Botanical Gardens. It was a lovely cool morning and the gardens are in bloom in every direction. These lily pads are amazing and the reflection of the cherubs in the water made the photo.

2. My most favorite part of the gardens are the lotus flowers in the Japanese Garden and they were in bloom so I was a happy snappy chappy! I love these flowers so much, they influenced my whole week! I drew them, painted them and used the colour palette in my art journal.

3. This wet pebble path was strewn with bright leaves.

4. Every time I visit the gardens, I have to take a photo of the sunburst glass by Dale Chihuly, I think they are the most beautiful thing. This time I held my camera up as close as I could and took lots of photos from different angles, so some glass was in focus and some not. I really like the effect I got.

5. I have spent lots of drawing time on the porch this week. This is a sketch for the Tinkersketch challenge.

6. I spotted this guy while walking the dog, he posed for long enough for me to get in nice and close. I don’t know what kind of fly he is, do you?

7. There was a cracking sunset on Saturday night.

8. I made a fresh tomatoes sauce with tomatoes and basil from the garden and mozzarella balls (not from the garden!). It is from the Laurie David book The Family Dinner.

9. Our neighbours have been unwilling landlords to this snapping turtle all week, we managed to get him down to the creek and everyone was much happier. They think he is about 35 years old!

Stay warm or cool depending on which end of the world you are!

Happy Monday x

‘I Like’ Friday starring Kale from the Garden!

Published by Clare at CatsEatDogs

A few things that I have been liking this week of thunderstorms, sunshine, pea soup humidity and humidity.

Midori sketchbooks. I was admiring the work of Hey Hooray Design and her sketchbooks looked pretty cool. I noticed the Midori hashtag and went to investigate. I found the Traveler Notebook inserts with blank pages at Jetpens and ordered a couple. They are a great size 8″x 4″, tall and skinny! The paper is not very thick but for pen and pencil drawings and notes, they will be perfect.

Puzzle markers. Of course while I was on the JetPens site I could not help but have a browse and I came across these cuties. Teeny tiny animal markers, they are like tiny post-its. To be honest I thought they would be bigger (always read the measurement information folks!), but they are just adorable, so I was not disappointed.

Neon highlighters and brush pens. I haven’t used my brush pens in a while so I was pleased to roll them out for the Creative Bug Draw a Day class for the month of July. I have been really enjoying making the drawings and often pleasantly surprised at the outcome. Mainly because they are all made using only brush markers, no pencil starts, just dive in with the marker. This means (for me at least), that each drawing starts with a leap of faith as the pen hits the paper, the drawing is more mindful and careful but free at the same time. All because I don’t start with a pencil!

A Wilder Life, by Celestine Maddy. I borrowed this book from the library and now I have had chance to flip through it, I think I need to own it. It covers everything I love and lots of things I never knew I might love! Adventures outdoors, natural beauty products to make, recipes by season, birds animal and insect identification, making house stuff like macrame plant holders and weaving on a loom. It is a joy to look through and it makes you want to get outside and spot wildlife and stay inside and cook and make, all at the same time!

Kale. Whether it is still cool to like kale or not, I do! I have it growing in my garden and I put it in salads, soups and make it into kale crisps.It is one of those magical veggies to grow because the more you cut it the more it seems to grow.

I hope you are having a lovely Friday and finding lots of things to like!

Happy Friday x

Get Messy Thursday. Season of Introspection Week 5.

Published by Clare at CatsEatDogs

I have been rolling out of bed this week feeling less than motivated to be honest, so when I decided I had better get on with some art journal pages, my heart did not leap. The feeling was more of a ‘what I am going to do on these pages which need filling with art and meaningful journaling?’

Fill them of course!

As you know I am not much of a journaler, so I concentrated on the art bit. I sat myself down gathered my paints and started to think about what to do.

One of the prompts from this season was to use a silhouette, so I decided to have a go at that, once the silhouette was down (it took a couple of goes and there may have been some ripped out pages!) What else to add?

I left it for a day or two while I worked on another background and when I came back to it I decided to keep it simple, black and white flower doodles for the win.

My silhouette is a little on the wonky side but I loved drawing on the flowers. Loved it I tell you. Flowers in my head!

I visited the Missouri Botanical Gardens at the weekend and was overjoyed to see the lotus flowers in bloom, so I took many photos of them and thought I would use the colours of the flowers on a journal page. The page (below) started rather brighter than I wanted, so I glued a vintage dress pattern piece over the whole thing and it became nicely subdued. Under the pattern paper is stenciled paint, inkblots and flower shapes made with cut up paint chips!

On top of all that I drew a free form mandala, which are always fun to draw.

This last page is a bit of a work in progress, when I was in my ‘lotus flower’ phase I also painted a flower with my acrylics. I quite like how it has turned out and I am now leaving it while I ponder what to add.

Here is the fabulous flower which launched a couple of pages (so far, there may be more to come). Isn’t it gorgeous!

Happy Thursday x

Weekly photos 26/52.

Published by Clare at CatsEatDogs

1. I made some tape transfers and couldn’t stop! For these I used regular tape with a matt finish. There is no stick left on the tape but this width is great for glueing in my art journal or onto my 100 day project cards. If you fancy making some here is a quick guide –

How to make tape transfers

You will need – tape, magazine images, warm water

Stick the tape over the image you want to transfer to the tape.

Submerge the whole image/tape in warm water for a few seconds.

Peel off the tape and gently rub any excess paper from the back of the tape. Don’t rub too hard or crease the tape or you will end up with lines or rubbed off image. When I made the ones in the picture the tape literally floated off the page with the image intact.

Glue them down to use as the tape will no longer be sticky.

For more in depth instructions you can look at this post by A Beautiful Mess.

2. I messed about with this photo of honesty and magnolia flowers in the Snapseed app.

3. An early evening walk in the woods and we stumbled across this tunnel of sunlight.

4. The campers have been chalk drawing on the park!!

5. Random exercise bike left at a local school.

6. Grilled avocado is a wonderful salad addition.

7. We planted some honesty seeds, I wonder if they will grow.

8. A tiny leaf with a raindrop.

9. I found this ace book at an antique shop for a dollar. It is from the 1920’s.

We have had a week of 100 degrees to 70 degrees, sun and rain, so the garden is happy! Summer is going well, we are keeping ourselves busy without being frantic!

So far there has been lots of swimming, drawing challenges – Tinkersketch and Creative Bug draw a day as well as my ongoing 100 day project, dog walking and podcast listening.

Happy Monday and Happy 4th of July to my American pals!

The same, but different. Sketch the same thing in different ways.

Published by Clare at CatsEatDogs

Last week I was in the garden looking at my tomato plants to see if any were ripe and how huge the beefsteaks are getting. I like to pop into the garden every morning and see how my tomatoes are doing, it is one of my favorite things about the summer. Nothing better than being able to grow your own veg, even if you only have three tomato plants! All of my plants have lots of tomatoes which is a marvelous thing.

Anyway, on the day in question, I spotted a dried up leaf mangled up among my little tomatoes. I went to pull it out when I realized that it was not a leaf, but a dried magnolia flower from my neighbour’s tree. Perfectly formed, just with brown petals instead of the delicate pink of the fresh version.

In all the years I have lived here, I had never noticed these mini wonders. I began to look all around the tree and I found a handful of crispy flowers.

Of course I did what anyone else would do and laid them out to photograph, then I brought them in to draw. As I sketched them with my pen, I thought how nice it would be to paint them with my sumi brush and watercolors, then I thought that the shape would be cool if I simplified it down. So I did and I enjoyed each different media.

When my poppies started to flower I did a similar thing with a brilliant red bloom, I drew it then painted it and had a go at a simplified shape to represent the poppy.

Of them all I thought I would like the simple shape best, but in both cases I liked the colour of the watercolor best and I don’t love either ‘simple’ drawing. Strange how these things turn out and it just goes to show that it is a good idea to try a few different ways to approach things, to get the best result for you, even if it isn’t the route you thought you would take.

Life lessons from a little sketching exercise!

Happy Wednesday x

100 days of altered cards 51-70

Published by Clare at CatsEatDogs

Only 30 more days to go, one month of the 100 Day Project and all done. I am enjoying seeing these little cards made into something new. Now I have a collection of them I am wondering what to do with them when I am done.

I think I will put them into a photo style album maybe using the Project Life pages and albums.

Looking over them as a whole some have become mini art journal pages. You can tell when we started to swim at the YMCA as part of our regular summer routine and when the poppies came into bloom in my garden.

If you fancy a challenge which is not quite as long as the 100 days, Rachelle at Tinkerlab has a new Tinkersketch prompt list for July. It is a fun thing to do for a month, the prompts are vague enough to allow you to do your art thing, but there is also enough guidance to keep you going.

I think the ‘Swim’ card is my favorite, I just love using the stencils and the vintage page is perfect! Another favorite is the half face I drew, I am new to drawing faces so I am practicing lots and I like how this lovely lady turned out.

If you are doing the 100 day project, do share your instagram details, we are doing so well!

Happy Tuesday x

Weekly Photos 25/52

Published by Clare at CatsEatDogs

1. Poppies in my raised flower bed.

2. Honesty plant from an early morning dog walk.

3. Slip n Slide fun!

4.Queen Anne’s Lace.

5. My Cherokee Purple Tomatoes are getting huge!

6. Mr Toad hiding under a leaf umbrella.

Another sweltering week here in the mid-west. I am excited to see a new poppy in my flower bed every day, they last such a short time, the petals fall and in the morning a new flower has appeared.

I am hoping to harvest and sow some seeds from the honesty and grow our own.

I hope you had a great week and are keeping cool or warm depending where on earth you are!

Happy Monday x