Clare Davis Etheridge

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‘I Like’ Friday. My Art Journal – ‘Get Messy’ Season of lists.

Superpowers I would like to have…

For this week’s ‘I like’ Friday I have been working on some art journal pages using the themes and prompts from the Get Messy Season of Lists.

It turned out to be a classic example of nothing going to plan.

I was planning to use the same colours in each page and make all five pages work together. First flaw was that I only made three pages (and I really don’t like one of them very much).

Once I got my colours out, I did three base pages using the diagonal ‘stripes’ in the corners using different ephemera and still planning to stick to my grey/pink/green/brick red colour scheme. I ended up using navy instead of red because it was being used on the eye shaped stencil and I really really didn’t want red eyes (not on this spread anyway, maybe on a page which needs creepy red eyes…).

As it turned out I didn’t use the colours anywhere else on the pages, so the colour scheme plan went out of the window right behind the brick red.

Funny how things turn out isn’t it?!

I want to go…

When I grow up…

About the only consistent thing apart from the corners is the splashes of neon which I didn’t even include in my original colours!

Once again the Get Messy community pulls pages out of me I didn’t know were there! I can honestly say that I didn’t see any of these three pages coming until they were done.

I still look at them and thing ‘well, that is not what I was planning!’.

I suppose sometimes planning is not always a good thing, unless you are prepared to plan and then be unplanned at a moments notice which is what happened here.

Happy Friday and happy creating.

Tangling, Drawing and art journaling.

Published by Clare at CatsEatDogs

I have this ‘pretend’ friend called Jeanette who writes at Craftwhack blog and has written a rather fabulous book called ‘Tangle Art and Drawing Games for Kids‘ which I got to play with and now I am going to tell you about!

I have met lots of ‘pretend’ friends – you know the ones you meet on the inter webs but not yet in real life (no, I don’t say IRL, I am not a young person). They are all talented and amazing and when they write a book, I want to see it!

This book was no disappointment, in fact it was an inspiration from page to page. So many great ideas and not just for kids in my opinion, I saw lots of stuff I wanted to incorporate into my art journal. So I did.

The Geometry tree (#1) caught my eye and I could not stop smiling at the tangled hair project (#45), so I thought I would give them a go. At first I decided to concentrate on the crazy hair, but as happens every time I work in my art journal, it had different ideas. I ended up with trees and tangle hair on the same page and I couldn’t be happier with the outcome.

For the trees and hair, I used a black jelly roll pen and a Sharpie paint pen for the white accents. Hands up who wants that hair! Me me me! Only for a special occasion which invites cats of course.

As I was looking through Tangle Art and Drawing Games for Kids, I thought we needed to know some more about the author of the book, so I posed some probing and pertinent questions to Ms Nyberg and got these answers:

Clare: What is your favorite colour?

Jeanette: Grey! I love grey in all the shades. Although I love different beautiful shades of blue together, but if I had to just choose one color solo, it would be grey.

C: Who is your favorite painter?

J: This question sends me into a panic every time, because I don’t have a favorite painter. A painting teacher in college once asked me who my favorite painter was, and I blurted out, “Matisse!”, because he came to mind first. I love that crazy old Mark Rothko a whole lot, and also Daniella Woolf’s gorgeous encaustics, oh! And also Mitra Walter.

C: What is your favorite shape?

J: Would you consider a stripe a shape? I suppose that’s more of a pattern, so I’ll say the humble rectangle. No! Wait! A star! See how I change my mind at lightning speed? It’s a real problem.

C:Best song to sing along to?

J:Toss up between “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina”, and probably still “We Are Young” by Fun.

C: Yummiest food?

J: Turkey burgers! They rock my little world.

C: What magazines do you read?

J: I don’t have any subscriptions anymore, but I’ll occasionally flip through a Martha Stewart, pretty much any home design magazine, and sometimes I like to make myself feel like crap by getting a women’s health magazine.

C:Which is your most favorite art supply?

J: Acrylic paint. I love that stuff so much.

C: Coffee or tea?

J: Green tea! Specifically, iced, lightly sweetened.

C: Favourite project from your book for kids?

J: I love to see what kids come up with when they try the Weirdo Animals game (#20). It’s so fun to see their morphed animal drawings.

C: For adults?

J: For adults, my favorite game is the synchronized drawing game (#12), because you can either be nice and draw slowly, or be wicked and draw quickly, because one person has to try to keep up with the other. It’s pretty hilarious.

So I think we all need to paint grey stripes while singing to ‘Don’t cry for me Argentina’ and eating turkey burgers!

I would recommend this book for anyone who wants to doodle in the margins, art journal, make cards, design coloring sheets or just wants a few minutes quiet for themselves, their kids or both. I found drawing the trees very meditative and they are so cool!

Thanks to Jeanette for allowing me to keep a copy of your wonderful book (all opinions on the book are mine, I was not bribed or blackmailed) and for answering my silly questions!

Let’s grab some paper and a pen and draw!

Happy Wednesday x

Weekly Photos 14/52

Published by Clare at CatsEatDogs

So far I think we are having a chilly spring compared to recent years. I am sure it is usually warmer than this here in the mid-west by the middle of April. No complaints though, you never know, the summer might not be so brutal.

I don’t know what any of these flowers are, but they are pretty and all over the park floor. I got to stand among them for a while as the dog had a sniff about.
I borrowed the paper cutter in the library to chop up my new coloring postcards this week.
Some trees are still blooming, this pink one at the park is a stunner.
I finished ‘A Man Called Ove’, and I love love loved it. It is such a good read, Ove is a wonderful character. It is funny, thoughtful and a great story.
I got some clay to play with and I made some beads and pendants, fingers crossed that they all turn out, or at least most of them! I will be sure to update you on the clay creations.
Over the weekend we popped down to Cherokee Street in St Louis. We explored a few antique shops and stopped for a coffee and cake.

I hope you had a fab week and are looking forward to the next. It is rainy here today, but not cold, so hopefully good growing weather for the flowers in the garden.

Happy Monday x

Get Messy Art Journal. The Season of Lists.

Published by Clare at CatsEatDogs

I am happy to report I am managing to do some work in my art journal almost every day which is something I have been trying to do since I joined the Get Messy community at the beginning of the year. I rarely start and finish a page in one sitting, mainly because each layer has to dry before I add anything else. This is another reason that I usually have more than one sketchbook on the go.

This first page is one I started over a week ago when I saw the fabulous crane in an old National Geographic magazine. I added a little gold craft paint to the gesso and glued down my bird. Then I left it. For ages. I added the triangle doodles and left it again. Today I finished the page with one of the list prompts from Get Messy Lists – ‘Mysteries to Explore’. I jotted down a few mysteries and I am not sure that my bewildered crane has any answers!

The top spread started as a watercolor ‘wash’ for the April watercolor challenge headed up by the lovely Torrie at Fox and Hazel. I added the Bognor Regis poster and wrote a list of ‘Lessons Learned’.

You may have seen the feathers before as I painted these absolutely ages ago and didn’t know where to go with them. In fact I painted two pages of them in case I ruined one page with any additions. I kept this page simple with some tiny doodles and a list of ‘What I have Sacrificed’.

This last page is one I made from beginning to end in one go. I mixed up a teal with my acrylic paints and made stripes with it. The words came from an old dictionary and I just added some dots and the list title with a white paint pen and a Gelly roll pen. Like the feathers, this page is in a vintage book which I use as an art journal.

I am enjoying The Season of Lists at Get Messy Art Journaling. Looking forward to next week!

Happy Thursday x

The 100 Day Project 2016

Published by Clare at CatsEatDogs

What could you make/create/invent for one hundred days straight? What do you want one hundred of?

Pages in a novel (it would be a great start to a book!).

Learn a foreign word.

Make a pattern every day.

Use one colour in a photo or a sketch.

Sketch a face.

Photograph the same scene – see how and if it changes.

Make an altered playing card collection.

Design an alphabet.

Run a mile (100 miles would be an impressive achievement).

Invent a recipe (another book in the making).

All kinds of things you could do and by one hundred of them you would be pretty good I think.

I did the 100 day project last year and I drew/made or photographed a mandala a day and it was a very good project. Over one hundred days, you really get into it and turn out some wonderful things and some rather terrible things, but the main thing is to keep doing these things until you have achieved that one hundred day point. My mandalas are all over at Instagram under #100daysofmakingmandalas if you fancy a peek.

This year I have decided to make 100 altered playing cards, I have a box of random playing cards and every day I will pull one out and draw on it or cut it out or paint on it or maybe sew on some too. Who knows what I will be doing by the end!

I have chosen the hashtag #100daysofalteredcardsbycatseatdogs to accompany me along the way. Every day I will post my card on Instagram and I will use this hashtag to gather all of the pictures together.

Are you participating? Do you know what you are going to make or do? Share your hashtag and Instagram name and I will follow along with you.

All the details are at Elle Luna’s Instagram here.

Happy Wednesday x

Weekly Photos 13/52

Published by Clare at CatsEatDogs

This week saw a fifth grade field trip, new perfumes, cleaning up the local woods and park and a sunny hike on Sunday. Not bad!

1. I helped out with the fifth grade field trip to ‘Junior Achievement BizTown’ on Monday. The kids all had jobs and ran a ‘business’ for the day. My team at Ameren/Peabody were great, they had a good day and worked hard.

2 & 3. I am working on some new scents for solid perfumes which is always super fun. I really like the orange blossom and basil one. These solid scents are great to chuck in your gym bag for a quick uplift and they are perfect for travel because they are not liquid, and they are home made so I can mix up my own scent combination.

4. It was a lovely sunny morning on Saturday for the REI and Brentwood Parks annual clean up. We all got started with a coffee and a doughnut, grabbed a massive trash bag and off we went. The woods and creek have acquired more litter than is ideal due to storms and floods and of course careless folk, but by the time we were munching on hot dogs for lunch, it was good as new and Brentwood trash collection had a pile of full rubbish bags to haul away.

5. Another sunny day on Sunday, so we went for a hike at Castlewood State park which was rather busy but still a good afternoon out. I spotted this tree waving out over the landscape!

I hope you had a good week and a nice sunny one is on the way for you.

Happy Monday x

‘I like’ Friday. Art Journaling Supplies.

Published by Clare at CatsEatDogs

I have been reading a lot lately about the supplies people like to use in their art journaling. These posts are inspiring and helpful all at once, so I thought I would add my two pennies worth and write a post about what I like to use.

As I have only been art journaling deliberately for a couple of months, I suspect the supplies I rely on will change and develop over the next months. I look forward to how my supplies evolve.

Of course the first thing we need to journal is a sketchbook. I have filled a Strathmore 500 series book which has very nice heavy paper and I have just started a Ranger Dylusions sketchbook which has heavy paper too, but is a little thicker. I can’t wait to fill it up! These are both larger books, 8″x 11″ give or take a quarter of an inch. I like to have lots of space to play with, so I like this size.

Pens pens pens. I use Micron pens in almost everything I do, so of course art journaling is no exception. They are most effective on a smooth surface though, so I also use a gel ball pen for writing and doodling. I find they move and flow over an uneven surface better than the Microns. The white pens are great over a colored background. The nicest paint pens I have used are the Sharpie pens. Sakura Gelly rolls are a finer pen for writing and drawing.

These are all paints at a reasonable price and I use them all the time. The watercolor palette is from Michaels craft store and I love the selection of colours in it. The acrylics are from Target’s Handmade Modern section and again there are a ton of colours to choose from. They are not top of the range so I think they allow more play with less pressure which is always a good thing!

I knew nothing whatsoever about gesso until this year. I even pronounced it wrong (the horror!). I have mixed feelings about it to be honest, I like that it gives a good background to work on, but I am not always mad about the texture it leaves. I am sure as I become more skilled in art journaling, I will master it. However I do really like black gesso, either all over a page or in blocks. The black works like a chalk board and is fabulous with the white pens over it.

The matt medium is what I mainly use as adhesive, I can slap it all over to stick things down and it dries matt, so it is not invasive on the page.

To apply paint and gesso I have a variety of brushes. The fat square brush is the one I use for gesso and I also use the gift card which gives a smoother surface. I picked up the stencil brush at a yard sale and I love to use it because it is a nice big brush and a great texture giver. Other brushes I use include the sumi brush (next to the white handled brush) which is lovely with ink and watercolours to paint words and patterns.

In the ‘other supplies’ section, I use ink pads for stamps and I like to use waterproof ink so that if another layer is added, the stamped images don’t get all smudged and ruined. Same with ink I use to paint and write with, always waterproof.

Masking fluid has magical powers in my opinion, I paint it on with a regular brush and I use watercolour over it. When I remove it with the rubber pick up (the square under the ink) the paper under it has no paint so it makes the final image really stand out. Kind of a batik effect but on paper.

Last but not least, paper ephemera. I haven’t used many modern magazine images in my pages so far, but I have ripped lots out of old National Geographic magazines. I also use old books, music scores, maps and old magazines. I especially love the vintage movie magazines which feature the film stars of the time. Wonderful stuff.

Happy creating and Happy Friday! Wishing you a wonderful weekend x

Mini Watercolour set in a tin.

Published by Clare at CatsEatDogs

This is one of those projects that made me immediately think ‘why on earth didn’t I think of this before?’. There are lots of travel watercolor sets to buy and I nearly did buy one, until I saw this DIY version on Julie Balzar’s fab blog.

I popped out and bought a tin of Altoids (I bought the blue one because I liked the colour and I don’t intend covering the outside of the tin) and a pack of gum which was sold in the tray style packet.

The only problem I had was deciding which sixteen colours I was going to squeeze into my trays to tote about with me and my watercolour sketchbook. I managed to choose a selection and then I arranged them into a pleasing palette.

I did make a note in my sketchbook of which colours went where. I also want to get another pack of the gum so that I have an empty tray to use for mixing colours.

This is such a great way to make you own travel set, I am so pleased with it. In total it cost me about $3.50 for the tin and trays, the paints I already owned.

I will use a water brush with the paints, so that I don’t have to worry about carrying about water and a brush which may well defeat the whole concept of a travel tin!

So there you have it, your very own travel paint set. You can use one or two trays which would allow eight or sixteen colours. If you only use one tray, you may be able to fit in a tiny pencil and a sponge for extra equipment. I will most likely fold up a sheet of kitchen roll in the bottom of the tin for wiping off my brush between colours.

I hope you make your own set if you fancy. What colours would you choose? Have I missed a vital one out? Yikes I hope not.

Happy Wednesday! We have big thunderstorms here, I hope you have sunshine!

Weekly photos 12/52

Published by Clare at CatsEatDogs

1. We walked to an Estate Sale locally this weekend, it was a 2 mile walk each way, but on such a lovely blue sky day, we didn’t mind. I loved this study and look at that fantastic wallpaper.

2. On the way home from the sale we took a short detour to snap a photo of this sign. I have admired the arrow for ages now and with this blue sky, how could I resist.

3. A flock of Grape Hyacinths at Forest Park, taken on Easter Sunday.

4. Trees on Art Hill in Forest Park.

5. St Louis Art Museum and the Grand Basin in Forest Park.

6. Lovely willow trees near a bridge in Forest Park.

What a pretty weekend it was. I hope you had a lovely week and weekend.

Happy Monday x

Art Journal ideas and progress.

Published by Clare at CatsEatDogs

This week I started to fill a book with patterns and doodles just to see how many ideas I can come up with. I want to fill pages with stripe ideas and then more with dot ideas until I can’t think of any more, then fill some extra pages.

For this I am using an old library book which I bought for 25 cents from our library’s sale cart. ‘The Shelf Book’ is my pattern sketchbook, I will try anything in it, it is not precious. So if I don’t like a page, never mind, turn to the next page and carry on. It is very freeing to be honest, I have only just started to fill the book and hopefully by the end I will have a nice collection of ideas for journal pages, backgrounds, colouring sheets and maybe a post card or two.

I started a new spread in a new sketchbook too which is a wonderful thing. I am so happy to have filled one sketchbook and to be onto the next already.

For this page I started with my circle gelli plate and a mesh bag which lemons came in which gave the texture to my gelli circles. Once that had all dried, I painted simple stripes with watery gouache and a sumi brush over the whole page. I think sumi brushes are one of my favorite things, I just love to paint and write with them.

Now I need to decide what else to add to this page.

This new sketchbook is a Ranger Dylusions Creative Journal and it has nice card-stock paper, lots of pages and a pocket for keeping important journal stuff in. It opens nice and flat so that double page spreads are easy to work on. I usually work over two pages at a time so this is an important sketchbook feature for me. Yes, I am the one in the art store opening sketchbook pages wide to see if they stay or at least can be persuaded to stay open!