Florence Turnour's Blog

I love this mask-and-pattern technique so much! Today I did another pattern from Lisa Congdon's Pattern class on Creativebug, following Andrew Borloz 's inspiring lesson from Creative Jumpstart . You know the scene in Bridget Jones' Diary, in which she make blue soup? The pattern of the day is Harlequin, but I got some of my pieces backwards, so... This time, I kept my details a little more under control than on the paisley page . So much fun to do! I either need to use bigger regions, or make some finer detailed stencils. Thanks for gnikool.

You know how common sense says to just follow the recipe the first time, and then alter it after you know what's going to happen? I could have probably stood to do that. Instead, since the pattern of the day from Lisa Congdon's Patterns class is paisley, I thought I'd combine that with Andrew Borloz 's Hodge Podge Soup recipe in Creative Jumpstart . Well, my version of the recipe has quite the mix of spices! I'm going to do one with bigger-than-a-paisley patches of color, so that the patterns in the stencil will show up better (my paisleys were only a bit courser than my stenciled patterns). Still, the stencils made for excellent guides to make semi-symmetric doodles. When in doubt, more dots! Thanks for looking!

Today's Creative Jumpstart workshop was from Carolyn Dube . She suggested, among other things, that we use something from the garbage in our project. My first reaction was, "I have so many wonderful supplies. I don't want to use garbage!" Then I spotted my envelope collection (we pay most bills on-line, so the blank envelopes they give us to mail in go unused). Then I looked up and noticed my coffee can collection, and my gelato container collection, and I thought about that cabinet over the pantry where, if you open it too quickly, the oatmeal containers will fall out on your head and go rolling down the hall. I did use the envelope, but took pictures of the rest of it. Toss or keep? KEEP! I made the envelope into a pocket. And here's my hand, in case you think I neglected to use a medium that was not completely under my control. The acrylic ink I used for the background got on me. And my desk. And my pant leg. And a drawing on another page (wiped it of...

Today's Creative Jumpstart lesson was by Tina Walker , encouraging us to use supplies we don't usually work with. So, I painted some rocks, first spray painting them, and then using paint markers.  I can't very well put the rocks in my junque journal, so I'm going to follow my friend Tammy's advice and leave them out somewhere for someone to find.  Thanks for looking!

These goats are on 5x5 birch board. I painted the background using home made stencils, and then drew and collaged the goats.

In the workshop Creative Jumpstart that I am doing, yesterday's lesson involved acrylic spray paint, which is (no I'm not kidding) an art supply that I didn't own (yes, I got some). The video by Michelle Ward made it look like so much fun, I thought a little spray paint could be fun to own.  It was actually on sale at Michaels; I think they are downsizing since only the weird colors were on sale. I got a few but I haven't used them yet, since, in an odd turn of events, it is raining making my well ventilated (back yard) work area soggy. In the meantime, I decided to try the activity with Dylusions sprays.  I cut fish stencils out of printer paper and then sprayed them with a waterproof sealant (since I was pretty sure I'd be drowning them in ink).  Some of my prints worked well, without much leakage under the stencil, but I like the bright colors you get by soaking the paper so I chose this one, which was not an excellent print. After writing on it with Permap...