Awesome Giveaway from Craftsy

Artists in Blogland (a group I run) is having a giveaway from Craftsy for your chance to win one free class of your choosing, valued at $59.99.  Head over there to check it out!

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Lego Brickworld Convention- 2013, Part One

Lego superman, doggie, Batman and Alvin & the Chipmunks

Last weekend we went to the Lego Brickworld Convention in Schaumburg, IL.  My husband Andrew is an avid Lego collector and builder.  We made the trip with Daria to see the Lego convention exhibits.  As an art teacher, I found some very interesting displays!  It was really great to see all the kids engaged in building and designing their own Lego exhibits.  Such a better hobby than sitting and watching TV or playing with video games (not that there's not a place for that either, but moderation, right?)   Many of the exhibits were built by adult Lego groups and others with parents and their kids.  All of the designs were original, not built from kits.  

We took so many pictures and I tried to cull them down to my favorites.  I split up the pictures into 3 blog posts.   

This is a model of the capitol building in Madison that my husband designed and built for the show.  Isn't it great?

There were a lot of awesome city scenes built with Legos.  I found the Dunkin' Donuts!

Of course I found the Starbucks also!

There were a lot of fun little pieces within larger scenes.  I love the mermaid in the fountain.

This was part of a huge interconnected piece that went around the entire table.  There were little soccer balls that moved throughout the parts.  This was a giant ferris wheel type thing where the soccer balls went around until they moved to the next piece. 

Daria and her cousins were fascinated by the Lego trains.

Here is a video I took of one of the trains.

Best wishes, Marcia
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Easy outdoor summer activity for kids

Every summer this is one of my daughter's favorite activities.  Just grab a bucket of water and some toys and cups.  She's having fun giving her ponies a bath and giving them swimming lessons.

Sticky Journal: Tape Lines & Link Up

Check out the other posts in this series about using your stickers and tapes in art journal pages:

1.  Sticky Inspiration
2.  My new stickers & some pages with them
3.  Using patterned tape in an art journal page
4.  Guest Post:  Marly Martinez

Here are two more art journal pages that use colored tape and patterned washi tape!

• In this page, I used thin solid colored yellow tape and medium width solid pink tape to create geometric shapes and designs. 

• A border was created with patterned tape and adhesive scrapbooking embellishments

•  I tore little pieces of patterned masking tape as additional decorative spots.

• I will continue to add doodling, writing and watercolor designs.  

Now, it's your turn!  Show off what you've been working on!



Best wishes, Marcia
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Glue It Tuesday and Making Index Card Art with my Daughter

What happens when you give scissors, stickers, glue, crayons and index cards to a 3 year old?  

Daria had a blast creating Index Card art.   Cutting, coloring and adding stickers were the best part.

I made some index cards also for Daisy Yellow's Index Card a Day challenge.  

These cards are also perfect to share with Glue It Tuesday!  Check out the other fun participants in both of these challenges.

I have a question for you.  Be honest!  I just updated my header of this blog.  Do you think it is too busy?  Should I make it simpler?

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Watercolor Doodling in my Art Journal

These are more old pages that I haven't shown you yet!

We went to a Brickworld LEGO convention this weekend.  I have a whole bunch of artsy LEGO pictures to show you that I will put up later.

Best wishes, Marcia
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Guest Post for Sticky Journals: Marly Martinez

Guest Post:  Marly Martinez

I sent out 5 packets of stickers to 5 different artists and throughout the summer I will share with you what they have created.  The first guest artist is Marly Martinez and her blog is called The Letter M:  Decollecting all of my Art Supplies.  Here is what she has to say about the Sticky Journal challenge.

"I was lucky enough to get to Marcia before all the spots for her Sticky Journals summer feature were gone. She sent me a ton of pretty stickers to play with and after staring at them for about an hour, I was ready to admit defeat.

I always let the aspiration of making something 'good' get in the way of having fun. Inspiration? Check. Art supplies? Check. Sitting down to make something? Check....absolutely terrified? Double check!

Well, enough of that. I jumped in and here is the first of hopefully many. Thank you so much to Marcia for sending the lovely stickers. I'm currently planning what to send back. It's half the fun!

 


Messy desk, hand carved stamp, stickers, paint markers, black pens and water soluble crayons.

I really like how Marly used the stickers in the center and then created a mandala shape around it!  Great idea.  Thanks for playing, Marly.

Best wishes, Marcia
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Buried Treasure: Farmer's Market in Madison, WI Photography

Every year, Seth Apter of The Altered Page invites us to share a "Buried Treasure", a post from the past that may get buried in your blog.   Every year I enjoy going through my blog archives and finding an interesting post to re-share.  This year, I'm going to share some fun photos from 2010.

Farmer's Market in Madison, WI,  2010

These are all photos I took on one day at the Farmer's Market in Madison.  It is a huge Farmer's Market which circles around the entire capitol building square and is always very bustling with people.  In addition to vegetables and plants, they sell honey, jelly, cheese (LOTS of cheese, it is Wisconsin after all!), fresh baked bread, donuts and pastries, drinks and more.  There are always street musicians to entertain the kids, little booths with crafts and often special events (like when they brought real cows for the kids to pet the other weekend.)   It happens every Saturday and is a huge deal here.  Lots of people meet up with there friends and you will see kids running around on the capitol lawn playing.  If you ever come visit Madison, WI you must stop at the Farmer's Market on the capitol square on Saturday morning.

These photos were taken in the early morning, so they do not capture the bustle and busyness of the market.  Usually around 10 am it is super crowded.  We try to go in the early morning in order to avoid the huge crowds. 

At the Farmer's Market

Balloons at the Market, 2010

Tie-Dye T-shirts at the Market, 2010

Setting up a Flower Stall, 2010

Best wishes, Marcia
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ICAD #2, Glue It Tuesday and Watercolor Doodles

Index Card a Day #2

Sharing with Glue It Tuesday.

I made my second index card for Daisy Yellow's Index Card a Day.  My goal is to make half of the cards.. about 30.  I like the idea of making quick index card artworks...  with my other projects going on (Project Life scrapbooking, working on my Professional Development Plan for school, organizing stuff at school, playing with Daria) we'll see how much I get done this summer.

Daria's at daycare once per week this summer to keep her in the swing of things.  Today she is there.  My plan today is to write this blog post, then I need to deep clean the house and do laundry.  I know, I lead an exciting life!  We watched my brother's dogs this week and with 3 dogs in a small house, that creates a LOT of fur balls!

When I pick up Daria from daycare I'm going to take out the index cards and scrapbooking stuff and see if she wants to make some art with me.   

I'm reading this really interesting book I got from the library called Life at Home in the Twenty-first Century: 32 Families Open their Doors which is way different from other home design books you will read.  These are pictures of middle class families' homes in their every day life... real-time observations in unstaged homes.  Bottom line is that Americans have too much clutter!

• American children (a small percentage of the world's children) buy 40% of the world's toys! 
• 3/4 of the families in this study use their garages for storage only, not for their cars!
• The researchers noted that how cluttered the refrigerator is with schedules, photos and magnets is directly proportional to how cluttered and messy the rest of the house is.   

Looking at this book made me realize our house is not as cluttered as it could be, but we definitely have too many material objects.

More colorful art:
Here are a couple of watercolor doodles I made awhile back and never posted.

Best wishes, Marcia
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Ladybug Watercolor Art Journal Page

I just got back a package of my artwork that I had sent off to Cloth Paper Scissors magazine.  I had an article in the Pages magazine, which I will show you later.  This artwork did not get published in the magazine, but I think it's one of my favorites!  The ladybug was painted with watercolor paints and the border is a combination of painting, markers and rub-on images.  The words were rub-on letters. 

Best wishes, Marcia
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Sticker Tutorial: Layering Circles

Yay!  I'm so glad a few people are playing along with me for my Sticky Journals challenge.  What is sticky journals?  Basically I am using up my stash of stickers and patterned tape this summer in my art journals.  Along the way, I am showing you some tutorials, prompts and artwork.  If you want to play along, great!  If not, that's ok too.  I'm just having fun with my art journals.   The linkup for the first week is here.

 Today, I'm go to show you how I layered circle stickers.

1.  First, I started by using patterned tape as a border.  The green tape was quite thick, so I ripped it down the middle to make it thinner.  Then, I used these fun gold seals that I found at an Office Max store.

2.  Next, I stuck white circle stickers on top. The dashed borders were already there. 

3.  Then, I added cute circle stickers from the Jonathan Adler - Sticker & Label Book.  I also found other circle stickers, stars and "o's" to put on the page.  

4.  Finally, I added a whole lot of doodling with various markers.  I added color around the stickers and on top of some of them.   I like to use Sakura Gelly Roll  Moonlight Gel Ink Pen Set and Sanford Sharpie Extra-Fine Pastel Paint Pens. 

I hope you enjoyed my little tutorial!

Best wishes, Marcia
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Featuring Magazine #4 is Coming Soon!

Wowza, Issue #4 is almost here!  We've been working really hard on this issue and even though we've had many setbacks, Issue #4 is going to be amazing. 

What is Featuring magazine?
A full color, gorgeous print magazine including art journaling, mixed media and other creative artworks.  Interviews with artists, stunning projects and reader artwork awaits in this issue.  

Look at this beautiful cover:

Read the brief summary of the content
Flip through some of the pages in the preview
It will take a while for the actual paper magazine to get back from the printing office, but you may want to pre-order the magazine because when you do that, you have the chance to win a Mixed Media Paper Craft Kit from Gauche Alchemy!!
Yes, you heard it right: FEATURING cooperated with GAUCHE ALCHEMY for A GIVE AWAY.

We will give away 5 ACME Mixed Media Paper Craft kits to readers who pre-order issue #4 before June 23. The fourth issue of the magazine will be released soon after.
Now that is an extra reason to want to order the magazine, isn’t it? Why not go ahead then. PRE ORDER/BUY your copy now to have your name in the hat for our give away and to make sure the fourth issue of FEATURING will come your way as soon as it is released.

Would you like to hear about my personal experiences writing for this issue?  Well, I am going to share them with you anyways!  The best part of writing for the magazine is the chance to become exposed to all different types of artists, some that I wouldn't ordinarily have come across.  Also, it is interesting taking all of the information the artist gives and translating it into an easy-to-understand, thorough and intriguing article. 

My first assignment for this issue was to write about Julie Elman's Fear Project

The Fear Project
Everybody is afraid of something, whether you want to admit it or not. What fears do you have? Could you create an artwork showing your fears? Maybe you would rather have Julie Elman illustrate your anxieties. Julie has illustrated over 100 fears. She calls this series her Fear Project.

Then, I can't remember the order of the other articles I wrote, but over the course of a few months I received three more requests for articles.  Other team members had personal conflicts and illnesses which limited their writing for this issue.  I took them one at a time and never felt overwhelmed with the writing.  It will be fun to see these articles in print!

Blueberry Muffin Studio
“Inexpensive therapy” is how Miranda Robb describes the benefits of art journaling. Using sketches, cutout phrases and magazine images, Miranda works through her emotions and life story. We took a peek into her art journals and got to know her better.

The Kingdoms of TIMothy
TIMothy Bruehl is a painter living in San Diego. His goal for his series 500 Kings in 500 Kingdoms is to create 500 individual canvases that work together as a whole. The canvases feature various cities (kingdoms) and are represented by symbolism and landmarks

Aleksandra Kabakova
Aleksandra Kabakova, an artist from St. Petersburg, Russia, creates sensitive, delicate images with gorgeous detailed black lines and splashes of color. Inspired by common things, she tries to catch the beauty of simplicity.

Sticky Journals: A Journal Page with Tape & Link Up

Welcome to the first weekly link-up for the summer of Sticky Journals!

I like to use patterned tape as a decorative element in my art journal pages. 

In this page, there is polka dot tape at the top and bottom of the page.  The rest of the page was made with watercolor paints, a print from a texture plate, collage elements from a vintage children's book, rub-on letters and rub-on flourishes.

Do you use stickers or tape in your artwork?  If you have any sticky art to share, please link up below!

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ICAD and other artwork

I made the first index card for Daisy Yellow's ICAD challenge.  She is challenging you to create artwork on an index card every day in the summer. 

Index Card art with stickers, washi tape and gelato crayons.  Do you see the #1 sticker?  I'm going to put a small number on each card in the order I make them. 

Detail of an art journal page with stickers

an in progress drawing of a girl.  I used this as a demo for my 5th graders on using the grid technique.

Best wishes, Marcia
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