Sisterhood of the Traveling Sketchbook-May/Jaime

I was able to spend the entire afternoon with Jaime's sketchbook.  This is my spread for the month of May.  To me, May represents beginnings and endings.  It is my birthday which always makes me reflect on the past year, give thanks for the good and hopefully the bad seems less severe when revisited.  It is a time of celebration, of gathering my family around me and of hopes for what will come in the year ahead. 

May is the end to my teaching year.  It is celebrated by a nice recital where all my students can showcase their developing skills.  It is when I can sit and think about the progress each one has made, and begin to plan the directions I'd like to take them in the fall.

May is a time of stepping back my studio teaching obligations so that I may enjoy a more relaxed, free summer.  It allows me more time to spend outdoors during the beautiful Michigan summer.  It gives me time to devote to my art and time to really enjoy being by myself.

Finally, May is planting season (usually, but we've had so much rain everything is delayed this year!).  I love seeing all the freshly plowed fields while I'm out walking.  They look so neat and orderly and I've always wanted to go and play in one.  (I've managed to avoid doing this so my farmer neighbors wont be upset with me).  I also love to plant flowers while I'm surrounded by the fragrance of lilacs in bloom and the flutterings of the first butterflies of the year.  May brings many things to a close in my life, but it also opens many new and exciting doors.

I hope that Jaime likes my entry in her sketchbook.  I  had a relaxing and fun time painting it. 

And the winners are...

Jenn F (from Facebook) will be giving the box a new home

and

the little fishy will be swimming its way to Kathy.

Congratulations!

Happy Monday to you all!



Happy Birthday Giveaway

I love my birthday.

I celebrate it in a big way every year.

Craig and I take a short vacation, this year we went to Grand Rapids, MI and visited breweries.

6 breweries in 3 days.

We have fun.

I also have a family picnic.

This is the official first day of "Sangria Season"

This was celebrated on Sunday

and although we picniced inside due to more rain, it was a great day.

I also like to give something away on my birthday.

I give to charity, and as gifts I ask for donations to my favorite charity, the Breast Cancer 3 Day.

I sometimes donate blood but I'm off schedule for that and can't this year.

This year I'm giving something away on my blog.

This box. 

 And maybe something else, but its still being finished.

**edited 11:37, yes, that something else is finished and pictured at the end of the post**

So, if you'd like to help me celebrate my birthday, leave me a comment here.

Or like Artbrat's Bits & Pieces on facebook and leave me a comment on my wall.

If you do both, I'll enter your name in the hat twice.

I'll draw a winner on Saturday at noon so you'll have til then to be entered.

(and if the something other turns out, I'll edit this page with the 2nd giveaway)

I hope you have a wonderful day!

This little fishy with the big bulging eyes serves no purpose other than making someone smile.  I love his big eyes!  This will be the other giveaway.  I think I'll draw 2 names so I can spread the joy and fun a bit further. 

Good luck!

A Package!!

Dont you just love getting packages in the mail?  It has to be one of my favorite things, especially if I am not expecting something (or simply have forgotten about it!)  Heck, I even adore it when I know its coming, and I'm waiting for the delivery man, bouncing around with excitement chanting "where are you?  where are you?  O, come on and freakin get here!!".  There is something so much fun about tearing a package open and getting at what's inside.  (Can you tell I'm gearing myself up for my birthday where I get SHINY packages all wrapped up for me!!) 

I received a terrific package in the mail a few weeks ago (shame on me for just now getting around to sharing it.  Time has been flying and I've been busy.)  This package came from Cat and was part of her One World, One Heart giveaway.  Cat also blogs with her sister Cricket  here.  Both blogs are beautiful.  Full of wonderful images and thoughtful words.  I hope you'll take a moment and explore both of the links.  I find myself visiting them often.  When I won, Cat asked what I'd like to receive.  I looked through those blogs and etsy shops and just loved everything so I pretty much told her that and asked her to suprise me.  I gotta say, she did a superb job of picking.  I absolutely love this tank.  The sentiment expressed on the back is so much how I want to live my life.  (Somedays I do better at staying true to this than others.  Hey, I'm a work in progress.)  I've never seen the brand Love this Life before, but you can be sure I'll be looking into getting more from them.  Thank you so much Cat.  I couldn't love it more.  Tanks are my summer staple and I cant wait for it to warm up here so I can wear this!  She also included a lovely "live large"card and a fun chalkboard heart ornament that will soon hang in my kitchen so I can leave love notes to my hubby, or just remind myself that I am out of milk. 

Thanks again Cat!  I love it!!!  And thank you for stopping by for a visit.  I hope your week is off to a great start.

Sisterhood of the Traveling Sketchbook

Here's my introductory spread for the "Sisterhood of the Traveling Sketchbook".  This Sisterhood is a group of 13 artists located around the world.  We'll be mailing our books through a chain every month and in a year we'll get our books back filled with all kinds of artistic goodness.  Our theme after the introductory spread is months.  We'll be painting our interpertation of the current month, loosely based.  That means that May, to me is the beginning of "Sangria season", so my spread might just revolve around that instead of a traditional "May Flowers" spread.  Its all open to how we want to interpert the month which I love!  I'm excited to get my journal on its way.  Hopefully it'll mail out tomorrow or Monday.

My first spread we were to use color.  My favorite color is orange.  I love how vibrant and cheerful it is.  The text serves as an introduction, however brief to me so the others involved with this project can get a feel for me.  Its so much fun to "meet" these ladies.  Most of us have just been introduced over the past month or two!  Its always interesting to see how much us artsy types have in common.  Including a serious ZumaBlitz obsession and competition I'm in over my head with against Cam. 

For my sign in page I had an idea of cutting out butterfly shapes that each person can alter and then attach to the opening page and also the back cover if more space is needed.  I thought we could include all our info either on the butterfly as I did, or surrounding the butterfly on the page.  I hope that's not to quirky for any of the participants.  Once I got the idea in my head there was no turning away from it. 

I can't wait to receive my first book in the mail.  I'm still brainstorming ideas to use for the spread of May.  This is all so exciting!!

Thanks for stopping by.  I hope you're having a beautiful mid-April day!

self portrait fun and boobies to boot!

I've been working on a journal page for the Sisterhood of the Traveling Sketchbook.  The Sisterhood is a group of 13 artist who will be mailing our journals to each other over the coming year.  Each of us will do a spread inspired by the current month and in a year we'll all get our sketchbooks back filled with everyones wonderful art.  I've never participated in anything of this manner so I'm really excited and a little intimidated.  My opening journal spread will be color based and an introduction to who I am.  Most people form ideas about me from my pink hair, and I'm ok with that.  It all goes along with not conforming and I expect it.  The page will include this self-portrait with entries of "I am ________, but____________."  I'll share it when I'm finished, but so far just have the background started. Why is it I can always see my mistakes clear as day when I look at a photo of my work, but I can stare at the work itself for hours and not see the same thing?!  Dang oddball lips...

I have a question for all of you.  How do you keep the surrounding pages clean when working in a journal/sketchbook with paint?  I put paper underneath both pages I was working background on and still managed to muck up the next page.  If there is a better way around this I'd appreciate you sharing your tricks.  I'm feeling awful to send not pristine pages to someone.

In other events, I've been slowly working my way toward my fundraising goal of $2,300 for the Breast Cancer 3-Day.  This year I'm trying to do a lot of art/craft commissions, along with CD sales to fund things without asking for straight donations.  I'm doing pretty well and just hope things continue to fall into place for that.  My latest "commission" is a boob scarf.  I was sent a picture and asked if I could make one.  I gotta say, I was super excited to try.

I laughed my way through this project.  Especially after realizing I'd been considering how to make the nipples "hard" for a good 4 hours!  There are just to many thoughts that kept popping into my head.  Anyways, it was lots of fun and I thought they turned out pretty well.

Button fun, You need more flair!

I had so much fun designing this button.  I started with paint, but I have digitally altered the image so much, you can hardly tell it was paint on paper.  In Cleveland, the route safety team goes with a pirate theme every year.  We get to dress and talk like pirates for 3 days (4 if you count our crazy crew day!).  We tell horribly bad pirate jokes and have a great time with the walkers.  I recently bought a button maker and I'm very excited.  Buttons are like gold on the 3-Day, everyone wants them!  This was my original idea, and then as I was working on it I thought, hey, you could make them say different things.  Like, I treasure my wife's pirate chest, or I treasure my itty bitty pirate chest, or like the one I've designed for our team this year, Protecting all the pirate chests.

I think they'll be so much fun on the walk.  Heck, I wanna wear mine around now and see who notices and comments about it ;)

I also threw this one together.

What movie is it where Jennifer Aniston gets yelled at for only having the required amount of flair?  If you've ever seem my 3-Day pictures, you know I go way beyond the minimum for flair.  I think we all need as much flair as possible each and every day.  It makes life so much more fun.