She Art 2

I'm taking an online class called She Art 2. This first week, we learned how to do faces. I'm not sure I like faces on the girls. Without faces, they can be anybody... I feel that I can read myself into a girl without a face. She could be me... the quote could apply to me...

Well, I figured that I would give faces a try. After all, who knows, I might like it. Here is my girl... face and all!

I don't like the way the mouth came out. It was better before I outlined it... oh, well. I do like the eyes. It's been years since I've drawn or painted anything. I guess I didn't lose all my drawing and painting ability after all.



---- EDITED ----
Okay, I had to try... I erased her face in photoshop. I think I like it better. What do you think?

The Nutting Girls!

I had the day off Friday, so Cheryl and I went down to Carlsbad to take a class by Julie Nutting. Julie is the author of "Collage Couture: Techniques for Creating Fashionable Art."

You know how I'm so into the "She Art" girls right now... well Julie has her own type of art girl... I'll call them Nutting Girls!

Here we are with Julie Nutting.

I wanted to share how we make the backgrounds. It's different than the backgrounds for She Art girls. Julie uses only paint with brushes, stamps and stencils. In the following steps, Cheryl's background is on the left, and mine is on the right.

We started with a coat of paint... most of the ladies used a royal blue. I used teal, Cheryl used light blue, and the lady next to me used green. Then we stenciled patterns with a doily and added texture with white paint.

Next, we add a glaze of color over everything. Cheryl used pink. Me? well, I had a problem with glazing... mine is more spotted than glazed. Julie had issues with mine... she likes her backgrounds more muted so that it won't distract from the girl... okay, I admit, I had issues with my background at this point too.

Now we redo the doily stenciling, add stamps and cover all with more white for texture... in my case, make that LOTS of white to cover up my mess, lol!

Even though all the ladies did their own thing, we all ended up with very similar looking backgrounds. I guess if everyone works in layers with the same 6 paint colors, everyone will eventually look the same.

Everyone added hair to their girl to make it look like them. I'm not delusional, I know that girl doesn't look like me, but she has my hair, lol!

When we got home, I did a little more work on the girls. I think it's from being in the She Art class, but I like my girls with words on them. I found a journal spot that I added to Cheryl's girl.

My girl got a nice sentiment stamp to break up the plain center of the doily. I also changed the huge white flower for a nicer smaller flower.

So what do you think of them? Cheryl likes them better than She Art girls. I think my style is going to fall somewhere in between the She Art and the Nutting girls.

Friends with Flair - She Art Girl

I put this up for the Unity Friday share. I love using Unity stamps for background patterns in mixed media art. This month Unity release a new Mixed Media Stamp kit just for me! Well, me along with the thousands of other Unity mixed media fans :oD

Here is my share for the day:

The thing about mixed media is that sometimes the stamps get buried under layers of paint or other stamps. Here are the Unity stamp sets that I used:

I really love the "It's All About Today" stamp. It goes perfectly with the quote, "She made Today Count."

She Art #3

Here's my last She Art girl... or at least the last one I have in progress. This one has a patterned paper background, which makes it more colorful than the other two. It was hard for my to work with such a colorful background.


I decided to make this one a brunette. I think the brown hair is easier to work with than the black and the blond.

I hope everyone is having a great weekend! Jim worked today... he'll be working Saturdays until the end of the year. Cheryl's girls had a game in Palm Springs... they lost again. Chris, Jena-girl and I went for a run. I'm excited! We did 4 miles in just over 31 minutes. I'm finally back in running shape after our trip followed by that pesky cold.

Tomorrow, I'll be competing with the Panasonic Team at the Engineering without Borders challenge. Wish us LUCK!

She Art #2

Here is another girl from the She Art class by Christy T. on mixed media canvases. This background is layered with tissue and stamped. I used my Unity Stamps: Distressed Dots, Worn Grid, and Time of your Life (my favoirte clock stamp). I LOVE how Unity stamps are perfect for mixed media projects!

Brown really isn't my color, but nothing else seemed to stand out from the background for her dress. I gave this girl a black bob, and I think she came out CUTE!


I have one more girl in the works! She's going to be very colorful! Wait until you see her!

She Art....

I'm taking a class from Christy T. on mixed media canvases. She calls her particular type of art, "She Art."

We started with canvases that we collaged, painted, stamped and distressed:

Then we get to the fun part... adding the girl. I think she came out cute!


I have one more canvas that I'm working on for week 1 of the class. The first week of the class has taken me 3 weeks to finish. It's good thing it's a self paced class!

Stay tuned for girl #2. It won't be today though... I have to go kill some ants!