Art with Edie…Again!

I had an amazing day! I was able to guest-host on Edie’s show again today. Click here for the replay: Life By the Seat of my Pants – Positive Message STOP Sign. Edie also has a phenomenal blog with the same name: Life by the Seat of my Pants.

Today I demonstrated how to doodle using patterns inspired by Mother Nature. I started by explaining the 5 basic element families of shapes. Every shape is made from dots, circles, lines, curved lines and/or angled lines. This is instruction that comes from Mona Brookes’ book Art With Children. (For more information go to this link: Art Makes Kids Smart) Then, I started a doodle (in Zentangle style) on a 4-by-6 blank index card.  I shared a couple of objects from nature, a seashell and a whelk egg case on the show to show how patterns can be found in them. This inspired the spiral pattern and a repeated irregular rectangular pattern in the doodles I demonstrated on Edie’s show today. I then started a larger art pieces, a portrait with doodling around it.

Edie demonstrated creating a “You are AMAZING just the way you Are” sign as inspired by www.operationbeautiful .com that she plans to post on her neighborhood corner stop sign. The purpose of this Operation Beautiful campaign is to remind people how wonderful, beautiful and amazing they are by placing sticky notes and/or signs in conspicuous places that would grab people’s attentions. It is a fabulous idea; furthermore, it helps promote positive thinking. (Picture below shows the sign Edie made on the stop sign in her neighborhood.)

Sadly enough, too many of us put our own selves down daily with negative self-talk from the moment we get up and look in the mirror to start our daily routines. Instead of saying or thinking, “oh, gee! I look like “poop” this morning”; how about having a sticky note to remind us of how amazing, wonderful, beautiful and even sexy we are! Why not! Getting up in the morning would be a zillion times more fun if we greeted ourselves with “HEL-LO, sexy!” or “good morning  sunshine / bright eyes/beautiful!” I have a tickle in my heart just thinking about it. I love this idea Edie found and it has me thinking now of creative ways to bring positive attention to people. How about you, does this inspire some ideas? I would love to hear some feedback on this!

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Art Day with Edie

Today I had magnificent time with my friend Edie of Life by the Seat of my Pants.  I was a guest on her live on-line art show, Art by the Seat of my Pants and we had a fantastic time creating and teaching art today. I shared how to make the Gifts Of Love bags and Edie experimented using different media on Tyvek paper, which is the specialized water-resistant paper that is used for U.S. Post Service Priority Mail envelopes.  

Edie started her program by introducing me and my Gift Of Love campaign. She shared the Gift of Love I gave her and she did a great job explaining the premise of the campaign, which is to pay Love forward to others. Inside the Gift of Love is a memento of the art of the bag printed on card stock and a letter with an original poem in it that I wrote entitled, Gift of Love. I will make the Gift Of Love campaign directions and its corresponding letter available this weekend on my website, Hearts That Care.

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As we continued co-hosting Edie’s art show, I demonstrated how I did the backgrounds for these works of art. After doing 2 backgrounds, I set those aside to dry and started painting on one of my completed backgrounds to demonstrate how I conceptualize the images. I saw angel’s wings in this particular bag. Each bag is unique, but each bag will have at least one heart painted on it. The heart represents Love and Hearts That Care.  

Edie did the second half of the show, where she used various painting and coloring materials on the Tyvek envelope. She started by using Gesso on half of it. While the Gesso dried, she used Neocolor, Intkense, Distress Ink, Water Color Paint, Craft Paint and Acrylic Paint on the “naked” side. Each of these materials acted differently. The Tyvek seems to have a waxy coating and a really interesting texture. The material seems indestructible. You cannot tear it easily. Edie also found that the Tyvek is not porous enough for most glues. You cannot glue things easily to Tyvek. Be sure to visit Edie’s blog. I am looking forward to doing more art shows with Edie in the future. 

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