Sharing the Schtuff

I have been wanting to do some sharing for a while now. File sharing that is. As I have been trying to build my collection of ephemera for collage, I have successfully nabbed a few treasures in the form of old books. I'm trying to stick to the advice of the Graphics Fairy, and keep to things with a copyright BEFORE 1923.

So if you would like an image for background or collage, I will be trying to share 2-3 each week. This is new for me, so please let me know if something is not working or I'm providing files too big, too small, or otherwise need improvement. If you do use them in an art piece, I'd love for you to share with me!! Of course a link is also appreciated if sharing is extended further.

You should be able to click on the image and pick up a link to Google Docs to download the large file size. Most should be actual size at 300 dpi. Again, if you have some sage advice for file sizes and sharing, I'm open to it!

Without further ado . . .

Sweet Country Boy

This was a photo I found with some things from my father-in-law. I suspect it might be my husband's grandfather. My father-in-law was from Tennesee so I assume this lad is as well. I love the coveralls.

Missing Number Game

This would make a great background piece for collage. It's from a book called, A Child's Book of Number. (No I didn't mis-type, it is Number, singular.) It has a lot of worksheet style pages and great illustrations as you will see in the next selection.

Pounds and Ounces

If you crop it down, the illustration is lovely on it's own:

I hope over time you'll find something you can use.

I'm off to do some final planning for my Oscar party tomorrow. Jammies and Jewels is the theme!

On a Roll

I finally got on a little art role the other night and technically finished the last 5 ATCs for Penny's swap at the Linen Shelf. I finally feel like this group is cohesive. The first 5 were all over the board. I'm thinking about redoing 4 of them so the set looks more like a whole. Now the set will get broken up in the swap, so this is not totally necessary. Am I being conscientious . . . or just a freak? How about a conscientious freak? Well unless I can make time tomorrow and pump them out, I'll just have to make do.

Now they do jive with one previous candidate:

But the others are all over the map in terms of style:

While I figure things out, DS is back from his Florida school trip adventure. He fared just fine without Mom for 5 days, but it was fun to dote on him today. Tomorrow I'll return to my commandeering maternal self I'm sure.

It's late, and I'm the last one up. Good night!

More ATCs for Spring

Another rainy weekend as my family wonders, "where has Mom gone?". Yes I'm holed up in my tiny closet office attempting to do "ART". It is sounding a little pretentious, I'll admit, but I'm really trying to project artistic qualities onto myself. It reminds me of the ballerina poster I had on my bedroom door as a girl, "Dream it, and you will become it". Normally I'm too cynical for sentimental word play, but now that I'm in my 40's I'm willing to try sentimentality. After all, my snarky insecurity got me no where so . . .

Those Spring themed ATCs for The Linen Shelf won't make themselves so here are my contributions for the day.

Our Lady Spring

I'm addicted to making whimsies every since I started with Tam's Art, Heart, and Healing class (sidebar). I love her so much, I asked my mom to get me her DVD for The Ultimate World of Whimsy classes (Thanks Mom!). I find her voice very relaxing to listen to, even if I'm not totally following the lesson.

I'm still fighting my instinct to finish everything with a pen outline. I tried not to do it here, I really did. It just doesn't feel finished without it. I'm fairly satisfied with her although I wish I could have made her less . . . mature looking. Well I guess Mother Nature has been around the block awhile. I also need to learn how to avoid the 'dead behind the eyes' look.

Vogel Post

Yeah, finally one that made me very happy. I had no plan at all when I started this. It had another background, I think sheet music, but I tried adhering the top layer of a cocktail napkin to it and the music was obliterated. I did like the effect of the napkin, and the colors were much more intense than I anticipated. I added a coat of white paint over the whole piece and then printed me up (intentional grammar choice) some birdies I found from the Graphics Fairy. I knew I wanted to incorporate a little sewing, so I tried every single ribbon I had floating around until I settled on this one. I think I need to follow this formula up with a few more along the same lines.

My kids are off for President's Week, so I'm not sure if I'll have more time to art play this week, or less. My 13 year old is across the country on a science trip with his school. I am excited for him, but missing him a lot already. He had to get up at 3am to be at the airport at 4:20am. For once, he jumped out of bed and was enthusiastic to start his adventure. I had to run out and buy him new shoes for his trip. Since he wasn't with me, I bought 2 sizes for him to try on. He needed the bigger pair – his first official Men's size shoe. Unbelievable.

Well I do have some plans for the Schtuff blog, but since I often don't get things into action as soon as I like, I'll just let them appear on their own when ready.

Hope everyone enjoys a creative Sunday tomorrow! Cheers!

Working on Spring ATCs

Finished a big project at my kid's school this week. To celebrate getting a huge weight off of my shoulders, I holed up in my closet office today. I didn't achieve total satisfaction with my efforts, but it all goes toward improving over time. Right? So here we go, my first 3 ATCs for a swap at the Linen Shelf.

February Collage Challenge

Have I really not posted since November?? I knew it had been a while but . . . that's just embarrassing.

Well I just wanted to post my completed February Collage Challenge from over at Green Paper. I actually completed the January Challenge and posted on Flickr, but I wasn't in time to submit it. Thank goodness dear husband took the kids to the movies tonight and I got some work done, and some "play" done.

I tried a couple of new materials today that caused a few issues. The first was a paper, new to me, which I initially printed the images out on. It's a luster finish from Inkpress. I do like the paper, but for me, this was not a good application.  Some lines printed out where it looked like one of the inks "skipped" every inch or so and I couldn't get any chalk, or charcoal to apply to the images. I also invested in some Golden Soft Gel. It was "goopier" than my matte medium I'm used to. Not quite my style, at least for collage.

I was very happy to find my Chapter text titled "Where's Terry?". I love little stories with my collages and I like to think there was an incorrigible family member missing on picture day. Hmmm, what is he up to now? That Terry, always late!

I was not so happy when I finished (or thought I had finished) only to discover I had completely covered up one of the elements (the botanical image). I managed to cut out a few sprigs and add it back in, but you would never know the image originally covered 2/3rds of the background! One day I WILL NOT start gluing until I have it ALL complete. That day is not today!