Project Life- March

At last I finished my March PL. It was my little one's second birthday.Along with that special occasion I've added pictures from our usual lives.  

 

 My six year old is a great helper at home. He loves to help me with household chores, especially when he is bored:) One weekend he was helping me with the laundry. I also added my She Art girl on this page.

 We celebrated Siddy's 2nd birthday on the 12th. I made chocolate cupcakes for them.

 These pictures are a favorite of mine.

I just had to take a picture of this. Ashish helping me to make dinner. The children love to play with flour and dough and when he had to do it for real he was so happy. The last picture is from an online class that I took  in March. Will post more on that soon.   

Thank you for checking

SusaN

Sunday Sketches

I did one more coptic stitch book. This was made out of Strathmore drawing paper. I have made this as my daily nature sketchbook and last week started sketching in them.
Here are the sketches I did from last Tuesday. Most of the sketches were not completed on the same day. It is impossible for me to work like that with my kids and the chores that I've to finish here.I come back to them whenever I can and try to finish them.

 Bluebirds

 By the time I started outlining the feathers my black pens seemed to have stopped working.

These Magnolias were inspired from a Pinterest tutorial. 

Not happy with the barn painting. Practice, practice and more practice.

This is another sketch that I saw on Pinterest.

 I hope I can at least sketch 3 to 5 days in the coming weeks.

 SusaN 

Linking this post to Sunday Sketches

Art for me is like Breathing

Do you remember this Gelli plate background?

Well, I finally did a collage on it.    

The quote is so real in my life: "Art for me is like breathing".  I do not know the source of this very meaningful line but for me everyday I need some kind of art, be it playing with paint, sketching, crafting with kids something or the other. Each day I feel so content when I'm able to spend some amount of time in creative play.

 
This is another yummy background that I created this week. Lot of texture and paint. The page once completed reminded me of a textured wall that existed a long, long time ago.

A close-up of both the sides:

Have a wonderful weekend everyone
Love
SusaN

Linking this page to PPF and Art Journal Everyday

Thankfulness

My Art Journal page for this week is all about Gratitude.  I am so thankful for all that the Almighty has blessed me with: my family, health, art and so many more.

I know that all creative souls get stuck at some point in their creative pursuits. This page for me was one such. How do you deal with such mental blocks? Frustration, is one bad thing that I have to struggle with.

I loved this background page but had a very tough time to come up with a main element. I tried painting, collage pictures and at one point I even thought of tearing this whole page. Then, BINGO, I  came up with that border pattern and loved how it merged with the background. The next thing that came to my mind was this word, THANKFUL. This page in real is much more vibrant than how you see in this picture and I love it.

Usually, I start a page with a very free mind. I know I lost that free creative spirit  here. But this page led me to think of what creating is for me, how I feel about art. I am not after perfection but when I create I am very particular that the finished piece should be close to my heart. When I am unable to attain that I feel frustrated, disappointed...Still I don't stop there, I try again and again.  Is this called as passion for art, an intense love for what you are doing? I'm not sure. This process led me to think about why I spend so much time creating. Art is expensive, it is not a business for me [at least not yet], still why do I love colors and patterns?

Just felt like writing my thoughts here. If anyone cared to read this and want to share your experience please do. It is always nice to know that there are like-minded people around.  

I wanted to share one more art related idea here.
How do you store scraps, odd tickets and cards, things that you eventually incorporate in your art page?

I had a major issue of organizing my scrap pieces, and when the time came to create I never got the right paper and stuff seemed to just pile up.

Recently, I found a way to sort them. I bought a 8 by 10 size drawing book from Blick and started gluing my scraps on its pages. Now I have a collage/scrap book to browse through and whenever I need any small piece I only have to go through this book. The book's pages are getting filled and thankfully I now don't have to tuck stickers, postal stamps and such here and there and then forget about them.

Here are a couple of pages from my book:

 Can you see those two little shells? I got them from India when we visited the beach.

A lovely wedding invitation envelope and card of one of my cousins, postal stamps, a fall leaf...  .

Sorry this post got really long. But thought I had to share this idea with my blogger friends.
Wishing everyone a happy and peaceful weekend
SusaN

Linking this page to PPF and Art Journal Everyday

Spring Again

I made this page for "Take the Challenge" hosted by Mou Saha at designmemorycraft.typepad.com .

This month's challenge is about making something new from something used or old. 

I had this old book with me for a long time. Now I have finally decided to make it useful. I have converted it into an altered journal. 

This page was created using gesso as the base and I drew the trees and grass on it to create some texture. 

Next I used watercolor crayons for the background. After it was blended, I used Faber Castell Big Brush leaf green, metallic gelato in green, Aquarelle watercolor pencil and Pastel Pencil from the Mix and Match Mixed Media Sampler pack to color over the branches and grass. The leaves on the trees were done using the rich metallic green gelato. 

 After blending all that well, I did some random stamping of more spring elements. Finally the page was completed with the circle lettered stickers.

I think I am so much in love with this season. Somehow, my art gets steered to all things bright and cheerful.
Thank you
SusaN