Wire Basket

I apologize, yet again, for being away so long. But I'm so glad I'm posting to the blog today.

I hope Thanksgiving was great for all of you who observe it. Ours was excellent ... delicious food and no major kitchen mishaps--just one coffee spilling incident!

I usually show paintings or assemblage art, but today I'm showing you my latest basket created from jewelry wire.

I formed the basket around a vintage crock, sort of like a casserole, hence the "handles" on each side. I ended up having to break the crock in order to remove the basket. I really didn't want to break it, but it was the only way that I could remove the basket.

I'm making a lid for the basket, which I'll post later. Now all I have left of the crock/casserole is the lid that I'm using to make the wire lid for the basket.

This is all I have for now. I hope I'm not away from the blog for too long before posting again!

All the best,
Deb

Photography Fun

Hi again ... it's me!

This post is mostly about photography. Did you know that even if you might not be able to afford Photoshop, you can use Microsoft Paint to "photoshop" your photos, create art, and do other cool things?

I recently took a photo of myself for a friend. She needed it for a school project since I'm the historical subject of the project. I used one of my computer programs to soften the look of the photo (Windows 8 comes with a good photo program for such things), but it looked like something was in my nose! Ugh.

So ... I opened the photo in Windows Paint and did a "photoshop" on the inside of the nostril. I know I need a lot more practice, but here's how it turned out:

You'll see in the left nostril that there's some grayish shading. That was from using Paint. Believe me ... it looks a lot better than it did originally. By the way, I'm not very photogenic, but this was the best photo I could take after about 30 tries! Also, I have trouble smiling for the camera!

 

 

On another note ... here's a nice photo that I took of a sunflower at a local garden show. There's really nothing that I would want to change, though.

 

 

On a final note ... I have a neighbor/friend who is a professional photographer. He took this photo of my ring for the project I mentioned above (a gift from my grandmother a very long time ago):

 

 

Ray can take any type of photo, and he does events like weddings. Here's his information if you want a great photographer:

 

8one8studios

Raymond Clarke, Photographer

Creative Personal Art

Custom Portraiture

Ultra Premium Finishes

Consultation/Shoots/Sales

Strictly by Appointment

Email: rcsnaps@yahoo.com

Phone: 215-514-8498

 

It's been very nice chatting with you. I'll be back before too long!

 

Deb





MORE MELTED WAX ART

Hi, my blogging friends ...

I'm back again. I try to post at least once a month or more often. I hope I haven't been away longer than that!

My girlfriend from California told me about an art demonstration she saw where the artist rubbed a candle over his art. It planted a seed in me, so much so that I had to try it.

You just rub a white candle over your art on your substrate (as much as you choose) and then blow the surface with a hairdryer or a heat gun. The wax melts, covering the surface, and it looks cool. You can even shine the wax surface with a soft cloth. It really looks good.

Then ... I decided to buy a used Ranger melting pot through http://www.ebay.com so I could do my own wax melting. It has a nonstick surface that makes it easy to clean up. Here's what it looks like:

I show three crayons inside of the pot because I used mostly melted crayons to create the following piece, which I refer to as an experiment:

I used aluminum foil to create the sections and then I poured different color melted crayon wax into the sections. For the white part surrounding the circle in the middle, I melted plain white candles. I also added glitter to the melted wax. You just have to be careful how you pour your melted wax so it ends up where you want it to go. If not, you can clean up the mess without too much trouble!

This is all I have for today, except for the fact that I'm attending my first Meetup for artists tonight. It's called the Creative Collective for Artists and Artisans and it's located in Central New Jersey.

All the best to you!

Deb

Garden ... Canvas ... Maybe More

HI MY BLOGSTERS,

I'M BACK AGAIN. SORRY I WAS GONE SO LONG. LIFE JUST GETS IN THE WAY.

HERE'S THE LATEST CANVAS I JUST FINISHED. I CALL IT REFLECTION.

I DID THE CANVAS WITH ACRYLIC PAINTS AND ACRYLIC MARKERS. IT TOOK ME A FEW WEEKS TO DECIDE HOW TO FINISH IT!

 THE ABOVE TWO PICS ARE MY MARIGOLD GARDEN.

THIS IS MY LOVELY LAVENDER PLANT. IT'S ON ITS THIRD YEAR OF BLOOMING. I'VE BEEN MAKING LAVENDER LEMONADE WITH IT. DELICIOUS!

 

GUESS THAT'S ALL I HAVE FOR NOW. I WISH I WOULD GET SOME COMMENTS FROM YOU WONDERFUL PEOPLE, BUT I GUESS YOU'RE TOO BUSY!

 

SO ... UNTIL NEXT TIME ... TATA AND KEEP CREATING!

 

DEB



Origami Lotus Flower

Hi again.

My good friend showed me how to create an origami lotus flower, so here it is:
 
 

You can learn how to create one yourself by going to

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfBD8djzDlo.

 

Below is a photo I took of a lotus (or water lily) at a local park called Grounds for Sculpture in Hamilton, NJ. You can easily find out about Grounds for Sculpture by doing a search on the Web. Thought it would be good to include this photo with the origami lotus.

See you later!

Deb

Abstract Canvas and Can Man

Hi everybody,

Just a quickie to show you my latest canvas.

I previously created something on this canvas, but I never liked it, so I took it apart, covered it with gesso, and created something new. I just call it Abstract on Canvas.

 

 

I learned a neat trick from a dear friend. You rub your canvas with a white candle to give it an interesting look. But I took it a step further: I blew the wax with a hair dryer and melted it so it covered the entire surface. Then, as I learned from a YouTube video, I polished it with a soft cloth so it has a nice shine.

 

 

 

Also, below is the Tin Can Man. My friend has it in her cabin in Nova Scotia and she sent me a photo of it. It was made entirely from cans and bottle caps. Good idea, no?

 

 

 

 

That's all I have for now ... see you again soon!

 

 

Deb

Fun and Silly Art Assemblage

Hey out here ... Just want to show you a fun assemblage piece that I created recently.

Her name is Mrs. Potato Masher Head (or should it be Ms.?).

 

 

I save all kinds of "junk" to make something cute or whacky (like this) when the mood strikes.

 

I had to buy a new potato masher, so I used the old one here. The head is made from one of my husband's white socks. The hair is yarn glued on. I made the rose in her hair from a piece of paper towel. And she's wearing a pair of earrings that I don't wear anymore. I added glitter to the handle and base to make it look fancy. I think you get the picture.

 

 

I hope you've enjoyed it!

 

 

Back soon ... Deb

18 x 24 Canvas as Emotional Dumping Ground

Hi all ...

This is my latest canvas. I needed to express some heavy emotions in my art. What better way to do it than with creating an abstract piece.

Here it is. I call it Emotional Inferno.

Materials used: gesso, acrylic paints, acrylic paint markers (love them!), gold leaf bits pressed all around the sides (the inferno), and Plaid acrylic sealer spray (only use outside since breathing it in is toxic!)

I'd like to know what you think, but people seem to have problems leaving me comments. If you want to comment on any of my blogs, my email address is deborahapierro@comcast.net.

NOW I DIGRESS ...

I write for a wonderful magazine called i.d.e.a.l. Magazine. It is a quarterly magazine about and for promoting disabled people to be seen as successful, productive members of society. Until you read the magazine, you won't believe all of the wonderful people who have exceeded all expectations despite having suffered serious disabilities, amputations, and serious diseases that challenge them every day ... but they press on to do whatever it takes and become all that they can be, all the while encouraging other people with their words of wisdom that come from their experiences.

Please check out the website, www.itsanidealworld.com/ to see what the magazine is about and to subscribe. You can keep it for yourself, share it, or give it as a gift to someone who might need encouragement! You won't be sorry. Owner/Publisher Zarifa Roberson travels the country to create awareness and she deserves an expanding readership! Thanks in advance.

I'll see you next time when I'll be showing you a crazy piece of assemblage art that I'm almost finished with!

Peace and love ... Deb

Improved Clown Assemblage ... and Latest Canvas

Hello my blog friends!

I'm back for a short time to show you the improved clown assemblage that I finished recently. It used to have blue paper clip arms; now it has better arms, white gloves, and bigger feet!

Here's what it used to look like:

Here's what it looks like now--my friend said it is a thousand times better!

 

 

And this is my latest canvas. My husband said to call it Metallic Wonder, so that's what I call  it. It has a lot of metallic acrylic paint in the first layer (gold, silver, copper) and in the grid on the middle right. The snake-like things are coils of wire that I glued on. (For some reason, I can't make the photo larger, though.)

I hope you like it.

Enjoy your day!

Deb

NEW CANVAS ... GARDENS ... WHAT ELSE?

HI BLOGSTERS,

I'M BACK AGAIN WITH A NEW CANVAS THAT I CALL REFLECTION.

I DID THIS CANVAS USING ACRYLIC PAINTS AND ACRYLIC MARKERS. IT TOOK ME A FEW WEEKS TO FIGURE OUT HOW TO FINISH IT!

 THESE TWO PHOTOS ARE OF MY MARIGOLD GARDEN.

THIS IS MY LAVENDER PLANT, GOING ON THREE YEARS OF BLOOMING. I'VE BEEN MAKING LAVENDER LEMONDADE AND IT IS REALLY DELICIOUS. YOU CAN GET THE RECIPE FROM DOING A WEB SEARCH.


WELL, GUESS THAT'S ALL FOR NOW. I WISH SOME OF YOU WOULD COMMENT OR ASK QUESTIONS. IT WOULD REALLY BE GREAT FUN!

TATA ... DEB

BACK AGAIN ... GONE TOO LONG ... DOODLE ART AND MORE

Wow ... I've been gone for about a month. I just had a lot of things going on and some distractions, like getting a new computer and getting used to the new operating system--plus navigating things from my old computer to the new one. It's an all-in-one desktop computer. I really love it. The screen is 23" ... huge!

I  have a canvas in the works, but I only have my first layer on it. I have to come up with an idea of what to do next, but sometimes it is slow in coming. I'll show it to you when it's finished.

In the meantime, a good way to keep your hand in the creative game is to doodle. You never know where your doodle art will lead, like this page in my art journal:

 

 

I had just taken a workshop on lettering from Julie Fei-Fan Balzer (balzerdesigns.com). I did the letters first, then connected them in alphabetical order. Then I colored it with gel pens and Sharpies. I started it on my husband's birthday, as you can see. It was a lot of fun, as most of my unplanned stuff usually is.

 

I have another piece of doodle art to show you, but I can' figure out how to load new photos using my digital camera ... so it will have to wait for now.

 

There is something very new ... I have seven pieces of my art (like shadow boxes, etc.) in a gift shop for sale. The store is in Vineland, New Jersey and is called Robin Hope Designs Presents: The Sky's The Limit. It's on Landis Avenue in the Amish Market. You can find Robin on Facebook. It's like a little mall. So that's exciting for me!

 

Now, I just have to figure out how to put a watermark on my photos to show ownership of the art. I'm trusting that readers will respect the fact that I'm the creator of the art on this blog. And I thank you for that!

 

Until next time ... have an artful adventure!

 

Deb

 

 

 

 



Oops ... I lost my last post: "Looking Out" canvas!

Dear bloggers ... I accidentally overwrote my previous post with this canvas, so I'm re-posting it.

Now I'll tell you how I created it: I made the girl/woman using the Microsoft Paint program. The rest of the piece was created using gesso, newspaper, various acrylic paints, a toilet paper roll, an empty tape dispenser roll, a swirl stamp, and acrylic sealing spray.

Ta-ta for now!

Deb

: < )

Doodle Art & One More Thing

Hi bloggers.

This is a short post to show you some doodle art I completed recently, and a birthday card that I made for my father-in-law for his birthday.

When you're in between projects, it's good to stay in the art game by doodling. I started this doodle weeks ago and finished it this weekend. It was fun to do. I colored it with mostly gel pens and used a black Sharpie for the large black sections. I might frame it in a clear frame or just insert it into one of my art portfolios.

 This is the birthday card for Papa Pierro. It is embellished with pieces cut out of tissue boxes, the gold foil from a sardine can, scrap paper, and small stickers. Mixed media artists find uses for things that most people put out in the trash!

Well, that's all for now. I wish you much peace, hope & love!

Deb : < )

Where is my muse?

Hi blog viewers--I'm back after not posting for what seems to be a long time.

I've been going through a dry period in which I haven't created much art. Guess I have just had too many other things on my mind and they're interfering with my creative process.

I'm still reading other artists' blogs, watching artists' videos on their blogs and YouTube, and reading art stuff.

One kind of artsy thing that I've been doing is playing around with a program on Windows called Paint. What you create here is saved as a bitmap file (bmp extension after file name). Do you ever play with Paint?

Below are what I've created on Paint. You have to keep scrolling down since I haven't figured out a way to crop the pages so they're smaller ...


 

 




 



 




 































I still haven't figured out how to make the images fill the page. Check out Paint if you have it on your computer. It's kind of fun, to me, and it keeps me creating in some way.

I hope you like my images!

See you later,
Deb

Modern Art

Hi everyone. I'm back!

I have an artist who has inspired me to create more modern looking art. Her name is Jane Davies at janedaviesstudios.com.

I finished this piece a few days ago and I'm very happy with it. I still haven't been able to think of a name for  it, though.

I applied gesso to a 14" x 18" canvas.

Then I painted on several acrylic paint colors: orange, bright metallic red, cobalt blue, and orchid.

Next I used a round piece of plastic that once had tape on it, turning it in the wet paint to make the circles.

Then I glued on two pieces of metallic paper that I cut and scrunched in my hands (using gel medium).

After that, I used a fork dipped in white acrylic paint to make the wavy lines across the painting.

I let the piece sit for a couple of days because I knew it needed more detail.

When I finally decided what to add, I did the zigzags with white paint and put dots of all the colors I used on the zigzags.

Then I flicked white paint over the entire painting to add a spattered look.

Finally, I used all of the same colors (except white) on the sides of the painting to give it a finished look.

Also, I applied mod podge to seal it.

I had a lot of fun creating this piece. In fact, I'm going to do more modern collages.

I'll  keep you posted!

WHAT SHOULD I NAME THIS PIECE? I NEED SOME  HELP!

Until next time, take care ... Deb

Art Journal Page and Clown Assemblage Art

Hi blog viewers,

I want you to know that I appreciate that you view my blogs even though you don't comment. But I wish someone would say something! That's enough of that for now.

I created this piece of assemblage art last week. It took me quite a while between painting, gluing, and drying time. Sorry about the change in font, but I just pasted this from some other document and I don't know how to change the font in blogger (yet). Anyway ... For his head, hair, nose, and shoes I used Crayola Model Magic, a modeling material that can be air dried.  I used recycled wooden pieces from an old shadow box that I bought in a thrift shop. I painted them with acrylic paint and covered everything--including the face, hair and shoes--with Mod Podge. And … I used super glue to adhere everything together, even to adhere the paper clips into their holes for the arms. For the hat, I glued a large sequin and a rubber whatchamacallit together and stuck a fake flower out of the top. I used markers to paint the face, and a piece of wire ribbon for the part of the costume that goes around the clown's neck. It was fun to make.

I may change the arms to pipe cleaners or something else. If I do, I'll
re-post the photo. The stand was something that I recycled from who-knows-what.



This is a page I recently did in my art journal, based on a garden I planted several years ago. There's acrylic paints on it, torn paper on it, a doily on it, and the photo of my garden on it. I thought the colors went really well together. As you can see, I call it "How did my garden grow?"

We had a few inches of snow last night. We're lucky that we didn't have the blizzard that Boston and other New England, USA areas got!

How is the weather where you live?

Til next time, see you soon--Deb

Who put the zen in zentangle?

Hello fellow (including women, of course) bloggers!

If you want to know more about zentangle, you can find a lot out by going to www.zentangle.com. Anyone can do it and it's relaxing and fun at the same time.

When I first wrote about zentangle art quite a few blogs ago, I showed it to be in a square-ish format, but a zentangle can be in any format you want it to be.

Here are the zentangles that I drew and colored, so far, this year.

I used mostly gel pens to create this zentangle. I think I used a couple of Sharpie markers as well.

For this zentangle, I did some stamping using acrylic paints with a wine cork and marker cap.

I also used gel pens and Sharpie pens. It's kind of different and not the usual kind of zentangle, but it was an experiment that I wanted to try. 

Do you like to do zentangle?

See you next time!

NEW YEAR--NEW MIXED MEDIA ART

Happy New Year to everyone out there!

Our holiday was very nice ... get-togethers with family and friends, my brother's wonderful Christmas Eve Seven Fishes extravaganza, my mother-in-law's Christmas lasagna, giving, and receiving. I hope yours was, too.

I have a 10 x 14 art journal that I experiment in. This is one of my most recent experiments. I got the idea from a Creative Jumpstart 2013 video through nathalies-studio.com. You have to sign up to be able to view the videos, which are free for the month of January--unless you want to send a donation.
I painted on the blue, then the red, then the green acrylic paint. I then outlined the fantasy flowers and their stems and leaves. I added a butterfly, the clouds, the stenciled circles, and the writing, plus some gold glitter paint flecks and some silver metallic sponged onto the clouds. I know the flowers are strange, but they are fantasy flowers!



Have you heard about using the end of a bunch of celery for printing on paper?

Simply cut the end off of the bunch of celery and use it to create rose-like stampings.

I recently used a previous paper I stamped to make a birthday card for a good friend.

You just fold it in quarters and glue the inside edges so they stay together.

You'd be surprised how much fun it is to find embellishments to match!

You can even use these papers to wrap a small gift.

There are so many possibilities! 



Oh well, guess I'll have to say so long for now.

Have an artfully great day!

Deb