Thursday Theme: Schnippy Schnappy

Bunch of small projects this time, and a really short post because I'm exhausted.  While we were in Germany, Mr. Pocket's youngest uncle showed us (and let us taste) his homemade schnapps, and then explained that it's not that hard to do.  No need to set up a still, you just use fruit and sugar and store-bought clear grain alcohol that's not too strong.  So with the abundance of delicious Summer fruit around, we've been experimenting with different flavors, and it's been a delicious experience.  But of course, we need some way to tell all the bottles apart.  So I've been making little tags as labels.  Here's the tour of the fruits of our labors... :)

 

Strawberry on the left, and red currant on the right.  Both fruits from my mother-in-law's garden.

Wild raspberry... mmm...

 

Blackberry, made with blackberries from a local farm stand.

More of some of the same flavors - red currant, wild raspberry, and blackberry - portioned out for my parents.

For flavors that aren't ready yet:  peach, plum, and more strawberry.

Thursday Theme: Close Encounters

Wow, has it really been almost a month?  Time flies.  Like a spaceship.  And unlike most times when I miss Thursday posts because I don't have anything to post, this time I haven't posted because I've been beset by UFOs.  UnFinished Objects. 

See, I've started several projects and haven't finished them.  Until this week, I'd finished one project, and it's a contest entry.  So I'll just show you the UFOs that have been hovering over my head, and hopefully that'll kickstart me to get them finished.

I may have shown part of this project before, but it's getting along.  I still need to draw the vines around the rose window, and paint the rest of the vines. 

 

This one will remain unfinished.  I have to start over, because I didn't really think through the logistics of putting it all together.  I'll share what it is when I'm done re-doing it.  I think it's going to be cool, though :)

 

These are made with leftovers from a first attempt at my contest entry that I mentioned above.  RWBY is a new original animated webseries from RoosterTeeth Productions.  It's also my new favorite thing in the world!  You should check it out, right here:  RWBY, created by Monty Oum.  It'll load the most recent episode first, so scroll down slightly to find the full selection of episodes and start with episode one, or even better, start with the Red trailer and work your way through White, Black, and Yellow before starting the series.  And if you want to see it, here's my poster contest entry:  ta-daa!

And this one is going to be a gift.  If I ever get it finished.  This, too, is one of several attempts, all but this one being unsatisfactory false starts.  Here, though, I finally feel like I'm onto something.

 

This week I'm back on a roll, though.  Stay tuned, because I will gather my thoughts and soon post about the awesome workshops that Mom and I took from Finnabair this week.  Totally awesome.  Til then, though, I'm off to try and finish some of these projects...

Thursday Theme: Medieval Sauce

Wie geht's, Pocketeers?  That means what's up in German :)  Not surprisingly, my work recently has revolved around a particular theme of medieval awesomeness.  We'll be like Tenacious D and call it "sauce."  Medieval sauce.  And it's flavoring everything I work on.  Because being in Germany and seeing all the medieval sights at medieval sites (see what I did there?) brought back my taste for the medieval pretty strongly.  As soon as we got back, with my head bursting with ideas, I ordered a whole bunch of Michelle Ward's Gothic Collection stencils.  If you ever do anything with stencils or stamps ever, and you haven't seen them yet, click right there on the words "Gothic Collection" and take a look.  Go ahead.  I'll wait.

So they're gorgeous, right?  And super medieval, which is kind of the idea.  And perfect for many of my German-castle-and-monastery-inspired ideas.  And very fun to play with.  So here are a few things that I've been working on, with a hearty helping of the medieval sauce.

This panel was the result of me playing with the stencils applied one after the other in layers with heavy body gesso.  



I had so much fun with the layered panel that I decided to do little ones, with a coordinating shadow box.

And this is how they look now.  Still not finished, the moss isn't secured, there will be more in the shadow box, but I liked the layers of color.

Closeup of the treatment on the textured ones.

I went to experiment with some offprints that I did with the gesso-y stencils from those two projects onto cardstock, and had some misfires.  But those misfires led me to end up doing this:

Regular gesso and homemade ink spray using a Distress Ink reinker, on watercolor paper.

 

I loved playing with the sprays and letting them run all over the paper and between the gessoed areas and over the gesso and then wiping it off the gesso and seeing the reverse-windows I ended up with.  So these experiments are now destined to become individual paintings for our bedroom.  But first, they need some detail.  Remember this pic from last week?

I love the vines painted around the arch.  So I copied that style and cross-referenced it with some motifs in an old medieval manuscripts textbook of mine, and tested it out a bit, and then bit the bullet and went for it:

Detail painting is hard!  I have trouble making accurate brushstrokes, even with a tiny brush.

 

 

So far I've only done one side of one window.  But all three windows will be surrounded by the time I'm finished.  I want to add some shade and highlight to the vines as well.  But at this stage I'm pleased with how they're coming out.  I'm hoping that when they're finished and trimmed up, I'll have something that will remind me of our time in Germany but with my own personal seasoning.  Some modern seasoning in the medieval sauce.  

Thursday Theme: Deutschland!

Wow, did I lose track of the weeks or what?  We've been surprisingly busy since getting back from vacation in Germany, with family visiting from Germany (yes, you read that right) and trying to get settled back in.  But I haven't forgotten the blog, or you.  And I realized finally that it's Thursday, which means it's time for a theme!  Until last night I hadn't done much art in the last few weeks, but even though I now have some pieces that relate to each other that I could show, I'll hold on to those and instead show you some of the inspiring sights I saw in Germany.  It's a beautiful place, and I saw stuff all over that inspired me, from the landscape to the wildflowers to the castles to the floor tiles.  So here we go.  I'll mostly let the photos speak for themselves.

 

(This is the view from my first castle.  Real castle!  The next few photos are from there.)

(There happened to be an equestrian tournament in town while we were there, in the park on the grounds of a palace.  Sweet!)

(This castle just happens to be chillin' in the middle of the park.)

(These next few pictures are from the monastery where The Name of the Rose was filmed.  Awesome!)

(Germania says:  "Come at me, bro!")

(We spent a weekend in a castle hotel as a wedding gift from the family.  Best thing ever!  The castle ruins were amazing and overrun by nature.)

(These last pictures are from the cathedral in Mainz.)

It was an amazing trip, and this is only a tiny few of the photos we took.  But they're a decent sampling of settings and patterns that got my creative mind going, so maybe they'll do the same for you.  Bis später!  (See you later!)

Thursday Theme: Background Check

More backgrounds for my tagebuch! I've done some on Kraft paper tags now, too. More efficient photos this time - the second photo is the same tags as the first photo, but flipped over. Same techniques as last week, but with some stamps this week.

Sunshine on a Cloudy Day

It's gloomy outside, but I'm in a pretty good mood anyway. Two years ago, I married my best friend, the most handsome and sweet man in the world. It was a beautiful day and we were the absolute cliche of the blissful couple. So on this gloomy day, I gave him this. The more I look at it, the more I see things I could've done better, but I made it with love and he likes it so that's all that matters. In a way, I guess an imperfect canvas is like a marriage; there are always things you could do better but if you live with love and at the end of the day you're happy together, you're doing pretty well.

Thursday Theme: Background Check

I'm back with a new theme this week!  All week I've been working on incomplete projects.  Not finishing ones that are already around, mind you, but on creating intentionally incomplete projects.  See, Mr. Pocket and I are visiting his family in Germany soon, and since it will be my first trip to Germany, I wanted to keep some kind of travel journal.  And then I got to thinking about the German word for diary or journal, which is Tagbuch, or day book.  And I thought hey, that has "tag" in it.  I'll journal on tags!  But of course I can't just journal on plain, blank tags, and I don't want to have to bring a lot of supplies and start each tag from scratch, so I'm working on a big batch of tag backgrounds to take with me.  I'm doing both sides of each tag so that there's not a front side and a messy back side.  Here's what I've got so far:

This last one is the one I'm least pleased with.  If I make enough backgrounds, I might not use this one.

 

For all of these, I've used Distress Inks, Perfect Pearls Mist, Adirondack Paint Dabber, and Michelle Ward stencils.  More to come!  I need lots of 'em.