ICAD 2015

I have been having a lot of fun playing along with my ICAD friends at Daisy Yellow again this year.  For those who are unaware of ICAD, it stands for Index Card a Day and it runs from June 1 to July 31.  The idea is that a cheap and unimportant substrate should not impede your creativity and hush the inner critic that says your work is not good enough for better supplies.

Tammy Garcia is the Fairy Godartist behind ICAD and she comes up with lashings of juicy prompts tp be followed or not as the muse strikes you.  She also posts a list of weekly themes with the same direction. So the rules are:  No Rules.  Have fun and play along.  The group is kind, generous and encouraging and in all it is heaps of fun.

To begin we have a list of warm-ups to get the juices flowing.  This year there are 10 prompts.  Here are my warmups.

 Week 1  Theme:  Drawing, Doodling, Pens, Markers, Ink.

1 Chevron

2 Carnival

3 Draw a Map

4 Mailbox

5 Owl

6 Taxi

7 Draw a Periodic Table

Week 2  Theme:  Painting, Gouache, Watercolour, Acrylics, Watercolour Pencil.

8   Grapefruit and Cherry

9   Carrot and Lemon

10  Eggplant and Ginger 

11  Lime and Mango

12  Parsnip and Kiwi

13  Blueberry and Plum

14  Salt and Pepper

 Week 3  Theme:  Collage, Paper, Found Text, Magazine Clippings, Old Books, Lists.

15  Route 66

16  Greeting Card

17  Wabi Sabi

18  Tree House

19  Snow Globe

20  Colour Wheel

21  1970s

Week 4  Theme:  Wallpaper, Thread, Quilts, Abstract and Geometric patterns.  Neocolor, markers and ink.  

22 Psychedelic

23 Romantic

24  Geometric

25  Botanic or Organic

26  Exotic

27  Academic

28  Dramatic

Week 5  Theme:  Mark making tools, Stamps, stickers and Tape.

29  Iced Cream

30  Telephone

31  Trivia

32  The Weather

33  Mad Man or I Love Lucy

34  Flag Independence Day

35 Portrait

Week 6  Theme:  Use different colour pallette each day, any medium.

36  Backgammon

37  Chess or Checkers

38  Mah Jong

39  Bingo/ Monopoly

40  Yahtzee

41  Bridge or Rummy

42  Scrabble

Week 7  Theme:  Words, Typography, Found Text, Definitions, Poetry, Calligraphy.

43  Definition

44  Focus or Blur

45 Saturday Night Live

Album Cover

47 Fashion

48 Disco

49 Black and White

There are now only 12 days left of this years ICAD.  It has been heaps of fun and I will share the remaining cards when they are done.

Art Swaps.

I love to do art swaps and have been swapping ATCs and Post Cards for quite some time.  I find the swaps at various online sites and once I find them trustworthy I jump right in.  I may not be the greatest artist in any of the swaps but I have fun and my efforts seem to be accepted with some pleasure.  It is so lovely when the Art begins to drop into the letter box.

Currently I am a memeber also of The Australian Art Swap Group, which is new and growing fast.  The group is a very supportive and encourageing environment and it is getting quite challenging with new swaps being posted all the time.

There are several listed with still time to join and one finishing up.
The one finishing is themed  White on Black.  There were some beautiful entries and I think I got some real goodies. These are the ones I sent out  to my three partners.  I still had to cut them at this stage.

Pam's ATCs.

I received cards back from Louise, Linda and Lisa.  Here they are:

 Linda...left and Louise....right.  Also there a little surprise bonus from my Grandson who did a challenge in the youngsters group with a Blue theme.

This package of beauty was from Lisa.

Another challenge that really pushed my buttons and took me out of my comfort zone was one for Paper Dolls.  Oh well nothing to lose, In for a Penny or in for a Pound....what ever that means :)

This is my first ever attempt at making paper dolls.

The one I'm working on now is Pocket Letters hosted by the lovely Rachel.  Everybody got very excited about this and jumped right in.  Mine are still happening.  I am committed also to an ATC swap with the theme  Buttons and I need to get stuck in there.  Also I have two International Post Card Swaps coming soon which I always enjoy.

So I am very happy to back back in the worl of mes and creativity again.  Heres hoping I stay well and inspired to keep going.

I've been absent for a while.

I haven't been doing much/any art for some time as I got sick again.  My specialist weaned me off the steroids I had to take and I lasted only two weeks before I relapsed.  Thank goodness it was not as bad as the first time, but enough to return to a serious medication regimen which causes all sorts of other problems.  Oh well, there is always something.

I have recently signed up for a fun free course, hosted by Tammy Garcia at Daisy Yellow called Draw Your Words.  Much Fun and I will share my efforts here now.

Lesson 1  Alphabetise.

This exercise just encourages writing the alphabet continuously in various styles to fill an index card.

Lesson 2  Block Letters.

This involved making squares and the filling in the background to leave the letters as negative space.

Lesson 3  A Journal Page.

 Following a tutorial Tammy led us through the Purple Page.  The elements used were Collage, stamps and a quote.  I used a home made stamp and scraps of other works on watercolour paper for my collage.

Lesson 4  Doodled Block Letters.

This was heaps of fun.  After watching the video away I went having a ball.   The idea was to make coloured letters and then fill them with doodles.  I used all kinds of markers and pens for this.  Gelly rolls, gel pens, Posca paint pens, various markers.  Fun, fun!!

Lesson 5  The Yellow Page.

This was another journal page with a delicious background to create.  Once again paint, collage, stamps and I chose to scrape some textured elements to the background paint.  I liked the colours very much.

Lesson 6   Repeat and Stretch.

For this lesson we had to choose a word and write it out three timmes in different sized font.  After Tammy showed us how to make the word fit perfectly.  My background was made previously to use up excess paint from another project.  My word was Inspiration for that is what Tammy surely is.  I used FW Artists Acrylic Ink for the words and doodles with some white Posca Paint pen to embellish.

And that is where I am up to at the moment.  Looking forward to more lessons soon.

The Music Is You

It's home!!  Thank you all.
 All you wonderful artists who added their contributions, I thank you from the bottom of my heart.  I really did not expect this and I feel very overwhelmed.
 I made a little video, never done it before :)  Maybe if it doesn't work very well I will post photos like a proper blogger.  Once again thank you all and blessings to you.

New Year Projects.

This year I am going to try to restrict myself....meaning CONTROL myself to what I can comfortably manage.  I love doing swaps and following prompts.  I am a bit slow to work out what I want to do to depict the prompt, and so I get behind.

This year I plan to once again to do The Documented Life Project, Journal 52 with the lovely Chelle Stein and Prompt 60 with the wonderful Tammy Garcia at Daisy Yellow .

I will also be taking part in some Australian Art Swaps for ATCs with Louise Kirby as host and some Post Card Swaps.  My current Post card swap is Musings on Realities with Shannon Ganshorn...it is international.

Here are my first efforts for 2015.


For DLP  the first month theme is the Empty Page and Week 1 is Setting Goals.

 Week 1 Spread.

 Goals.

 Quote.

For Prompt 60 which is a prompt a day, but it is not neccessary to follow that as a time frame...at my leisure is the rule here.  So far:

 Title Page.

 Documenting papers used for first layer.

 Teeny Icon Mandala.

Collage in Green Book Style.