A Note and A Tweet

Recently, I posted a letter I wrote to my house. That post was inspired by Shimelle's wonderful journaling class. Here's two other forms of correspondence, inspired by that same prompt.
First, a note I'd like to leave under my daughter's pillow:

If I was on twitter (which I'm not), I would tweet this to my son (who will be getting his driver's permit this week):

It reads: "Dear boy, how can you possible be old enough to drive?"
Are you more likely to write a letter, a note or a tweet?

Haute Couture

The Gingersnap Creations Challenge Blog is one of my favorite places because of the way they run their challenges.  Each month has a theme, and they start the month with a theme-based challenge.  Later in the month, they run a supply-based challenge, a color-based challenge and a random challenge.  As a Guest Artist, I will be submitting artwork for each challenge, and I invite you to join me!  Each of the challenges is open for a full month, so there's lots of times for inspiration to strike, but, with a new challenge going up weekly, it also feels like there's something fresh going on.
This month's theme is sewing, and the first theme-based challenge is "Haute Couture" or high fashion.  I made this art journal page, featuring a scraped, painted background and one of my favorite fashion images.  The journaling reads "Antlers are all the rage on the runways this year."  Do you follow fashion? I have to admit that I love the photography and model aspect of fashion more than the clothing aspect. But my biggest confession is that I love all those reality TV shows that have to do with fashion:  Project Runway; The Fashion Show; America's Next Top Model.  Through Project Runway, I discovered a very funny fashion blog run by two Gay men named Tom and Lorenzo. Their blog reviews all kinds of fashion and a fair number of TV shows.  It's definitely on my google reader.

All dressed up . . .

and ready to create!  In case you missed this announcement, I'm thrilled to let you know that I'm a Guest Artist this month at Gingersnap Creations! The theme for the month is "sewing," so get ready for lots of fashionable art from me this month.

Best Halloween Party Ever

Shimelle challenged us to use a mad-lib or fill-in-the-blank template for journaling.  I used one from Friday's class lesson to compose this description of a Halloween party from long ago:

"I wish I could go back to a time when I would really dress up for costume parties.  A time like the night Paul and I dressed up as Frankenstein and the Bride of Frankenstein. It made me feel all hip and cool, like we could even win the costume competition. We didn't (but it didn't really matter). That same night, we danced and drank until the bar closed down, and they kicked us all out. Everyone said it was the best party ever! I know I thought the fun would never end. There was never another Halloween party like that again!"


Our Halloweens have been much quieter since then.  There were many years of taking the kids trick-or-treating (lots of fun, but in a different way).  The pendulum may be swinging back. This year I'm dressing up as a Gypsy (complete with Tarot cards to do readings) and Paul is dressing as a Vegetarian Vampire (complete with a theme drink - Bloody Mary's), and we're off to a friend's party in a bit.  Will have to report on the party later . . . 


How was your Halloween?

"Dear House"

The writing expert featured in Shimelle's new class suggested writing a letter to an inanimate object. I wrote the following letter to my house.
Dear House,
Are you built on some mysterious spot that causes strange weather phenomena to occur within your walls?  Are there small volcanoes which erupt in the floor spewing debris about for me to clean up? Do small geysers exist in the children's dressers causing clothes to gush out and overflow the drawers, cascading to the floor?  Are there tsunami winds which blow papers all over the counters or small tornadoes knocking every remote, telephone and adapter onto the floor?
How else do you explain the mess which greets me each morning? I know I tied you up yesterday!
Regards,
Mortgage Owner

Two out of three ain't bad

Question:  So, Ms. Ontiveros, we know that you are a full time law professor and spend quality time with your family. Yet you continually amaze us with the amount of beautiful art you manage to produce. Can you share some tips with your readers on how you manage to get it all done?
Answer:  Well, the truth of the matter is that I don't. . . at least not right now.  Usually I am able to manage all three areas of my life by staying organized, setting reasonable limits and staying in constant motion. Currently, the time I'm devoting to art and kids' activities are both a bit out of control, and my work is suffering a bit. . . not the teaching, but I truly need to start devoting more time to my academic writing.  A good friend once told me "Whatever truly needs to get done, will get done." And I've found that to be so true!  Right now, I just keep telling myself that "two out of three ain't bad."


From a design perspective, I created this piece in the same way I did the bird piece from a few days ago ("Rediscovering the Joy of Flight). It involves stencils and watercoloring with spray inks. This one has a more symmetrical composition, although it's not quite symmetrical, which I think gives it more visual interest.  I used numerical journaling, instead of words, based on a prompt from Shimelle's class.  I think it adds to the interest and mystery of the piece. Truthfully, it's one of my all time favorites.
I designed another art journal page using the principle of symmetry and based on a grid.  I filled each grid with a time of the day and a letter which represents what I'm doing at the time of the day, a bit of written journaling, some corrugated paper and a piece from a cigar band.  The journaling prompt came from Shimelle's class and the design from Dina's class.  Although I don't love this page, it was fun to make and I learned from doing it.  I'm sure I'll return to the design idea in the future.  Here it is:

I don't use symmetrical designs often.  My style runs much more to the asymmetrical, which I balance using other design principles. What about you?  Symmetrical or asymetrical?

Fall Challenges: Masks, Colors and Gothic Grannies

Taking a short break from posting of art journal pages to post a few entries to challenges.  Stampotique's current challenge is to create something scary using Stampotique stamps only.  So, I made this scary cute tag with their "devilish" stamp.
Like the technique? It's Tim Holtz's extreme masking, which happens to be this week's Compendium of Curiosities challenge over at Linda's Studio L3 blog.  Here's another tag with the same technique:

Like the colors? They just happen to be pumpkin, eggplant and avocado, which are the colors for this month's color challenge over at the Gingerstamp Creations blog!
Speaking of Gingerstamp, and because I really can't get completely away from art journaling these days, here's one more entry for their "Gothic Elements" challenge, which closes on Halloween. I feel a little bad that I've always thought my Great Grandmother looks downright scary in the pictures I have of her.  But I can't help it.  I do!

Do you only have nice, sweet looking relatives? Or do you have gothic grannies in your family tree, too?