Painting with Plastic

When I take out my journal, I have no idea where creativity will take me.  This morning, as I pulled out the colors that spoke to me, I decided to paint with plastic. Yep, plastic!

Usually, I only choose 2 or 3 colors, but today 5 colors jumped out at me! Aren't they luscious?

I applied 5 big blobs of color to the right side of my spread

Then I took an old credit card and transfered some of the paint blobs to the left side of my spread.

Holding the card at about a 45 degree angle, I spread the paint in a random manner.

 I applied more blobs of  the same paint colors to my favorite palette - a small paper plate.  In addition, I added black and white and pulled out my plastic fork.  While the background dried, I studied the patterns to see what I could detect.

As I stared at the pages, the shape of a figure began to form, and the purple strokes reminded me of a keyboard.  I began applying paint with the handle of the fork.  First, the light green to highlight the arms, and  then, white and black to hightlight the keys.  I could see the faint beginnings of a face on the upper left.

I turned my attention to the right side of the spread.  I saw the makings of a hand on the lower right corner.  The yellow area looked like the top of a drum, and as I studied the page further, I saw the faint shape of two eyes and a head.  Continuing to use my fork handle, I applied more paint highlighting and shadowing the various shapes that I could see.  I added the curved black line behind my bongo player to draw the eye to the left and add a little more interest to the page.

I had a lot of fun with this spread, and now I have a jazz club in my journal.  I know that somewhere out of view are people laughing and chatting at tables in darkened corners, and the soft tinkle of ice against glasses.

And me? I'm tapping my toe to the rhythm of the bongo player and contemplating where "Happy Creating!" might take me tomorrow. 



You've Got Mail

As if waiting for cue, The Universe has dropped an extraordinarily luscious assortment of "junk" into my mail box. Just take a look at some of the goodies I've received in the last 2 days!

There are lots of interesting items in this batch of mail! I love the photo of all the street signs. (That's an invitation to a new gallery show) It's a tri-fold card and there are lots of useful words in a nice font included on both front and back.  The Lakeland invitation also has some good imagery (sheet music/comedy & tragedy masks) as well as key words such as "art".  Last but not least is the Lowe's advertisement.  The great thing about this are the discount cards.  They're almost the same weight as a credit card.  It's almost certain I won't use the cards at the store, but they have another greater use that I'll reveal in the next couple of weeks.  As a bonus, there's a lovely pot of flowers that's just begging to be collaged.  And what about the fork?  No, it didn't come in the mail, but stay tuned to see what part it plays in the creation of art.

Today's mail call was really over the top!  I can't believe what an elaborate marketing tool this is!  It was sent to my son from The University of Phoenix and it was encased in a VELLUM envelope.  There are 5 incredible pieces to work with here. (sorry for the glare)  I will show you more photos of this piece of mail in the weeks to come.  I could not have ordered a better junk mail kit.  Happy creating!