When you think of Christmas 2 colors always seem to come to mind. I’m not really sure how it came to be that red and green were considered colors of the season, but thats usually what people think of. Oh sure, we throw in the occasional silver and gold and maybe even a dark blue from time to time. What about orange, or pink, or lime green? Our Christmas tree is silver with black and silver ornaments and it’s beautiful, but not your traditional kind of christmas tree. So show me your Outside the Box kind of Christmas.
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The whole internet is a buzz with Tim Holtz’s 12 Tags of Christmas , myself included. He’s a very talented artist and I love the way his mind works. So for this weeks challenge check out Tim’s site and pick a tag to do and share it with us here. Ths one here is done using techniques from his day 2 tag. I added a layer of UTEE to the top of it to give it a little depth and texture. Feel free to share as many as you’d like as often as you’d like. Tim is so good at Stepping Outside the Box.
Transparencies and acetate can be sooo much fun to play with!! The above ATC was done on a thick plastic I cut from the lid of a greeting card pkg. I used white staz-on to stamp on it. This is just one thing you can do with it. If you have collage sheet transparencies that opens a whole other world of ways to create. Ever wonder what happens when you turn your heat gun on a transparency?? Check it out!! However, do it carefully and in a room with some ventilation. See what alcohol inks do on a acetate, then sponge on a white or cream colored ink over the top of that and watch them pop through the other side. Lets see what kind of Outside the Box creation you can make this week.
Most of us have done journal pages or have thought about doing them at one time or another. Lets take advantage of my most favorite time of the year, Thanksgiving! This week, lets get out our journal pages and make them all about things we’re thankful for! Now, here’s the Outside The Box part, everyone knows that you’re thankful for your friends and your family, thats a given, but lets think past the obvious. Something I do every day w/ several friends of mine on a yahoo group is we do a Daily 5. Each day we post 5 things that make us happy, and we have to be specific, you can’t just say, your dog, your husband, that kind of thing, you have to say, my husband made the bed this morning, or my dog snuggled on my lap. So lets think of all those little things like finding the perfect parking spot in the front row and journal about being thankful for them. I can’t wait to see what you all come up with!
There’s nothing that says, art has to be serious, there’s no reason a piece of art can’t give you a good chuckle. I know it’s not something we would normally do when creating art, but thats why this is this weeks Step Outside Your Box Saturday’s challenge.
Get out those old books and layer, layer, layer!!! You can do as I did here and make the book pages really visible, or use them just to add depth and texture and cover them up with ink or paint. Choose your book pages carefully, notice the words on the page that will show, do they pertain to what the subject matter is, or would they detract from the piece? This is an easy one, have fun with it!
This week lets see what you can do with just one color pallett. This is a canvas I did some time ago done all in purples. This should be an easy one so I hope we get lots of players this week.
This week I’d like to see your favorite creation, something that when you finished you sat back and looked at what you created and saw that it was good. I do hope it’s something that you kept for yourself too, I believe that all artists should keep some of their work for their own.
There are so many ways in our art to express a season in our life in such a way that it’s not blatantly obvious to the viewer exactly what that season is. I’m not talking about Spring, Summer, Winter or Fall. The painting here, that you can’t see well because of the glare is called, The Light From Within which depicts a very spiritual awakening I went through, the image of a flame or fire or Light pushing through the center was very meaningful to me, yet the casual observer may not see that.
I also did a painting that depicted the depression I was going through and the way it felt when the edges of the darkness would creep in. To the casual observer they would just think it was a kewl painting, but for me it meant so much more. It represented a season in my life that I faced at that time.
So what season are you in? Or what season have you been in that you can pull inspiration from? Show us in your art, whatever that art form may be.
Sorry bout the absence last week, I was out of town, but brought my laptop w/ intentions of posting, however, the internet connection at the hotel was so bad that it was impossible for me to post anything.
This week however, we’re going to explore metal. I love those sheets of thin metal you can get, copper, aluminum, I believe there’s even a gold colored one. These sheets are fabulously pliable and work well when you add texture to them w/ either a stylus or I’ve even run them through my Cuttlebug w/ an embossing plate and got fabulous results. Another thing I love is the metal flakes you can get in all those wonderful colors. However, we can even go beyond that if you’re so inclined and use nuts and bolts and washers and other finds from the garage!
So this week, lets be inventive, steer away from using simply brads/eyelets or charms for your metal element, cause, that’s not really “outside the box” now is it?
