A Quick and Lazy Challenge

My oh my has September been busy!  I've been traveling for work for the last couple of weeks and am just now getting settled back home and in the crafty swing of things.  I'm so behind on my Prima and Marion Smith Ustream shows not to mention all of my fab YouTube friends!

Even though I visited some great scrapbooking and art stores in Chicago (Windy City Scrapbooking) and in southern Oregon (ScrappyCraft and Craft Warehouse), all of which I recommend especially ScrappyCraft,  I came home feeling a bit worn out and in a creative slump.  I had two major projects to complete before the end of the month:

1. September's Artsy Addicts challenge: create a layout using paper and embellishments you create yourself - totally up my alley!
2. Create an anniversary present for my hubby for our 1 year wedding anniversary.  Paper is the traditional gift for year one - again, totally up my alley!

But when I got back from OR, I just couldn't seem to get it together.  I had a lot of ideas but wasn't feeling like putting them to "paper".  That is, until my amazing husband gave us BOTH a challenge.  This is one of the many reasons he is the perfect hubby for me.

I was whining about how I had to get moving on my projects and just wasn't "feeling it".  He came over and said, "why don't we both go into the garage (where his painting studio is) and grab one sheet of canvas and some acrylics and just paint?  I'll do one side and you do the other. Come on, it'll be fun!"  Brilliant!  The idea was to use whatever was in the paint drawer and nothing else.  No worries, no need to gather supplies, no concern for what the other was doing on their side of the page.  Just put paint on the canvas and paint!

I pulled out a handful of warm colors (I was feeling yellow and a new copper heavy body acrylic from Golden).  I'd also picked up some water soluble oil pastels in OR that I really wanted to try.  He picked up some blues, greens, and oranges and painted a green line down the center of the page.  Then the fun began!

His (left) and hers (right).  H20 soluble oil pastels (heart and red swirls) and acrylics on canvas paper.

It was so interesting to watch how his creative process worked versus mine.  He prefers to paint with oils and we're both pretty new to playing with more professional type acrylics.  His sky blue background was the "air" to my earthy yellow background.  I ended up painting a flower over my heart to match his flowers, pulled one of his flower stems to my side and then edged it all in brown to try and tie the whole thing together a bit. It's not the best piece either of us have done but that wasn't the point.  The point was to just get creating and it worked!  My creative energy returned and I woke up the next day with tons of ideas for my projects and most importantly - I now know what I want to make him for our anniversary.  :)


Jeremy's flowers with a smidge of iridescent blue on the background and a nice pop of orange.



I love the texture of this canvas paper!  It lends itself to dry brushing so well.  I dry brushed copper heavy body acrylic onto the background for a nice sheen.  The H2O oil pastels and acrylics worked wonderfully together.  Had this not been a "quick and lazy" challenge, I would have added some glazes to the heart and some stamps on the background and...  so many fun options once your juices get flowing!

So if you're feeling creatively slumped Donna Downey and Julie Balzer are right!  Just pull out a piece of paper and throw down some ink or paint and don't worry about what happens next.  This is the whole concept behind art journaling (which I clearly need to start doing). 

Happy creating!

Supplies used:

• Liquitex heavy body acrylics
• Golden heavy body acrylics
• Golden fluid acrylics
• Claudine Hellmuth studio paint
• Water soluble oil pastels
• Canvas acrylic paper