Alice Hendon, Artangleology

Let's make a simple zombie tag together. Simple? Yes. This took maybe ten minutes because I had all the materials located and together before I began.  Whether you  participate in Halloween activities or not - this simple tag can be made for any holiday or family celebration you wish to . . . uh, celebrate! Let me walk you through. So, this is me pulling all my materials together. Actually, Sarah in Creative Crafty Friends did much of the work by sending me one of the monthly project kits. She sent me the craft tag, the paper scraps you see and the stamped image of the zombie girl.  I began with some Dyestress ink pads - graphite , mustard seed and ripe persimmon . With the blending tool you see I scrubbed and scraped some of all three colors across the front of the tag. I also used my Copic markers to color my zombie person. I love her! So creepy! Hahaha!  This is my completed surface after using the three ink pads. Any ink pad you have will work just fine. Do I...

  Hahnemühle has a new watercolor book available and you are going to need to get one for yourself! Or maybe two! I love mine and have had a fun time trying out various art methods in it. Not just watercolor. Let me show you.  The 95 lb. pages are roughly 5.5" square and come in either beige or grey shades. The book I have is beige. I did not know how the color of the page would affect my art, so I just got right to work. I could figure it out along the way. The pages lay flat when the hard cover book is open. There are sixty pages total, that comes out to 120 work surfaces. The page surface is smooth with very little texture. I began with some painter's tape along the edges on one page. After wetting down the entire page I added Schmincke watercolors in bands of color, then let them sit to dry.  After spritzing some water on the dry page, I brought in some extra lines of color with my Schminckes.  Remember I said I didn't know how the beige paper would affect my ...

  Did you know every year on October 1st we celebrate World Postcard Day? Yep! We do! It happens each year since 2019 when we celebrated the 150th anniversary of the postcard. Need to shoot off a message to Grandma but too tired to write a full blown letter? Maybe time is an issue? Perhaps you want to pen a short message to brighten someone's day? The postcard can be your go-to for birthdays, holidays, retirements, catching up or to just say "hello, I was thinking about you." And where do you start? Well, you really should start with Hahnemühle . I did. I grabbed a tin of their cold pressed watercolor postcards and a pad of their Nostalgie sketch postcards and got started.  Since the tin postcards are advertised as 'watercolor' I began by pulling out my set of Schmincke watercolors and painted a nice wet on wet background. I love the bright colors you get with Schmincke and this paper loved the color. I was able to stick with just one layer of paint for this par...

Lately I have been working on postcards. Specifically Hahnemühle postcards. At roughly 4" x 6" they make a nice 'do-able' art surface. Something one could sit down and do in a few minutes.  This particular one is a Nostalgie card which has a smooth surface. I was working wet watercolor onto a dry background, just pushing color around with a wet brush. And . . . I did not like the results at all. What a hot mess! Not one to waste a bit of product I figured out something else to do with this postcard.  I began with this stamp from Studio Light and stamped it twice vertically on the card. Color was added using my Copic markers. Already this hot mess was looking a whole lot improved!  I keep a stash of digital images ready for just such an occasion as this. When I don't feel like painting or drawing, I pull out some digital images I have printed out and color them with Copics. This little marker girl was the perfect addition for this postcard. The words are from A...

Are you always looking for ways to make your art more affordable? That is my exact thought behind Art on a Shoe String. Making the process of art more affordable for you. And for me, too!  Mark and I were at Walmart a few days ago and I was checking out the leftover school supplies. (Don't I always?) Most  are on big-time sale right now. I found something I had never seen before. These half size composition books. Looks like they took a full size composition book and cut it in half. They came in a pack of ten books for a total of $3.00 - that is 30 cents a book. You can't beat that anywhere! Each book has 100 sheets, which means the possibility of 200 work surfaces. Yes, these pages are thin. You can glue two pages together to make them sturdier, but I elected not to do that.  This is the first page in my book. I cut down a painted page from my friend Niki Green to fit a sheet in the book. Niki had already painted and stenciled even more paint all over the paper making it...

  Gotta love Kimberly McGuiness' sense of humor! And you have to love her new sketchbook! This 8.5" square book has 120 pages where you can bring your creativity to life. I was fortunate to beta test this book and I want to show you how I put my copy of Yes This is a Friggin' Sketchbook to use.  This is what the pages look like - a book full of double spreads for you to work your magic on. The floral designs at the outer corners are for you to test your art tool to see how it interacts with the paper. The cream colored pages are smooth and take pen really well. The one concern I had was the weight of the paper. I know from experience that Kimberly has no control over the paper weight. Kindle uses just one kind of paper for this type of book. The book description tells us right up front the pages are a 50 - 61 pound weight, depending on what country your copy is printed in.  I figured the best way to tell what the paper could take was to just jump right in! I went to the ...