Day 30: The Cover

Day 30: The Cover.

Whew.  I made it. Day 30.  None too soon. I’m ready to wrap this project up!

I had several sources of inspiration for the cover.  I wanted to try using a new medium and honor the local Italian Street Painting festival in San Rafael that ran this weekend.  For two days artists create beautiful works of art on the pavement using chalk.  At the end of the event, the streets are washed and reopened for traffic.  The works of art remain only in photos and memories.

So I used chalk (and no, I’m not going to wash the book off tomorrow) and decided on sunflowers for my main image.  I had a picture from the Farmer’s Market that I looked at as well as other images I found online

I also wanted to include a variation of this image I found on Pinterest.

My “canvas” was the boring cover of the Art Journal that I just completed filling all the pages of yesterday.

Before:

I used a strip of paper to cover the binding because the title was embossed  and I didn’t want it to show in the finished product.

Now the trouble started.  I’ve never used colored chalk and I really can’t draw worth a damn.  I don’t know how to do shading and highlighting except in theory.

A nice collection.

Of course, not quite like these, at the Italian Street Painting:

But kids did it at the festival.  It couldn’t be that difficult, right?

I wasn’t trying to do anything as grand in beauty and scale as any of these:

The inspiration.

The Street Painting.

This beautiful painting was the poster art for the event this year and it too was turned into a street painting.

I really didn’t know what I was doing and I got chalk dust all over my hands and arms.  It really made me appreciate the efforts of all the artists even more.

This was a really hot weekend for San Rafael and they were sitting or kneeling on the asphalt in the sun.  It is hot in our apartment, but I was sitting at a desk with a fan blowing on me.

I layered colors, I smudged, I made a bit of a mess.  In the end, I came up with something that I thought was fine.  Kind of murky, but still recognizable as some sunflowers.  I also used some permanent marker and pencil on the swirled circles and water-soluble oil crayons.  A coat of Mod Podge and the whole thing was set.

I covered all of June in this Art Journal and since I started the book in May, it seemed right to include both months.

Best of all, I’m going to finish before midnight! Rah.

For my final day of 30 Days of Creativity last year, I made a Macrame Bracelet.

For Day 30 the previous year I made delicious Honey Vanilla Ice Cream with Caramel Sauce.

Thank you, thank you for all the support, comments and encouragement.  It really helps to have that kind of feedback.  I appreciate everyone who has come to check out even one post.

Day 6: Mosaic Poppies

Day 6, a little late, a mosaic of poppies. Pinterest was, once again, a source of inspiration.  I found this picture and followed the link back to Donna Downey’s awesome blog “Simply Me“.  Lots of yummy stuff to go look at later.

I love these Oriental Poppies and have taken pictures of them at Filoli Gardens:

And also at the Italian Street Painting Festival in San Rafael:

I used pictures pulled from magazines and from my stash of saved images (also mostly from magazines).  The poppies have petals made from blinds, dresses, art work and lips.

The flower centers are from a picture of lustrous dark hair and a black pen for the little details.

The green for the leaves and stems came mostly from ads that had leaves in them but also from some green jeans.

Most of the color for the background “tiles” was background in ads – sky, water, or just a pretty colored  background, but I also used several paint chips, some scrap-booking paper and a great purse.  Look carefully and you can see details like stitching (that’s the purse).

Somehow it is almost 8PM and I haven’t started the spread for today! Yikes.

Here is the Day 6 project from last year: Shrinky Dink Rings (Fail II)

Day 6 the year before was: Infused Oil

Thanks for stopping by.