Strong Heart Felt and Paper Collage

My theme for the #100DaysChallenge is Hearts and Houses so there will be a lot of hearts and a lot of houses posted here over the next three months.

I'll bundle them as needed so I don't bore you all :-)

QAYG Trivets

 I love monochromatic projects so when I saw an absolutely adorable tutorial for QAYG trivets on S.O.T.A.K Homemade I got right at it.

It was terrifically fun to take a chunk out of my scrap pile and sorting things by color is just as engaging  now as it was in preschool.

Each hot pad is about 10.5 inches square and they are padded with Insul-brite so they are heat proof.

Now that I've made a purple and green one, I can't wait to get going on gray, yellow, orange and blue.

Have you been sewing? What have you made lately.

Emerson and Arabesque Art Journal Page

A fun way to use up your small paper scraps is to make yourself a template for a shape you find pleasing (in this case, arabesque)  and when you have free spots in your day, process your scraps down into your shape.

When they're all put together the effect is quite lovely and your template can be stored away for future projects. 

Queen of the Night Sky

Lately I've been practicing ideas in my sketchbook and then trying them again on watercolor paper or canvas. This is a big change for me as I always fear I'll never be able to repeat something I've done.

While I like the sketchbook drawing, I'm bothered by a few details:

1. The thick brown lines in her hair

2. The crayon lines in her dress and how the middle lacks texture

3. How the crown is sitting on her head - looks like it's sliding right off.

4. The handwriting was an afterthought and it's irregular.

Here is the new and improved version on thick watercolor paper:

Repeating your work is a great way to get better and to take another crack at those trouble spots. It's also a terrific refresher on how my supplies react to different substrates. For example, my watercolor markers that I use practically everyday don't exactly rock on canvas.

Here's a close-up of her dress detail.

And a side-by-side comparison. Click to see it up close.