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Showing posts from January, 2009

Peeling Paint

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Playing around in Photoshop again... a bit of cabin fever perhaps? I was on the  Inspire Me Thursday  site, where last week's challenge - Peeling Paint - is still posted. So, I decided to rummage around for a starting point - and found an image I took last fall of a shutter. I've always been drawn to weathered wood, rusted metal, cracking finishes of any sort really. I hadn't ever thought of using this photo for a challenge but it seemed to fit, so I added flowers to the window section and brushed on a border treatment.  The flower is wishful thinking - we've been immersed in an icy, white world for nearly a week now - our annual storm. We've been fortunate enough to have power, unlike over 500,000 people in Kentucky who are without, including my dear friend, Kym, and her daughter, my daughter's bff, who are staying with us. My son and his posse tromp through fairly often, so we've had a houseful.  A mound of bacon and platter of pancakes this morning - a ra

ice and snow

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After 36 hours of ice and snow, we've got quite an accumulation - here's a view from the window seat in the Altered Attic, a cozy place to be. Unfortunately, the cherry tree may be a total loss. Fortunately, DH moved his vehicle out of the path of the limb that ended up crashing to the ground later in the morning. The kids have been out of school all week and I haven't had much studio time but I'm working on my Visual Journal, learning how to doodle!  This storm is widespread - leave me a comment and let me know how it's looking where you are!

Journal Workshop - Week Two

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The second week of the Visual Journaling workshop was about adding visual elements to our backgrounds - still without an idea or concept of the finished piece.  This feels like collage to me, though this process is more fluid, less planned. More spontaneous. It certainly is uncovering my difficulty in altering my approach to a project or process.  I started off by sifting through images for elements that looked 'right' together because of color or theme, without giving much thought to how they relate to each other. Then a theme of sorts started to emerge and I felt a bit more comfortable. I haven't begun to think about actually writing on these pages. Aack. All of this work only to mess it up with words? I didn't realize that I had a comfort zone when it came to art, since it's relatively new in my creative career; I can see that my trepidation at stepping outside the box, my rigidity is in place, and that's why I love this workshop. All the time I've been e

Photoshop collage

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Photoshop collage , originally uploaded by pattiedmon1 . In my spare time, I've started playing in Photoshop again. I did this collage a couple of weeks ago, and, since I haven't been able to upload photos directly to Blogger, I'm experimenting with Flickr. If anyone else has had similar difficulties I'd appreciate hearing about it. This collage is composed of a photo of my Aunt taken in the early 1950s, a photo from last summer of roses draping over the back gate and a poem that I wrote in sixth grade, which is, hopefully faint enough for the text to be visible without the words being too readable. Photoshop is such a vast playground I have stayed away since beginning to work in mixed media. Years ago, when I had to stop working in the darkroom, first because of being pregnant, then because I never had the chunks of time to devote, I did a lot of photo manipulation, painting and other fun stuff. I'm taking a Visual Journaling Workshop now, so I'd better get bac

Flickr

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This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

Journal Backgrounds 101

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After years of writing in journals, a lifetime actually, I've finally started a visual journal. I'm in good company. Somerset has a publication dedicated to art journaling and there are plenty of books and workshops to help those of us who are trying to convert. I'm taking a workshop that started this week, in fact, taught by the fabulous Pam Carriker. Her background pages look more like art pieces than anything I've ever considered journal.  It has been a fun first week; I've made several background pages and I'm anxious to see what we'll do next. I have to admit, this still feels a bit out of order to me; I've always started with a thought, emotion or situation, in other words, knowing what I wanted to express. I don't sketch, so aside from an occasional quote or clipping, it has been confined to words. My first efforts at keeping an art journal several weeks ago involved staring at a blank page, followed by a search through my 'paper piles'

The Ultimate in Procrastination

A few years ago I was on the back deck and heard my neighbor's smoke alarm go off; her husband headed in from the back yard, and in his unique, curmudgeonly style, muttered, "Dinner's done." I don't think Jeanette really used the smoke detector for a cooking timer but it cracked me up and I've thought about it numerous times when I've pushed time to the limit, or just past, as is my custom. Taxes, swaps, just about anything with a deadline triggers that dreaded response, I'll get to it next, next week, and then, it's time and I'm cramming, just like I always did with work projects when I still ran the business and school before that.  I read a book on the subject once, albeit a week after my friend asked for it back, and it was full of truths. We avoid making a decision fearing it will be the wrong one, we are avoiding the issue or its consequence; seldom are we lazy, just afraid of failure - or success. That made a lot of sense to me at the ti

Here's to creating every day!

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One last holiday post... a photo of the tin I made for my mom this Christmas. It gets so much harder every year to find creative ways to gift, but I knew for certain that she didn't have an altered Altoid tin. Inside is a photo of the two Alices - my mother and daughter, with mementos from this year's Nutcracker, about which I've already gone on and on.   Over the break I spent a few hours cleaning the Altered Attic, packed away all the tissue, ephemera, ribbon and charms that I used to make Christmas  projects. And the bonus - I can now see the surface of my art table. So now I'm heading toward the new year, which doesn't officially begin until my kids return to school on Monday. One of the moderators of my art group - 14 Secrets for a Happy Artist's Life - posted the question: What do you want to accomplish artistically this year? I thought about it for a few days before posting an answer; one of the biggest advantages of belonging to this group, which is re