Carolyn Dube

The Diving Mermaid

Posted on May 22, 2013 by Carolyn

I am honored to share works sent to me by some of my newsletter readers using my free Sparks of Art-spiration. What is a Spark of Art-spiration? It is a snippet of a larger work. Something about the snippet sparks my creativity so I go with it. I print out the spark in whatever size I feel like and then I play. Since I can print it again and again in any size there is no fear of ruining it. That gives me complete freedom to experiment, play, explore, and just have fun arting.

Karenliz has made magic with the mermaid above (drawn by my daughter). She created more movement with the addition of the 2nd tail and gave this mermaid a colorful world to swim in with spray inks, stencils, and that fun pop of pink! Clicking on the artists’ names will take you to their full blog posts.

Consie created a stunning cluster of butterflies on her painted tree. This card is elegant with the gentle branches giving the butterflies a place to rest. The neutral background lets the colors on the butterflies sing! You can see how she made it step-by-step by clicking on her name.

Valerie found all sorts of fun images in this Spark. Love the hands reaching and how they are different sizes-that adds such a playful feeling to it for me! Cars zooming down the road, the sun shining- what a great world she found in this Spark with her pen!

Vicki has created a colorful tag using a Spark for the background that takes flight with her birds! Using only a portion of the Spark gives it a whole different look than if she’d used the entire Spark.

Want Sparks of Art-spiration delivered to your inbox about once a month in my free newsletter? Just click here! Have you been playing with a Spark? I’d love to see it – just send me an email at aColorfulJourney at gmail dot com!

Posted in Spark of Artspiration | 10 Comments

A Bouquet from Black Paint

Posted on May 19, 2013 by Carolyn

Black is a paint color I rarely use on my Gelli Plate but every now and again I do. So I cleaned off my brayer in my vintage journal like I do with the rainbow of colors I usually use. And it sat. And sat. Most of my other colors get lost or look muddy when put on top of black so I shied away from this page because whatever I did was not going to look good. That was really a sneaky way the gremlins in my head said, “You will screw it up and it will be ugly.”

Once I realized what those gremlins were up to, I had the perfect way to combat them- Oops! I knew immediately that I would not make a single mistake with this because anything unexpected is just an Oops. Not good or bad. Just another layer that takes me another direction.

I needed something to show up against the black so I thought of white. What if the white didn’t work I thought. Well then it is just an Oops! Turns out it did work! I stamped a jumbo foam stamp by Donna Downey in white acrylic paint. Now I had contrast.

Now what do I color them? Twinkling H2O’s! They are translucent with a wonderful shimmer.

“Oh, that looks so boring with just one color on a flower. You’ve screwed that up,” grumbled the gremlins. “Well, no I didn’t!” I told the gremlins. I knew it was just an Oops that it didn’t turn out was well as I planned.

I grabbed more colors of Twinkling H2O’s, blending colors together to give it more interest. Some orange to go on the edge of the pink flower. Some blue to blend with the purple. “But now the flowers look like they were slapped on the black, like they don’t belong there,” the gremlins grumbled. Oops. It is just an Oops you silly gremlins.

PanPastels. I hadn’t thought about these before now but thanks to the pesky gremlins I saw the Oops of not adding more paint colors as just an Oops and found the next step. PanPastels cover a large area quickly so all that pink took less than 5 seconds! I used blue along part of the black and purple along the other to give hints of more colors. Now my flowers look like they belong there. Take that gremlins!

I had to have some words on here so a Stabilo pencil along the stems. The Stabilo pencil is one of my favorite ways to write over dark colors since it will write over slick surfaces with ease.

By the time I finished this bouquet, the gremlins were barely a whisper in my mind. Do you ever have gremlins in your head that keep you from attempting something creative?

Products Used

PanPastels Stabilo Pencil H2O’s

Linking up with Inspire Me Monday, Make it Monday, Artful Times (blooming), Simon Says Stamp (flowers), and Creative Everyday.

Posted in Art Journaling, Gelli Plate, Mixed Media, Oops!, Pan Pastels, Silks and Twinkling H2O's, Step by step | 20 Comments

Why I Gelli Print

Posted on May 17, 2013 by Carolyn

I was asked by a non-art person what I enjoy making when I create. Of course I said, I love making Gelli prints. Befuddlement. That “did you just speak an alien word” look. How could I possibly explain what I do with the Gelli Plate using words only. I tried. The more I explained the less he understood. I needed visual aides.

Why do I make Gelli prints? It makes me happy to play with complete freedom. The full post, including a video, for this piece is here.

Along with freedom and fun there is magic. There is something breath taking when the layers of paint play together to create something I could not have created with a paint brush. You can see the full post, including a video on how to use the Gelli Plate to make a print like this, here.

I end up with a joyous stack of one-of-a-kind papers made by me in the colors I want. Those papers can be used to make anything from the practical envelopes to playful shoes. Both of these posts have videos so you can join in and play too! Check out the envelopes here and the sneakers here.

How could I not love making Gelli Prints? I’m not the only one! Check out all the great prints and projects that have linked up for A Colorful Gelli Print Party for May. The link party goes all month so there is still plenty of time to join in and link up! Stop on over here to see all the Gelli plate magic that is happening!

Posted in Gelli Plate, Mixed Media, Tutorial, video | 7 Comments

Apples and Pomegranates

Posted on May 16, 2013 by Carolyn

This word has been popping into my mind, heart, and life a lot lately which means it pops into my art. I keep getting reminders from the universe how wonderful my friends are.

Speaking of friends, today is a Stencil Test Drive for Jessica Sporn’s stencil, Apple and Pomegranate stencil! I’m not the only one driving today- be sure to stop by and check out what Maria McGuire, Revlie Schuit, and Jessica have done with this stencil!

The paper on my counter was getting lots of great colors on it so I decided to add more!

I used Liquitex Spray Paints with Jessica Sporn’s Apples and Pomegranates stencil. They are wonderfully rich colors.

I picked a small portion and cut out a tag.

A big sunny and bright flower with some scribble journaling about how amazing my life is because of my friends. What is making your life amazing today?

Linking up to Paint Party Friday!

Posted in Art Journaling, StencilGirl, stencils | 23 Comments

Celebrating Spring

Posted on May 12, 2013 by Carolyn

The sun is shining, the grass is green, and the peonies will be blooming any day now! In honor of spring, I am working in greens. I usually work in a full rainbow of colors so I wasn’t sure how this would turn out…

A background made long ago that sparked the green theme.

Added my scribble journaling as I processed what was going on in my head.

Grabbed a title and the butterflies. The green on the butterflies was stamped using a Gelli Plate to get a thin, even layer of paint on the stamp. I have a video showing how to use the Gelli plate with stamps here.

White oil pastel along the edges to frame it.

Ripped the trust title off to add the green ribbon below it. A mistake that I didn’t glue the ribbon first? Nope. Just an Oops. I even ripped the paper as I pulled it up and it is still just an Oops.

Bonus points for me here- I used up a “treasured” item from my stash- star pins from Maya Road. I have decided I would rather run out of something wonderful than keep it in a drawer and never use it (a huge shift for me).

Used another “treasured item”, the sparkly butterfly, and added a glitter glue flight path.

That bottom left corner just felt unfinished so Ronda Palazzari’s stencil to the rescue! That balanced it out with a delicate touch.

Linking up to Inspire Me Monday, Creative Everyday, Art Journal Journey (challenge yourself), Simon Says Stamp (wings), Glue It Tuesday and Make It Monday.

Posted in Art Journaling, Crafters Workshop, Gelli Plate, Mixed Media, rubber stamping, stencils, Step by step | 40 Comments

It’s Just An Oops

Posted on May 8, 2013 by Carolyn

I used to fight making mistakes. Pointing out all my imperfections to myself with a strong dose of harsh judgement. No shocker that being creative often ended in frustration for me back then. But it doesn’t any more. Why? I just say Oops.

This is a random mess of a page. I was using up torn bits off the counter, pieces of Gelli prints, tried out the Croco Crackling Color I just bought (huge wonderful cracks by the way), grabbed paint colors and smeared it on with no plan. Do the colors match the way I intended? Nope. Mistake? Nope. It’s just an Oops.

An Oops is something unintended. It’s not good or bad. It is just an Oops.

The scalloped border with the green blobs at the bottom of the page is too short to cover the entire width of the page. A mistake? Nope. An Oops.

There are opportunities in every Oops. I love that there is some of the stamp and the pink peeking out from the edge of that scallop. That never would have happened if I had a longer piece of paper.

There is one huge Oops on this page. The pink and blue library pocket. It has 6 different layers of paint under the collage bits. I had only expected to put 1 layer on it. Didn’t look right. A mistake? A failure? 6 mistakes? 6 Failures? Nope, all 6 were Oops.

The Oops were opportunities to build up layers of color and then to reach for the collage. I love that I collaged it the end but I just wasn’t ready to go that direction until I had tried 6 other things. The Oops led me somewhere even better than I had planned.

Why the blue on the ATC here? Because there was an Oops. I had cut this woman out of a Gelli print using Dina Wakley’s stencil and added some subtle gray stamping. I loved the ageless definition on the dictionary page with her- the attitudes fit perfectly. But the definition just didn’t stand out the way I expected it stand out. A mistake? Nope. An Oops.

The opportunity in this Oops? The blue pops on the orange and I never would have collaged that word if it hadn’t been for the Oops!

These are smashed bottle caps covered in Vintaj Patina. These are so much fun to make because they are one big Oops.

It’s hard to control what you get when you pound bottle caps with a hammer then smear blobs of paint on top. Oops can be fun when you embrace that you can’t really control exactly what happens.

She’s right at home in her library pocket with her ATC and the smashed bottle caps (on the right). As fun as this page is, it is still missing a critical element for me- the journaling. I forgot to put it under the quote on the library pocket as planned. Failure? Nope. An Oops.

If I had remembered the journaling on the library card I never would have looked for another way to journal. I used Dylusion’s inks to spray a blank product tag yellow and the scribble journaled all over it.

This art journal page is filled with Oops after Oops and that is a good thing! Every Oops will led me somewhere even better than what I envisioned.

Looking for more creativity? Check out Paint Party Friday, Art Journal Every Day, Fashionable Stamping (anything goes), The Dictionary Challenge (the letter A)and Anything But a Card (ATC’s).

Posted in Art Journaling, Crafters Workshop, Dina Wakley, Gelli Plate, Mixed Media, Oops!, rubber stamping, Step by step | 47 Comments

Spinning My Wheels

Posted on May 5, 2013 by Carolyn

I was spinning my wheels, not really going anywhere artistically today. Ever have those days? Well, it all changed when I started ripping things up!

Many moons ago I had extra paint on my palette and brushes so I made circles on a piece of ephemera. Then it went onto the pile of papers I have randomly smudged and smeared. It sat there for weeks, until today.

I was feeling stuck so I ripped up papers I had laying around on the counter. I had been playing around with the latest spark of art-spiration so I knew I could print out as many as I wanted/needed- no fear in ripping then! A Spark of Art-spiraiton is a printable spark that goes out to my newsletter subscribers- you can sign up here).

Once I had the gel medium out to glue my ripped paper I was no longer spinning my wheels and the art journal page began to come together.

A neon orange colored pencil was used for some illegible journaling. Apparently, round wheel like things are on my mind since I was drawn to the circles…

I was missing the orange I covered up with the torn paper so I added some Twinkling H2O’s. Shimmer is always good!

I searched through my art journal to find a background that made me happy.

Layering ribbon I saved from the packaging of something or other.

A painted tag and the title (cut on my Silhouette) felt right but not finished. Something more was needed…a big chipboard butterfly that I had colored some time ago for another project (but never used).

What sparks your creativity when you are having one of those “spinning your wheels” kind of a day?