Another week of ICADS

This week, I continued my participation in Daisy Yellow's "Index Card A Day" Challenge. It's Day 42 of the challenge, and I have finished 28 cards. 

 

 

 

 

 

The prompts "draw your earrings" and "psychedelic"  inspired a renovation to an existing card.

This is how my ICAD looked before the renovation. The above version is actually inspired by five prompts, as this one was inspired by "grocery list," "nail polish" and "peace sign."

I decided to make a backgammon board with brown and black pieces of tape, as backgammon board and washi tape were prompts this week.

 Prompts of mosaics and leaves inspired this card. Then the wind blew real leaves onto my just-vacuumed floor.

 There were two more prompts on Week 6 of the Daisy Yellow ICAD challenge that I did not do, which were "graffiti" and "stream of consciousness." I'm still thinking of ideas for them, so we shall see. The Week 7 prompts are also posted now.  But Tammy had some extra, personalized prompts this week. We asked for, she gave. Mine was rainbow, fruit and collage. I decided some old Sweet Stack paper needed to be collaged.

Adding things as I go

Since my last post two days ago, I haven't made much progress on my ICADs, but I have changed the appearance of two of them some.

I added a lot more stamps to my most recently created ICAD. And, because of the lighting differences the two times I photographed them, it also looks like I somehow bleached my card in between.

Then I followed the first two prompts for ICAD this week - Draw your earrings and psychedelic. I am grateful for the first prompt, because it also prompted me to organize my jewelry drawer, and while I was at it, a portion of the huge mess that is my scraproom. I drew my most psychedelic earring. However, because the pink post has broken off  its other part of the pair, I then threw this earring away. Pink, blue and purple didn't look quite psychedelic enough to me, but the peace sign I had drawn for another ICAD two weeks ago did. So I cut out the earring from the ICAD it was on, and glued it to my older ICAD. That also helped with this week's weekly prompt, "textures." I like the texture of the wadded up grocery list, which was splashed with pink nail polish and whiteout before I drew the peace sign on it. Also, two layers of index card gives some texture, right?

ICAD stands for Index-Card-A-Day, a challenge issued by Tammy Garcia of Daisy Yellow. The goal of the challenge is to create art of some sort on 61 index cards, either following a list of prompts or not. I'm pretty much following the prompts, but because I keep doubling, tripling or in this case, quadrupling up on them, I don't have the 37 cards I should have yet. The card with all the stamping makes #25. I probably won't end up with quite as many as I "should" but I'm sure that's OK.

The artist in me

Here are the first 20 cards I made for Index-Card-A-Day at Daisy Yellow.

And here's the last five. I am far from the most creative art journaler on an index card. In fact, without Tammy Garcia's prompts, I would have very little idea of what to do with these index cards. But I've come up with some creative spins on her prompts, I think.

Pinterest and challenge blogs combine for two

I create a little bit of art almost every day, drawing inspiration from several challenge blogs - especially Daisy Yellow and A Year In the Life of An Art Journal. My two pieces of artwork created yesterday are inspired by both.

The current A Year In the Life of An Art Journal challenge was to create a page with the theme "Put Your Feet Up," and to create what looks like a beverage's "ring" on the page. And over at Daisy Yellow, host Tammy Garcia's now half-way through Index-Card-A Day challenge.Although the weekly challenge at Daisy Yellow this week is to use neutral colors, it's also to use tea or coffee on  a page.

At Pinterest, there's a much brighter and better example of what I tried to do here. Unfortunately, Blogger isn't letting me post anything from Pinterest, nor from Flickr. So I can't show you the original. Wouldn't know whose it was, since it was on Flickr.

When I saw this quote, I knew it was perfect for the A Year in the Life of An Art Journal page.  So, I tried to replicate what I saw there. The Pinterest page looks like watercolor pencils transferred with water color pens, but brighter. I knew mine would have to have more subdued tones, so I filled one of my water pens with tea, and stepped back to see what happened. Two pages I like.

A week of painted cards

 I have been busy creating cards this weekend for ICAD, mostly yesterday and today. So, I'm posting them all on Facebook in one swoop, and sharing a little more about each one here.  They're not posted in order here. Because the weekly prompt this week was "paint," I chose to use my big jar of peach powder paint for five of them.

 This was actually the last one, inspired by a cartoon i found on Facebook today, and the #8 ICAD daily prompt, "Happiness."

 I've had a pillow since I was in high school that inspired this one - also Prompt #6 for the week, "your name in block letters."

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 Two years ago in the spring, when the weather was much cooler than today, my husband and I visited Joshua Tree National Park. This is very similar to a picture I took there. It's inspired by Prompt #5, lizard.

 This is close to Jurupa Valley Chamber of Commerce's logo  - inspired by Prompt #4, logo.

 I don't like this card at all. It's inspired by prompts 1 and 2 for the fourth week of ICAD though - owl and lyrics. I thought the card was copying color, which would have showed the yellowness this old hymnal really has. An owl has to sing something with the word who.

 Before I looked at the second prompt, I attempted to draw an owl.

This may the most technique-focused page, although I made it up. Inspired by prompts 3 and 4, peace and shopping list, I glued a real shopping list to the index card, splattered nail polish and whiteout over that, and drew a peace sign in several colors.

Now, ready to begin Week 5. I have a good idea for the first one, and maybe the second one, but the rest are kind of stumpifying.

Give it your all

I enjoy running, and belong to a running club. Consequently I receive a magazine with all kinds of advice about running. While it may have been helpful, I loved the images of runners within for a much different reason. They make fantastic additions to my art journaling.

My latest contribution to the Index Card A Day Challenge combines both interests. Because whether it's running the streets, running my business or art journaling, I am interested in transforming potential into performance.

These runners are in the 1976 Olympic Marathon  I have never run a marathon, nor has 75 percent of the membership of my running club. The 25 percent that has run them would be lucky to finish around 3 hours and 20 minutes. The best of these runners probably finished in more like 2 hours and 20 minutes. So, while they aren't sprinters, they, like all Olympic runners, were designed for speed. They definitely run with everything they've got.  But then so do my marathoner friends, and I'd like to think that I do when I run a 5K. And I would like to think I give all that I have to other things I do,  although I know in some areas, that's not ture.

But whatever I do it's good advice. For me, and for you. Once you realize that you need to do what you were designed for, and you give that everything you've got, your winning season starts now. So make he most of every advantage, and go run.

Art journaling is probably not what I'm designed for, but when an idea comes together, I will run with it. This idea is "found poetry,"  which is collecting words and phrases from a magazine and assembling them into some kind of poem. If you squint at the blurry lines, you see my poem says what I've said here. Not a bad found poem!

San Diego, more ICADs and one full-size journal page

One place I have enjoyed visiting on a more than annual basis since moving not too far away is San Diego, California. During the two years my cousin lived just west of there in Coronado - and especially in the year my aunt and uncle were there too, we visited more than once a year.  But now they have both moved - my aunt and uncle back to Exeter, and the kids to Nebraska.  As of today, I haven't been back down south since then. In fact, it has been almost a year. Since Wesley's birthday was celebrated in Orange County in 2012, it was Bradley's first birthday that we last visited San Diego. 

But soon, Don and I will be headed south - almost that far. My brother is getting married at Moonlight Beach in Encinitas on July 4. We don't know about anyone else, as my parents' hotel is considerably farther away, but our hotel is the Day's Inn a few blocks from this same beach.

And so, I had to make an index card celebrating the past visits to San Diego, and the near future visit to, um, San Diego County.

 

I am glad that even though we are in poverty, we can go to the beach. I did a real art journal page about where I would go if I were rich instead. This one was prompted by A Year in the Life of An Art Journal, but it was fun to give that some thought. If i were rich, instead of the beaches of southern and central California, and the fun/work trips we make to Hollywood on a regular basis, I would fly somewhere. It would probably still be to a beach, but far enough away no one could come there and say hi to me. So probably, some deserted tropical island.

The topic of "city or map," one of the prompts for the ICADs last week, inspired this creation. This is my own little part of southern California, specifically the area between my condo and the City Council chambers.  Don and I, along with a Cal Poly student who was on the "planning" project Cal Poly had volunteered to help the city with, drew a similar but larger map on June 4 (minus the cute sun.) Then on June 6 the Cal Poly students presented a much more polished presentation to the City Council. Our city is supposed to be working on a general plan, but it of course, doesn't have the money to do so. So, it's working with a non-profit organization (Reach Out), Cal Poly Pomona and many residents to get some of the ground work done by very unconventional means.

 

These are a few more ICADs I've made in the past week or so, following prompts at Daisy Yellow.