Christine Adolph Designs

Travel Journaling

Journaling on the road is something I look forward to on vacation. I don't give myself the opportunity to do it much at home because I stay so busy with life.

A few things I brought this time that I am loving! I bought a pentel brush pen before I left and it is a perfect tool for travel (unless it leaks!!). I see that they have metallic ones too. I am going to have to order a gold and silver one.

I also bought some Caran D'ache Aquarelle, they are a little on the expensive side and I won't let the kids use them! I bought the kids watersoluable oil pastels that will give a similar effect. The caran d'ache pastels have a beautiful quality of color and are perfect for travel. I am using them for my backgrounds in my sketchbook. Color in your backgrounds and dip your brush in water and they give the effect of water color.I have a couple of white sharpies and of course lots of glue sticks!

If you have any good travel journal tips or supplies I would love to hear about them! thx..

Poppies and Decor8

Getting in the mood for SPRING today. This is a quick little piece that I did. I glued some silk dupioni fabric to a canvas board and painted these poppies on top, I used my favorite Golden Interference Paint in the background . I would really like to start expanding my art licensing to do more in the home decor market . So far I am doing most of my licensing in the craft market, which has been great, but I really would love to do posters and prints and gift items as well. This is a good goal for 2006.

And  speaking of home decor and decorating. Look at this fabulous site called Decor8 !! I am so honored that she did a review of my blog, made my day. I love her style, great shopping links and info about super cool stuff.

I love getting bills....

well not really paying them but I can't wait to open them and see what kind of pattern I find inside the envelope. I have been in front of my computer screen a lot during my available work time and when I have design projects that require digital work I am away from my art studio and sitting in my home office plugging away. Today I went down to the studio to tidy up (always a good distraction/or a method of procrastination:) I have this growing pile of ripped up envelopes just waiting to be integrated into some collages...I really love the little windows they are perfect little framing devices. Getting bills in the mail seems slightly less painful knowing that I might get some free collage material. "Recycle and Re-Use" is the motto around the family art studio. I am posting some collages showing how I like to integrate these bits of junk mail scraps into my work.

This is a series I did a few years ago just for fun. I layered the envelopes in the background added some acrylic paint and some old music (another fave), added some drawing, stitching and did a foil stencil on the top.

Same with this one. Envelopes, music, postage and acrylic paint in the background and a foil stencil technique on the top. I am planning on introducing many of my foil techniques on this blog later in the Spring  and early Summer so please come back often if you are interested in learning about any of these unique mixed media art techniques. FYI, for these 6x6 collages I used a paper called Stonehenge, love the weight of it and the way the edges tear, it is a printmaking paper.

These larger  (10x18) collages were done on an inexpensive rice paper (I buy it in a pad). I layered different colors of pastel foil in the background with the music. The hearts are from my beloved envelope stash!

The heart at the bottom is the negative of the heart from the previous collage. I love to use negative and positive shapes in my collage and never throw away the negative from cut/punched or diecut shapes.
I wish you could see the sparkle in this art....you will just have to imagine it.  Hope this helps to ease the pain of those bills even if it is ever so slightly!

Batik Tags

After I had written the last post about inspiration I saw Carol's
post about looking for inspiration everywhere.  I got a chuckle about how she found inspiration at the grocery checkout line. That is the kind of thinking I can relate to. She had posted a cute tag showing how she used the color inspiration she found. She used my Fresh Flower's  stamps.

I  am in the studio today working on some stuff for an article and I found these tags that I had done and just wanted to share some of my favorite art supplies. I LOVE my Twinkling H2O's they are the most wonderfully sparkly bright little watercolors, they look like make-up. I use them all the time, they have the prettiest shimmer and are not too over the top with sparkle. I added a little water to them and brushed them onto my blank tags (I like to blend two analogous colors together to create an ombre effect) once they are dry I brush a little bleach on my stamp (I know that is bad, but  I rinse them right off) and stamp (used my collage cube from the FF line) the tags with bleach and the bleach takes away the watercolor to create this batik effect. When I was designing fabrics for the swimwear industry we did a lot of batik but used wax and irons, this gives the same results but with less labor and great detail too. I added a little foil on the edges and some rub-ons . Just so you know regular watercolor paints (from the tube or pan) don't generally bleach out so these twinkling h2o's are very unique. Inks like Dr. Martins and Luma do bleach out nicely but they are (for the most part) not very colorfast, they will fade over time if in direct sunlight.

Back to work!