Colour .... Give me colour .... LOTS of colour ....

Well, no entry for Summer of Color this week. This is the first time that I skip it, but I might join in again next week. Why don't I join in this week? Well, I have a confession to make: I crave colours at the moment. Using lots of colours, all at the same time. And I can't satisfy my craving for colour with SOC this year. Which is weird, because other years I had no problem whatsoever with the limited number of colours. But I could still use different shades and tints of the prescribed colours, and that made it exciting for me. Just how many tints can one colour have. I love experimenting with that.

For this week the colours are red - red - metallic. Well, I hardly ever use metallic colours in my work, and if I do then only in very small quantities. But the real problem for me was the two shades of red. Too similar. You can take a dark red and a light red, but there's not that much difference between the shades. Not enough at least for me to create enough contrast in a piece. It would be too similar to the result from week 2 with 2 pinks and one orange. And I really didn't feel like that. So, no SOC-entry for me this week...

I did go back to the background for my intuitive painting. In the past few weeks I've been smearing paint on there every time I was doing something and had some leftover paint. Last time I showed you it looked like this:

I kept searching for images in there but I couldn't find anything that spoke to me. After adding little bits and pieces in the past few weeks it looks like this:

And finally finally finally I could see a figure emerge from the background! Phew, so happy! I can see a female figure with outstretched arms, but I must admit it's hard to see it in the photo, it was much easier to see just looking at the canvas. Can you find her? I'll show you next week :-)

I also finally finished another doodle:

and another ACEO:

Summer really has started here now! We are experiencing a heatwave at the moment, and I'm loving it! It reminds me so much of Queensland.... School summer holidays also started this week, and we're doing a lot of lazing around and catching up with stuff that we never have time for. I am still finishing those side-tables, but painted the base colour on three new ones:

And last weekend I went to a flea-market and found some cute old little cupboards, that I've been sanding and putting some primer on as well:

The top one I'll use some kind of dry-brush technique on I think, and the second one will be dotted, with some mosaics around the mirror. Oh, so much fun, I'm a bit addicted to recycling furniture at the moment ;-)

Well, that's it for now! I'm linking this as always to Paint Party Friday, and to Show Your face. 
Both places are worth a visit!

I'll end with my funny of the week:

lol ... ;-D

Thanks for taking the time to visit! Wishing you a beautiful day, and a weekend filled with warmth! See you next week ♥ ♥ ♥

playing with paint

This week I did a bit of everything, but don't have much to show for it. I finished small details on my painting and gave it a few coats of varnish, I made some ACEO's and I have been playing with my 2 new canvases, putting layer upon layer of bright colours.

Here are the ACEO's:

 And the 2 canvases:

The first one is for an intuitive painting, but it's so long ago I made one that I really have to practice again to see figures. At the moment I don't see anything, so I might have to make quite a few more layers. The second one is for a "negative" painting like the one I finished last week. I love working on more than one painting at the same time. When I'm stuck with one I can just continue with the other one.

And, in case you don't know it yet, next week one of my favorite challenges will start: The Summer of Color! I have been participating for the last three years and I love it. It makes me use colours that I normally wouldn't use and sometimes it really surprises me how I like certain colourcombinations. If you want to join in the fun, here's the link to Kristin's blog. Hope to see you there!

That's it for this week. I'm linking this to Paint Party Friday (bloghop for all kinds of art that was created this week) and to Art It Friday - Show your face (bloghop for any kind of face that you made this week). Lots of eye-candy at both places!

I'll finish with my funny of the week ;-)

lol :-D

Thanks for visiting here! I love reading your comments and visiting your blogs too. Wishing  you a wonderful day and a great weekend with lots of favorite things to do! ♥ ♥ ♥

Getting there

I have made good progress on my painting. Finally finished all the white spaces. I tried out different brands of white and in the end found one that covered the background better. Still had to do lots of layers though. I now started working on the faces. Here's the first one:

And here's the whole painting:

Changed a few things here and there that I wasn't so happy with, and now overall I like it better. Still a bit of work to do though.

Also finished some more ACEO's:

 Lyrics from Dire Straits, but I didn't have room to add their name anymore ...

And look how this one looked when I scanned it in:

It's weird: every time I scan something that has fluorescent pink or orange, the colours just disappear...

Okay, that's it for this week. Linking this to Paint Party Friday of course, the weekly party full of gorgeous and interesting art. Go have a look over there, you won't regret it! And I'm also linking to a new art bloghop, this one all about faces. Which, as you know, is my favorite subject to paint/draw/sketch. It's called "Art it Friday-Show your face", and I found it thanks to Linda :-)

Thanks so much for coming to visit me, and I wish you a beautiful day, and a relaxed weekend full of happiness.

Funny for this week:

 lol

See you next week ♥ ♥ ♥

Busy busy busy ....

... but not much to show for it ;-) I've been filling in the white background in my big painting, so it's still looking more or less the same. Can't wait to start working on the figures. I am preparing a new background for the same kind of painting, but instead of white I plan on using Payne's Gray. And I've also been putting more layers on my intuitive painting canvas. But like I said: there's not much to show right now ....

I have been making new ACEO's too, but only one's finished. I make the drawings while I'm sitting with my daughter on her bed at night before she goes to sleep. It has taken a while before we took up this habit again, but we both really enjoy it, even if there's only 10 minutes left before she goes to sleep.

This one was made with coloured pencils, markers and acrylics. It's available here.

Today I want to share art from some students in my Soulfood class. Didn't manage to reach everyone, but I got some to share already:

Lloydene calls these her "quirky collage girls". I love it everytime she comes up with yet another creation. You can see more of her wonderful art on her Facebookpage.

Joyce made 2 versions of the same girl, and I love both of them. Can't pick a favorite! You can find more of her beautiful art on her blog.

Amazing faces by Jackie Beeman. Also really love her colourful backgrounds.

And some more by Lloydene.

I really enjoy seeing what my students create. Makes me want to make more workshops, only to see what they will come up with :-)

There's another promotion in my Society6-shop (free worldwide shipping), so I decided to add some more art. Here are some examples:

 iphone skin

 stationary card

 totebag

 framed art print

I am late this week, but I'm linking this to Paint Party Friday anyway. Thanks so much for visiting! I'm wishing you a wonderful weekend with lots of warmth ♥ ♥ ♥

Funny of the week:

lol :-D

See you next week!

April ... where did you go ?

Another Friday, another month, we're almost halfway the year! Can't believe it. Except for the warmer weather, I don't like it at all that time moves so incredibly fast. I cannot remember that it was like this when I was younger... :-{

Meanwhile, I'm working on several things at the same time. Still painting away with white:

I have almost finished the first layer and added a second layer in some places already. It takes at least 3 layers to completely cover the background. For my next painting in this style I will try another colour instead of white.

Put some more layers on my canvas  for my new intuitive painting. I'm still not seeing any figures emerge, so I keep layering until I do :-)

And I made some more ACEO's. This first one is again mixed media with collage:

But then I also felt like painting one:

Takes some getting used to this small size, but it was fun. I'm a bit done with collage for the moment, it's weird, with me everything always goes in phases: I have my sketching phase, my intuitive painting phase, my collage phase, my journalphase, my markersphase, my coloured pencil phase and so many more ....  Guess I'm in the painting phase right now ... ;-)

And today was the last day to subscribe for Soulfood! It's finished already! Another example of time going too fast. It's good that I have till the end of the year to watch all the video's, since I only saw a few of them yet. The classes are as diverse and creative as their different teachers. It felt wonderful to be part of such a talented and generous group of people. And it was so exciting to see the work my students did after watching my video's. I was a bit late in asking their permission to post it on my blog, but I hope I can show you some examples next week. To start with: this is the page I made as an example for my class in Soulfood:

Well, that's it for this week. Linking this to Paint Party Friday, as always my favorite bloghop. Hope you take a look over there at all the work the artists have done this week! You won't regret it!

Here's my funny for this week:

 hahaha! Overambitious cat ...

Thanks for visiting me here, I hope your day started out well, and I wish you a beautiful and loving weekend! See you next week ♥ ♥ ♥

Playing with paint

I'm still working on my canvas, and I've also started putting layers on a new canvas. So many ideas in my head, I just feel like painting and sketching all day. Alas, life gets in the way more often than not...

Here's where I am now:

Once everything is drawn on there, it's quite meditative to colour in the white. It'll need at least two layers before the background is covered enough. Then I can start working on the figures. Looking forward to that.

And here's the new canvas that I'm playing with:

This is the part I love the most: just playing, spattering, dripping, layer after layer after layer, until I see figures starting to emerge :-)

Made a few more ACEO's:

I will probably put these in my Etsyshop. Did you notice my new page on top? I decided to put some of my smaller paintings up for sale on my blog. Need to keep practicing putting paypal-buttons on my blog, right!? ;-)

This week Dawn DeVries Sokol's new book : "A world of artist journal pages" was published, and I'm proud to say I'm in it!! Can't wait to flip through it (it'll only be available in Europe next week), it looks like a great tool for inspiration. So nice too that quite a few of my internetfriends are in there as well, and even some people I met personally. So cool!

You can even see a small part of one of my journalpages on the backcover (upper right corner) :-D

Okay, it's after midnight here, time to dive into my bed. I'll link this to Paint Party Friday tomorrow. Thanks so much for visiting and leaving your wonderful comments!Wishing you a fun weekend ahead of you, and some more sunshine to enjoy! (I love all the spring-like paintings on all the blogs! So clear that everyone is over the moon that the cold and ice are behind us for now ...)

lol :-)

See you next week! ♥ ♥ ♥

Tutorial for putting Paypal-buttons and an image-gallery on your blog

The sun is still shining, the kids are still home from school, so I still didn't do very much artwise.... I just had to go outside and feel the warmth on my skin. It's funny, when I was living in Australia the sun was shining almost all of the time, and I could just relax and stay inside if I needed to, because I knew the sun would stay. But here in Belgium I have the feeling I need to grab every little bit of sunshine that's there, because it can go away any minute....

Yesterday I took my markers and my canvas outside and started drawing the figures on there. So I did a little bit of art :-) I even painted a small part already ...

It was fun working big again.

And even the dog is smiling because the sun is shining ;-)

And I finished 2 more ACEO's:

As promised, and because some of you asked, I'll try to explain how I made this extra page with the paypal-buttons.

1. First you need to add an extra page to your blog, by going to design - pages - add new page

2. Make sure you work in the HTML-mode, not the compose-mode.

3. Next you need to make an image-gallery. The tutorial I used for that is this one. I changed a few things to suit my needs.

The html is for an image-gallery with 4 (equal) images next to eachother. Copy and paste the html below:

<center><table><tbody>
<tr>

<td><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="yourwebsiteurl" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" target="_blank"><img alt="yourimagetitle" border="0" src="yourimagesource" width="120" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">yourcaption</td></tr>
</tbody></table></td>

<td><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="yourwebsiteurl" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" target="_blank"><img alt="yourimagetitle" border="0" src="yourimagesource" width="120" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">yourcaption</td></tr>
</tbody></table></td>

<td><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="yourwebsiteurl" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" target="_blank"><img alt="yourimagetitle" border="0" src="yourimagesource" width="120" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">yourcaption</td></tr>
</tbody></table></td>

<td><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="yourwebsiteurl" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" target="_blank"><img alt="yourimagetitle" border="0" src="yourimagesource" width="120" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">yourcaption</td></tr>
</tbody></table></td>

</tr>
</tbody></table>

</center>
For every new line of 4 images you need to enter this HTML-code again.

4. Change the blue text:

yourwebsiteurl : first I put the name of my blog here, but then when I clicked on the image it went back to my blog, and  didn't want that. I wanted a larger view of my image when I click on the image. So I put the same link here as in yourimagesource
Where do you find that? Go to the blogpost where you used the image,  Click on the image you want, then right-click and go to image-information (not sure whether it's exactly like that in English, since my blog is set to Dutch and I'm just translating). Copy the link that comes up, and paste the same code in both places. You can also make a new post with all the images you want to use (you can leave it in draft-modus if you want to). Just upload your pictures as usual, then switch to HTML-mode, and look for img src=" or src=". What follows the quotation mark is the part you need. It starts with http:// and ends with .jpg.
yourimagetitle: whatever you want to call your image. You might want to keep SEO in mind when you do this, it's also the title that comes up when your image won't load on someone's browser. I use the title of the ACEO and the number.
120: this is the width if you use images of the same size. I make the width 100 for a vertical ACEO, and 140 for a horizontal ACEO.
yourcaption: here you need to insert the code for your Paypalbutton

5. Make your Paypal-button

If you don't have one yet, sign up for a free Paypal-account here. I set mine to business-account to receive payments, although I think it also works with a normal account.Then you go to profile - settings - selling preferences and you can start making your button.

Step 1: choose a button-type (if you choose "shopping-cart" customers can keep adding items to their shopping-cart, if you choose "buy now" they buy one item, have to pay, and then can continue shopping). You fill out the item-name and the item number. Very important this one if you sell more than one thing. If you don't give it a number, all your items will have the same number and if someone buys something you have no idea which one they bought (yes, it happened to me ....). This means that for every unique item you need to make a new paypal-button. Which is actually easy to do because you can click "create similar button" and you only need to change the number. For the rest of this part you just fill out everyting you need, you can choose the currency, you can add shipping costs if you want (leave this blank if the shipping is included).

Step 2: track inventory profit and loss: you need to fill this out if you sell one-of-a-kind items, in order to avoid having two customers buying the same item. Click "track inventory", and fill in the item ID and the quantity in stock (= 1). Then you choose the option "don't let customers buy the item". When someone wants to buy an item that has been sold, they get the message that's it's not in stock at the moment they want to pay. When an item is sold out (in that case you get an email from Paypal), you need to replace the HTML-code for the paypal-button with the message "sold out". For now there is no way to let Paypal add that automatically when the inventory = 0, you need to do that yourself.

Step 3: fill out what's necessary, click "save button", and then click "create button".

You get the HTML-code for this particular button, you select all and copy it, then you go back to your blog, and you insert the code in yourcaption.
Do this for every single image.

6. Create a "view cart" button

You only need to create this button once. This button allows your customer to see which items they have put in their shoppingcart. After you have created your "shoppingcart"-button, you can find "create more buttons" underneath your generated code. Choose "create a view cart button", copy the HTML-code, go to blog design - layout - add a gadget - HTML/Javascript and paste the code in there. You don't need to give it a title. This way the "view cart"-button is in the sidebar of your blog, so that it's always visible no matter where you are on your blog.


That's it! I hope it was not too confusing. If you have questions just ask and I'll try to help. Don't forget I'm not an HTML-expert, I can only share my experiences .....

To finish this post: my funny of the week ;-)

lol ....

Okay, that's it for this week. Linking this as always to Paint Party Friday. If you want to see lots of wonderful art, just click on the link :-)
Thanks for visiting me, hope your day has been going well, and I wish you a nice, relaxing wekend with no stress whatsoever! See you next week ♥ ♥ ♥