Saturday, February 5, 2011

Making Art With Marilyn

My friend Marilyn came over this afternoon to make some art with me.  We have taken classes together in the past and are now attempting to get together on a regular basis to make things with our craft supplies.

Before she came over, I had to get busy and clear off my dining room table so we would have a surface to work on.  Here's how it looked at 10 a.m.:
Basically, about a month's worth of projects in various stages of completion.  The clutter was really starting to bug me, I just hadn't had time to sort it out before today.  However, a little bit more than an hour later, the table was cleared off (much to my great relief) and I had laid out the supplies we would need for this afternoon's project:
Today, we made pages for a journal, based on an online tutorial I had taken as part of the 21 Secrets collection of classes. This particular idea was the brainchild of Tracie Hanson, what she calls the "Doodlicious Daybook".  You can read more about it in her blog entry of January 26th. Basically, we painted some cardstock, both coloured and brown paper, cut the pages to the size of our choice, punched holes in them and joined them together with binder rings.

The more time we spend together doing this type of thing, the more our contrasting styles are apparent.  Marilyn is speedy and got her book assembled this afternoon and even started writing in it while I was still painting away at individual pages.  I am taking more time with mine, and over the next little while will be embellishing the pages with rubber stamps and ink, photos, collage, sewing and gluing more paper onto them, adding pockets, etc.  Marilyn was working with pastel colours today (see top photo, below) while I was absorbed with primary colours (2nd photo below).  She made a lot of square and rectangular shapes, I was all about swirls and circles. 
No matter how different we are in the way we create, we both love to play with paint and pen and ink and paper.  That's one of the great things about art, the way it brings people with different styles and habits together in a fun and friendly way.

1 comment:

HDD said...

Hi Cynthia me again.
After a day at work I was happy to read about your get together with Marilyn.
I wish I could do so with Diane and meet all of you in Toronto.
It is fun to have a friend or friends join you in the exploration of activities you all wish to explore. I have a small group that does that with me.
Leads to all sorts.
And yes always need to clear space to do it!
Cheers. Heather
PS Thanks for your thoughts re the rain. fortunately our area not specifically affect but now there are floods in Victoria, bushfires in Western Australia!