A very good “Happy Saturday Afternoon, To You!”  It is such a lovely after noon, here, in sunny Florida!  Spring is upon us but good!  We made it through another cold, dark winter, to have come out just fine!  Gardens are in all over the world, in preparation, already, for the Autumn harvest and the coming year’s bounty.  On the farm, baby cows and lambs trot around on wobbly legs, while, the raccoon and fox tend to their new offspring in their hidden dens in the wood.  We live in a marvelous world!  Mother Nature is one hell of a gal!  Ostara, origins of Easter to Christians and Passover to the Jewish, is a way of giving thanks to her for all she provides for us.  The people celebrate with the sowing of the crop.  It’s the season for that which has gone dormant to become revitalized, alive, and reborn. Kick it off with a dance in the first rain of the season.  It really is ‘revitalizing’!  It’s something the children can do, too, though, I prefer to hold my own little ritual when frolicking about in my garden.  LOL

Bless all living things!

 

In my Digital Whisper’s group, we’re doing great things!  Lately, we have explored the art of Cristina Parise, whose style is very colorful collages.  I like her philosophy because it sounds like me.  She got caught up trying to do what others did or expected of her.  Finally, she got it – I’m getting there!  LOL  Here is one of Cristina’s works:

Then, we worked out a color palette from Cristina’s art page and made something ourselves.  Here is the piece that I did:

What made this different for me is the vivid colors I used, or borrowed, from Cristina’s art.  I went into a lot of detail for this piece.  The button pack, for example, has the birds wearing crowns; it also references the ‘happiness’ the Bluebird(brand) is noted to bring.  So, it relays the message to live well and be happy.  The crowns symbolize how special I am in my own way.  The dog, well, Chelsea will probably pop up in more art.  Dominoes are there to symbolize my nightmares.  They aren’t in the correct places; they can’t be with the combination I used.  In my nightmares, whatever the topic that night, in each and every one I am trying desperately to accomplish a feat that I cannot ‘conquer’.  Once, for example, I had to count stacks of pennies.  The more I counted, the more stacks popped up for me to count.  I could never get ‘on top of’ counting the pennies, or whatever dream task it was that night.  This has been an underlying theme most of my life.  It just manifested itself in my nightmares.  The ‘fairy tale’ tower, by the way, represents my love for fantasy art.

The next art we are tackling is “Zetti”.  Please do not ask me to explain it, except that the term was coined by Teesha Moore.  I am still studying the style, but, I know you have seen examples of it online!  It is very popular in art journalising, ATC and collage communities.  Here are a couple of her pieces:

(Click on image to go to her ‘Journal Page’ artwork)

Do you recognize it?  What I am gathering is the addition of ‘body parts’ is unique to Zetti.  Wings, striped, hand-drawn appendages and the collage effect for a layout are other key characteristics.  There are even collage sheets of arms and legs, offered by Zetti-ists, for use in this art.  LOL

 

So, at Digital Whisper, we are having two Round Robin Challenges!  It will be tomorrow,well, it will start then.  In both groups, one for Zetti art and the other in the Color Palette group, the first person who signed up will start a piece of art and add one element to begin, like a background.  The next person adds her parts, perhaps along a theme, like the Zetti one.  We have a lot of communal sense and conversation for events like this.  The last one, at Valentine’s Day, was a success and the art turned out beautiful!  See?

Tomorrow’s (April 10) Round Robin promises to be alot of fun!  If you would like to join us, leave a reply to my e-mail, suruha, and I will send you an invite.  Even if you don’t make it until tomorrow, your sign up will add your name to the list of the order in which it travels. All of the addition of our parts is done online.  You would download the piece when it is your turn.  In your program of choice, Photoshop, PSP, Gimp, etc, get creative, following whatever guidelines, if any, or style, like Zetti.  When done, save your part, but, then, post the ‘new’ piece back to the group for the next person.  It is a lot of fun!  I will watch my inbox this weekend, just in case anyone wishes to join us.  Feel free to join us at any time, if you can’t make it tomorrow.  We have ‘party’ days about once a month, with challenges and contests.  Everyone wins something, too.  There are no losers!  The best part, I have to say, is how supportive the folks have been and how educational my experiences have been with DW.  That is their aim over there.

Anyway, in preparation for tomorrow’s big day, I made some bits and banners and thought I would share them with you.  Even if you don’t do digital art or ATC’s or whatever, you could use them to embellish your scrapbook pages, on and off-line.  It is one sheet, so click on the image to enlarge it, then, right-click and save to your hard drive.

The upload was 12″ by 12″, but, on my pc, in only comes up as 1600px by 1600px, when you open it.  It’s just stripes and squares.  If you find you really need a larger sheet, drop me a line and I’ll link you up!  LOL

Monday, the day after tomorrow, Miss Edna and I release the second parts of “It’s Raining, Duckie Darling!”  These parts will be the scrapbooking goodies.  I will be back then.  Have a good Sunday!  Maybe, we’ll see you at Digital Whisper!

SMILE!

Hugs,

Su