Indian Dreamweaver

Saturday, February 28th, 2009 by Alyice

My mom, while proclaiming to be a Christian, often confused me with her religious beliefs. She loved God and what He stood for, but she also loved the idea of something more than God—of a belief system that didn’t give one deity control over all of mankind. And so she often found herself leaning more towards the belief systems of Native American Indians. She believed that they understood the earth better than any living soul, and that they could connect with the spirit world because of their connection with earth.

So it was no surprise that when each of my children were born, she presented them with two things: a beautiful white cross with a child kneeling and praying before the cross, and a handcrafted dreamweaver. It was her desire that the cross would remind them of the one true God—and I am sure appease me—and that the dreamweaver would protect them by keeping away nightmares and providing them with pleasant, happy dreams.

The card below is in honor of my mom’s beliefs.

May this Indian Dreamweaver postcard remind you to respect the beliefs of others, even if you don’t agree with them or find them confusing from time-to-time.

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Posted in The Cards | 2 Comments »

How To Create A Van Gogh Card

Friday, February 27th, 2009 by Alyice

About two months ago, an artist told me that various pieces of my art reminded him of Van Gogh—that they were very impressionistic. While I never really studied Van Gogh’s art, or any other artist for that matter, I have been fond of several of his pieces so I took it as a wonderful compliment. Then I created the piece you see below and for the first time, I thought, “I see it.”

Supplies:

9 x12, 90 lb. watercolor paper
Cardstock
Paint brushes
White gesso
Mod Podge Matte or Golden Polymer Medium
Golden Fluid Acrylics
Pages from an old book
Colored tissue paper
Mulberry paper
Gold Metallic Dimensional Writer paint tube
Computer program (like: Paint Shop Pro or Photoshop Elements)

To create this “flowers in a vase” piece, follow the instructions below:

Cover a 9 x12, 90 lb. watercolor paper with Gesso and let dry.
Rip scrap papers into various shapes and randomly glue to the paper with Mod Podge Matte or Golden Polymer Medium.
Paint background using Golden Fluid Acrylics.
Sketch your floral design and vase onto the painted background.
Rip out pages of an old book; preferably pages that are tinted brown.
Randomly glue the ripped pages onto the vase, making sure to overlap the papers so that the painted background doesn’t show through.
Cut a floral design out of colored tissue paper or mulberry paper.
Glue and layer the cut outs until you get the floral shape and design desired. (In this case, I used approximately 100 floral cut outs.)
Paint over the vase with Golden Fluid Acrylics. Make sure the paint you choose is light enough that it leaves a hint of the text underneath.
Take a Gold Metallic Dimensional Writer paint tube and draw an outline around the flowers and the vase.
Let dry overnight.
Scan image into your computer.
Adjust brightness and contrast of the scanned image. (Mine was set to -5 brightness and +10 contrast.)
In your digital software program, add a paper texture. (Tip: I used Corel Paint Shop Pro and selected the Texture button, then paper. Under settings, I used: 400%, Smoothness 40, Depth 1, Angle 243, Intensity 50, Elevation 31, and 0 for Ambience and Shininess.)
Resize to 5w x 7h and run it through the “unsharp mask” and save.
Print the greeting card on cardstock.

Keep Creating

Posted in Art How-Tos, The Cards | 2 Comments »

How To Create An Inspiration Board

Wednesday, February 25th, 2009 by Alyice

I’ve been thinking long and hard about what I wanted to create for this month’s art challenge and while many topics came to mind, I realized that the best place to start is with an “Inspiration Board”.

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Inspiration Boards have been around for a very long time and go by many names: Vision Boards, Creativity Collages, Goal Maps, Treasure Maps, Bucket Lists, and so forth. The idea behind an inspiration board is to give us something to visualize on a daily basis so that we don’t lose sight of what’s important to us.

For you see, all too often we go through life without fully giving thought to what we really want out of life and even when we do take the time to figure it out, we “forget” to make room in our lives for those wants. So as time goes on our dreams and desires get buried beneath everyday responsibilities, job duties, and other distractions until the day they are forgotten altogether. Until that one day when we are left wondering why it feels like there’s something drastically missing from our lives and feeling guilty because, on the surface, everything looks great.

Visualizing our dreams and aspirations through images allows our minds to focus on the end result—the pot of Gold at the end of a rainbow, if you will. The images in our collages create excitement whereas a list of goals often creates a sense of “one more thing” to accomplish and leave behind a sense of failure when they aren’t crossed off in a perceived timely manner. By using images, versus text, we’re more inclined to leave our personal dreams and aspirations out in the open without fear that someone will be able to see right into our souls or judge us. For you see, to the outside world, an Inspiration Board is nothing more than a collaged piece of artwork—but you and I will know differently, won’t we?

Copyright 2009, Alyice Edrich
Personalized Inspiration Board © Alyice Edrich, 2009
See how this Inspiration Board was altered 9 months later. Click here.

When I first thought about creating an Inspiration piece, I started small by creating an “Inspiration Mini-Album”, or IMA for short. My IMA was nothing more than a cheap 4×6 photo album—the kind you get when you turn in a roll of film for developing—and some photos. It sat right next to my bed to remind me of what was most important in my life. At least once a week, I’d open it, think about the images and send out good thoughts as I prayed over them.

Later, my IMA grew to include mini-collages. In it, I placed a picture of each person I wanted to pray for. Next, I added images of people I wanted to think positive thoughts about—people who had hurt or wronged me. I wanted to forgive them without having to drudge up the past—which I often did during my “journal healing” sessions. Then I included extremely simple 4×6 collages that consisted of a combination of clip art, images, and text that represented the dreams I had for my family and the goals I had for my business—goals that, for me, seemed out of reach and unobtainable. I used this process for two and a half years.

But last December, I needed a change. I needed to spend some time concentrating on me and my well being. I needed to start taking care of me, the person—not me the mom, not me the wife, not me the businesswoman, and not me the friend. And in doing so, I realized that my personal goal lists weren’t working for me. It didn’t matter if I placed them on my bulletin board, scattered them throughout my calendar, or shared them with my closest friends, I never really followed through. That’s when I decided to spice things up and create my very first Inspiration Board.

Now, looking at my Inspiration Board reminds me of the things that are most important to me, reminds me to stay on track with my personal goals, and reminds me to ask, “How’s that going for you?” when something isn’t working out as planned or no longer feels right. And the best part is that I feel absolutely no pressure to meet a deadline so I can enjoy the process.

How you create your Inspiration Board is entirely up to you. It can be something as simple as collaging a bunch of images together or it can be as elaborate as creating an entire work of art. The important thing is that you just do it!

Supplies:

A canvas, poster board, block of wood, piece of fabric, sheet of paper, or bulletin board.
Gesso paint, white.
Images: cut out of magazines, bought off stock photography sites, dug out of your stash of personal photographs, or hand-painted by you.
Molding paste: light, heavy, or crackle.
Paints: acrylic, watercolor, oil.
Water-proof pens, crayons, or markers.
Acid-free glue: GAC 100, Yes!, Mod Podge Matte, or stick glue.
3-D items: i.e. shells to symbolize your dream of vacationing on the beach.
Anything else you can think of to enhance your personal vision.

There are really only four steps for creating your Inspiration Board:

The first step is the hardest. It involves actually listen to yourself—not your boss, not your spouse, not your kids, not your friends, and definitely not the media. Listen to what your heart is telling you. Spend a week or two just thinking about your life: where you’ve been, what you’ve learned, where you’re headed, and where you WANT to be headed. What dreams died years ago that you want to resurrect? What are you doing now that you wish you didn’t have to do? What dreams have you been working towards only to hit a roadblock and how are you going to move past that roadblock so that you can see your dream come to fruition?

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The second step involves weeding through your thoughts (and notes if you’ve taken any) to find out what you really want to focus on for the rest of the year. Then dig through your art supplies, your photographs, your magazines, your sketch books, your journals, your personal stash of mementos, and pull out things that fit your dreams and goals for the next year.
The third step is the fun part. Here you get to take what you’ve discovered about yourself and express those dreams in your art. You can be so creative that you complete a masterpiece that could be sold as art for someone else’s wall or you can be so quick that you create something so simple that after a year’s time, you can collage right over it without regret.
For my Inspiration Board, I took the easy way out. I just grabbed images I had lying around the house, printed out an inspirational list I call “Live With Authenticity”, and glued them all over the board—including the sides. Then I grabbed some light modeling paste and acrylic paints and got to work. It’s nothing fancy but it does showcase what’s most important and that’s not the design but the things I want to accomplish this year. And the best part is that I can cover it with gesso paint and reuse the same canvas next year—or even mid-year should I decide to change a few goals.
The last, and final step, is to place your Inspiration Board in a prominent place in your home or office. Place it somewhere that can be seen on a daily basis and place it somewhere that doesn’t have you cringing should someone walk by and ask about the artwork.

As for my “Live With Authenticity” list, it’s just a group of phrases that spoke to me as I read several books on simplifying one’s life.

Phrases like:

Living with authenticity = a meaningful life.
Being mindful of every day blessings = contentment.
Giving self permission to live the life you want to live = a balanced life.
Loving yourself first = loving others healthfully.
Managing the mind = living in the present.
Slowing down & quieting the mind = replenishes the body.
Being proactive = fulfilling dreams.
Limiting exposure to sensationalism & negativity = peace of mind.
Setting & keeping boundaries = stopping self-sabotage.
Making finances a priority; not an afterthought = a stress-free life.
Stopping the excuses & eliminating distractions = a fulfilled life.
Not letting others or circumstances dictate how you feel = true joy.

Keep Creating

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AlyiceEdrich.com
I'm a freelance writer, mixed media artist, SMVA, and the owner of The Dabbling Mum.

Copyrights

All material on this blog belongs to Alyice Edrich, unless otherwise noted. No project, artwork, or text may be reproduced or displayed elsewhere without the consent of the creator. That includes making derivative works for resale. Please use project tutorials for personal use and/or gifts only.