Prince Charming...

Prince Charming, as i see him... not that i am in any way waiting on a Prince Charming lol, i just thought it would be cool to give him a go since i am doing another Suzi class :)) and need to practice side view faces! so here is my first ever, i 'm not drawn to side views so much because i get less eye to play with and for me it's all about the eyes in my faces but having tried this i probably will do a few more and then practice some 3/4 views too, always something new to learn and that is what i love about drawing and painting!and then there i this painting 'Passion' commisioned by my friend Esther, a beautiful redhead herself so she loves my girls & angels

this one is no angel, seeing the text she wanted put on was a touch sassy lol i figured it was best to make her a goddess instead :))

ok, short post, the weather is way too nice to be sitting in and the sun too bright to take the laptop out lol

so have a brilliant day & whatever you are up too, i hope you are having fun!!

talk soon!

love & peace

tanya xx

beautiful times

isn't it just wonderful when Spring makes it's enterance? not that i ever complained about Winter, not like 99% of the people i know lol, i don't mind Winter, i love snow, ok, driving in snow and on icey roads not so much but it's part of it and can't be changed ... so why complain?

anyway, Winter seems to behind us and Spring has made it's enterance, i see purple sticking up out of the soil, the goldfish in the pond are pretty active and before long there will be thousands of tadpoles appearing.

Even my doggy knows it's Spring, he ran away last week, off to find himself a woman jack russell lol! he had no luck!!!! i found him first and my neighbour found the new tiny gap he managed to find to escape the garden ... it's fixed!

My last two orchids are in bloom again, last year i must have brought home an orchid with a desease, (white sticky fluffy bugs!!!) i did all i could to save my 18 orchids but sadly i only managed to save two and yes!!!! they are blooming, i am over the moon! like a proud mommy :)

i've been painting:

this one is on canvas, i hardly ever work on canvas because i need to work gentle and i'm not such a gentle worker :) i love to rub, scratch, scrub,... not so gentle!

This one is called Alice's Angel and was inspired by what other that Alice in Wonderland! i went to see the film in 3D, i hate those stupid little glasses over my own glasses, they just don't fit!!

but the film i liked very much! i loved this version, Tim Burton doesn't usually appeal to me that much but Alice was great!

The saying on it i already used before but i like it and i like opening doors and windows...

now i am working on a really small piece 6X12inch and there are plans to make her big!!! i will show and tell once it is done.

my foot is bad! terrible even, i wish wish wish i could say otherwise! i dream of the day i can tell you all my foot is healed and i can jump and dance like the crazy lunatic i am ...

but due to the beautiful L4 L5 hernia i have the nerves to my left leg and foot are even worse off than they already were, i mean come onnnnnn!!!! f*!!!!

i hope the epidural treatment next week helps some.

my left foot is now starting to turn inwards, the muscles aren't getting the correct information and are giving up on me :(( no matter how hard i try my foot will not stay flat, doc says if it gets any worse i will have to wear a brace to correct my foot position, this really made me want to cry...

but!!!! life is beautiful, there is more to it than my stupid foot!!!

i am enjoying all that can and have loads to be grateful for.

on the bright side: due to the pain i haven't been able to eat well so i am losing weight!

hey!!! losing weight is a good thing :))

see always a silver lining!!! always!!!!!

have a great day! i' m off to paint and sing, i can't dance but i can softly headbang to Metallica wohaha!!! Spring is in the air!!!

all my doors are open!!

xxx

love & peace

no Tag 11 yet

hello hello, no! no tag today! owwwwww untthinkable nearly! but you know what? i had a bit of me-time in the city with a friend today, hanging out, drinking coffee, bit of shopping, lunch, you know just ahhhhhhhhh relaxing time. no time to make tags or anything else, didn't even cook!!! got pizza instead. so a lovely lazy day alllll day! so proud of myself.

i did finish an angel painting last night, the light was really bad today but i took a picture anyway, doesn't really show the true colours, the ochre in her face is really very very subtle in real life, strange how it is so hard in this pic, ah well here it is anyway.

she is an adorable red head angel, apparently i do a lot of red heads... now where does my inspiration for that come from i wonder... i had a nice time painting her, lovely new golden fluids mixed with my studio paints by Ranger of course and i have some wonderful Sterward Gill paints on their way from Scotland, can't wait to get them in !! they are sooooo beautiful, can't even describe them, you need to see them for yourself!

ah the flowers on the windowsill inside are dead! i know, i should throw them out huh!

but see how my geraniums are still flowering strong outside!!! December i might add! see this is where the ochre in her face is harsh but not in real life i promise you :)

the wings are very textured so i didn't beeswax them,

all the rest of this 60X30cm painting was waxed

bit too dark picture to see the lettering at the bottom! it says EMBRACE in nice bright red really ( i might have to take a better pic tomorrow of the weather decides i can)

she is telling me to embrace love,she is holding my heart, she is reminding me to embrace all the love around me, the love in my heart even if i don't realize it at times, there are so many things to love, it is not always about romance now is it? lol i am in love with my paints for example, i enjoy painting so much, it just feels right and makes me happy and carefree., i love my children of course, goes without saying that! i love my doggy, did you notice him in the background, too lazy to be bothered about me painting pretty angels.

ok tags, cos there is a fat chance you came to see my take on Tim's 11th Xmas tag!

Monday! i will post the last two tags on Monday, i am having a friend over this weekend and we will be working on a personal item for her to remember her father by, so no time for tags.

you understand.

hope you all have a great weekend, see you on Monday! xxx

still time to start following my blog!

my pretty girl

just checking in, letting you all know i'm not lettng myself go with this whole dystrophy thingy!!! actually, now that i know what it is i feel a little better in a strange way, even though the doc says it is the worst outcome of the options he had in mind, still, knowing is way better than feeling like a complete whimp with unknown pains and aches and stuff, you know?

i'm taking meds for the osteoporosis part, i'm doing new painless exercices to strengthen my muscles, i get cool massages to drain fluid from my foot and leg, we are tackling this thing!!! lol

so anyway, one of my chicks from class came to play on Tuesday, she had a little book to finish, we had lots of laughs and a nice chat. i need to have chicks around more often!!!

here is her finished book, she loves it and so she should, she made a really beautiful trip down memory lane. totally handmade, bound with bind-it-all, her first little book! cool huh!

Yesterday i finally got to finish this little girl, i started her a while back, i can tell cos my mouths are changing now so i'm not totally happy with this one anymore but never the less, i finished her, and i like her! 12x24 inches, my favourite size to paint on.

i added a little metal embossed heart, ten second studios metal, i love it! getting myself really into this metal embossing and thought it would be cool to use in my mixed media paintings!

the cool thing about mixed media is that there are no rules or limitations! just fun and experimenting and mixing and letting things go wrong sometimes and still loving it! my kind of art!

my pretty girl is ready to take on the world and even though it hurts sometimes it still feels good!

bit of a message to myself in this one so i am keeping her close.

( the words are cut out of a pretty sassy mag that i 'borrowed' from my son's desk haha! shhhh don't tell him!)

at the moment i'm working on a little project with sticky back canvas, i'll show when finished, if i decide i like it haha!

it's just fun to be playing a bit more again, letting go, all part of the letting go.

so, off to my paints, coffee and ipod docked into the speaker system to let my favourite music fill the room, make me move a bit ( there are still parts of me that move smoothly lol)

a bit of Green Day, Foo Fighters and Red Hor Chili Peppers will do the trick!!!

love you all, thanks for the caring comments on my blog! xox

hope you will all have a day as wonderful as the one i'm having!

xox tanya

ooohhh i'm soooooooooo bad!!!

i really am bad!!! all my Xmas cards are still here! they really are! they are all ready to leave mind but they will be sooooo late! i'm really sorry things just got on top of me really! flu; kids, bad schoolresults!!! other things i will not bother you with,... i promise they are getting posted today so maybe they will be like New Year's cards instead? :-)

i did draw the winner of a Xmas gift, i can say no more than she lives in Belgium...

present will get posted today!!!!

it's been busy here with my birthday, i had a full weekend with my three eldest kids, went out for dinner, visited Maastricht, went shopping in Hasselt, went out with a couple of friends, busy busy... and i slept too little and ate too little the whole weekend, no! i didn't drink too much!!! truth is i'm just not feeling too well, can't explain what, a bug probably

i have a few days to myself now, all the kids are away, only bart is here but he's at work during the day so i have sooooo much peace and quiet, it is beautiful, just me, my music (listening to Coldplay this morning), coffee, Cadbury's chocolate and my art, i'm finishing a few Petite Dolls and starting a new one a hope, i feel like doing dolls this week, experiment with some layers and gesso

here is the Goth Doll that i finished for my 16 year old daughter, i didn't do much more to it, i added silver wax that i applied with the fine tip, drawing along the stamped swirls, i did the boots all silver and they were hillarious ugly hihi! i scraped most of it back off and painted over with red studio paint (claudine hellmuth) and i wanted to dry quickly with heattool cause i am really impatient!!! i admit and what happened? that bit of wax that was still there melted through the paint and i got this great bubbly effect; honestly, maybe it doesn't show up well in the pic but in real life it is really grundgy!so i'm pretty chuffed with my mistake of the silver boots:-) and i'm going to experiment more on wax under paint!!! it is fun!!!!

these dolls need more work, i'm not sure where i'm going on this, i started all pink and girly but then decided bah!!! so in came the orangey colours i like so much these days and a goldleaf tree that i then sanded down to age, i like this!! really great effect

this little girl i just started, i love the layers of her dress, i simply gesso (claudine hellmuth's because the structure is so nice) with paper tissues ripped up into little bits and "gessoed" down, a technique i use alot on canvas to add defenition, really cheap trick but with great results, a friend of mine does all the sides of her canvas art this way but i also use it on altered books, in paintings,...

she still need a lot of work but can you see the structure of her dress?

well, i'm off to get my hands dirty with paints! i should probably go to the supermarkrt first, hardly any food left in the house hihi! but hey! i'll do that later i really am not in the mood to go out just yet

hope you all have a wonderful day!

and my cards are on the way! again sorrrrrry for the big delay!!!!

sticky-back canvas book

ohhh it's such a dull day, a day to stay inside and drink hot drinks and create or play! howereven this morning i had to go to the doc for a check-up on my ankle. It's a really slow healing process but i'm getting there, i'm off work now till the end of January 2009 and i got another 20 visits from the pysichal therapist, i am soooo looking forward to that! (read with plenty of sarcasme!)

but no complaining from this end! at least it is getting better, slowly but surely!

i went Xmas shopping on Saturday and am pleased to announce that i did well! all the gifts for the kids are under the tree! and i bought myself 2 books for Xmas! yes i ahve to buy my own gifts, comes with being alone! i got myself the TWILIGHT book the whole world is on about! and i got the book following "the pillars of the earth" i didn't even know there was a second book so i was like a littke kid in the bookstore! i had the mgiftwrapped so i can't read before Xmas! aren't i good?!

this weekend i finished my littke canvas book i made with Claudine Hellmuth's sticky-back canvas! great stuff!

i'm pleased with my little book, happy even, it's a bit of a healing journal kind of thing, well i don't know what to call it, i did make it pretty personal, random thoughts, things that i relate to at this time in my life kind of thing. does it have to have a name? :-)

my daughter thinks the cover is a bit "nude" haha! but one needs to feel a little nude once in a while to get to the bottom of the matter... or am i just strange? :-)

i used Claudine's paints and matte Multi medium! i sooo love this medium! i even used it to adhere the goldleaf, it worked like a charm! i mixed the paints with Perfect Pearls and watered them down, i monoprinted with them, i splashed and brushed on, i dabbed them on with Cut 'n Dry foam! do i love these paints? they mix, they hold their colour! they are semi-gloss!
translucent!! which is wonderful for collage art
i used Ranger Distress Inks, Distress Embossingpowder, Goldleaf, Ranger Stickles, Paper Artsy stamps!(thanks Leandra!) i love them! ohh and i painted the flowers! they were all different colours to start wirth, all left-overs. Yes with Claudine's paints, watered down and mixed with perfect pearls and dryed with the heattool, they turned out great! i added little charms i bought in NJ, i know the flowers look a little out of place in my book, they are bright! but that is who i am! pink one day and dark the other! it's my book! i collaged with stamped tissuepaper, book pages, Grungeboard, wrapper of my fav Cadbury's chocolate! Tim Holtz' tickets,... i loved working on this book!





ohh you should see the shimmer on this red page! it is magnificant! really it is!

I never thought i would love Claudine's line so much and i never thought it would fit into my style bit it has and i am soooo pleased with her joining the Ranger Crew!!! aren't they all great!?!!! and then you all only know the designers! there are some pretty great insiders there at Ranger! Merry Christmas to you all!!! you all really made my year 2008 a happy one! especially in October hihi!

what will i do next? i think i'm going to get my Utee and Melting pot out and play!!!

hope you all have a wonderful day!

my first Gothic Arch

i made my first Gothic Arch, there is something about this shape that i find really appealing and apparently i'm not alone, i found http://gothicarches.wordpress.com/ where you can download free arch templates to get you started, i found this address when reading the November issue of Craft Stamper, a UK magazine i just love!

anyway, i printed my own artwork, Oracle card "strength" onto this really thin newspaper-like paper, it went really well with my Canon printer, i dried the ink with my heattool cause i like things quick!

i beeswaxed my print with natural beeswax to a background i had painted and masked with Ranger Dabbers, Distress inks, papers and bits of bookprint, it turned out a touch dark so the next time i will keep my background a little lighter! i added some gold and bronze beeswax! i used my craft iron, melted the wax up against the iron and ironed it on straight away, i'd never done it like this before, i usually use the little spade on the stylus tool! this was quick! less accurate but fun because it left space for chance!

i added a dotted ribbon at the bottom, waxed it and dragged some bronze and gold wax across it, i addes some flowers with brads, i cut off the prongs a attached with Glossy Accents, Ranger, a inner watch piece, a rub-on at the tpo, some buttons, a found plastic object and a cool little piece of glass that i glues onto a piece of book page with Glossy Accents, i was so lucky to just pick up a piece that i had torn earlier for a diff project and the word "strength" just jumped out at me!

i also made soem of these cute little houses! i've been wanting to make some for ages and never got round to doing them, so now i did!

i like them, i want to make a whole bunch of them before Xmas ( i know! i love Xmas!!!!) they would look so nice all together like a little village, very nostalgic even.

i even want to make my own pattern for some house of my own, it's pretty easy really!

i love these ones mind!!!! they are by Julie van oosten.

Strength

okay, i'm back again, wanted to share this with you: over on the Suzi Blu forum we were challenged to make are own Oracle card, now, i know nothing about Oracle cards really so i did a little research and through some link i found out that my personal card based on the answers i had to fill in, would be STRENGTH, now that got me thinking of course and i must agree, strength is something i have had to have the last years, well many years really, so i joined in the challenge and made my Oracle card STRENGTH, it was kind of good to sit and create and think about life, life as a mother to five( the birds represent my kids), life as an artist supporting her family, anyway, here is my card, 5x8 inch, nice big size, i like! just good to work on i think.

i'm not saying she is a work of art or she is a real beauty or anything but i like what i did and it was good doing it, so here you have it! STRENGTH, i wish you all strength in these uncertain days

my first real petite doll

I think i'll call her ruby
maybe you like her maybe you don't! probably all a matter of taste. and that's fine.


i kind of love my little doll! my first attemp to draw on wood, i couldn't find the wood i wanted so i went with what i could get, it wasn't easy getting the face shading right! i did it a million times up to a point i had to stop so not to ruin her little face all together! i haven't got a blending pencil yet so it's a bit difficult, but one is on it's way!!!
i was getting all anal about it and then decided, hey! it's my first, it's not perfect! and that's okay! we are happy with that, tim would say! embrace the imperfections, tim would also say! get over yourself, mario would say! (tim's wonderful, beautiful assistant!) so i did !!!
i got over myself and feel happy with my petite doll!!

you can tell i've been to ranger!!! i used claudine's paints! they are soooo wonderful mixed with glaze!!! they keep their colour! don't go all light and pastel on you! they become translucent and wonderful! i like i like!!! t hey are not just another paint!!! they are beautiful!! and i'm not just saying that! i was sceptical about them at first i really admit!!
but believe me they are worth trying in mixed media!!!
i also used ranger inks of course, when do i not use ranger inks??? anyone who knows me i use ranger inks!!,perfect pearls to mix and i used them on their own, so much detail they gave to my piece!!, stamps, dabbers, i used suze's bedazzles!!! love the tiny little sprinkly thingys

the hearts om my art are with gold dabber, i simply dabbed them through a stencil, pretty thick dabbing and dried with my heattool to keep them all bubbled and textured, as tim taught us to!!!
i think they are really neat (awesome for the US readers!)

oh and i used the great ranger white pen to do the sparkle in the eye! is great for that! i'm so pleased with it!!!
you really should go check out all the ranger stuff, link in my list on the left<<<>

ohh my first little doll, i'm so happy!

never thought i could draw something and be happy about it!

life has so many suprises!

big hug!! tanya