Starry, Starry Night

The blue of this specialty paper from my stash is gorgeous, is it not?

Something about this card really appeals to me, but for the life of me, I can't articulate what it is. The design isn't particularly good...in fact, the spray of silver cord strikes part of me--the logical, sensible part--as distinctly odd.

But another part of me--the symbolic, artsy, vague part--loves the intimation of a comet or shooting star contrasted with the stable, very traditional star (which is made of wood painted with a silver metallic pen). Stable and transient. Movement and stasis.

Wow. Those last two statements illustrate the rhetorical trope of chiasmus. A and B. B and A. That transposition of the order of meaning in two pairs is something Alexander Pope uses in one of his poems...probably Essay on Man, but I'm not sure about that. It's been a while, but every time I think of chiasmus, I think of Pope. Shakespeare, too. (Okay, I checked. Pope did use chiasmus in Essay on Man, though he certainly might have used it in other places.)

Oh good grief. I can hear you unsubscribing from Simplicity. Ayyyeeeeee! Run screaming from the weird English Lit freak spouting classical rhetoric!

Don't worry. Tomorrow's card will be sensible and down to earth. But for tonight, I'm feeling very starry and rhetorical.

And I swear I only had one small glass of wine.

Gracious Vases...Part 2

As promised, today I'm showing my latest attempt at coloring with markers. Before I get to the card, however, let's talk about the markers.

Y'all know that I'm not a big colorer. The drive to keep things simple lives strong in me, and coloring isn't simple. It takes practice, skill, and time...much more time than inking a block image up and stamping it and being d-o-n-e, done.

Not coloring much hasn't kept me from experimenting with and buying just about every coloring medium known to stamping. I have watercolor pencils and crayons, Prismacolor pencils, Twinkling H2Os, chalks, SU reinkers, SU markers, Memento markers, and Bic and Sharpie markers. I can honestly say I've not gotten my money's worth out of any of these, but at least most of them don't go bad, so eventually, if I live to be a hundred, I might actually use some of them half up.

Can you say "conspicuous consumption"?

Knew you could.

Anyway, I deliberately didn't buy Copics, figuring Bics and Sharpies were adequate to my very simple need, and until Wednesday, I only had seven Copics: six of them I'd won as blog candy, and the seventh was the light cool gray I bought with the expectation of outlining images. All the cool stampers outline, you know.

There's a reason you've never seen an image with a marker by me. Seriously.

Anyway (again), when I started coloring the outline vases from Gracious Vases, I discovered that they look really nifty with monochromatic shading. Which made me go through all my markers to see what colors I could use. Which made me realize that the Bic and Sharpie markers are sadly lacking in light colors. Which made me want to supplement my stash with some light Copics.

In addition, the cap colors on the Bics and Sharpies aren't entirely accurate. Which was annoying when colors didn't turn out like I wanted. Which made me get all AR/OC at 11:00 Tuesday night. Which made me make a chart so I'd really know what sort of monochromatic shading I could do. Which made me really tired the next day. Which weakened my resolve to stay away from Copics. Which made me spend an undisclosed amount of money at Marco's Paper and Hobby Lobby.

Hey, I used a coupon at Hobby Lobby.

Oh, Lordy. I'm so very crazy.

So here's the chart. I stamped a bunch of the vases on a spare sheet of paper and then colored them all in. The ones I liked, I cut out and glued onto this chart. That way, I didn't have to be neat coloring (you try staying in the lines after midnight while completely manic!) and those combos that didn't work too well could easily get pitched in the trash.

Now, finally--I'm sure you thought I'd never shut up and get here--the card:

The shelf is a ribbon stamp from Faux Ribbon (Papertrey), and the sentiment is from some set by StampinUp. The colors make me think of the 1970s. The vases are stamped on scrap paper, colored, and cut out...because I ran out of Gina K cardstock and couldn't color on a one-layer card without the marker bleeding through.

Yes, I got my shipment of Gina K cardstock yesterday so I can once again make one-layer cards colored with markers.

The end.

Supplies
stamps: Papertrey Gracious Vases, Faux Ribbon; SU sentiment
ink: Palette dark chocolate
paper: PTI vintage cream
accessories: Bic/Sharpie markers

Would Someone Please Push the Pause Button?

I don't know why my life sped up this week, but I feel like someone pushed the fast forward button on it. It's been fun but exhausting.

Anyway. Today's card is the last I'll post with Grunge Me for a while...maybe. This one isn't grungy, though. It's crisp and clean, and as soon as I saw the stamp I knew I wanted to make a stylized flower with it.

Okay, the sentiment is grungy. But the card isn't. Pear Tart and Bahama Blue. A Memento Ink match made in heaven. To do this, I placed the stamp very carefully with the central point at the center of my gridded acrylic block. I placed a pencil dot in the exact center of the card and lined that up with the central circle on the gridded block, rotating the card for each stamp! So very easy to get precise placement with that FAB PTI gridded acrylic block!!!

And now for a non sequitur.

Happy Canada Day to my friends to the north! Y'all rock!!!!

And speaking of Canada, check out this ever so relevant little button the Canadian Jennifer Styles sent to me. Oh, she knows me so well! I'll bet y'all didn't know that the reason I have posted three OLWs in a row is because I don't want to get stuck with the odd numbers again. That really bothered me.

And yes, the lack of punctuation and capitalization on the button bothers me. "I have CDO. It's like OCD, but all the letters are in alphabetical order as they should be."

Now, I'm happy.

And tired.

I'm going to bed.

True Artists

Okey-dokey. Maybe I should add a new label for posts here: Proof that Susan Is Loony.

I got my Papertrey design email this morning and clicked over to Betsy Veldman's blog. For years, Betsy has blown me away with her creativity and artistic eye, and I've CASified a number of her designs. Today's tutorial is totally fab, but you want to know what struck me most? Click over, take a look for yourself, and then come back to see if you guessed.




-------------------------------------------------------

Are you back? Did you figure it out?

How in the HECK does she work with all those ink stains on her acrylic block?!?!?!?!? Dang, I'd go crazy and be completely unable to stamp anything straight with the block...all that ink would distract me hugely!

Betsy, however, is a true artist like all the other true artists I've known in my 44 years. True artists are never distracted by silly stuff like ink stains on a block. Have you ever looked at a true artist's watercolor or oils palette? They dive right in and make a mess and wodge colors together and slop stuff around.

And out comes beauty.

How do they do it?!?!

As both Popeye and my friend Nicole P. say, "I am what I am, and that's all I am." I am AR/OC. Betsy, clearly, is not. We both make pretty stuff and get pleasure from it, and that's all that matters. As much as I want to go to her house and clean her blocks, she'd just mess them up again.

I so completely admire her for that.

Now, go back to Betsy's blog and read her tutorial. I'm so going to use her ideas for sentiment, in my own clean and simple way. I bet you'll be inspired, too!