Icads # 55, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61

Have been lost the last few days without my desktop computer, sucks when the hard drive dies without warning and the future doesn't look good for retrieving info off the old computer,  new computer is all hooked up, but I'm missing ALL of my photos, ALL of my digital stamps I've bought over the last few years, as well as my Office documents & spreadsheets.  Argh!!! Saying a prayer that they can work a miracle and retrieve all that data.

Anyway, Index Card a Day is winding down ... I've had so much fun exploring new techniques I've seen other participants display, special thanks to Tracy Scott and Fran Traina for their tutorials (hope my pestering them didn't force them to do them so I'd shut up, lol).  I can't wait to try some of the things I've seen and learned in my art journal and even canvases.

I digress ... 

Here is my card for #55 - the prompt was Jewels - I found the crown online as free clip art & fussy cut it out.  The background is made by using the marbling technique & alcohol inks - only instead of using the glossy card stock, I used a regular index card - I like the way it looked.  After the crown was collaged on the card, I doodled a little scrollwork and wrote the quote.

This next one is #57 - the prompt was Carousel.  I feel a bit like a slacker on this one ... I used the same background technique as above with the alcohol inks and pounced them on the index card.  Over that I drew the carousel with the animals.  The carousel was colored with gel pens.  Black dots were an afterthought.  For the white-ish flowes in the background, I used my Copic colorless blender & dotted on the ink which pushed away color, leaving white.

 For #58, the prompt was to incorporate a zebra ... I failed miserably with the above animals, so I wasn't going there again.  Instead, I colored a zebra pattern with my Pitt black pen and added some acrylic green flicks to the edge to simulate the jungle.  I doodled the corners, but looking at them now, it puts me in mind of a cage - being at the zoo  ... oh well, it is what is it.

 For #59, the prompt was angels.  I had this beautiful angel that I got from the internet sitting in my clip art folder and loved the change to use her.  On the background I used purples (several shades) of acrylic paint and smooshed the index card over & over til I got the mottled look.  I used white oil pastel to make the clouds.  She was fussy cut and collaged over the clouds, which I tweaked a bit more with the oil pastels.

 This next one was #60 and the prompt was an astronaut.  So many clever icads, but this is the road I travelled on ... Background was painted with heavy body acrylic blue.  Then I used yellows, golds, white oil pastel to create the moon.  I then applied matte medium just to the moon & when it was ALMOST dry, I rubbed at it to give me some crater/texture to the moon.  The astronaut is clip art in my stash (what was I thinking collecting him in the first place?). 

This is #61 ... The last HURRAH for the Index Card a Day challenge ...

The prompt for this was thread.  I've used my sewing maching before, but one of the gals at the ICAD challenge, Simi Warah, did some beautiful work with embroidery on her cards/paint chips that I wanted to give it a go ...

I had a background that I used fluorescent acrylic paints for a smooshed effect.  Over this, I used my piercing tool to place holes along the left side and bottom at equal distances to embroider my card.

Hand wrote the sentiment - This was new to me (on index cards, I should say), and we all need to try new things - I think that's the whole spirit behind the Index Card challenge.

 

These last two were Fails ...

 
I used acrylic for the background & white oil pastels and painted the face with acrylics.
Was not impressed with my dangles, either, but I posted

This one I actually really like ... even though it might be a Fail for the challenge

This started off to be my #60 astronaut card - I was going for a space station thing ... But when I got this far, I liked it the way it was, so I left it ...

 

And last - (I'm putting this at the bottom in the hopes that you'll be too bored by the time you get this far and won't even notice it) ...

This is a single line blind selfie ...

 

 One of the ladies at Daisy Yellow's ICAD on Facebook started it all by posting a blind, one-line selfie.  You sit in front of a mirror and draw your head/face.  Once your pencil touches paper, you can't look down or lift up your pencil.  I was actually surprised the portions weren't too far off, but if you look close, I have a scar from the eyebrows to the nose and again under nose to lips and from lips to other side of the face (didn't lift my pencil).  Notice I didn't post a photo of the image when it was just the pencil, lol - I used acrylics to paint the selfie and then added some doodles to distract the eye from the actual image ...

Just so you know, both of my eyes are the same size and my hair length is uniform all the way around, lol.

So glad for the opportunity to do this 61 day challenge - I've been uncreative til this spring with all my classes.  I started Art Journaling and have been eating up different videos on techniques and what not ... This ICAD challenge gave the opportunity, and sometimes instructions/tutorials on how to do different things so rather than watching YouTube, I actually did them.

There's another couple of challenges starting August 1st over at Daisy Yellow:

Daily Paper Prompts = 61 days of challenges - similar to ICAD, but can be done on any size paper, and most any mediums

Art Journal Tangents & Tactics = Weekly challenges that also help explore different techniques for art journaling.

Thanks for popping in ...

Have a great day,

Collette