November HeARTs Giving: Week 3 Update

Week 3 of HeARTsGiving yielded 19 new embellished heARTs. Read on to learn more about my inspiration, materials, and techniques...

15/30: Artist's Choice

Stamping with ArtFoamie rose and leaf stamps along with Color Shift paints. I had fun combining and layering the various stamped motifs.

“There is simply the rose; it is perfect in every moment of its existence.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson, American Essayist

16/30: Mark Making

"The whole point is to live life and be - to use all the colors in the crayon box."
--RuPaul, American drag queen, actor, and author

Coloring inside the stitched lines with Tombow dual brush pens and embellishing with dots.

17/30: Artist's Choice

Future fissures were outline stitched before cutting apart. A bit of painter's tape was used to baste the pieces together as I hand embroidered the pieces back together.

A few more cuts were made and reassembled for the second heART.

“The reality is that you will grieve forever. You will not ‘get over’ the loss of a loved one; you will learn to live with it. You will heal and you will rebuild yourself around the loss you have suffered. You will be whole again but you will never be the same. Nor should you be the same nor would you want to.”
― Elizabeth Kubler-Ross and David Kessler

18/30: Fiber

"Habit is a cable; we weave a thread of it each day, and at last we cannot break it."
--Horace Mann, American educator

These heARTs have become a wonderful evening habit, especially when hand embroidery is involved...

19/30: Sheers

"With but few exceptions, it is always the underdog who wins through sheer willpower."
-Johnny Weissmuller, American competitive swimmer, Olympian, and actor

This creative journey requires sheer willpower and lots of play along the way! It was fun to revisit layering strips and squares of primary-colored sheers to create subtle tartan designs.

20/30: Mark Making

"It's ok to show all your colors."
--Luis Guzman, Puerto Rican actor

Experimenting with some of my favorite markers and the impacts of spritzed rubbing alcohol to blend the colors. Three experiments were conducted:

Round 1: Ecoline Brush Pens (top row)
Round 2: Tombow Dual Tip Pens (middle row)
Round 3: Sharpie Markers (bottom row)

The left column showcases the markers and original design. The middle column includes after photos after rubbing alcohol has been spritzed. The right column is actually the backside where the various colors bled through to the back.

The Sharpie markers definitely yielded vibrant colors, although more marking was done prior to adding alcohol.

21/30: Mark Making

"The human brain works as a binary computer and can only analyze the exact information-based zeros and ones (or black and white). Our heart is more like a chemical computer that uses fuzzy logic to analyze information that can't be easily defined in zeros and ones."
--Naveen Jain, Indian business executive/entrepreneur

Stamping lines using a variety of household objects and Color Shift paints. These are just a few of the many designs I'll be teaching on January 26th in my new Mark Making Magic workshop (registration is currently open).