This week, the hero of the week in the Woog's class is Vincent van Gogh, so we did a little Woogie Wednesday project to learn more about him. Starry Night is my favorite piece of his (and the Woog's too!) so we took the project outside and used sidewalk chalk to recreate the work on the deck.



I remember when I was in 5th grade, we did a starry night project using oil pastels and I thought it was so fun. I remember meticulously making my swirls and dashed lines.

Ironically, I was going through the pictures on my iphone the other day and found several I took while at the Met last summer. These were pretty awesome to see:



Starry Night is on display at MoMA so maybe next time I'm up that way I'll get a peek of it if it's still there.

Labels: woogie-wednesday

This week is read Across America week in celebration of Dr. Suess's birthday. The Woog had activities all week at school and today they were to come as one of his characters so, I sent her off with a wocket in her pocket. It was so cute to see little Cat in the Hats, Cindy Lou Who's, and Thing 1 and Thing 2 running around the Kindergarten hall.

We also worked on a Woogie Wednesday/Weekday/Weekend project of the Cat in the Hat. We made a Junk A Seuss-le:



As a creative person I have always loved Dr. Seuss and his weird and wacky world. I love the rhymes and his playful use of made up characters. When I was in Orlando once I saw one of his taxidermy pieces and thought they were awesome. I've always thought I would make my owe sometime with my art. I found another artist who did one here. I found a cool flickr stream with pictures from the Seuss exhibit at Fresno Metropolitan Museum:



My favorite book of his has to be The Shape of Me and Other Stuff. It was one of the books the Woog always wanted me to read her so I have it all memorized plus I love how Suess-like the simple shapes are. Amazing! What's your favorite Dr. Suess book?

Labels: Dr. Seuss, junk-a-doodles, woogie-wednesday

It's 19 degrees and snowing in Nashville so The Woog and I made ice ornaments. You can check them out here.

Labels: woogie-wednesday

Well, we're finally here. Nine days away from the first day of Kindergarten so to celebrate (and help us both get prepared & excited) we're doing school themed art everyday until THE day! We haven't nailed down exactly what we'll do, but some days we'll be on our own and others will work on a piece together.

This transition wouldn't be as easy if it wasn't for:

• If my aunt teaching Kindergarten across the hall from the Woog's class


• Knowing that this school is the best school for her and in line with our family teaching & values


• Her being so excited to start school and looking forward to it for more than a year.


• Looking so darn cute in her school uniform.


• Me being excited and geared up with so many ideas & prospects to grow my business even more under a more steady (& quiet!) schedule

My contribution for today's art was to make the series header and little countdown tag above.

You can check out her art celebrating 9 days to go here!

Tomorrow: Art for 8 days to go!

Labels: kindergarten, school, woogie-wednesday

The Woog turns 5 on Easter so she'll have double the goodies! Her party will have a school theme. These invitations were mailed in a clear envelopes from ClearBags so the world would see that "Walker turns 5!"

Thanks for all who donated and/or re-posted my last blog post. In one week (via a facebook & twitter campaign) they were able raise $7,000 and receive $2000 in skymiles. Very cool!!

Labels: birthday, invitation, party, woogie-wednesday

Psst...hey...click the bee to see today's Woogie Wednesday art.

Labels: woogie-wednesday

This is a picture of the outside of my studio this morning. I wish the snowfall lasted longer but it should stick around on the ground for the next day or so. I will be posting about my Surtex planning soon. I promise. I'm trying to get all my thoughts and references together to post. I'm still feeling overwhelmed with it all and really need to buckle down and crank some new work out to show. But that will happen another day. Today is a full day of Woogie Wednesday with a major painting and decorating going on. Check the site later today to see what we've been up to.

Labels: surtex, woogie-wednesday

We finished up our Christmas card last weekend and I got them all mailed out. I think this is the earliest I've sent them which feels good to have them off my plate. Walker provided her recipe for Marshmallow Lasagna and included a treat with it. Here's the text from the card:



WARNING: If you are expecting a handmade gift from the Woog this year, do not click the link below!

And yesterday we had a good day of Woogie Wednesday projects. The Woog made some gift tags and then the gifts which turned out great! You can check out everything here.

This may be my last post before the new year, but I might pop in at some point. I have a list of work still due, a couple of gifts to make and this huge one to tackle:



There are about a million shingles to stain! It will take me forever, but the look on her face will be priceless!

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

Labels: woogie-wednesday

We're all getting ready for our first family vacation next week and the above is from today's Woogie Wednesday. Go check it out!

Also, today was the launch of Pumpkin Junkin' 2008. I haven't received any entries yet so start sending them in! I still need to make mine. I started when the Woog did her's but I just couldn't get into it. Maybe when we get back.

Labels: vacation, woogie-wednesday

I love when you just stick stuff on a scanner, do a little in photoshop and it becomes something cool. This is from today's Woogie Wednesday. These will appear in an assignment I'm working on and also future pattern designs for licensing. A few weeks back I designed some stamps specifically for my junk a doodles work so this is really the first time I've had a chance to use them.

Labels: licensing, woogie-wednesday

We're currently working on our Woogie Wednesday project over here, but thought I'd share this. The Woog had problems hanging her pictures on the wall today ("They won't stick!" which is pretty much the reason she is using painter's tape. Otherwise I'd be peeling off masking tape from the wall along with nice chunks of paint) so she decided to make a small gallery on the floor. The is a portrait of a non-existent cousin (I forgot the name she gave her). I think it's her best portrait yet and it's the first time I've noticed eyebrows on her drawings. Too bad this is on newsprint and not an archival paper :(

Labels: woogie-wednesday

Our Woogie Wednesday that turned into a Woogie Weekend (yes, it is Friday but we try to have 3 day weekends every weekend) is finally done!

Labels: junk-a-doodles, woogie-wednesday

We've been working on something over here. Hopefully we'll finished it up today while the sun is still out for photographing. If not, check in tomorrow!

Labels: woogie-wednesday

here are some more gouache pieces I've worked on. I'm pleased with the little boy but I think the beaver is a little dark. For him I also used a new graphite paper to trace my drawing and the line came out too thick and waxy. Overall I'm really loving gouache ut am unsure if I'll add it to my illustration medium yet. Maybe it could be my picture book style since picture books tend to use more traditional mediums. Who knows...

I hope (HOPE!) to get back on track with Woogie Wednesdays today. It seems like we've always been busy or out the past several ones. I think today's theme will be space so we'll see what we come up with. Check here later today for it.

*Our project is up now!

Labels: gouache, woogie-wednesday

The W party went great! Here's a picture of her cake. All the w's are chipboard pieces that I bought on etsy.

Oh, and Happy Tax day to those in the US (or at least try and make it happy)! If you work at the IRS, my check will probably pay for your entire salary this year :)

Labels: birthday, cake, invitation, party, woogie-wednesday

Today's woogie wednesday can be found here.

Labels: woogie-wednesday

Someone will turn 4 on Saturday!

Labels: birthday, cake, invitation, party, woogie-wednesday

It's Wednesday again and time for Woogie Wednesday. I think Wednesdays might be changing around here. We started a project this morning but she was done done about 15 minutes into it, which had kind of happened on and off this year. I'm thinking I should change the structure of WW and just do other creative things besides making art. So, here's one thing we did today:


We FINALLY (sorry to the ones on the list!) got around to putting on our traveling tail and taking a picture. Traveling Tales is the brainchild of Stacy at Mama's Doodles. Here's the flickr group with instructions. She's currently on maternity leave but go ahead and bookmark her shop here and in the future you can get a tail all your own.

Labels: woogie-wednesday

It's Wednesday again and time for Woogie Wednesday.

It snowed today, so we went out this morning and playing the the snow as our "project" for today.

Labels: woogie-wednesday

It's Wednesday again and time for Woogie Wednesday.

This time we picked out her stuff and I have to say, it's pretty weird! Not real sure what else to say about it. No harm was done to the Maria Osmond doll while making this piece:)

Labels: woogie-wednesday

I did my part from yesterday's Woogie Wednesday today. I took her big head and made it into a big headed monkey. I've been doing some different illustration work with found objects similar to this. So that's it. We're off to the circus where I don't know if there will be monkeys or not. If it was up to me, I'd say bring them on!

Labels: found whimsy, woogie-wednesday

It's Wednesday again and time for Woogie Wednesday. It's about 9:45 P.M. now and I've been going full force since 4am, but wanted to show a "ww" in progress.

I had several deadlines today and I knew I wouldn't have time to do a "ww" project so while I worked I had the Woog work on her part of the project. She made several drawings of heads and then started drawing apples (with arms and legs) like crazy. Not sure what they deal was there but she was excited about them so I was too. So, this is the "Big Head" I chose to use and I will add my part tomorrow:



to be continued...

Labels: woogie-wednesday

The new Woogie Wednesday site/shop/blog is now up and running. Go check it out and add to her college fund :)

Labels: etsy, woogie-wednesday

It's Wednesday again and time for Woogie Wednesday. This is where we make one of my found object (Junk A Doodles) pieces.

Here's what we started off with:


I then asked her, what should we make out of all this?
"Diamonds" she said with a smirk on her face. She was wearing a "diamond" ring and she wanted something to match.

I had absolutely no idea what I was going to do, so it took me a while to figure it out and in the meantime she lost interest but did check on me from time to time and hand me pieces of junk to use.

The best thing I could come up with was a cat with diamond stripes and diamonds on the collar. I also did a few stitch lines and am calling it Illustration Friday this week too.

Here's how it turned out:



I'm still working on the Woogie Wednesday site, but prints should be up for sale over the weekend if not before.

And, now some Link Back Love for today:

doobleh-vay.blogspot.com
gailmakiwilson.blogspot.com
danidraws.com
artgirlatl.blogspot.com
donnadoodles.blogspot.com

Labels: junk-a-doodles, woogie-wednesday

It's Wednesday again and time for Woogie Wednesday. This is where we make one of my found object (Junk A Doodles) pieces.

Here's what we started off with:


I then asked her, what should we make out of all this?
"How 'bout a DUCK!"

OK. I guess we both have birds on the mind today.

She starts picking out which parts will be what and paints the head, beak and paper punches random bits, while I paint the background. She them turns her attention to doing one all by herself and confiscates 2 of the pieces. She made a mouse and thought it was hilarious that I took a picture of it:

And here's how it turned out:



And then here's out finished product. more of a chick than a duck. It would make a cute Valentine's Day card I think.



I'm launching a Woogie Wednesday site next week and we'll be selling prints of our pieces, so stay tuned!

Labels: junk-a-doodles, woogie-wednesday

We didn't get a chance for Woogie Wednesday yesterday, so we worked on our quick project today.

The Woog received some pretty awesome hair accessories for Christmas and we needed to make a special holder for them. Here's our materials:




These are all from Pretty In Paper and I love, love, love them!! Definitely unique!!

Labels: woogie-wednesday

It's Woogie Wednesday again and today we've been working on our handmade gifts from the Woog to go with our handmade Christmas.

Earlier this morning we had a "photo shoot" for her Daddy's gift and for some reason she has started flashing this really sqwinchie smile when I take a picture. This is one I think I'll do in black and white.


*This isn't the photo used as the gift though. That's a surprise.

Then we moved onto gifts for grandparents and such. The Woog loved our magnet project this summer so we are making a magnet set entitled "Smiles of 2007":



And then I had to figure out what I could make for my cousin's tween boys. Not an easy task. So I thought up these gross eye ball magnets to make. All boys that age have got to love eye balls!!



She has a few picture frames to decorate and then she should be good to go on all her gifts.

Labels: woogie-wednesday