My kitty, Pixie as my Sun card for Litha/ Midsummer. Watercolor and colored pencil with Micron ink. I love my little meatball.
Feels good to be able to draw and paint again. Still getting my skills back, but I’m enjoying it SO MUCH!
Inspired by https://www.etsy.com/shop/PingHattaStudio
Disclaimer: Kitty Galore is a character I created for the litRPG series, Mafioso Online, which I co-wrote foa a couple books under the name Heather Hallow.
Kitty is a spy/informant and dancer/escort who works for the Antonelli family at the Gentlemen’s Club in River City.
She was painted in acrylics on watercolor paper with gel pen highlights.
If you’d like to read for free on Royal Road, head over here: https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/67642/mafioso-online
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This is a gift for my MIL’s birthday.
I was really afraid to take paint to paper since my stroke in September. My vision has been affected, and I have constant vertigo, so the idea alone has been daunting. I was afraid that it would be so bad that I’d get discouraged and never want to paint again. I guess regardless of whether I can’t paint or just DON’T paint results in the same thing. But I did it, and it’s only a bit late!
Charlie is essentially a pitbull head on a beagle body (or so I’m told, I haven’t met him personally). It’s not perfect by any means, and I didn’t have the courage to do a real background yet, but it looks like him. I’m going to call it a win.
5×7″ watercolour and acrylic on watercolour paper.
So, last month I participated in the Cara Brandon and Friends Facebook challenge. Each week we had to first make a bunch of pockets and such, then a bunch of tags, then collect decorative items to use, and lastely to create at least 15 finished items with all that. I made a TON of bases, because it’s hard to stop once you get going, I find.
On the left you see two pockets made from reused mail envelopes. They have a front pocket, the inner pocket, and then you can attach them to a page to have a tuck spot behind them. The tag below has a pocket on the back and a smaller tag, not pictured.
These are a pair of bellybands which have sliders that go up and down the band. One is for a gothic style book, the other for a pagan-specific book, possibly with a crow/raven theme.
I have to admit, I really love the purples on the right-hand one so much!
This is something I think I’ll make more of. It’s a great scrap busting idea, and doesn’t take much time at all.
Here are two giant tags, each about the size of a half page, almost. The have pockets on the back, which I’ll show next along with the matching pieces.
I’m really inspired by these colours and papers, but I don’t think I have any of the patterened paper left, sadly.
This is the back side of the vintage-coloured giant tag, with the pocket.
It includes a medium and small matching tag, and a sort of journal card made from the tab portion of a file folder. I quite like this set. The paper went really well with the tea-stained file folders I used for many of my bases for this challenge.
Here we have the reverse side of the blue tag with pocket, and the ephemera to match.
The medim tag is to the right, and sitting on top of the pocket are a small tag and a tag-shapped booklet with tea-stained pages inside.
I find this blue colour quite calming, personally.
Lastly are some random bits I made while working on the project.
Top row, far left: a tag made with decoupaged napkin, which is a first for me. It also has a synthtic leaf and a fence die cut.
Top row, middle: a pocket with a tea-stained image from a colouring book and a gem.
Top row, right: a tag with a dicut feather and a real feather sent to me in a long-ago swap.
Bottom, left: a vertical notepad, which mataches the vintage giant pocket.
Bottom, right: a journal card with a print of one of my paintings on the front in black and white, with a tab at the top. It can go into one of the envelope pockets in the first image.
Anyhow, I have several more giant pockets halfway finished with autumnal themes, and one with a peacock paper I’d been hoarding for like… a decade. LOL I’ll get to them in my next creative frenzy.
This is a double page insert for Toni’s Witchy Arts and Crafts birthday challenge. It went into the mail today, and hopefully should arrive in time for the drawing on July 12!
The front image is hand painted in acrylics, and the little sticker in the bottom is pastel holographic. The sentiment and the painting are both outlined with finger-dabbed gold acrylic paint. The back page on the left is writing space decorated by a black gate die cut.
When this is folded in half, everything will appear in the correct places for inserting into a book.
The interior scan shows a pocket with an index card with my swap-friend info (contact info and likes) on the left. The writing spaces are tea dyed papers torn for interest. There are swirls of smoke or aromas maybe (?) in pencil, but you can’t really see them here. The bottle is done from a transparency sheet from a paper pad, and I think it looks cool despite it not being easy to cut with the die.
Friend (Pixie) with the altered lyrics for Sweet Pea (Sweet Peep). The mat and the mousie are her faves.
So, after making like a dozen raggedy journals that I still haven’t photographed yet, I had a shitton of scraps of all sorts. I also had some tea stained index cards, and imagesrelated to the journals. Since I haven’t felt very arty lately, this became a project I could do while watching shows and just zoning out. It’s nice to have bonus items to send along with purchases, so there we go.
I like the grungy, scrappy look, and I’ll probably do more of these journals for my Etsy shop, once I get around to posting the original batch. I’m really not good at the documenting and posting part of having an online shop. Ugh. Plus the weather and lighting haven’t been cooperative to get the books outside for optimal photos. That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.
Just some simple things I put together for two October challenges. Both asked for decorated bags with seasonal goodies inside.
This first one was returned to me by the post as undeliverable, sadly. But I really like the way the diecuts fit with the orange and black October look (yeah, I know the pussy willows are for spring, but I like it).
The second one features a copy of my own artwork. It’s based on the folklore that anything left in the field after October 31st belongs to the fairies. Next to the decorated bag is a memdex I created, with my info 
inside, as it’s an envelope in the back. This one went to Thespa (Vintiquities on YouTube), and she seemed to like it. It won the challenge, and I received a great package of Target potion bottles and some other handmade Halloween goodies. It went to my wife’s address, so I haven’t had the chance to mess with it, sadly. lol
October has been difficult for me. Usually I absolutely LOVE the season, and Halloween and Samhain, but all I can think of is my mom and my Noosh, and I just wish I could go back at least to August and get a do-over on everything.
I intended to do an artsy challenge but this is pretty much all I did. I love how the fox came out. It has for me a sense of the cycle of life, and transformation, the idea of becoming something else. I’m really clinging to the idea that maybe I can use this feeling to transform through the grief. I don’t know. I just don’t want to keep feeling like this. It’s unbearable.
Sept. 9th I lost my mother to cancer. By the time it was caught, she’d already had treatments for a tumor in her uterus, and a bunch in her brain, but there was much more. COVID-19 contributed to delays in care, especially since she and her husband lived in rural Newfoundland.
I didn’t get to see her for the 5 years since she moved, but we talked several times a week. I don’t know what to do with my feelings about all this, for reasons.
And then Noosh (Poet) fell ill and within a week she passed, on the morning of Sept. 25th. I can’t believe that little personality is just gone from the world. I never got around to producing the Noosh books. It feels too late, and yet… I promised. It has to happen. I miss her every moment, and I can’t stop crying. We had her cremated, and her box and other items are on the Bast shrine.
Paris journal with several folders. This one includes lots of post cards and other pretty Paris-themed ephemera. 6 x 9″ cover with 5.5 x 8.5″ pages. The cover features an Eiffel Tower postcard, crochet lace doily and butterfly with pearl.
This gothic journal is pretty cool, if I do say. It was made with Release the Craftin’s Parish After Dark kit, as well as bits and pieces of others. It has several collaged flip out envelopes, among other great ephemera. 6 x 9″ cover with 5.5 x 8.5″ pages.
The cover has gorgeous fringe trim on the right, with matching trim on the back.
Inside colors include black, white, grey, and sand.
I did a cool moon journal, currently on Etsy, but I don’t know where the cover photo is presently. Check my Etsy if you’re curious.
Currently I’m also working on some disc-bound journals. One is magical ravens/crows, and the other two are herbal and generally magical grimoire.
