Soup Weather is Upon Us! Yay!!

My daughter and I are making beef barley soup (more like a stew) as I write this today. I don't usually make my blogs about food but I've got to say the aroma wafting through the house is amazing at the moment and I'm very happy. My kids are both great cooks and I would like to thank my Dad for that. The younger one sat at his side all the time to watch what he did and she duplicated much when she was old enough to cook on her own, while the other decided eating it was much more interesting. Until she got older and became a master at creating homemade soups. Yum. This particular recipe was inspired by our Great Aunt Ella, who made this a favorite for my girls and I when we lived next door to each other. Smelling it cook all day and then enjoying a bowl once ready was a nice family memory for us. Although it doesn't really taste like her soup (we added red wine to ours, something she would never have done), it is absolutely delicious.

 Here it is without the barley in it which got added a little bit after this photo was taken. Mmm-mmm. 😋

Now, onto the art part, something I do best.

I started taking the month-long fodder challenge and the watched the first class. I haven't completed the project and cannot show it until it's finished, so be on the lookout for that. I might actually wait until the end of the month and share all I did. I'm not positive I'll do everything offered but I do love watching and taking notes and getting inspired!

I did do a little embroidery. I love it so far. I think I'm going to play with wildflowers next but that'll take some time. This is a good piece of practice fabric to use. It's an old dust cover for a chair. Those were used in our house because we always had chairs that required them. After I cut out the rips and the wear and tear from a lot of them, I have a good amount of fabric to play with for embroidery practice.

I've been cutting up papers, adding embellishments on them, making them small cards or pieces that can be added to cards at some point. I'm actually making more collage fodder, which is fine by me. I was fussy for a few days until I realized I could draw botanical patterns or use a lot of the flower stencils I have and create some great looking pieces to go in my journals. It's all for me and my art practice, so it doesn't matter how much or little I have; as long as I have what I need to keep being creative, it's all good!

Painting papers leaves some beautiful marks on my paper towels and Sidekick journal. Love these rich looking colors!!

Watercolor and isopropyl alcohol created the below. I've done this technique for years and really love the unpredictable way it all comes out. You never know when you spray or blot alcohol on the paint what you'll get.

I've been cutting out my little doodles as I find them. Actually some of the below in the first photo are fairly new to be added to the small storage container for future use in my flower journal. I've used a lot of the doodles that I made last year, adding them to the flower journal, so I have room now to add more. Yay!

This photo below is of the remnants of a piece of paper I use as a protector for the page or table when I use alcohol ink markers. I usually end up doodling on them at some point, sometimes to see if the pens work or just mindlessly draw something. When it's fairly colorful, I cut some shapes out and use the rest for cards or the layered technique in collage that I like to do, shown in the second photo below.

 

Days 215-220 in the collage a day journal.

 

Enjoy your week!

Cindy,  EarthMotherMosaics - Mixed Media Art

Instagram: @artbyearthmothermosaics 

Stay Peaceful and Enjoy the Journey

 

Gearing Up

I'm doing a lot of this and that's; and have a lot of photos to share this week.

I did try my hand at acrylics in the paint journal. I took an old magazine ad and traced it. It's not bad but I will never understand why I use the colors I do. It's never a good choice but it's my choice.

I think the ad was for NyQuil. I did NOT do this guy justice at first! Look at the colors!! Yuck.

Final decisions were to lighten the face (looks much better), and to stop hyper focusing on his hand and just cut it out from my print out and use it here. The face isn't bad ... I haven't drawn a face in over a year so even though it's been traced, it's a win in my book.

I'm making collage fodder or working through stages with the things I've been making. For instance, the scrap paper on old receipts project that never ends. As I decide what to do with some of them, I might take what I have and add sticker phrases to them and maybe use my fancy scissors and cut them. Then they go back in a box as I try to decide where to place them. On a card? In a journal? As I make a decision, I continue to add scraps to paper. It has become a ritual, like everything else I do, to sit and add some painted papers, magazine scraps, etc to something.

 

This past week I spent time inking stickers that had a lot of white around the designs. These came from my cousin and I think she got them at Temu. In any case, after doing an entire day of inking around edges, some I felt just needed a grungier look to them and I put ink across the whole sticker making them grey in color. I like that. These shiny stickers aren't a favorite and every time I use them, I wish I hadn't added them before cutting out the white parts or doing something to them before use. Spending a rainy day inking all these stickers was exactly what I needed. I have two more containers I could do but might leave them until the next wave of low energy arrives. These don't take much to do.

 

I've got embroidery on my mind and although my fingers really don't like to do much, I am going to practice the stitches on an old cloth I have. I cut all the lace and stitching done on all the hankies I had belonging to my relatives. Lace is a fun thing to add to journals or sew on a card or tag. Many were filled with spots of blood or rust. While I don't mind rust, I couldn't tell which was which, so I tossed those all out.

I started a new collage a day book this week. I'm happy I've continued with it. The last square in the 2nd book was finished on my birthday and the start of the Autumnal Equinox. Woohoo!

 

Days 209-215 in the collage a day journal. I really enjoy doing these each morning!

I also finished my mosaic vase! I finally grouted it over the weekend. It's so pretty.

I'm practicing a little bit for the classes I'll be taking soon. I bought myself a month of classes through the Fodder School called the Challenge as a birthday gift to myself. I am going to have a great time watching others create in mixed media, take notes and do a bit of playing. I also have another class I signed up for, in addition to this one, so October will be very busy! Yay!

 

I finished up the tags I started a while ago, adding ribbon and/or jute to them as well as inking them around the edges. I have so many more to do. I like grabbing a box and deciding I'll do at least one thing inside that needs my attention. Then move onto another. Some of these tags are very small and will get stapled together and added to pockets in journals, I believe.

Right now I'm feeling the need to do some painted papers although I have so many. I don't use them as they are, so maybe doing some embellishments on them will help me figure out how to use them. And some, as I look at them and crinkle up my nose, will get painted over completely quite possibly. And I'm okay with that.

 

 As I did a lot of inking, I grabbed a piece of paper and used it to catch the extra ink. Little did I know when I finished that I'd have a work of art in its own right! Check this out!

Looks good enough to frame, doesn't it?

Enjoy your week!

Cindy,  EarthMotherMosaics - Mixed Media Art

Instagram: @artbyearthmothermosaics 

Stay Peaceful and Enjoy the Journey

 

Being Creative When You Aren't Feeling It

I've got a cold so I've been feeling "less than" all week. I did a lot of this and that's but nothing real intense. I just didn't have it in me. I'm on the up side of this thing but still have it and so I'm writing notes, printing out things to work with and waiting for the energy to start creating on a daily basis once more.

I added a page to one of my journals using a nifty gnome print and when I put the envelope pocket on it, he disappeared. Oh no! I hadn't really thought it through, obviously. This page could have been left as it was, I suppose but what's the fun in that?!

 

I solved the problem by making a card for one of the pockets using the same print.

When I take the card out and place it just right, I can still see the entire print. Yay! The other side of this card was a vintage soap ad. Not sure I am in love with it but it's there for now until I do something else with it. Which I might.

 

When I made the other card that goes into the second pocket I noticed a few numbers. I looked them up to see what they meant in Angel numbers. And I wrote them on the card, circling the number.

 

The other side of the card has trees and mushrooms on it. Love those!

I took my scrap paper that I glued down to old store receipts and put them through the die cut machine making a nice array of flowers for my journals.

The silhouettes were so pretty I knew I'd have to do something with those as well. What I ended up deciding was gluing them down on a less than favorite painted paper. I think I'll make bookmarkers from these.

 

I also punched out circles and squares before gluing them down, getting a nice array of collage fodder.

More scraps!! Ahhhh! LOL 🤯

I used some stencils on magazine pages that had ads on them and cut them up a little bit. All will be added to the journals and I know am getting a nice selection of things to play with when I'm ready to do some journal pages. That makes me very happy. And I am having fun!
 

 

The second collage a day journal is almost completely finished! Next week I'll be starting the third one.

201-204 in the collage a day art journal. I'm noticing I'm only using the lines for the squares as a basic guideline now but not staying within them if I don't want to. What a rebel I am!

205-208 in the collage a day art journal. 208 has some of the scraps I shared above. I thought it was only fitting to add some of those awesome things to my daily journal.

I had been adding a flower or some kind of design from this little tray in the newest painted handmade journal daily until I got sick. I shared the process of creating this book last week. You can see it here: September 14, 2026. Now it's waiting for me to continue. The best part about these kinds of journals is I just do random placements of these things, then eventually go back and will add marks or paint or stamps and make each page a bit different. I can keep adding and changing each page, sometimes it takes a year. I'm okay with that.

These are the last few pages I played with until I needed a major nap. The top photos are tea and/or coffee stained painted papers. The bottom are roll offs from brushes and the gel plate. I'll probably do some mark making on these and other embellishments. I wasn't really feeling well by the time I got to these and I just grabbed whatever paint I had in front of me and went for it without much thought. This black, grey and yellow one ... what was I thinking?! Definitely going into the pile again to either be repainted or cut up in some way. I don't have a lot of dark papers so I suppose I should see how I can use it without painting over the whole thing again. Time will tell.

Enjoy your week!

Cindy,  EarthMotherMosaics - Mixed Media Art

Instagram: @artbyearthmothermosaics 

Stay Peaceful and Enjoy the Journey