Christmas Presents!

I know I know! Christmas is already over, but now that all the gifts that I made have been well-received I thought I would share them with you. Each year I love to give gifts that I have created. I love to create something that makes them think of me and the memories we have together when  they see them. They are also personalized so that they meet the needs of the person and their tastes.

Ok, I want to start off with one of my favorite type pieces. A very dear friend of mine went through a tough time and didn’t believe that they would get through it. However, after they rose from the ashes of that destruction, we started to talk about how they were like the Phoenix. Every year, I give this friend something that goes along with the theme of rising above your circumstance and setbacks. Each year is a new beginning. You can check out last years here. And the one for this year was a beautiful staff, since we are both nerds, that is designed after the Phoenix.

 

This was drawn with my black .03 Staedtler Pigment Liners, and colored with red, orange, yellow, grey and brown Steadtler Color Pencils. I then decided that taking the grey color pencil and rubbing it lightly over the outer edge of the paper gave the whole thing a new look. Overall, I’m happy with how this turned out and have already started researching phoenix ideas for next Christmas. If you have any ideas, I would love to hear them.

Onto the second gift, I was gifted a smaller lazy susan. It was made from bamboo, but had some apples painted on the top of it.  I wanted to do something very personal for my sister-n-law and her new husband. I knew that they would appreciate a handmade gift. So, I had my fiance’ sand down the top and it left a beautiful finish. Then, I started working from the inside out. Starting with the first letter of her new last name, “S.”

After surrounding the monogram with a very detailed mandala, I then erased my guidelines (still in the picture above) and put two clear protective coats on it. On the night we gave this gift, It was immediately put to use under the salad bowl in the center of the table.

The last, but certainly NOT least, gift that I made personally, was for my fiance’s parents. They have been such a wonderful blessing in my life and I wanted to give them something that represented family and unity. So, like the last gift, I chose to do a monogram again, but with my fiance’s parents last name letter “L”. But unlike the last gift, I chose to paint this on a black square canvas that I had.

I decided that using my gold paint pen from my table project gave this piece the life it was searching for. I absolutely love how it turned out and they seemed to as well. I am truly blessed to be able to share my talents with those around me.

Although these were not the only gifts I gave for Christmas, they were the most personalized gifts and I wanted to share them with you. Please let me know in the comments below, which was your favorite and why. I would also love to know any ideas you may like to see in the future.

2017 Year in Review

Happy New Year!

I want to create a special post that sorta sums up my year for 2017. You know that although I had been blogging since 2016, I only got my own website in 2017. Boy have I been blessed with this outlet to share my creativity and inspire others to do something creative every day.  There are several things that I am going to discuss, to include my subscription to Sketchbox, My first Mandala Collection, Christmas Gifts I created and my favorite creations of the year. So grab your cup of coffee or your favorite beverage and lets get started!

SketchBox

For those of you that don’t know, Sketchbox is a monthly subscription box for artists to try out different mediums. I have really been excited by everything that I have been able to create using the products I have received through these boxes. Some of my favorite products include a watercolor sketchbook, a full sepia Copic fineliner set, and last but not least watercolor pencils, this is only to name a few. If you would like to go back and review my unboxing posts you can visit them by clicking on the links below.

May  

June

JulyJuly Grab box  

August

September

October

 November

December

Mandala Collection I

For me, this was a huge accomplishment.  I wanted to start a collection of the mandala that was similar and yet different at the same time. For this collection, I chose to draw my mandala on gradient paper with black fineliners and a white gel pen. I was so happy how each one came out so different than the ones before.  Prints of these will be available in my shop once I get it all online. Stay tuned for this special collection. Each one of these mandalas are so special to me. I wrote a different post for each one, which you can visit below:

Mandala #1

Mandala #2

Mandala #3

Mandala #4

Mandala #5

Personalized Gifts

One of my favorite things to do is create something beautiful and personal for my friends, family, and co-workers. I truly enjoy the look on their face when they realize it is not only an original, but there are no others like it in the world. I want to share these few gifts with you.

Personalized Parties

Every birthday that happens in my house is a reason to celebrate. With the birthdays spread throughout the year, we are able to party all year long! Starting in February with my two from my previous marriage celebrating, then moving to my youngest two in June, oldest two in July and 3rd oldest in November. Mix that in with all the holidays and we rarely don’t have a reason to bust out some exciting party decorations. But also, because we have so many celebrations, It’s important that we get creative with them all, most of the decorations were homemade. Check out the following posts about my under the sea themed party for my youngest two.

Under the Sea

Octopus Guard

Sea Sponges

Jellyfish Mood Lighting

Furniture Painting

The absolute highlight of my year was creating a beautiful work of art for my mother. She brought this table to me and gave me no restrictions other than she wanted a Charity Original painted on top. Painted?! I’ve never painted anything detailed like the creations I have made.  Check out how this table progressed by clicking on the links below:

Scallopped Table #1

Scallopped Table #2

There are several other projects that I completed this year for Christmas Gifts to include a 12×12 personalized mandala painting on canvas, a monogrammed lazy susan and a phoenix staff for my best guy friend. All of these projects were special in their own ways and were hard to keep a secret for as long as I could since I love to share my progress pictures with the special people that received these gifts.

My Favorites of the Year

 

Final Thoughts

I do want to send out a special thank you for all of you that have supported me this year. I couldn’t have done this without you cheering me on. Special thanks to my fiance’ who has stuck by my side while I have spent the long hours trying to make something out of nothing. I love each and every one of you and I can only hope that in 2018, we will see a lot more growth from CraftyArtistKC. Help me make this year a good one by sharing my site with your friends family and social media accounts. I can’t wait to see what comes next!

Let me know in the comments below, what was your favorite project or post from this year!

Beautiful Garden

Filling a full page of colorful flowers, testing out each petal was so much fun. I used the Staedtler Triplus Fineliners for this piece. Finishing the piece with the green swirls in the back brought everything to life. Everything about this tested my ability to create something out of nothing.

My challenge to you is to think outside your box. As you can tell, I worked across two pages on this and didn’t finish it off with a straight line. So, try something new. Think outside the box and create something without straight lines boxing it in. Link your art in the link below so I can take a look at what you can create!

Dream Catcher

I have drawn a few feathers and a few dream catcher rings, but I haven’t ever drawn from start to finish a dream catcher. That is so weird to me. To show you what I am talking about, Here is the dream catching ring I was talking about.

I have such an infatuation with dream catchers. I wish I were better at drawing them exactly. I did try a few attempts in my bullet journal to draw a full dream catcher but its so basic, I was ashamed of it. It was all different sizes and not symmetrical at all. I hope to try a little more in the future and hopefully I can come up with something truly considered a masterpiece. This was drawn with Staedtler Triplus Fineliners.

My daughter for the longest time has believed that her dream catcher helps keep her dreams full of light. She doesn’t like bad dreams and has always been the type to sleep walk and sleep talk. Several times in her life I have had to figure out her dream and calm her down without waking her.  I believe that if you believe in something enough, it will work for you. Because I don’t know 100% either way, I allow her to believe in positivism and safety, which helps her sleep better.

Have you ever tried to draw a dream catcher? Do you believe in the power of a dream catcher? I welcome all tips on creating a better one in the future.

Lifeblood

The story behind this drawing is that just as every snowflake is different, I have to believe that every raindrop is too. Each raindrop plays an important role in the survival of our planet. Without water, we would all surely perish.

Although I am not an extremist in any way, I do believe that if everyone cleaned up after themselves and worked on their own footprint, we would be way better off.

A Celebration of Love

Since it is the month of February, I thought I would work on two pieces that celebrate love. The one above is colored and the one below is black and white. The first piece was done with Staedtler pigment liners and Staedtler Maximum Gel Pens. I loved adding some color to it because it just flows so well!

The piece below was done with Sigma Micron pens only. It was just a decorative idea that I have had fluttering around in my head and it was nice to finally get it down on paper.

 

For The Horde!

This piece was so delightful. For those of you who don’t know, I am a long time player of World of Warcraft, a mmorpg made by Blizzard. I have been playing since, what we like to call, vanilla wow, which simply means, World of Warcraft before any expansions. Along with playing the game, I have also been a long-time Horde player, which is the cause for the symbol below. I’m sure I could do better if I drew the symbol more, but I think this is pretty good for my first time.

I used several pens and color pencils for this, all of which were Staedtler. Staedtler pigment liners for the black, Staedtler fineliners for the red dots, and Staedtler color pencils for the symbol colored in.

If you also play WOW, I would love to know! Let me know in the comments below.

Doodle with Bubbles!

On this piece, I used the Art-n-Fly pens that I reviewed earlier. They worked out pretty nice. The smaller tips were perfect for the bubbles. When I first started this piece, I started with just a flower. However, I have just fallen in love with tentacles on flowers, It makes them seem like something out of a sci fi movie. So, Of course being the sci fi fanatic that I am, I just had to add it all in. After I finished the tentacles though, I really felt like something was missing. The bubbles seemed like the most natural answer to the blank spaces between the tentacles to finish out the piece.

I would love to know what you think about this piece. Let me know in the comments below.

Tree of Life

I had a friend of mine decide she wanted a tree of life tattoo. Well, although this isn’t her tattoo, it did start out that way. However, I decided to make this one colorful! As everyone knows, I hate coloring my own art, but this one wasn’t that bad. The orange didn’t show up as bright in the scan as it is in real life, but you get the general idea. I used Staedtler fineliners for the lines, which includes the colored lines, and Staedtler color pencils for the coloring in.

Enjoy!

A new way to mandala?

Well, today I decided to try something sorta new and sorta old. I started with a circle in the middle. Using some of the techniques and fillers I learned from zentangle videos, I added only three major features to the center. After adding everything up to the tentacles, I decided to finish it off with a circle of sorts. Circles were sorta the theme to this piece and I absolutely adore the finished project. This has to be one of my favorites so far.

I would love to know what you think, let me know in the comments below.

Garden Lattice

I started this piece off with just a variety of flowers that I knew how to do off the top of my head. I like having something to look at when I am thinking of new ways to do the same thing differently. The problem with this is that I typically have several little doodles lying around and I really wanted one piece that I could really enjoy looking at and learning to adapt it in many different ways.

By looking at the beginning of my drawing you can tell that I just had to do something to bring all the flowers together and I really didn’t’ want to do a open garden scene. So I figured if I could just add in one element across that page that makes everything come together it would look better.

Now, after seeing where it started to where it ended up at, what is your favorite part of it and how would you have joined them all together differently than I did? Let me know in the comments below.

Lunchtime Challenge

Every once in awhile, I find myself severely impressed with what comes out on paper. This is one of those times. I started out with just a few lines and dots. It’s a trick I use when I just don’t know what to draw. If you have seen my office, you would know that I actually have blank walls! For a creative person like me, It hurts sometimes to look at them. I also have no windows and  a very bright harsh overhead light, which I recently requested that two of the bulbs be removed from it to lessen to brightness.

I had this sitting on my desk and every minute or so I would add another line to it. What am I drawing? I kept asking myself, as a line would end up much weirder than I had originally planned. I tried to let myself go and just let it end up where it was going to end up. Boy was I glad to see that the response from my friends and family I use as sounding boards, were overjoyed with the results. It always shocks me when something I have no clue how it even happened ends up being a favorite.

I sat it on my desk for the past 4 hours. Scoffing at it and rolling my eyes at the absurdity, but then, something happened! It started to grow on me, the more I looked at it, the more I saw things that I never meant to be there. A submarine, a lawnmower and even something you’d find under a microscope, and yet, it was nothing.

What do you think about this piece, where I started to where I ended up? Let me know in the comments below.

Lunchtime Challenge

Well, I have had people tell me this looks like a fish and another tell me it looked like wings, either way, this was my lunchtime doodle today. I hope you like it! Yes, I did it in 45 minutes or less. This was just completed with a sharpie for the larger lines and then I filled it in with a sharpie pen that I had for all the little details.  The amazing thing about this doodle, is that I never intended it to be anything. I just love the way it turned out. It is so bold and yet so detailed. Seems like I should keep this one for a coloring book one day.

Let me know what you think it looks like in the comments below!

My Inspiration

I have to start this blog by giving a shout out to all my fans and followers. The inspiration from you alone is enough to keep me going. I’m so blessed to be surrounded by such encouraging people. Thank you. I wanted to take a moment and tell you a little bit about why I do what I do and where I get my ideas from.

When I am relaxed, and feeling fun and carefree, I mostly draw my doodles. Now I think I do a great floral design, so mostly they stem from that, but I am inspired by the world around me. I watch a lot of YouTube videos and I there are several that I have loved being subscribed to, one of which is KC Doodle Art which you can find here. I hope to one day be bold enough to create videos of my progress, but I have yet to even look into the process. Nonetheless, I am inspired by the videos I see from artists just like me.

IMG_20170402_0001

Another place I draw inspiration from are my children, who are on the notepad I keep at work, pictured above. I have several “children” that frequent my home that have been attached to me by my relationships. My fiance has 3 boys that are all above the age of 16, my ex-husband has a 16 yr old son, whom I took care of since he was 2, I have a soon to be 8-year-old daughter, and two little ones, a 2-year-old daughter and a 1-year-old son. Every single one of these children have blessed my life and helped me see things in a different perspective. I love spending time with them and I love who I am because of them. The child I find myself being most inspired by though is my oldest daughter. She and I draw, write, and see the world artistically. We were recently discussing a book, Complete This Drawing, that I received from Christmas and her ideas of the drawings were just so refreshing. If you don’t know much about the book, there are a lot of squiggles and some a little more detailed that you have to finish. We both laughed about what we saw in the squiggles as we flipped through the pages.

Another place I draw inspiration from is gaming. I am a veteran World of Warcraft player, as I have been playing for over 10 years. I usually shy away from tv as I feel like I need to be doing something at all times. To be honest, 90% of the time, if I stop to watch tv, I fall asleep. So looking at fan art and the vast world that has been created digitally, It inspires me to think outside the box. It inspires me to put things together, that I may not have previously thought of, such as flowers and tentacles, which happen to be my new favorite things to combine!

I say all of this to say this,

“Look at the beauty around you and always try to see something differently than the rest of the world”

Its like when you are looking up at the clouds to try to determine their shapes. It’s that type of creativity and open-mindedness that the world is lacking in today. So be different, see life differently and inspire others to do the same!

Lunchtime Challenge

So, today I just decided to doodle at lunch today. These  were done around 45 minutes. They are by far not my best doodles, but I feel like it’s important to show the viewers even the pieces that didn’t take any time to complete.

Using doodling as a relaxation technique has raised my production in the afternoon. I don’t find myself hitting the 3pm wall that I am so used to hitting. Not to mention, I am using my downtime to produce something unique.

What relaxation techniques do you use? Answer in the comments below, I would love to learn new techniques!

Detailed Doodle

This doodle was probably the first piece that I actually planned out ahead of time. My first step was creating a grid. Once I created all my borders, I added in Squares and Circles in the middle so that I wouldn’t bite off more than I could chew for my first full page full of tiny doodles. Here is a close up of the doodles when I first began.

As you may be able to tell, that is a lot of detail wrapped up in the small corner.  I had fully expected to turn every circle into a flower, which I would then fill in with other details. The only purpose for the squares in my mind was to break up the space and make me appreciate the detail even more. As I started progressing even further, I had to figure out the best way to tackle this project. So I decided that making the flowers first would be the easiest route.

Oh just look at that sweet, sweet detail! I loved every minute of this. I thought that each time I added an element, the entire garden just sprung to life! In the end, I decided to surround the entire garden with a fence like border around it. I could not be more please with the outcome and I think that it is actually another good picture for a potential coloring book!

Have you ever drawn anything that made you surprise even yourself? Tell me about it in the comments below!

Penguin Doodle

As I started drawing this, I noticed throughout that it took the shape of a penguin. I tried to disguise the little guy but he kept coming through.  Either way it was very fun to draw and even more fun to add all the little designs in there. The most interesting thing I kept thinking was, once you see it, it can’t be unseen. Do you see my silly penguin popping through?

Floral Doodle

I watch this youtube channel called kcdoodleart, and it gives me so much inspiration.  Check it out if you would like to see the amazing work she does. She is the inspiration behind this piece. She always starts with a circle on the page and builds out from it. The simple fact that she can create something so amazing from just a circle just blows me away every time.


Sea Turtle Prompt

Well, I decided for the new year that I was going to be doing random prompts so that it forces me to think outside the box more. So, with the help of my dear friend, Sea Turtle was born. Here is a close up so that you can see some of the details.

One of these days I will be able to take better pictures of my art that is larger than 8.5×11. This one is 11×14. If you have any suggestions on how to take pictures of larger pieces, let me know in the comments below!

Gift – Teal & Blue

I have a dear friend who is in love with teal and blues. She is also an artist friend of mine and I knew that she would appreciate and one of a kind art piece for her home. I had so much fun drawing this and perfecting it. it was worth all the time and energy when I watched her reaction when she opened it.

I am so blessed to have people in my life that not only appreciate my artistic abilities but encourage them as well. This special lady is just one of those mentioned.  Here is a close up so you can see the detail and shimmer in the finished product.

Gift – Phoenix

I drew this mythical bird for a very close friend of mine that has been through a lot, but always seems to emerge from the pile a new person. I am so proud of him for not stopping until he found happiness. I am so blessed to call him my friend.

I outlined this with fineliners and colored it initially with color pencils. After that I decided that the sparkle of the gel pens would make this creature just POP! I think I was right. He loved it and it now hangs in his office!

What do you think about this piece? Let me know in the comments below.