Dabbling With Paper Dolls and a Crow

Good Morning! I have some time to myself this morning, so thought I'd share what creative dabbling I've been doing for the last couple of days. And I do mean DABBLING! :)



One day I took a notion to see if I could still cut paper dolls from folded paper. I couldn't remember, so Mama showed me how. I haven't practiced much, so I'm still not good at it and sometimes they turn out single instead of connected, but it's all good. :)

Left: These cutouts are glued down in my Moleskine art journal. The orange cutouts are card stock, the top row of dolls is decorative paper, and the bottom row of dolls is printer paper stamped with olive green ink. The "birds" sitting on the girls shoulders are the cats turned upside down. The Moleskine pages are buff colored, and the stamp in the middle is cherry pink ink and says, "Of all possesions a friend is the most precious." by Hyronomus (or something like that).

Right: These dolls, dogs, and stars are cut from a tan colored sheet of pastel paper that I was using under projects. I wrote on it, wiped excess paint off my brush on it, stamped on it, and swiped paint and ink across it just because I felt like it. What fun! :) The dogs were supposed to be Scotties, but somehow they turned into more like weenie dogs, but that's ok. I like weenie dogs. These are not glued down. I haven't decided how I want to use them yet.

These are the negative shapes left from the dolls, etc. that I intentionally cut out. Aren't they interesting? The two that are square and rectangle would make great inchies. I can see all sorts of possibilities for both the positive and negative shapes in art journals, mail art, mixed media, atcs, inchies.... With a little imagination or different angles they can turn into other shapes. The whole sheet could have been cut up in inchies, atcs, twinches. They would have been pretty as is or as backgrounds. I'm loving the colors and patterns on these. :)

The other day Sammidog and I rode down to the pond about sunset. On the way, I noticed a crow sitting on a dead tree branch surveying the landscape. Not an unusual sight, but something about this one pricked my interest. I didn't have my sketch materials with me (Note to self: Never leave the house w/o something to sketch with), and it kept nagging at me, so the next morning I tried to sketch it from memory into my Moleskine art journal with my Zig marker. Very rough and very simple, but I like it. He was kind of far away, so no detail much. The red ribbon bookmark got scanned in with it, but I like the dash of red and the angle, so I left it. I'm a little quirky that way. :)

Now I'm off to see what kind of creative dabbling I can get into today! Hope you have a wonderfully creative day, as well! :)