Lucky girl

When we met for our first real-world date, as promised, he brought me chocolate raspberry truffles. On top of that, he also brought tulips from Pike Place Market, a historic open-air market in downtown Seattle. The ones above are to mark the seventh anniversary of that first date.

And The Husband now weighs less than he did when we met. If you'd like to encourage him, go here and cheer him on. Or read his novel online and tell him how cool it is.

He's a great guy. I'd introduce you, but he's taken.

Handpicked

This is only the second time I've doodled in The Boy's scrapbook pages, and the first time I've tried making the writing a bit more stylized. I tried to follow the curve of the sleeve wrinkles. The inspiration comes from two sources: my new doodlebug friend Aimee, and Michelle Ward's most recent Crusade. I know, this isn't an art journal, it's just a scrapbook page. But the whole point of Michelle's Crusades is to provide inspiration. The current one is about journaling (in your work). So... journaling dripping from each fingertip, a line for each of The Boy's strawberries. (Plus a little more, so I guess the last line stands in for his stork bite.)
Michelle also inspired me, before this, to get a white paint pen to write with. Had to outline it a bit with regular Tombow pens so that the journaling didn't get lost in the marbled pattern.

Each of the smaller photos was printed on textured paper, for a clearer image that would still be softer than photo paper. I also used the image below for the large transfer image.
I always thought of the strawberry in his hand as the one he carries around like a magic trick. "Nothin' up my sleeve... Presto!"
The ribbon bits connect the location of each strawberry to its placement on the body diagram.
There's the stork bite, under The Boy's hair, in the photo below. It was a bit more visible when I printed it out, but the gel medium I used to seal the paper darkened the color in that area. I was really pleased with how the marbled blobs showed through the gel transfer once I adhered it with matte medium. Made the leg look more... corporeal.
Again, I thought at first the page could've done with more layering. But I think more layers would've overwhelmed the composition, because the marbling and the image sizes are pretty commanding on their own. It needs that (marbled) white space.

I don't really have TwoBoo's strawberry page figured out yet. I think it'll have to wait until I get another self-portrait page idea on its own page.

Baby construction

Apparently I make big babies with big red birthmarks.
Both The Boy and TwoBoo have "strawberry" birthmarks, which are blood vessel birthmarks that usually fade by the time the kid is between two and five years of age. (Fun fact: Up until six months of age, any skin mark that isn't a freckle is considered a birthmark.)

So I'm going to make strawberry pages for each of them. (The second picture shows just the largest elements.)

Notice the lovely red marbled paper that looks like, well, blood drops. (Sorry. This medical stuff fascinates me. ) I also made a gel transfer of an antique medical diagram. And since The Boy and I went strawberry-picking last summer, a transfer of that photo made it into the spread.

As I positioned the other elements, I thought maybe they needed more something, I don't know what. But I was surprised to see the photo looks better than my mind's eye conception of the page. So I'll have to wait and see... again.

Sixth anniversary

This one is all about keeping it simple.
If you're new to le blog, let me tell you that I try to make a piece of art for The Husband for our anniversary each year. This time around, I wanted to make this year's piece relatively quickly. Last year's was great fun to make, but it was quite labor- and idea-intensive. And for our three-year anniversary, I had to put off making the art until Father's Day.

But I didn't want to delay again. And now that I have Kids instead of A Kid, who knows how long it would take to finish. Even though we're pretty much settled into a routine with TwoBoo, he's still 4.5 months old. You never know when he'll decide he wants to hang out and socialize instead of sleep.

So I decided to go monochromatic. One color, varied textures. That way, I narrow down the possibilities in a creative way and maximize the time I have to actually put the piece together.

As background, I used this white paper with twig inclusions I'd bought years ago (when I first discovered my paper jones). I also found a lotería card, which could be toned down with a scrap of cream lace paper.

Then I flipped the orientation of a childhood picture of The Husband, in Photoshop, so the transferred image would face the right way. (Remember, kids, if you're going to do a transfer, your images are going to be mirror images of the original.)
I layered a picture of The Boy and me on top of the larger picture. Both images are transferred onto watercolor paper which has just enough texture to make it interesting. I just used a regular old (acid-free) glue stick to adhere everything. It's drier than glue or matte medium, and would not make the lace paper disappear on the lotería card.
Finally, I pinned the piece into a shadow box. It's a much better composition than the first shadowbox I did for The Husband -- that one I kinda threw in everything but the kitchen sink.

But where's TwoBoo? I know, I know. But I couldn't really figure a way to incorporate his image into the piece without it looking shoe-horned in. TwoBoo is in there -- I'm five months pregnant in this picture. You just can't see it because The Boy is sitting in my rapidly-shrinking lap.

Recurring artistic choices: transfers, textured & lace paper, bright colors muted (by layering).