Ahhh, spring, where art thou??

And the sweet rug

of spring bloom

has been ripped

out from under

our warming toes...

By the harrowing wind

flinging icy daggers

and petals of

whispering white snow.

Between Friday daytime, and Saturday evening, the temperature was projected to drop 65 degrees. Friday was the first 'real' spring day we've had. 68 degrees out in most parts of Kansas City. The little one dragged her blankets, snacks and schoolwork out into the yard for a day of yardschool (as opposed to 'home'school). I had shoes on WITH NO SOCKS! The teen was reading with the windows open! We were all set for spring! And then...

duhn duhn duhn duhn (scary music inserted here...)

The awful weather man said a cold snap was coming along with bitter cold and 5-6 inches of snow. As I sit typing this (middle of the night, Friday night), I can hear the sleet and a blanket of 1" of snow covers my pretty grass that was just discovering a new palette.

Ahhh, spring, where art thou??

I couldn't stand it, I had to create my own springish colors. I joined The Artistic Mother Flickr group of people working their way through the projects in this book (list of participants on this blog, right column.) It's such a good book about inserting small pockets of art time into your busy days as mothers, worker bees and wives. 

The first project was to get yourself prepared for the next projects and that started with painted papers. Well, you know I love to paint my scraps as evidenced here, here and here. But I'm following the directions to do papers, from the book. I chose scraps, book pages, mail, old homeschool schoolwork, a soda cardboard box and covers to a watercolor pad. Stuff I was throwing away anyway. 

I gesso'd them. Okay, truthfully. My gesso is so old, when I went to open it I was overwhelmed by the yucky fumes. I think it's safe to say it's 'turned', like milk... So I chucked it and used a thinner white acrylic paint. Works just the same. I will tell you, when you're going to do the next step of painting over with color, it's better painting over gesso'd papers. It makes the colors brighter and the paint doesn't seep into the paper giving it that 'wet' look.

And, since I was lazy and didn't want to get out the acrylics when I had my trusty fluid acrylics sitting on the table, I just used those. You know me, I'm a rule breaker, risk taker, dream maker!! 

Then I pulled out all sorts of stamps. I tend to lean towards background stamps. I like that they cover more area of the paper. Doesn't have to be perfect as all of this will be torn up and used in subsequent projects.

Now that they're all done and drying, I'm off to bed to watch the new episode of Flash Forward. Looks like a good'n. Have a wonderful weekend!

(P.S. You can see The Artistic Mother author's painted papers & instructions here: Background Papers.)