Mandala Monday Round-Up

Once again I noticed belatedly that I haven't remembered to do a blogpost for the last few Mandala Mondays, so today there's a bumper crop to savor! 

This week's mandala is inspired by and composed of papers from Prima Marketing's new "Farm Sweet Farm" collection, which has just arrived at Paper Anthology and is, imo, one of the prettiest paper collections of 2022! I started this mandala with a stacked hexie center (you'll definitely be seeing that again!) and added circle punches, upside down hearts, butterflies and tear-shaped elements. 

(PS: this style of mandala is the easiest everrrrrrr and also a great way to use paper scraps!)

A subtle lineart mandala, drawn with colorful Emott pens and surrounded by a Pinkfresh Studio Folkart Frame diecut that happened to be sitting on my worktable when I was getting ready to draw.

I bought this cool Strathmore "Grey Toned" sketchbook during a BOGO event at the big box store and haven't really worked in it much, so this seemed like a good time to break out the Posca paint pens and add pink, silver and white, with a little bit of superfine Pitt Pen black outlining.

Tombow Dual Brush Pens, used both directly on the paper and also picked up with a waterbrush for a looser and more interesting background. In the colors of the Ukrainian flag.

♥♥♥

I hope your Monday is off to a good start and that you'll 

find time to do something fun and creative before it's over!

Another Week Flies Past...

...and it's time to celebrate Fourth of July already? Seriously, HOW did that happen?! Of course this also means that we are just a tiny smidge past the halfway point of ICAD's 61 glorious days. Here are this week's index cards:

day 27: cappuccino

i've always wanted to try drawing fancy coffee-top art and this seemed like the perfect occasion. i lightly sketched in pencil, added color with sepia, violet and prussian blue colorburst, then outlined with my faber-castell pitt artist pens.

day 28: off-prompt

test driving a new stencilgirl stencil called stepping stone #1 by maria mcguire. I used dry oxide inks in the background, then wet them and watercolored the design. then added lots of outlines and doodles.

day 29: citrus

combining the actual prompt of the day with mandala monday. this one is in citrus colors (WITHOUT any black outline... hard for me not to add that lol...) with some of my newer favorite pens from the ink pad. on a swedish library card that came from a swap with my IG friend, ellen.

day 30: souvenir

...or at least souvenir was my starting point; in the end, this became a sort of historical/travel themed collage... and i'm cool with that...

day 31: off-prompt

a somewhat vaguely nautical one-staple collage. with a manatee. and sequins.

(let's not analyse this too much lol...)

day 32: off-prompt

inspired by an amazing mosaic/wedge collage my friend cyndie reis made last week. mine uses the leftover papers that were sitting out from my manatee collage. the found text is from a spanish language childrens book and reads, "sometimes lightning jumps from a cloud to the earth".  

day 33: periwinkle

one of the few days i have done the prompt ON THE DAY; go, me! ok so, i started off with small funky periwinkles which promptly got overshadowed by large funky orange guys. it happens, lol; let's just go with it.

♥♥♥

HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY

to everyone who is celebrating!

(and Happy Weekend to everyone else!)

It's PEN-demonium!

What do you do when you get new pens? I like to test them out, to see what sort of line they make and how they show up on different backgrounds. I also make little samples for The Ink Pad, so customers can see the same things. The results of this set of  essperiments and all the names of all the sets of all the pens are on The Ink Pad Blog today!

Hello!

Hello, March! Hello (Almost) Spring, and most importantly perhaps for The Ink Pad: Hello, Chelsea! As of yesterday, we are officially open in the new location, at 233 West 19th Street, between Seventh and Eighth Avenues. All of which seem like good reasons to celebrate with a bright and cheerful card, don't you think? Luckily there's quite a nice one on The Ink Pad Blog today (she said, modestly)!