Donna B Miller

All Things Gypsy

There must be a gypsy somewhere in my background. I love rich bohemian tapestries, jewel colors, and travel. Anytime a gypsy-themed digital kit or photo collection becomes available, I have to add it to my stash. 

Last year, I showed you the Gypsy Diary that I made as part of Tangie Baxter's Gypsy Diaries Mixed Media Worskhop. Since then, I've been scouring the shops for all things gypsy to use on the inside pages. Two of my favorite digital kits are Tangie's Gypsy Rhapsody and Pink Lotty's Gypsy Caravan. 

Imagine my excitement when I saw that Deviant Scrap has but together a store-wide collaboration celebrating all things bohemian, La Vie Boheme.  Here are a couple of pages that I put together using Tumble Fish Studio's kit. 

Happy National Scrapbooking Day

You don't have to be a scrapbooker to get excited about National Scrapbooking Day. There are lots of freebies, bargains and activities for the multi-media artist and digital artist as well. I have been spending a lot of time at Deviant Scrap this weekend, chatting with friends and overspending my art budget.

This morning, I finished up an artist trading card for Tumble Fish Studio's Distant Relative ATC challenge. 

I dug out an old photo of my great uncle Jimmy, a lover of fish, and apparently a bit of a dandy in his younger years.

Credits: Tumble Fish Studio's Male Persuasion, Something Fishy, and At the Beach kits.

In the Save the Drama for Your Momma challenge, Holliewood Studios provides us with a stage on which to mount our own family story. I had way too much fun with this. 

Credits: Everything is from Deviant Scrap. The stage is by Holliewood; the girls are from Tumble Fish Studio's Ooh La La.

And, finally, I took advantage of Tumble Fish Studio's free Family Album download to participate in just one more challenge. Doing the captions was a blast.

Credits: Photos from Tumble Fish Studio's Family Album freebie; everything else from the Deviant Scrap Family Picnic kit (free this weekend). The font is Jane Austen.

Purple Poetry and Inspiration

When I was in elementary school, I had two favorite poems, and they were both about the color purple. 

THE PURPLE COW
Gelett Burgess

I never saw a Purple Cow,
I never hope to see one;
But I can tell you, anyhow,
I'd rather see than be one.

GRANDPA DROPPED HIS GLSSSES
Leroy F. Jackson 

Grandpa dropped his glasses once
In a pot of dye,
And when he put them on again
He saw a purple sky.
Purple fires were rising up
From a purple hill,
Men were grinding purple cider
At a purple mill.
Purple Adeline was playing
With a purple doll;
Little purple dragon flies
were crawling up the wall.
And at the supper-table
He got crazy as a loon
From eating purple apple dumplings
With a purple spoon.

While I am happy to say that my taste in poetry has grown a little more sophisticated over the years, my love affair with purple has never passed. I was so excited to get a chance to play with Tumble Fish Studio's Shades of Purple kit, now available at Deviant Scrap.

My first piece was a digital collage, Seeing Purple.

The second is a little ATC brought on by spring fever. Every year when it starts to warm up, I want to put on my hat and fly away to exotic places (or at least to Gatlinburg.)

Mail Art: My First Love

It was Nick Bantock's Griffin and Sabine series that made me fall in love with collage and mixed media art. I loved the bright colors, the exotic characters, and the wonderful, grungy stamps. I wanted to be the kind of artist who could create magical stories out of ephemera and color. It wasn't long before I was pulling up Photoshop on the computer and attempting to recreate Bantock's techniqes digitally. 

If you are not familiar with Nick Bantock and his work (or even if you are), be sure to check out the video here.

That was over seven years ago, and since then I've explored all types of art, both digital and traditional. But I keep coming back to mail art. It truly is my first love. That's why I was so excited to see that Deviant Scrap is celebrating National Letter Writing Month with a quick mail challenge.

Here's the postcard I created. Sign up before April 3o to play along. 

Credits: Tumble Fish Studio's Journaling Pieces 1 and 2, Viva Artistry's Fairy Tale, and Nancie Rowe Janitz's History Bits brushes.

Where is my Mind?

Blame it on spring, but my head has been in the clouds lately. I just realized that I had neglected to post not one, but three, pages that I created as part of my creative team duties at Tumble Fish Studio.

The first is based on a theme that I keep returning to. I call it my Garden Girl series.

Credits: Tumble Fish Studio's Shades of Green kit from Deviant Scrap.

This one is just a piece on nonsense that I came up with when I saw the hair tonic image next to the fish image as I played in Photoshop.

Credits: Tumble Fish Studio's Shades of Green kit from Deviant Scrap.

And this last one is a tribute to the old movies, and the beautiful women who wanted to be stars.

A true story: I have two great aunts who ran off to Hollywood to become movie stars. As their older sister explained, "People told them they were beautiful and they believed it."

Credits: Tumble Fish Studio's Méliès-ish kit at Deviant Scrap.

 

The Grumpiest Fairy

We're trading art journal pages over at Paper Traders as part of our monthly tip-in project. Each participant chose a journal theme back in January, and we're taking turns completing spreads for each other's albums. When we get our spreads, we insert, or tip in, the pages into our own journals.

For April, I completed two pages for Pam using the theme of Fairies. I think this may just be the grumpiest fairy ever. 

Credits: Tumble Fish Studio's Etcetera, Miscellany, Spring Junque, Crazy Legs, My Picks, and Autumn Junque kits

Pretty Little Ribbons

When I was little, I would take my mother's old Sears catalogs and cut them up to make paper dolls and houses. Here I am, fifty years later, and I am still at it. This month, Paper Traders is holding a Ribbon Doll Swap, inspired by a tutorial at Ten Two Studios. 

This is a great project for using up stashes of ribbon.

Credits: Tumble Fish Studio's Christmas Junque, Journaling Pieces 1, and Lowbrow kits, available at Deviant Scrap.

Credits: Tumble Fish Studio's Freestyle 2, You're invited, Your Zetti Self, and Divas kits, available at Deviant Scrap.

To participate in the swap, you'll need to join Paper Traders and sign up in the database to indicate how many dolls you want to make. 

Once Upon a Time

I confess. I am 54 years old and still in love with fairy tales. I love the TV series, One Upon a Time; I just finished reading Kate Danley's The Woodcutter, a fairy tale for adults; and you'll often see crowns and wings appearing in my art. That's why I was positively giddy when I saw Tumble Fish Studio's new Once Upon a Time kit and journaling cards. Just look at those pretty faces, those crowns, and those frogs! 

I downloaded it immediately and began working on this art journal page where I ramble on about the perils of marrying solely for money. I found my Prince Charming, a penniless student, almost 35 years ago. I hate it when I see people settle for less.

Then I turned around and created this little ATC using Tumble Fish's Once Upon a Time Journaling cards.

Many of the designers at Deviant Scrap have created their own Once Upon a Time kits. You can check out the entire collection here, and if you spend more than $14.99 on any of the kits in the collection, you'll receive a huge Once Upon a Time collaboration kit free. 

Valentine Junque

As the end of January nears, our thoughts turn toward hearts and Valentines and all things pink. It's just all so sweet (she says, rolling her eyes). No, I am not a pink kind of girl. You won't find the color in my home or in my closet. That said, there was something about the new Valentine Junque kit from Tumble Fish Studios that spoke to me. 

Maybe it's those charming faces, or perhaps it's those bright splashes of red and purple. In any case, I couldn't wait to create with it.

Here's an ATC, featuring a Valentine's vamp. Doesn't she just look like she's thinking, "I may be kissing him, but I'm thinking of you?"

And then, there's an art journling page featuring the lyrics to Bobby Vinton's song, "Love Me Forever."

She really is sweet. Maybe Tumble Fish will turn me into a pink girl after all. 

 

I'm Going to Let it Shine

This little light of mine, I'm gonna let it shine! Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine!

My favorite song from Sunday School still makes me smile, still makes we want to be a better person than I am. A warmer person, a brighter person, a more generous person.

So, humming this song while I fixed my morning coffee, I decided that SHINE would be my one little word for 2013, the one word that I will reflect on throughout the year and that I will let guide my actions as I strive to live a better life.

I've participated in Ali Edward's One Little Word project for the past four years, opting to choose one word that represents my goals for the year instead of making resolutions that I soon break. It has amazed me how powerful the action of choosing and implementing just one little word into my daily routine can be.

And, because this word has become my focus, it's showing up in a lot of my art pages, sometimes intentionally and sometimes sub-consciously. I've noticed that my work is becoming brighter and sunnier, too.

Here's a letter I did as an assignment for Tangie Baxter's wonderful Art Journal Caravan, a year-long workshop filled with prompts, tutorials, and community. I have been a part of the caravan since it started back in 2010 and can honestly say that of all the workshops and tutorials I've purchased, this is absolutely the best use of my crafting dollars. You can check out a worskhop sampler here.

Credits: Tangie Baxter's Collage Fodder Edges and Being Me (flower), Tumble Fish Studio Unpredictable (lightbulb), Crazy Legs (legs and boots), Your Zetti Self (arms); Holliewood Art Journaling 3 (paint), Deviant Scraps Midnight Reverie (background and floor) and Rucola Designs Morning Bird (alpha).

I did another shine page for the January Art Journaling challenge at Deviant Scrap. The prompt was to make a resolution to try something new in 2013.

Credits: Tumble Fish Studio's Lowbrow and Journaling Pieces kits, available at Deviant Scrap.

One of the fun things about this challenge is that you get a free gift, just for participating. Don't you just love that Zetti dress?