Haiku in August

Slide Show too fast? Click the Pause (||) button and then you can use the arrows to click through at your own speed.....If anyone can tell me how to slow down a Picasa slide show I am all ears (or eyes and fingers....) You can click any image to be taken to a link for the stamp used.

We've been experiencing a 10 heat wave here in the Northwest. Seattle set an all time high and here in Portland we missed our high by 1 degree, but the length of consecutive days above 100 may have beaten the records. We mostly don't have air conditioning in our homes as we hardly ever use it so I have been a prisoner of the basement!

Hope you enjoy this slide show. Mention the Art Neko Blog when ordering any of our Haiku collection between now and August 15th and get 25% off on any of our haiku stamps or sheets.

Keep cool! I'm trying to!

Candice

Moms and Kids

With Mother's Day coming soon, this week's blog theme is mother's and children. As a mother of four kids I feel truly blessed. I would love to take credit for what great adults they have grown up to be, but I think too often we take too much credit or too much blame depending on the situation. My kids have all worked hard to become who they are and while I did my best to provide encouragement and guidance, their successes are their own.

I picked this photo with David, my youngest, because Art Neko could never had come into existence without his tireless and patient efforts to set up and train me on how to maintain my website. In this photo he is helping me with an exhibit of cross stitch charts I made while in Japan. Yoko, standing at the right is also a very proud and doting mother. The small portrait next to me is of her son in full kimono in his 5th year of age which has a special celebration in Japan. Yoko had me enlarge and digitally chart that portrait and at the time we left Japan she had stitched about a quarter of her project. Talk about a mother's devotion!

This photo is about 14 years old and David here is now married and in his third year of graduate studies in math at MIT. I never could have started Art Neko without his gift to me of designing my website. Now if I could just get him to help with this blog.....Children, the gift that keeps giving (even after they leave home....)!

The week in which the 5th Day of the 5th Month falls (May 5th) includes several special days in Japan. Included in this weeks's post are projects relating to Children's Day (formerly Boy's Day) and Greenery Day, two of these special celebrations. As always, mention Art Neko Blog when you order any of the items featured this week for a 25% discount on those items.

Blue Butterfly

I love this image which can also be found on the Garden Friends sheet or purchased individually in three sizes.

It was stamped this time with embossing ink and then embossed with Adirondack Espresso by Ranger.

The butterfly was then colored with Prismacolor pencil crayons.
Layering on complimentary colored card stock and patterned paper completed the card.

In Your Pretty Colours

I call this tech "Chalk on Chalk". Three chalk colors are blended to create the background and spritzed with hairspray from the dollar store to fix the chalk.

When dry, ink stamp with VersaMark or similar embossing ink and stamp on prepared chalk background. With a Qtip, dab different chalk colors to the Versa Mark stamped image.

Use a soft brush to brush away excess chalk dust.
Easy yet quite effective.

This Swallowtail Butterfly is available in two sizes.

Mother and Daughter

Another "Chalk on Chalk" card. This time the this butterfly image has been stamped in two of the three sizes available on the Garden Friends sheet. (May be purchase as sheet or individual images).

The butterflies were then enhanced with gel pen and peel off dots and layered as shown.

The patterned background paper is from Basic Grey.

I am thrilled to join the Art Neko Design Team and happy to post my first artwork. As the publisher (writer, creator, photographer and head bottlewasher) of the Technique Junkie Newsletter, I hope to use many techniques to show off these beautiful Art Neko stamps. I hope I can do them justice!

The crane on this card was colored direct-to-stamp with waterbased markers, misted with water, and stamped onto watercolor paper.

The crane was matted in blue and layered onto a black cardstock piece (yes, that was black!) that has been brushed with gold and blue metallic paints. I layered that over a blue cardstock piece that had been embossed using a Cuttlebug folder. I added some paper piercing, grommets and ribbon with additional layering to highlight the crane image.

This crane image is available on the Asian Beauties 6 Sheet.

Thank you for looking at my art!

Pat Huntoon

Bunnies and Pine

For last week's OSA layout challenge with an Easter theme, I decided to use the Whispering Rabbits stamp from Art Neko as my main image. In keeping with the layout design, I stamped the bunnies in black ink on an oval cut-out. The entire image wouldn't fit inside the oval, so I inked only part of the stamp. The bunnies create a great image left perfectly plain in black and white, but I added a little very pale color with pencils (pink shading on the bunnies and greens on the pine and grass). I edged the oval with a faint touch of pink, then mounted it to a rose colored panel layered with gold. In my stash of washi papers, I found a very springy cherry-blossom design, and chose a section of the page that would enclose the bunnies in flowers. I cut a panel to fit the folded cardstock, attached it to a pink panel and then to the card. I cut a strip of the rose colored cardstock the width of the decorated panels, and attached it horizontally. I then added two gold, scalloped rub-on strips and layered the bunny panel over it.

Japanese Papers A Lot of Projects and Samples this Week--To see all this week click Older Post thru to Washi Eggs!

Who can resist beautiful papers, especially Japanese decorative papers commonly referred to as Washi or Yuzen? I know I can't resist all the textures, colors, prints that are found in paper shops around the world. While some husbands might complain about those paper stashes some of us have, my husband considered my paper obsession a blessing. While wives were out purchasing the latest fashions, fancy jewelry and other expensive souvenirs while traveling--I only wanted to go to paper shops and used book stores. Paper is a relatively cheap obsession. Like the toddler who spends more time with the packaging of his or her Christmas or birthday present, I could be ecstatic by the rough textured TP in the restrooms of Budapest (much more suited for art projects than it's intended purpose, if you ask me!), cocktail napkins in Japan or Germany, foil wrappers from chocolates or confections and on it goes. But I do have to say that my greatest love is for the elegant decorative papers of Japan. They can be a bit pricey, but a little bit can go a long way. Our Japanese decorative papers are limited to what is in stock. If we are out of a paper we will notify you as to whether it will be restocked and the likely wait time and you can choose to receive a refund or to substitute a different pattern. I hope you enjoy the samples this week of projects using these papers. We have quite a few projects here this week so be sure to read all the way through to Washi Easter Eggs at the end of this segment on Washi papers.

March 2009 Cherry Blossom Special

I am debuting our new blog with Cherry Blossoms as this week's theme. Go to the Search Box at the top of any page of the Art Neko website and enter the word Cherry. This should bring up two pages showing most of the items on the Art Neko website that are somehow related to the word Cherry or Cherry Blossom, including images of stamps, sheets of stamps, sets of stamps or decorative papers. Click on the small image of any of these items to get the complete information for the item.

The flowering cherry (Sakura) and flowering plum (Ume), common motifs in Chinese and Japanese art are often confused by westerners. Both are considered harbingers of the coming of spring with the plum blooming at the end of winter in February and the cherry in April when spring is in full sway. In addition, cherry blossoms are generally very pale to pink while plum blossoms are usually white or a much darker pink to red than the cherry (although they are depicted in just about any color on Japanese decorative papers). The petals of the plum are generally smoothly rounded while the cherry generally has a slight notch on the edge of the petals.

The two flowers have differing symbolism in Japan and China. In China the plum blossom (really more of an apricot than a plum) is much more highly revered than the flowering cherry whereas in the 9th Century the cherry overcame the plum in popularity in Japan. In China the plum is more representative of winter than spring as it is in Japan. In Japan the plum is believed to be a charm to protect against evil. In China the Plum represents resiliency and perseverance and the cherry is representative of feminine beauty and love. In Japan the flowering cherry represents the transient nature of life owing to the brief period, though spectacular, that the trees are in bloom. It is traditional in Japan to have picnics under the blossoming trees and to celebrate this time of year with festivals and other Cherry Viewing activities.