Inspired Me

Merry Christmas to all of you. I love this lady that I painted in celebration of the special day. I hope she makes you smile and feel the spirit of the season. Hope you all have a fantastic time!

 Happy December! My art mojo has been on vacation for several weeks. But before it slowed down I did a few really fun paintings. There is a mixed media artist named  Mystele . I have admired her style and wanted to try my hand at it. I love the bright colors and layers of paint she uses. Take a look at "Encouraging Friends." The stamp says "Blue skies are ahead." This picture reminds me of the power of friends and the loving support they give. Enjoy! I made the first girl on the far left and it felt so good I had to create three more. LOL! Don't you love the hot pink hair? As you can see, I do! :) I love the hot air balloon stamp too. 

Most of you know me as a scrapbooker and greeting card creator. And over the last few years, I have included art to my list of passions. As a growing young artist, it is great to see our city of Downey has a growing art community. Just this year, Ron and I has gone to concerts in the park, food festivals, art shows, and music festivals all organized by our city or local groups. Earlier this month, we visited the  Stay Gallery for their opening exhibit called "For The Love Of EARTH" featuring artist Ricky Ostendi. They had a great turn out to see his fantastic art show. We even went back on a last Saturday to enjoy it all again. While we were there we met staff members Aldo and co-founder and creative director Gabriel who told us the history of this gallery and some of their future plans. They are doing some great things here in the city to help create a thriving art community. Now, here are few pictures of our time there. I just loved all the dramatic faces!

Thanks to all of you that stop by and saw my Summer Art Show video! I was really excited to share it and glad to hear all the positive response. Awesome! For those of you that missed it, check it out here. 2014 Summer Art Show One of my favorite parts of the video was the stencil art girls. So here is a look at how I created them. Get an image you like from a magazine or online. Then trace image on a clear plastic sheet and cut it out. Now the fun part! Just go crazy using your fingers, paint brush or whatever to make a big paint mess. Lay down your stencil and use dark paint to go around the image. I used a make-up wedge and dabbed the paint on. Remove the stencil and look at the magic! I used my wedge sponge to finish coloring the dark blue over all the background. Then outline with white or black pen, add the hair and that's it! I hope you get to try this if you haven't already. So fun! Also, I used that same image to make this next paintin

Now that Summer is over I am so happy to announce my 2nd virtual ART SHOW! It is a collection of my work from the last few months. It was so  fun creating this video and the music is just perfect happy music. So stop by and enjoy the show! CLICK HERE >>>  Kelly's Summer 2014 Art Show

Is it blogaversary??? LOL! Well, today I am celebrating my wonderful home, Inspired Me. Over these four years, I have loved sharing my life and creations with you. When, I first started I was so excited. My first post was about art and so neat to see after all these years I am still painting along with other artsy things.   Here is my 1st post I have shared cards, drawings, paintings, personal moments and even floral arrangements. When Ron and I started our business, K. Simone Designs, I shared that marvelous adventure here. You all have been apart of so many of these times in my life cheering me along and I thank you. I hope something here has inspired you and I plan to continue doing just that.  Cheers to you all!

  Happy Friday! I have enjoyed sharing my art with you this week and today there is more. These faces were fun because I was trying some new angles and multiple adult faces. After seeing a picture of two best friends on twitter, I was inspired to try. Take a look at how it evolved! Early stages! I loved the background but it was so light and I wasn't settled about it. Yes! I love the darker colored background and how it warms up the faces.  I just love the hair too.  Thanks again for stopping by and I will be sharing more art and other fun things soon. Have a great weekend!

Happy Wednesday! Today I will share more art. So glad you all liked the last one and this is another fun one. Sometimes, I am in the mood to get my fingers nice and messy with paint. When I made this one I was definitely having a blast. I made the flower balls by mixing several colors of paint and swirling them around. So cool! Then, the confetti was made with my fingers. I felt like a kid doing finger painting! Try if you haven't and you will be surprise how giddy you get. I hope you feel the party and celebration in this picture. At first I was only going to made couple of balls, but after I got going I almost couldn't stop. LOL!     Find the happiness and joy in you life today. Come back Friday for more art.

Today I will be sharing one a several painting I recently finished. This one is one of my favorites. I wanted to try two faces and just love how they turned out. It was fun going crazy with the multi-colored background. The hearts were made using my new favorite thing to make from toilet paper rolls- STAMPS.  I saw them on Julie Balzer's blog. Toilet Paper Tube Stamps  Then I used my fingers to paint the inside of the hearts. So neat! Take a look and I hope you feel the love and joy in this piece. Aren't the afro's fabulous!!! LOL! They were my first try and look pretty darn good. The little girls afro puff is so cute and reminds me of the ones I had as a child.   I love the hearts on their clothes. I used my stencil to make the design then painted around just to show the insides. Hope you enjoyed and come back this week to see some other paintings. Have a good one!

Hello everyone and hoping your day is going well. Today I stopped by to share a mini album card I recently finished for my dear mother-in-law's birthday. It took me a while to put it together but I liked how it turned out. I learned a neat lesson in art and life too. My printer was acting up and wouldn't print the pictures black and white. I tried all sorts of things to get it to work but for some reason, these pictures wouldn't work. After lots of frustration, I decided to work with the pictures just as they were. In fact, I like them because they looked sort of artsy. So the lesson: when my plans don't work go with the flow. It might turn out better anyways. :) Take a look! I used yellow chalk to color the white title sign. Don't these orange-y pictures look good??? :) I love using these glass buttons. They looked like pieces of ice. Thanks for taking a look. Take care!

Last Sunday, my husband and I went to one of our local parks. It was a nice, sunny and warm afternoon but the breeze was just heavenly. We found a shady spot full of all types of trees and laid out and just relaxed. So here is a layout I did from that lazy Sunday. I scrap lifted this idea from Latrice Murphy's layout in the August 2014 issue of Paper Craft & Scrapbooking magazine on page 59. I saw the online copy and when I saw her layout, it went in my memory to try at some point. A great way to use up all those scraps I had sitting around, too. I love the wood grain paper paired with all the bright patterned paper.  We laughed as I took the "selfie" of us laying around. I splattered white gesso paint around. This little leather sticker was a fun touch. Thanks for stopping by! Have a great day! 7/25/14 After looking at this layout this morning I decided to add some gold glitter paper banners to really finish it off. Now I feel sati

I love trying new things in art. It is like an adventure and a hearty challenge. So after I saw this picture of the soul singer Ledisi, I just had to try it. Love the dark eye shadow and the head tilted. So dramatic! When I first tried adding the blue eye shadow to my painting it looked cool to me. But when I had my hubby look at it he nicely told me the blue I did made her eyes look hollow! LOL! So I went back and added a lighter blue and that did it! So here are some pictures showing the progression of my version of Ledisi. Thanks for stopping by! Have a super day.