POP UP ART CHALLENGE #18 - Dog Days of Summer

Holy freakin' cow!!!!  Can you believe that it's already nearly August?  It seems to me like every year goes by faster than the last, and to be honest, it doesn't seem like we've been at this for 8 months.

It's Melody again, bringing you this month's calendar challenge...to celebrate/bemoan the dog days of summer.  Create your calendar for August using dog/paw print stamps...that's it!  You choose the colors, but get those stamps inked up and let us see your puppy love!!!

Here's the AWESOME calendar created by Miss Betty for this month...and here's what she had to say about her process:  "Created in my large Dylusions journal using Liquitex Basic acrylics.  I cut a large circle out of diamond scrapbooking paper, gessoed over it, then went to town making me a hot Texas sun, blending the colors with 3/4" flat brush!  I prominently feature the beautiful Weimaraner stamps that were custom made just for me of my dogs by the lovely and talented Andie Mayr, along with a few other small doggie stamps I had.  The days of the month are a paw print stamp.  Numbers were applied with a #1 round brush and white acrylic paint.  The outline of the fire hydrant is Dr. Phil's black india ink applied with a dip pen.  I actually copied the hydrant image from a Glass Patterns Quarterly magazine I had and transferred the outline image and painted it a deep cadmium red.  I hope you don't get tired of hearing me complain about the heat throughout the month.  This is always our worst time of the year.  Everything turns brown, the heat is oppressive and you wilt when you go outside.  We laugh and say we can cut us out a chunk of air this time of year.  Hope your August is more pleasant!"

Next up is my (Melody) calendar!  So, working in my large Dylusions journal I got busy with a some Liquitex Basic acrylics in Quin Magenta and Titanium White, and some Amsterdam acrylic in Napthol Red Light.  I had already laid down some torn book pages, sheet music and other assorted papers, then applied some gesso here and there all over the pages.  Using my 1" Dina Wakley flat brush I began dragging and blending my paints, not really worrying about balancing the amounts of the two colors, but just painting.  While the paint was drying, which didn't take too long since I didn't go too heavy with it, I punched out my date "tags" from a couple of sheets of scrapbook paper that coordinated with my paint colors.  Then I dug out every dog stamp I possess, including one I carved myself, and began stamping them all over the now dry paint.  Once I had the dogs, I went for an "August" stamp, also taking it all over the page.  While the ink was drying, I stapled two tags together, and once they were all done, glued them down onto the page.  Finally, because I'm from Texas, and we love our bling, I got out some glittery letters to label the month on the stop left corner of my spread!

And last, but not least, we have a super cool calendar by Shana!  She is so stinking talented it just blows me away!  Here's what Shana had to say about the process:  "My August calendar, created in my Canson Mixed Media Journal.   Materials used are as follows: Yellow background is Liquitex Basics in Cadmium Yellow, the blues, reds, grey and orange are Ranger Distress Paint daubers.  My fine lines were made by white and black Sharpie paint pens.

"I had no clue what to do with this month's calendar prompt other than I wanted a puppy on it, so I just started by adding color until I had a fun background, then added the puppy and the paw prints for the days.  It was originally supposed to be a standard calendar layout with the days of the week, but I had a mishap and only did 5 paws instead of 7, so I decided to just go with and covered the whole right side with paw prints!

And there you have it, y'all.  We had a LOT of fun creating our calendars for August and hope that y'all will share yours with us over on the FB page.  Thanks for stopping by!