October 23, 2007

graffiti book pages

This past Sunday I spent all day at a (sort of) local stamp store in Scottsdale, Frenzy Stamper. I spent the day painting, stenciling, scribbling, and gluing, in a Graffiti Book class with Kelly Kilmer. (I took a class with her at Art Unraveled that was alot of fun, so I was kind of excited to take another one.) This kind of painting is sooo not my usual style, but there's something really "freeing" about it. We painted the fronts and backs of 5 12 x 18 pieces of paper, using all different techniques for color mixing and layering, some of them using metallic glazes. Then, we dug into her amazing stash of rubber stamps, stencils, markers, and paint pens, to give it the graffiti look. After that, we bound the pages into a book using a 3-hole pamphlet stitch. (I really need to remember how I did this, so I can do it again.) This first book turned out 6 x 6 inches square. I decided to make my book open vertically, since that's how I did most of the stamping... Kelly has such an amazing stash of rubber stamps... I did buy a couple while I was there, so I'm working on my own- lol! One of the interior layouts- it didn't photograph too good, but the bluish page has a wash of silver metallic paint over the colors; it's amazing how that totally changes the colors! The darker page has "graffiti-type" scribbling on, using a Sharpie paint pen, and some glitter glue, I think. I cut my pages smaller (those large pieces of paper intimidate me, I don't know why...) so I ended up making two books. I folded the pages off-center for the second book , so some of the interior pages are smaller, more like a flag book. This way I can attach something to them, or turn them into pockets, or something... One of the other classes Kelly taught over the weekend was a "taped journal," which is why she had a great collection of decorative tape... I never even knew there was such a thing- of course, now I need to keep my eye out for it when I'm out shopping! It took a couple days for me to wash the paint and glue off my hands, but it was totally worth it. Check out more pics from these books on my Flickr page. (I think she'll be back again for another class in January- I can't wait!)

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