a BUSY (and fun!!) weekend!!

whew!! I was exhausted this afternoon; I needed to take a nap! Friday evening I participated in a shopping event to benefit a local charitable organization, Don't be a Chump! Check for a Lump! an organization that promotes monthly self breast exams. There were a number of local vendors, food, wine, music, and raffles. This is the first time I've done an in-person craft show in years, though, so I was worried whether I had everything I needed, whether people would buy any of my items, you know... the usual. I found out I didn't have anything to worry about-- it was a really fun time!! The event was hosted at Holly's (the founder) house, the Don't be a Chump! headquarters, in a north Phoenix neighborhood. They put so much work into hosting this event, it was amazing-- I didn't forget anything, I sold quite a number of things, and they raised money for their organization, so it was a success on all counts! this photo is my table set-up... I had a few more things that I couldn't fit onto the table, but this was most of it. Marble magnets and thumbtacks, collaged domino pendants and keychains, handmade cards and tags, and a couple pieces of mixed-media artwork. I did a fair number of sales, and also got inquiries about custom work, which was an unexpected bonus. I got to bed about 11:15 pm, and got up early on Saturday for the next thing...

a class where I made this journal!! I took an all-day class at Frenzy Stamper in Scottsdale on Saturday, making a journal using found papers and fabric-- the entire cover of the journal is sewn-- yes, I learned that I can be friends with my sewing machine! Jane Eileen is a great teacher; I've wanted to incorporate sewing on paper into my projects for ages, but have always been hesitant-- Jane said she's sewn through aluminum soda cans, and all sorts of things... I guess I just needed to hear that it's "okay" to do things that a traditional sewer might construe as abusing a sewing machine... lol!

This journal is called the "Double Double Journal;" it's actually two journals in one- one on the left side of the center spine, and one on the right side of the center spine. It was lots of fun to choose random fabrics and ribbon, sew them on, and see what happened. click here for the Frenzy Stamper blog, to see a couple photos of us in action during class. I will definitely be doing more of this type of sewing in the future-- it was so much fun! ...then, today, we had to get up early again, but for another fun reason-- we headed up to Glendale to Roseglen Shelties, to bring home our new Sheltie puppy, Prescott.

This photo is Prescott making friendly overtures to the cats... they definitely need some time to warm up to him, which is evident from this photo-- Butters looks absolutely evil in this picture!

Prescott had a big day-- first car ride, touring the pet store (to buy a collar and leash), meeting Bisbee and the cats, and exploring the house (the tiled kitchen, at least). Right now, he's pooped out, and napping in his crate. We're both pooped out, too!!

Kelly Kilmer weekend fun!! (edited)

last weekend was such a great time- Kelly Kilmer was in town, and taught her first two-day class!! it was so much fun!! Two whole days of paper, glue, ribbons, fabric, and creative inspiration mixed in with a lot of catching up, jokes, and laughing! (oh, and a Sprinkles cupcake was in there, too...) We made a journal from scratch, then worked on collaging some of the inside pages. I didn't take a lot of pictures-- I was too busy making things-- but Debbie has a few more on the Frenzy Stamper blog. This was the "before" pic of my workspace-- it's pretty clean, there! (it didn't stay that way for long...)

This was towards the end of day 2, when we started cleaning up-- you can still see Jeane and Jane doing some last-minute touches to their journals across the table, and Kelly's journals off to the left. The woman at the right (I don't remember her name, unfortunately) came from Santa Fe to attend; she said she'd only found out about Kelly's work a couple months ago. It's always fun attending classes; you get a lot of inspiration seeing what everyone else is working on, and although we all started out with the same basic journal and page concepts, the completed books and pages were all really different. I'm always interested in seeing Jane's work, too, because she adds fabric and sewing to her pages, which gives them a different dimensional aspect. (I haven't gotten that brave yet with my own pages, although the fabric and ribbons is a good start, which I don't usually do in my journals.

We decorated the covers inside and out before sewing the journal together, which is such a simple idea, and it made everything so much easier! This pic is the inside back cover of my journal-- I was drawn to lots of pinks on Saturday, and Kelly has a great collection of ribbons and trims! I also used some of her great collection of paper tape, and a piece of (pink) fabric along the edge.

More pinks on the inside front cover!! I never get around to writing my name and address on the inside cover, but I really should, so I left a space for it. The "bliss" ticket is actually covering up a mistake (I snipped the fabric right on the edge), but it turned out good, I think.

The front cover and the spine-- even more pink!! I love this Japanese paper with the gold accents. I'm going to add something more to the cover-- just don't know what yet. I love this journal!! It turned out really nice (I did a pretty careful job with my gluing and trimming), and it's a nice size- not too large, not too small, and the square page format is different than any other ones I have right now. The only problem is, I really want to work in it right away, but I have another journal I also need to work in-- I guess that would be a good incentive for working in the 3-ring binder journal, so I can finish it up!

edited to add: The woman from Santa Fe is Krista-- thanks for commenting, Krista! I'm glad you had a good time!!

image borrowed from Debbie's Frenzy Stamper blog (since I was too busy to take pictures!)

art in the desert!

I haven't been doing much creating lately, but last weekend I got the chance to get back into an art groove. Kelly Kilmer was in town teaching the entire weekend at Frenzy Stamper in Scottsdale, and I signed up for her Sunday all-day class. I wasn't going to, but I stopped in the store on Saturday just to say Hi, and everyone was having such a good time, I just couldn't help myself. (And, I'm sooo glad I did; it was a great day!) Sunday's class was "Reclaimed- An Altered Artist's Book" and was tons of fun, as always. The starting point was a used book that was gutted and transformed into a journal. I dug thru the books at the local Goodwill, and scored this great book- I looked at them strictly for the size/shape and cover design- I love the colors of this book, and bonus, it was only $2.99! (I did feel a bit bad about destroying a book, but I will use some of the interior pages and pics in my future artwork...) The first pic shows a closeup of the journal spine- I removed the book spine, and replaced it with a painted and stamped canvas one.

This is the entire front cover; the butterfly sticker and paper doily are from my stash (plus some glitter glue!), and the flowered tape is from Kelly's collection. I really love the color combination of this journal!!

This is the inside front cover; when I removed the book block, I ripped the inside cover paper, so I collaged over it. More springish colors here, with my SB paper and stickers, along with more of Kelly's great deco tape over the vellum envelope.

As always in a Kelly class, we did some fun painting techniques to make the journal pages- it's hard to see, but the page above has some texture made using gel medium underneath the paint. More of Kelly's awesome deco tape collection, along with another of my stickers.

Not all of my pages were painted; I left some of them blank so I could collage on them... this was made from magazine paper (the flames) and a vintage star chart(?) for the heart. I think this journal will be used mainly for the quotes I collect- usually I write them on scraps of paper, scattered all over, but this will be a great place to keep some of my favorites, I think. (for more photos of this journal, visit my Flickr page.)

impatient...

yes, I'm impatient for the workday to be over... Mixed Media group meeting tonight (the project is a surprise!), and I also brought my journaling stuff with me, so I can hang out beforehand at Borders and work on some new pages in one of my journals.

I took an all day class last Saturday at Frenzy Stamper with Kelly Kilmer, and learned some great new stuff! I haven't taken pictures of my pages yet, but you can check out her post about it here till I break out the camera. I love taking classes with her; she always has great ideas for working on art journaling pages, and she also has great paper, stamps, and stuff! I ended up with so much paint and gel medium on my hands that I didn't even bother washing it off before heading home, 'cause it would have taken forever... those are the best kind of days!

(pics soon, I promise...)

AU 2008 Recap Part 1

My first class at Art Unraveled was Monday: an all-day class titled Two Art Quilts Two, with Jane LaFazio. I decided to take this class because I love fabric, I do like sewing sometimes (as long as the sewing machine isn’t involved, that is!), and because I loved the pet portraits in the class description… I still really want some sort of portraits of Cleo and Phoebe, and was really excited by seeing her interpretation.

I found Jane LaFazio through Flickr-surfing, I think. She does amazing watercolor journaling, and wonderful art quilts of all kinds. Since then, I’ve seen her work a couple more times in Cloth, Paper, Scissors magazine… fabric and sewing, sometimes combined with paper: what could be more perfect than that?? (perhaps only some glue and stamping added in for good measure!)

This is one of Jane's pet portraits... I love the buttons on the edge!!

We started with the pet portrait- I only had really crappy photocopy enlargements of photos printed off my Flickr account, but I think it turned out okay, considering what I started with. We started by tracing the major shapes onto tracing paper (think paint-by-numbers, or coloring book), then transferred it to unprimed canvas using a Sharpie marker. From there, we started painting using thin washes of acrylic paints…Jane said when coloring in the shapes, don’t think about the “actual” color of the pet, but rather, think about their “aura” and their personality. I had really wanted to make Cleo’s picture a really soft, sage-y, olive-y green, but couldn’t get the paint color right, so she ended up being kind of pop-art instead, but actually, when I think about it, Cleo wasn’t a soft, sage-y kitty in real life, so I think the blue and yellow fits, after all.

I think I managed to capture her personality in the facial expression; I’m really proud of that. The next steps are stamping her name at the bottom, layering the batting and backing with the front, stitching the outlines and details, and finishing it off with an edging of some sort… hopefully, anyway! I really had HUGE expectations of perfection for the results of this project, (like everything I do, naturally) so perhaps I shouldn’t have done something with so much personal meaning for my first try, but I still think I’m going to finish it.

My tablemate for this class was a member of the East Valley Mixed Media group; I mentioned that I recognized her from the one meeting I attended, so she invited me to lunch with her- How nice of her!! This group of ladies meets once a month (in downtown Chandler, in the evening) to learn/discuss/share all sorts of things associated with mixed-media artwork… I’ve been trying to figure out how to attend regularly, but with Tom’s unpredictable travel schedule and the distance, it hadn’t been working out. Anyway, we had a very nice lunch with a couple other members, then headed back for the Landscape Quilt portion of the class.

Below is one of Jane's examples of a mini landscape quilt: I really like the way she used the sheer fabric in the sky, and how the frayed edges of the fabric suggests grass and growing things. And, if you look close, each of the colored bits in the lower left is an individual fabric scrap, sewn on by hand!

Again, I had definite ideas of what I wanted to do with this project, but my creative muse decided otherwise- I had purchased several beautiful batik fabrics from a (sort-of) local quilting shop, and thought I would make a desert landscape with mountains in the background. Jane’s approach to this project was to take a few fabrics, lay them next to each other, see what worked, and pull out/replace fabrics till you get something that feels and looks “right” to you. While I was pulling my supplies for the class together, I decided to throw in some other fabrics from my stash to take in addition to the batik.

During my process of pulling fabrics out and laying them down, I tried to make the desert landscape I wanted, but some of the fabrics just didn’t work, so they got replaced with my other cottons… more of this trial and error process (“no, try this one” and “how about using a piece of this?” from Lulu’s stash of fabrics) led to my landscape changing from a desert mountain scene to Midwestern rolling hills and fields, instead… amazing how that happens, isn’t it??

This landscape also needs lots of work to finish, although I have ideas for some of the details: embroidered grass, running-stitch plowed furrows in the fields, and tan buttons to represent round hay bales. And perhaps some running-stitch swirling clouds in the sky… or maybe a bird or two flying over the fields…

This class was a lot of fun, and it led me to reconnect with a group of really interesting people I hadn’t thought I would be able to again… it also showed me that sometimes pre-conceived notions and thought-out plans about projects can be (sometimes need to be) discarded in favor of what works at the time with how you’re feeling, which can lead to a totally different (but no less successful!) result in the end.

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!)