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12/30/2014

Marbleized Paper Continued

Yesterday I showed you my experiment with making marbleized paper. I sprayed the surface of a dishpan fill of water with spray paint and then took a stick and slowly stirred the paint around. I tore some pieces of water color paper and laid it gently on the surface producing some very cool patterns. I did most of the rest of the patterns with card stock which seemed to do just as nicely. Yesterday when I was in The Dollar Store I found a weekly planner for 2015. My thought in getting it was not necessarily to use as a planner (I'm still stuck on the small pocket sized calendars for my purse. Call me old and/or stubborn) but to leave it in the car in the morning to write a word or a few thoughts down, maybe throw a bit of paint down with some water color crayons, sort of a quick document my day/morning kind of thing. Could be a place for reminders, lists, ideas etc. Anyway,as I was sitting in my studio with these pieces of marbleized paper on the floor next to me, I figured I'd need something to inspire me with this cheapo journal, so off I went tearing up the paper and gluing it down. Matt medium did not work as well as mod podge in this case. With the exception of the torn paper (which is from my made collage stash) in the upper right and lower left corners, it's all from my experiment with marbleizing the paper. I'm pretty sure I will add more to the cover at least. It needs more...... more Jo stuff. Today I was going to share the pieces that we've been working on in my mixed media class on Saturday mornings, but I will save that for another day. Thanks for stopping in.................................Jo

12/29/2014

Marbleized Paper

Hello friends. I hope you are well and warm. On Christmas Day here in Virginia it was on the warm side. I think in the low 60's so I opened some windows in the studio. I filled a dishpan with some water and tore up some card stock. I sprayed the water with several colors of spray paint and took a stick and swirled it lightly on the surface of the water. I quickly laid some torn paper on top of the water, left it there for about 10 seconds and then used some tweezers to remove the paper. Pretty cool don't you think?. I will say this. You have to do this with ventilation and I probably should have done it outside; even with the windows open I still got a bit of a headache from the fumes of the spray paint. I also noticed that after using the same pan of water the paint was sticking to the stick as I swirled the water and so I had to spray more paint before I laid the paper on top of the water. I was too impatient or maybe too lazy to change the water. It was all trial and error. Still the results were pretty neat. Have you ever done this? Tomorrow I want to share the lovely pieces the women in my Saturday mixed media workshop have been working on. The results are so amazing. Thanks for visiting.

12/16/2014

Making Cheapo Stamps

I made my first attempt at stamp carving a couple of years ago. I started with some erasers from The Dollar Store. I figured I'd practice on something cheap before I carved on a SpeedBall block in case I wasn't happy with it. The blue and two dark pinks are erasers and the light pink is one of the first block ones I carved. I don't like it much but I have used the lower left one a lot. It shows up often in my work, so often it's becoming brittle, and dry so I attempted a few more on blocks. Oops. I repeated this. I'm sorry. I meant to show you where I drew designs in to piece of craft foam and pieces of an egg carton to create these. Talk about some instant gratification. So simple. This last weekend at my mixed media class, I gave everyone a piece of craft foam to create their own stamp on the spot. It was fun to watch the different designs appear and how they used them. I had given everyone a big piece of brown paper to work on and most everyone used their craft foam stamp as a border. Oops. I think I repeated this again. This is what happens when google chrome wasn't cooperating this evening and I had trouble keeping my eyes open after waiting for 45 min for me to try and finish this post........ Did I mention that we all tried my hot glue stencils that I shared with you on yesterday's post? So remember to save that egg carton or foam package from the grocery store. Grab a ball point pen and you'll have a stamp in 5 minutes.... Thanks for visiting. P.S I didn't repeat after all. Good night my friends. It's time to go. .................

12/15/2014

Glue Gun Stencils

One of the things I played around with in my absence from this blog was to try and make some stencils with a hot glue gun. I'd read about it on Traci Bautista's web site awhile back and had attempted it without much success. I decided to try it again. I figured out with my heat gun you have to lay the glue on pretty thick. It was trial and error. Here's one that doesn't yet have paint on it. This one gets a bit better. Then I grabbed a piece I'd done weeks ago on the gelli plate and added some black stenciling and tried the glue gun stenciling on top with bright red paint. I like it. Did some more playing on a paper towel with two stencils and two colors. Then I tried it on a deli paper gelli print. I like the organic "ness" of them. It takes some patience (for me) and practice to coordinate the squeezing out the glue from the gun and drawing the design at the same time. I understand there are some changeable tips on some glue guns, and mine look somewhat heavy handed but I like them nonetheless. Have you tried to make these? Thanks for stopping in.

12/13/2014

Happy Paint Party Friday (On Saturday) and the Five By Five Small Works Exibition

Yes, I have been absent for a good three weeks...Life and "stuff" happens. It's sometimes hard to maintain a blog with work full time, and life outside of work, and creating, and then having to decide whether to simply create and share later, or simply step away for a bit to regroup. I found I needed to have some down time to pick up the pieces and begin again. Right now it's nearly 10pm after a long work week/day and I am sitting in front of this pc trying to keep my eyes open. Now it's Saturday as I am writing this post. The picture I am showing you was created for a call for submissions in 2012 by New York artist Seth Apter. I am tickled to share with you that my 5x5 creation is part of more than 100 others that make up the Five by Five Small Works Exhibition at The Empty Spaces Project in Putnam, Ct. You can read about it here. Also, I want to share with you that Uncle Bill will be celebrating his 100th birthday in about 10 days. I was commissioned to created a birthday card for him, not only because it's hard to find birthday cards for that many years and also because it needed to hold 100 signatures. At least that was/is the plan. So, I created this card out of a half of a sheet of poster board. It opens up to this so there was lots of room for all those signatures. The back of the card states that is was created especially for Uncle Bill's momentous occasion given by family and friends. I do not know Uncle Bill. He is the uncle of a coworker. I may have to go meet him at his party. I am not usually late... but like the White Rabbit, I am late for an important date over at this party. where I didn't know I was a the featured artist on November 28th. Thanks to Eva and Kristen for hosting this every week. Thanks for letting me share my news with you and thanks for stopping by.

11/21/2014

Happy Paint Party Friday

I am continuing to journal in the car in the mornings before work. Yes, I am crazy with my in-the-car- art bag which right now contains the Moleskine journal, a plastic box with Neocolor water color crayons, a water brush. a glue stick, scissors, an an assortment of paper for collaging. I can easily lay down some color on a page or two and leave it on the front seat to dry. A woman's got her art on when she can and I do it best first thing in the morning and since I have to get to work early in order to get a decent parking spot, why not have art with my coffee before work? It makes it easier for me to start my work day... It's been a heckova work week. I'm so glad it's Friday. I'm going to visit Paint Party Friday since I've not been there for a couple of weeks. I hope your week has been ok. Thanks for stopping in.

11/18/2014

Teddy Lives!!!

I hadn't realized it's nearly three weeks since I last posted. Between work full time, planning for Saturday workshops, helping my Mom with garage and house cleaning, and running my own household, I haven't had much energy. And now that it is dark and cold all I want to do is come home from work and do nearly nothing. So, my mother is getting ready to put her house up for sale. My mother is ummm, can be a pack rat. She is moving to a smaller living space so deciding" what must go", to" would like to go, but your brother would probably kill me" are the questions at hand. I tackled the inside and outside windows of three rooms in my mother's house this last Sunday. Yes, they are the kind of windows which fold inward but you have to use your imagination when you are not a 6 foot tall man. I am only 5'3 but I became pretty adept at balancing the upper and lower windows on my knee while standing on a step stool and then grunting as I hoisted the upper window to raise it to it's upper position. That sounds like nonsense but I'm sure you get what I mean. I knew my back and arms would feel this in a few hours but waking the next morning I felt like I'd been run over. Must be because I had a birthday somewhere around that time. I came home from work and daughter Liza had surprised me with wonderful birthday treats. Pretty scarf, and some jewelry. And some lovely flowers!! She made my day! I'm skipping around here. ..... In the process of helping my mother in her cleaning and sorting, I have become the recipient of some treasured items. I showed you one box of dolls already. But wait. There's another box I have yet to show you when I can lay them out and photograph them. I have inherited some very old, vintage dolls that belonged to my mother, her mother and her mother, along with the doll clothes which were hand made. I'll have to share more with you as I set up a doll hospital and begin to work on trying to repair and mend these little rag muffins. Other items like a few childhood books and things we made came home with me. But this was my favorite. Tell me this bear was not well loved.I have a thing for bears, but not just any bear. You know there are bears that have personalities and a certain warmth and character as soon as you see them. As I am writing this post I have taken a picture of him and sent it to my mother, who says she thought she had thrown him out because she thought he was in worse shape than he was. She instead put him in the box with the dolls. So it WAS her bear. Teddy lives! Give him a hug from me, she says. I will take good care of him, I say. Teddy sits for now on the hutch with the trivet I made in art class somewhere in my childhood. And because Teddy deserves the best I am putting his picture up the right way!! lol......... Thanks for visiting.

10/30/2014

Why Not?

If you can doodle or paint on pumpkins then you can certainly alter a leaf. I picked these up in my yard last night and had a bit of fun with paint markers. I am pressing them in a book. I'll try paint next. :)

10/29/2014

Unfinished Stuff, Works in Progress Stuff, Vintage Stuff

My studio is again looking like a disaster zone. I prided myself a couple of months ago when I did some reorganizing and cleaning about a month ago, but it's really hard to tell at this point. I cannot decide if I have two many projects going on or if I seriously don't have enough surface space in which to work, or I am just too lazy to clean up before I work on something new. Or a little of each. I looked around my studio last night. I feel really lucky to have this space because I know many people do not have this luxury. I do have a lot of things going on. A lot of unfinished projects. Perhaps I have ADD where ART is concerned. I tend to move from one thing to another. You know what happens when you give a mouse a cookie.... He asks for milk and a straw and crayons and.......... These lines strung from one window to another are good sometimes for hanging things you want to refer back to......... I have to share with you something really cool.. some new people have come to visit my house...... from another time....... These vintage dolls were passed on to me by my mother who is at 80 yrs old full of wonderful stories and memories as I help her clean out her garage and pack things up. Seriously, these dolls belonged to her and her mother. I did not have a lot of dolls as a child. I never had Barbies and don't feel I ever missed out on them. I had some rag dolls but preferred a lot of time to play with my brother's Match Box cars and "Little Kiddle" dolls. Does anyone remember those tiny little dolls? Anyway, I know my mother lovingly brought these very old dolls from Oregon years ago. I never knew of their existence. Last weekend she asked if I wanted them. I did. I think she was hoping I might give them a home instead of her giving them to a consignment shop where people might well be arguing their monetary worth. They are worn but they have been well loved. I will share more on them as time goes by. Thanks for stopping in.

10/27/2014

It's Coming Together

I had an awesome time on Saturday with three wonderful, creative women at my mixed media class at my local arts and crafts store. We've been working on a large piece together, a group collaboration for the last several weeks. I've seen growth. I've seen us begin to loosen up, to not be so critical, and have fun creating together. Check out how this is blossoming.There's a lot happening. Here's my daughter Liza, getting a panoramic view for us. And she got a great panoramic view. Stay tuned for more on this group collaboration. I'm proud of them. Thanks for all your comments on my last post. Hope you had a peaceful, creative weekend. Thanks for visiting.