A Valentine to Oneself

I've never particularly been in to Valentine's Day for many reasons, but when I led my mixed media workshop on that Valentine's Day Saturday, I had big pieces of brown paper laid out on the table for each participant. My directions were for us to gesso the page. The next step was for us to draw a large heart in the middle of the page and scribble a letter to ourselves... what ever we wanted to say........... just fill the heart with words, scribble, babble, blah, blah, blahs. Didn't have to be legible. No one was going to read it. The next part was for us to paint, collage, anything to fill in the heart to our heart's content. What they did with it after that was up to them, but my thinking was that they could then use this piece as collage paper in several ongoing projects, such as our altered children's board book. Here are some of those ongoing and completed board books. I am having a blast creating with this small group of women. They are the high light of my week. We are all working at different paces; some have finished their board books and are moving on to altering a deck of cards, and at the same time working on a larger altered book. More on that to come later. Thanks for stopping by.

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

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. .................