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.

Happy New Year!!

I've been teaching a mixed media workshop at my local AC Moore on Saturday mornings. We've been playing on large pieces of brown paper. Just playing....with prompts and or suggestions ..... I have seen such growth. Check out some of the pieces and see the changes. Same piece after another session. How cool is that!! Here's another one. Which became this..... Here's one that really changed. It began like this. She was not feeling it. I mean, I think she was having a hard time moving on. I suggested she try some different colors, ones that she had never used before and that it was ok to cover anything up. She could always bring it back again. Check this out. Here she is- very much feeling it now. I love this!!!Here are some closeups and some other works in progress. That one is slightly out of focus. Sorry. But aren't those colors awesome? Notice that some of these are hung up. WE didn't have a lot of wall space in the craft room due to all the Christmas wreaths in the beginning so we had to make do with the outside of cabinet doors and big boxes that were leaning against the wall. Hanging the pieces up on the wall allows for a different view, and some of us are finding it allows for more freedom and playing when we are standing up. I am just so impressed with these wonderful creative women. I look forward to more good stuff during this new year. Happy Creating to all of you. Thanks for being here and for being so supportive. Happy New Year!!

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.

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

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.