Artsy-Craftsy Adventures

A couple of weeks ago, my buddy Kelly Kilmer came up from Southern California to teach classes at my favorite store, Stamper's Warehouse. She teaches there several times a year and I always look forward to her arrival. Before her classes began, we spent a fun afternoon shopping for art paper and Japanese books in Berkeley and San Francisco and, of course, had dinner. Lots of laughing.

But what I was most looking forward to was her class called "About Face." That's where she showed us how to paint over photos and magazines pictures. I like to include faces and figures in my collages and other art work, but because I don't yet know how to draw them well, I have to rely on Photoshop artistry to get what I want. That's fine, but sometimes I want to work with paint instead. Kelly's method gave me another tool for my toolbox, one that I'm sure to have fun with.

Here's what I created in class, from magazine pictures:

First try

Second try

Third try  Read more »

After eight hours of labor on the part of two very good painters, my studio has been transformed. The walls are now a lovely shade of aqua. The color virtually sings around the walls of the room, significantly brightening a large space that has always suffered a dearth of natural light. It's downright happy now.

It is also absolutely the wrong shade of aqua for me.  Read more »

I once asked my mother if she missed her own mother, who died two months after I was born. "Every day," she said. "Not one day goes by without me thinking of her and wishing I could just pick up the phone and call her."

Her sorrow over the loss of her mother was evident in her voice, even twenty years after my nana's death. I thought this level of grief was exclusive to the special relationship she had with her mother - they seemed more alike and thus, closer, than I was to her. I didn't know that one day I would feel the same way.  Read more »

While going through my photos to find those pictures for my graduation post, I came across another portrait that I wanted to share. This is one of my sister's two daughters, which I took during a long photo session in 1994:  Read more »

These two precious little girls graduated high school yesterday:

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Yesterday, I was lucky enough to spend the day in one of Michael deMeng's classes at Stamper's Warehouse. Michael is an assemblage artist who creates shrines and other relics from all sorts of things, such as electrical outlets, light bulbs, Pez dispensers, and Hot Wheels cars. When he is done with them, you can barely tell what the source object started life out as. The depth of color and texture in his work is particularly intriguing to me. I loved what  Read more »

Make your own personalized cocktail set by etching glass. Here's how...  Read more »

What makes these tasty treats "lesbian"? The secret lies in your choice of a mold and your wicked imagination.  Read more »

Last Fall, I picked up a pink lei at the 99-cent store. It is made of silk flowers and is just so gosh-darn perky. The second I bought it, I knew I had to take it apart and use the flowers for something crafty. For a while, the only crafty purpose they served was to embellish Tilly when she walked across the island in the studio, or slept on the roller carts that I shoved under the overhang to the island. Tilly was quite the flower power girl.

A few days ago, I wanted to make cards for people and decided I'd use those flowers. This is what happens when I work on organizing my studio -- I get off my bottom and follow through with a couple of those great ideas! Sometimes I find out that they weren't so great, but this time, I was happy with my results.  Read more »

It's my nephew's birthday this week, so of course I wanted to make him a card. Only, boy card are so much harder to make than girl cards, so it took me a bit to come up with an idea. I certainly didn't want to go with plaid designs and duck decoys. I've done a lot of pirate cards and thought he deserved a break from that. But what to do?

Kathy and I brainstormed a geek card and here's how it came out:

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I turned my computer into a Pirate computer!

My current computer -- the desktop model that resides in my red pirate office -- has a glossy black case. It's rather lovely compared to the ugly "putty" colored cases I've had in the past, but it doesn't have much character. Plus, it's huge so that it can accommodate all the disc drives I put inside. I swear, you'd think I was running a server if you saw it.   Read more »

Want something primed with gesso or painted black? Well, if so, you're in luck, because I'm your gal. Set me up with a little assembly line where I prime as many board books, book covers, and papier mache objects as possible and I am happy. When I went crazy with the gesso a couple of weeks ago, Kathy exploited it shamelessly, adding items to the pile while worked. I didn't mind, because I always feel so good when I'm done - a worksurface littered with fresh canvases, in essence. It's kind of like having a full tank of gas. With a primed surface, you can create anything!  Read more »

Last December, Kathy and I were passing by the TV section at Best Buy when we saw a movie that caught our attention. It was Ultraviolet, the stylized scifi/comic/vampire movie staring Milla Jovovich. Let's face it, Milla is hot, so we were understandably distracted by a scene of her fighting her foe with a flaming sword, all while looking fantastic in a color-changing outfit. We didn't know what movie it was until we got home and I looked it up.  Read more »

Lola Pie North is becoming a brave girl. I took her to the vet for her re-check, and while I know she hated every minute of it, she was not quite as terrified as before. I mean, she was scared, but she was also a little curious and I think she was trying to muster up some attitude. That's fabulous! I'm not sure if the singing helped. I sang to her on the drive home, mostly any song I could think of with most of the words replaced with, "Lola." She likes them best that way.  Read more »

There is cat snot on the plasma TV. We can't have nice things.

Poor Lola continues to be sneezy, with her eye watering constantly. I think the pricey prescription eye drops have helped, though, just because she is not squinting like she did before. It still waters but I think it doesn't hurt so much. At least, I hope not!  Read more »

Kathy and I made new journals today for our classes with Kelly Kilmer. Class starts tonight, so we've been heads-down on our project.

I think Kathy's journal just ROCKS. She used my homemade templates for the binding holes and then made up her own beading design. It's awesome, and I love the images on the cover. You probably can't tell, but she has a sheen of iridescent gold glazed over the whole book. Check it out:

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Today's title is actually an instruction flashed to Lincoln Six Echo in the movie The Island. Hey, I need to report to the tranquility center, too! Where is it?

I decided that my tranquility center is located in my art studio. I haven't been spending enough time there of late. What with all recent stressors (sick kitty cat, waiting for a surgical biopsy, broken computer in repair, and more) I find myself needing to create.

I just love color, so I started out by making this very colorful art journal to use for my color studies:  Read more »

I asked Kathy how it went with the Simple Secret to Better Painting. What was the one rule we needed to know?

Turns out it wasn't that simple! She said there is a lot more to it.

I am shocked. Can you believe that the title was just a marketing ploy? SHOCKING. What are we supposed to do now? Study, observe, pay attention?

Outrageous. We can't possibly have time for that. We need to make fabulous art RIGHT NOW.

As evidenced by our recent focus on color-mixing, Kathy and I have been trying to strengthen our core competencies, so to speak, in art. Along with color, we've been wanting to learn more about composition and design. We signed up for a class on composition and design in January, but it was cancelled. So, we decided we have to learn about it in other ways.

This evening Kathy showed me a composition book online. "Do we have this book?" she asked.

"No," I answered. "We have another book..."  Read more »

All this surgery stuff is getting me down, so this morning I tried to lift my spirits with some color mixing. I pulled out my tubes of Azurite Hue, Indian Yellow Hue, and Alizarin Crimson Hue (Golden acrylic paints) and mixed up a color wheel. The colors were indeed lovely, and very different from the vivid, clear colors created when using Pthalo Blue (Green Shade), Hansa Yellow Medium, and Quinacridone Magenta as primaries. I can really see times when I'd like to use this alternative palette.  Read more »

My drawing books arrived in the mail yesterday - yay! I chose three of them:

How to Draw What You See by Rudy de Reyna - This one looked like it would provide me with the basics I need. Kathy looked at it and felt it would be useful for her, too. It starts with simple shapes and, honestly, we need that level of instruction. We have NO confidence in our drawing skills.  Read more »

This weekend, Kathy and I took a two-day class on Color with Tesia Blackburn. Tesia works with Golden Acrylics, as do we. Last May, we took an acrylic surfacing class from her that was fabulous, so we were excited to take another of her classes.

Tesia is a fun instructor. After explaining some of the technical background regarding pigments, she had us gather around so she could show us our first exercise. "Color theory is fine," she said, "but this...THIS is color reality." Ha!  Read more »

Un-shopping is a ritual that Kathy and I engage in after a big shopping excursion. If you shop, you must un-shop...or, at least, that's how it works in our household.  Read more »

I had to hit the ground running this morning. Tomorrow is my niece's birthday and, as usual, I hadn't made her card ahead of time. That would be, I dunno, just not panicked enough for my style! So, I needed to make her card at 7 am and then fly out the door to drive to San Francisco for my appointments at the Breast Care Center. Here's the card that I made:

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I went to lunch with my friend Sue yesterday, had a lovely time, and headed out afterwards to run errands. At Trader Joe's, I turned toward the display of Airborne (that stuff to ward off the cold and flu) and had an spooky feeling. I decided I didn't want to run any more errands and headed home. Two hours later I started coughing, out of nowhere, and I had a fever. Voila!

Alix, meet Mr. Flu.  Read more »

I sent my friend Maria a box of Paris-themed gifts to celebrate her birthday. Happy Birthday, Maria!

Here is the sign to go with the collection:

This was one of those projects where, halfway through, it seemed to go to hell. I was dry brushing ivory paint over the paper I had decoupaged and I thought it looked all wrong. The ivory crackle paint over the metallic copper seemed off. I questioned whether I should glaze it with burnt umber. It wasn't what I imagined and I had no idea what to do.  Read more »

I photographed the album that I made for Kathy, featuring her two boys, Dash and Skee. Here is the cover: 

This uses a Westrim clipboard style album that already had pre-cut openings. I started out by using a copper leafing pen on all the edges and openings, before doing anything else. I used teal embossed suede paper on the cover and copper crepe paper over the spine. Those are copper crown charms on the boys, which I pounded flat with a hammer.

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Kathy and I signed up to take Kelly Kilmer's Graffito Artists' Book class, held at Stamper's Warehouse today. Trouble is, last night I realized that my fatigue is just too much right now and I couldn't handle several hours of class. While it was too late to cancel, we called to let everyone know we wouldn't be there. Here's what we missed:  Read more »

Kathy's shadow box from our class looks fabulous.

Today, she just needed to glue on the CO2 cannister and paint the background. I offered to do the black base coat on the background before she did the interference colors because...well, I like to paint things black. I really, really do.  Read more »

 I'm finally ready to share what my pirate shadow box has become. This is the one I started in the shadow box class with Tim Holtz . Check it out:

Here are the side views:  Read more »

Today, Kathy and I took a class from Tim Holtz. We signed up just yesterday, without knowing much about the class. All I knew was that a shadowbox and a skeleton was involved, and I thought, "I'm there!"  Read more »

Today, Kathy and I stopped by a garage sale at our friend Sue's house. Sue Astroth is an author who works at our favorite shop that sells all the artsy-craftsy bits that we use. Today was our first visit to her house, so she took a break from selling to give us a tour of her art studio.

Oh. My. God.  Read more »

This morning, I had enough energy to have some breakfast in the kitchen and chat over coffee with Kathy about our day. That's a big deal when you've barely sat upright all week.

I was telling her that I wished I had a larger selection of vintage ephemera to use in my art. You know, little bits and pieces of things like old report cards, calling cards, or deeds of trust. Buying them on eBay is expensive because, when you're talking about little pieces, the shipping can cost more than the item.

Kathy said, "We should go out to garage sales and estate sales and find them ourselves."  Read more »

I have recently been taken over by a grand new idea. I love new ideas. They are intoxicating! My ideas tend to be very complex. They flesh out and grow within seconds of the initial inspiration. It's a busy, busy world inside my head.

Today's idea was that I want to create a fabric-based art book that's all about...STEWARDESSES! Not flight attendants, but the late 1960s/early 1970s women in mod uniforms whom we only knew as stewardesses.  Read more »

For some reason, I've been hunting down retro-style fabric on the Internet today. I ended up finding a Michael Miller print on which I have an instantaneous, mad crush.

Take a look:

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Kathy and I spent this weekend in a fabulous art class. We took Acrylic Surfacing with Tesia Blackburn at the Walnut Creek Civic Arts Education program. Tesia is a Golden Working Artist (Golden being Golden Acrylic Paint, my favorite brand of high-end artist acrylics). As such, she used Golden products for all of the techniques she taught in the two-day workshop. That was great, because that's what I have my studio stocked with. Imagine taking an art class where you don't have to buy anything afterward! I don't know about you, but it rarely happens to me.  Read more »

I have an idea for a collage. First, let me give the disclaimer that it may be a while before I can get around to it, so don't be looking for results soon.

I want to make a collage or an art book (of collages) featuring the health care providers who are guiding me through this journey. My idea is that I could do separate layouts, perhaps using a stripped-down children's board book as a base, for each doctor or nurse.

Starting with a photo of someone, I could do a mixed-media collage with paint and words and images...maybe even making each one into a goddess or other archetypal figure. I think my primary care physician, for example, is definitely Athena. It's an interesting thing to mull over.  Read more »