Blog Stash from Dreamweaver and Want 2 Scrap
Well I’ve managed to get my self involved with a couple of cross promotions coming up in conjunction with Art Glitter Blog Design Team in June. So you know what that means… I will actually get to do some art work done because I will have a deadline!
Dreamweaver Stencils gave a generous number of stencils to Art Glitter to use. So I get to use them!
And here is some fun bling from Want 2 Scrap. I’ve already started!
Wow, it truly is amazing how motivating a deadline is.
I actually thrive on deadlines. It’s the only way I got through college (like everyone else!) and I made it a way of life.
When I worked at the local newspaper years back, deadlines were not a problem!
So look forward to more from me soon! Thank you Dreameaver and Want 2 Scrap, I’m excited!
~emm
Momo the Lion Pg, Take Two
Now here’s the rest of the directions for my chunky book submission…the back side first.
After adding color to my photo and letting it dry completely I glued it onto a recycled food box. I purposely let the advertisement show on the back because I like it! It give it a kind of pop art feel.
The fluff is Fantasy Fiber from Art Glitter. I made a 4×4″ square on my board (the red lines) so I would know how big to make my fiber bed. Put baker’s parchment paper over it and laid a thin layer of Fantasy Fiber with 3 different colors.
More parchment paper on top and iron at a medium high setting for a second or two.
Here’s a nice fiber sheet ready to be glued onto the back.
Then I glued on my info sheet with the original photo of Momo to the backside as shown at top of post. Here’s the original photo - I call it Red Momo.
She looks sweet and harmless…
Now, I got ahead of my self a little bit. You can make the fiber back ground when ever you want, but if you want an easy application of glitter, do that first before gluing the fiber on. So that’s what I did. I used my Designer Dries Clear adhesive with our fine metal tip attached to get thin lines of glue. I outlined the border first and dunked it into Art Glitter’s Ultrafine Transparent #210 Fossil. Then I drew in more whiskers with the glue and sprinkled on same glitter color. Bling!
She thinks she’s a lion, so why not make her one?
I’ll have photos of the finished Chunky Book soon. Great stuff!
MomoTheLion Page Take One
Okay here we go, I joined up to do another Chunky Techniques Book from Art Unraveled classes I took last year. I promised to blog about it and just like everything else in my life, I only do it when up against a deadline. So here we go!
The theme for this exchange book is to design a page around a technique you learned from an Art Unraveled class taken within the last two years. This was easy for me, because my most useful class from 2011 was Karen Michel’s class Altered Photos.
The premise and tools are so easy, I really can’t believe I didn’t figure this out on my own. But it’s one of those things like, well, you don’t think about taking your photo, purposefully getting it wet and scratching emulsion off in layers when you’ve been taught your whole life to treat it so gingerly. I got to tell you, this is right down my alley!
Anyone who’s ever processed photos before, or even heard about how it’s done knows that at the end of all the chemicals you give your photo a nice water bath. Before it dries it is especially vulnerable to scratches.
So you get your photo printed from a commercial center like WalGreen’s (my new favorite printer). My photo above was originally color, I cropped in and made it B&W for this project. Even though it is B&W you want it to go through the color process so that you have all the color layers there (cyan, magenta and yellow). Don’t worry if that doesn’t make since, you don’t really have to know that, just get the color process anyway!
Why do I have so many? Because I have to do 28 of these for the exchange of course.
My tools of choice, the photo, a shallow dish of water that is larger than the photo. Sand paper. And a clay carving tool. Thank goodness I got that in college! You can see some black floaties in the water, that’s some emulsion I’ve rinsed off. When you do a lot of photos you need to change your water often.
I scratched away some detail, made her whiskers more prominent and suddenly she became a lion! The scratching took about three or more hours to do. My hands hurt, but I got over it!
I forgot to show my coloring tools! I just used my kids water colors and cheepo markers mainly. I like to use unnatural colors. About the only natural look is her green eyes.
Not quite done yet. Still need a backing, some Fantasy Fiber fun and glitter of course! This is my prototype above, however, I’m all done with the 28 for the Chunky book and they are sent off, but I didn’t have time to take photos. I still need to make a few more for my friends and family, so I’ll get on that and take photos.
Did a quick post on it for ArtGlitterBlog.blogspot.com here… But I promise to give more directions and photos soon. Enjoy!
BTW, a personal thank you to Karen. It was a wonderful class, you are a caring, helpful teacher and I had a blast!
Morning Walk
First of all I’m just going to pretend that it hasn’t been almost a year since I last blogged. So here are some shots from my regular morning walk with Scotty the Aussie this morning.
I brought my camera because I wanted to get a shot of the ground where it had become muddy and then crystallized in a pleasing way, to me anyway. If you know me you know that I really enjoy natural textures and take lots of photos that would bore most, so I’ll show you this one that has some paw prints in it, possibly Scotty’s, but see how cool the ground looks around them?
This is looking back from one of our favorite hills to walk at our little town. Our house is in there, you just can’t see it. Well, it’s so far away you really can’t see anything! The field you can see is the upper ball field at our school.
Can you spot the Scotty? Can you tell if his tongue is hanging out?
This is one of my favorite yucca plants we walk by all the time. It is pretty large and fun to watch the changes it goes through. I just love the white curly sinews!
Here we are at home. Scotty is attentive, only because he is expecting a bone from me. His feet are dirty from the canal at the school he always run through. Can anyone say…out door dog?
This is the little bit of sidewalk that was replaced in front of our house in 2000, not long after Jackson was born. I put their initials in, wish I’d had them put their hand prints in. Oh well. It is supposed to snow 3 or 4 inches tonight, that’s a real blizzard around here. Maybe it will stick past noon. I’ll take photos if it does. Enjoy ~emm
Bus Rides, The BFG and Jeffery the Insect
Okay, so I haven’t been following my new mantra: ‘Do what you want to do when you want to do it’ lately. There’s been too much work-work to do. And although I don’t believe I have to blog frequently, I think about it all the time. Think about all the things I want to tell you all, and even though you probably don’t care, I feel like you’ve missed out on so much! I write blogs in my mind, like this one, I had plenty of time to compose it while riding a bus to and from Phoenix. With 2 third grade classes none the less!
It wasn’t all that bad. I figured it was better than getting a call telling me I had to come pick my son up in Phoenix like last time! Yes he has bus sickness, not car sickness, just with buses. As we started off one teacher looked at me and said, “Doesn’t he…” then she made the universal motion for throwing up*, last year he threw up 3 times, poor Mrs. Clark! Yes, his reputation proceeds him! Although I drugged him up, I still felt obligated to go just in case. So I was his soft shoulder to sleep on.
We went to the Tempe Center of Arts to watch the play “The BFG”, the big friendly giant. It was a hit, lots of humor, even a ‘fart dance’, so of course the kids liked it! This is son number two, Jackson. He’s not so much the touchy feely kind like Ethan is so I was surprised when leaving the theater he held my hand. Then he held my hand in the bus and was full of cuddles while talking about the bug, ahem I mean insect, (don’t want to get that wrong!), Jeffrey, who was hitching a ride back with us on our window.
We got back a few minutes early somehow and Jackson was depressed about having to go back into the classroom when the teacher let him leave with me, making him very happy. As we walked up to the house he said he was very happy for two things, one, that I was there so he could leave with me early and two, that he didn’t have to walk home in the hot sun. So that’s what the whole day boiled down to, getting out of school early and ridding home. Oh yes, and one last parting thought about Jeffery, he wondered if Jeffery had moved from the window and yet, and what made him want to ride with us? These questions will just have to become part of the great mysteries of our lives. And I’m sure when I drop him off at school tomorrow he’ll pull away from me like usual when I give him a kiss goodbye, but I’ll always have today.
*Hands to mouth moving out in quick, horizontal thrusts.
Exotic Fantasy Butterfly Class
Well I had the wonderful opportunity to teach my new butterfly technique to 7 students today at Art Glitter and it was a blast! Everyone paid very close attention and made some very creative butterflies! Here’s one from Sharon, my very talented friend who drove down from Flagstaff for the class.
During the class as I was demonstrating, I was talking about how difficult it is to get a hole sometimes in a film piece this thick. Well little Miss Sharon says, why don’t you poke a hole where you want it to start? And there you go, a new technique is born. It worked wonders. You can control where the hole goes and it is easier to control the size of it too! So thank you so much Sharon! I can’t wait to take a class from you soon too!
Sharon also helped me take photos and I took some too, but I’m exhausted now, there were a couple of hic-ups during the class turning it from a 3 hour class into 4 hours – ouch – sorry all. Live and learn. I’ve been told to get over it so I’m not going to dwell over my disappointment and enjoy the fact that everyone absolutely loved their butterflies. That I am very happy for. I’m adding Sharon’s blog to my sidebar so you can visit her from here at any time. She has wonderful work.
So more photos later. One last thank you to Nancy, our store manager and teacher of most all Art Glitter classes. You were a fantastic help and my comic relief as usual. Enjoy!
Black and White Show and Beyond
Regal Kitty. This is a remake. I made it, it broke and now I’ve remade it. The components are pretty much the same. The original had these dyed white leaves and they fell apart after a while. So I glued these puppies down good with my Designer Dries Clear adhesive. Still a little wet when I took the photo. Had 10 minutes left to turn it into the e-go gallery down the street. Part of Made In Clarkdale, only a monthly set up with fewer artists at a time. Like a real gallery!
Mixed Media: Fabric, chain, beads, Art Glitter black micro-beads, AG Krystallos Vintage Glass Glitter Shards, AG Microfine Opaque Black Wing Glitter, Dried leaves with AG Microfine Transparent Winter White Glitter on top. I think I liked my original design better. Oh well.
Spherical Sanctuary. I turned this in for the show too. A digital B&W I took a few years ago. Momo jumped in, I took the photo and she jumped back out. She loves the laundry basket because it represents the possibility of warm clothes to lay on.
Here’s my new treasure. I dipped these fragile leaves (that I got for real cheap after Christmas in a package with red and green ones too) into a mixture of Designer Dries Clear adhesive and water (2:1 ratio). Drain off excess glue and place on a piece of wax paper to dry. Let dry (don’t try to move early!) for 30 to 45 minutes and pull off gently. Presto, flexible, sturdy leaves!
Here’s a taste of something to come. I started these Fantasy Film (Satin) butterfly wings for the B&W show but just couldn’t get motivated to finish them. Finally got inspired and got this far this weekend. Will show you more as they progress. They may not stay B&W, don’t know, will ponder this some more later!
Enjoy – emm
