My 2' x 2' canvas from Dyan Revealey Super Bowl Sunday class at The Queen's Ink

Another class at The Queen's Ink with Dyan Revealey - Some of her art pictured here

What a Super Sunday it was on Super Bowl Sunday! And a super Super Bowl, too. Sunday morning I took a mixed media painting class at The Queen's Ink in Savage Mill with Dyan Revealey, a Ranger senior Signature Educator from the U.K. I had taken two classes with her last summer and enjoyed her style, techniques and total attitude.
This time we made a two-foot by two-foot canvas which I will show in my next post. Great fun in a 4.5 hour class. But, did I ever get messy! Found a miracle product for ink and paint on the hands though, the Craft Scrubbie, by Inksentials. I have no idea how, with only a little soap and water, it gets all that staining stuff off, like black liquid ink all around my cuticles. But, it did. Needless to say, I bought one of the little $5 buggers.
Also, Dyan's brand-new Dylusions rubber stamps, stencils, ink mists and more, just announced Jan. 24, were available at The Queen's Ink and a few supplies found their way into my shopping basket. Over concern for the popularity of the new supplies which were in limited quantity this weekend, shop owner Patti Euler made auction-style "bidding paddles" with numbers, which we could flip up and wave whenever we saw a product demonstrated that we "had" to have.
Dyan's Zetti-like style as shown here is so exciting, lively, fun, inspiring. Looking at it displayed around the classroom was very much like working in a candy shop!

A new journal for a new year

I hoard journals. I love all sizes and types, from purse-size Moleskine to hand-made and hand-bound journals, board books, bound pages, whatever. I treasure journals I have received as gifts. I have a gorgeous handmade one from Laurie Blau-Marshall. I have a beautifully-covered one from Michelle Geller. My great-niece just gave me a pretty one for my birthday. I just bought one on clearance at Pier 1.

So what is the problem, you ask? I don't ever seem to write in them. I have journals with watercolor paper, lined pages, blank pages, pages made from maps and cool ephemera. I love to look at them, and I love knowing I have them in case inspiration strikes. But I couldn't seem to make a mark.

I guess I felt I'd be ruining the beauty of the journal somehow, which I know is dumb, especially because I actually drool over examples of others' filled journals. Even my great-niece has a totally cool journal she writes and doodles in and add mementos. She even stitched herself a fabric cover for it. I bought her Dawn DeVries Sokol's Doodle Diary to keep her inspired.
And she did just that.

Meanwhile, I would buy Stampington's Art Journaling magazine. I would stare for hours on end at cool blogs, especially work by Pam Garrison and Pam Carriker. I even advanced to tearing out magazine pages and pieces of magazine pages that inspired me. In fact, I have baggies of paper bits just waiting for a place to call home.

Finally, I decided the new year and new month are a very good reason to start a journal. That, and the fact that I had been itching to paint, draw, make collages, doodle, draw zentangles, do Zettiology-like art, and what better place to do everything, than in a journal. When I mentally commited, I was so excited, I woke up at 5:30 a.m. on a Saturday and started right in preparing pages.

I am using a plain, 9" x 12" *ish* journal by Canson with watercolor paper pages. I collaged several pages with my paper stash. I was further inspired by a "supply swap" I had just done with Jade Adams, and could hardly wait to use the goodies she sent. I also have a ton of new rubber stamps from Unity and their kit-of-the-month club, as well as Unity Stamps by Suzi Blu, all of which I want to play with.

After I collaged a few pages, I realized I hadn't left myself any room for the "dreaded" writing down of thoughts. Intentional? Maybe. Or maybe just inexperience. So I painted the back side of the pages with watercolors, and ended up making color-theme spreads, each with a blank page for my thoughts.....if I happen to have any.

Alice in Wonderland or Me in Aliceland

Marie who? Seems my Marie Antoinette kick may have taken a back seat for the moment to Miss Alice herself and her wacky friends, like M. Hatter, Esq., pictured here popping out of the house I made for him. Doormouse, Cheshire Cat, Duck, Dodo, Lory and Eaglet are in the back window (not seen here) along with Alice. So many strange characters in that book! Isn't that where one finds Toad the Wet Sprocket? I think someone besides the Caterpillar may have been smoking the hookah when writing. Of course, that was Lewis Carroll back in 1865.

Meanwhile, I was inspired to create a Baby Alice art doll (Linda and Opie O'Brien Who's Your DADA?-style), Alice as a Young Girl art doll/canvas assemblage (inspired by Lisa Kaus) and a Zettiology-style (inspired by Teesha Moore) Alice skinny book page. Small doll head from Kris Hubick of Retro Cafe Art. The black framed pieced is a 3D collage under glass with vintage silhouettes. I think that may actually be inspired just by me. Maybe that's the author explaining his book idea to a comrade. March Hare/White Rabbit (who is whom?) winks knowingly on the front of the piece.

Still beading away, a little collage and Georgia O'Keeffe

I am in love with the earthy colors of this latest bracelet I put together tonight. It's a really unusual mix- sort of burnt umber, burnt sienna, magenta, browns, coppers and some animal print. It has a nest, birds, leaves and beads of glass, resin, pewter, ceramic and lampwork. I don't want to love it too much, though, because I really want to sell it.

The coral and silver bracelet has some really great findings, especially some lacey bead caps on the tiniest bits of coral. This one is just waiting for me to string up the turquoise table-cut beads and then assemble the whole thing. The beads look like Chiclets to me: a gum I used to obsess about. I've also always been partial to turquoise and coral when they are done up like this- in an Indian or southwest/cowgirl style. Oh-oh, another bracelet trying to talk its way into my jewelry box.

I'm pretty sure after that one, I am done with jewelry-making for awhile. I've pretty much exhausted my stash of beads and findings, so I need to make some more mad money!

The collage above is part of an 8.5 x 11 inch collage I started last year. I thought it was finished once, but I found some more great ephemera to add to it. I still haven't figured out if it is done yet, or what it means, since I've never seen any of those sites.

Speaking of southwest, I did some interesting reading today about the great American painter Georgia O'Keeffe and her husband, the great photographer, Arthur Stieglitz. O'Keeffe is known for her paintings of the flora and fauna of the southwest, but Stieglitz is best known for his nude photographs of O'Keeffe. When one pictures O'Keeffe we probably think of her in her later years- small, gray, wrinkled, weather-beaten, sort of an artistic version of Granny from the Beverly Hillbillies. But O'Keeffe was aparently quite the sensual creature in her earlier years, becoming Stieglitz's muse and most important influence.

I was doing a little refresher because there is an O'Keeffee exhibit in Kalamazoo until Sept. 13 that I would like to see: Georgia O'Keeffe and her times: American Modernism along with Through the Photographer's Lens: O'Keeffe and her circle. You can find more about it at the Kalamazoo Art Institute here. And thanks to Joanne Thieme-Huffman for the heads up.

My Beach-y Memoir-Published!

Is this not the coolest magazine cover ever? It makes me think of all things summer. It also makes me want to run and jump and do flip-flops like the gent on the cover. Why? Because my beach-theme shadowbox was chosen as one of the featured pieces of art in the "Life's A Beach" challenge as referenced on the cover of this July-August 2009 issue of Cloth Paper Scissors magazine, by Quilting Arts and Interweave Press. Nearly 300 pieces of art were entered in the challenge and 14 were published. I feel truly fortunate.

My beach-y piece has few words but is truly a memoir as I created it while on vacation in North Myrtle Beach, SC, using some of the things I found there, like driftwood and shells. It's been traveling around awhile, so it will be good to get it home so I can hang it up and "dream."

You'll have to buy the issue to get a better look at mine and the other 13 entries. Check the September-October issue for results of the reader challenge charm swap!

I'm Not Who You Think I Am

I'm not done with my collage (top), but then I didn't even plan on what it became. I had my niece Abby, 11, stay overnight Saturday after my son's graduation open house, and we decided to make collages. It was her first time, and I think she had fun sorting through my bits and bobs to find "just the right stuff." Her collage says: Try Hard, Die Hard, Be Compassionate and Have Passion. Pretty good advice, Miss Abby!

My goal was to make one large face out of a bunch of smaller faces, but then, as sometimes happens with collage, it took on a mind of its own. Each top half of a face got paired up with a different bottom half, and it became something totally different. Not sure how I'll finish it off. Abby took hers home. We put a hanging loop on it. We also flipped our hair ends out, made greeting cards and did rubber stamping and embossing and made earrings. Pretty good fun in less than 24 hours, adding in time to eat and sleep.

Home Sweet Home

So who receives adorable and great swap artwork from friends and sticks it in a drawer for a year? Okay, guilty. But rarely do I not find a way to display my swap treasures. In this case I had high hopes of finding tiny hinges to attach this row of an artist's dozen of matboard houses I received in Jeri Aaron's Row House Swap last spring. I would look at them wistfully, actually not in a drawer, but in my art supply cupboard slash armoire slash entertainment center slash holding spot.

Finally, I gave up on hinges and used that master of all adhesives: duct tape. The top two photos show the 11 houses I received plus one of my own, now on display in my studio. The bottom two photos show some of the houses I made and sent for this fun swap- one of my favorites ever.

I almost didn't join the swap because I don't have a good cutting tool for matboard and had visions of the very crooked B- mats I had cut in my art class in college back in the day. But like a hostess with the mostess, Jeri offered to cut out the house shapes for me in exchange for a trade of western US ephemera (old postcards and such) which I sent to her. So it was a win-win.

Jeri hosts wonderful art retreats in Texas and other areas, including the Smokey Mountains this fall. Check out her Artful Gathering blog for more info and lots of great art!

Finally made something! Take that, Muse!

Anyone who has had his or her muse and mojo run off together knows the joy in my headline. A frustrated creator also knows the experience of spending hours piddling on something only to dislike it enough to tear it apart and start over. And a muse-less, mojo-less person like me would understand why I got excited about simply gluing a piece of clip art into a pendant.

So the above are my results, two-plus months after I bought the supplies at Art & Soul, Portland. I was excited with the colorful collage sheets offered at the ArtChix booth.

And, after a ridiculously-long absence from the ArtChix Yahoo! Group, I was lucky enough to have my pendant chosen for the home page art this week seen here. Thanks Cindy! (and Helga!)

And if that weren't enough, I got a nice comment from the very sweet and gentle Bone Folder (can a bone folder be sweet and gentle?) Mike Jennings of Hannah Grey. Mike and wife Shosh have a fantastic e-store, and are two of the sweetest artists you'd ever want to know. Mike says Shosh is having an art drought. Boy, do I know the feeling! And how about a drought with guilt?! I 'owe' Mike and Shosh some art samples plus a promised 'dolly box' for the Hannah Grey Design Team, and I just can't make a thing to save my life. But, I know it will come- if past experience and quantity of supplies are any indication. Take heart, Shosh!

I was enthused with the ease of the resin-like DG3 Art Gel when I tried it at Collage's free make-and-take in the Art and Soul lobby. In fact, I loved my little Paris pendant I made there, which someone else apparently also liked, because it disappeared during its 24-hour drying period. Who knows? Maybe my muse took that and bolted.

Once home, the supplies sat on my desk until this past weeked. They were joined by some beautiful glass beads I got on another trip as well as my bead soup kits from Gilbert Designs. Everything just kept staring at me, until I finally put most of it away. That in itself is unusual, because I usually organize everything away as soon as I get home from a trip. Maybe my muse can't operate around a messy desk?

While at A&S I scooped up alcohol inks for making glass slides, daubers, said slides (Memory Glass), accompanying frames, bracelet blanks, pendant blanks, two sketch books, charcoal, collage sheets, ephemera, all from Collage on Alberta. In fact, I spent so much maybe my muse left me to get a job. Or perhaps I horrifed her? Overloaded her senses? That's probably closer to the truth.

So, the other night I felt motivated to make a bracelet to wear with a particular outfit. The glass beads were the right color. I had all the stringing supplies: toggle clasp, spacers, pliers, Soft-Flex all laid out in front of me. I perused my latest copy of Stringing. Every thing was so cool! I looked at my stuff. Nothing. Strung two bracelets. I'm a little OCD when it comes to stringing very symmetrically, and symmetry just isn't in style right now (see Stringing). My muse laughed at me! I cut the bracelets apart, filed the beads back into their little cubbies and put everything away.

My next adventure went slightly better. I decided to make the pendants shown above. There's nothing to it. In fact, the ArtChix inchies were already sized to fit the pendant blanks. The pink one is art from a couple different sheets, a little charm and some seed beads. The round one is clip art of a crab from ArtChix, a starfish from Hannah Grey, a shell and some seed beads. When your muse is happy with your arrangement, you simply fill the pendant with DG3 Art Gel, which hardens clear overnight. Voila! Done. Put on some ball chain, and you have a necklace. Not very challenging, but I'm working without my muse and my mojo, so I have to ease back into creating after a bit of an absence.

I know everyone talks about their muse running off, but I had had a good run, nearly 18 months of frenetic creativity in every spare moment, weekends spent without sleeping, juggling multiple projects, writing for four or more blogs, coordinating groups, swaps, fat books, submitting art and articles like crazy for publications, working on an art book proposal, writing fiction. Eek! No wonder my muse needed a vacation. Now if I could just go with her!

'By the Sea' Treasures from Art & Soul

I felt like a kid on Halloween night, dumping out all of my treasures from Art & Soul Portland; arranging, rearranging, mentally cataloging and slowly putting away all that I had collected in the way of supplies, trades, purchases and finished art.

It is tradition to bring small pieces of art to swap, such as charms and artist trading cards. Charms were very popular since many A&S attendees belong to a group called Charmsters, including my hostess Michelle. I swapped enough charms to make an entire bracelet, nicely full of handmade goodness (top). A few extra charms from Michelle made their way into my pile of goodies during our 1:1 swap (second photo). I also received two lovely 4 x 4 fat book pages from her for my 2008 book. The other pics/piles are more swap receipts, ephemera collected, class supplies, purchases from the on-site store, Collage, and vintage finds from around Portland.

The bottom three photos are my background papers completed in Traci Bautista's Doodling & Letters class. The will now be cut up for ATC or other backgrounds.

Portland Art & Soul Even More than Expected

Beautiful but soggy Portland was the site of another Art & Soul retreat, and I had a spectacular time staying with Michelle. She's shown above in her home studio which is much more like a store-make that a candy store for grown-ups. Cassondra joined us most of the time-what a cheerful, sweet person she is!

We shopped 'til we truly dropped on two different days. I'll be posting pics of my goodies. Portland is an amazing city, and there is such a hip, happening, vintage and artsy vibe. Every place we went was so cool. I walked nearly a mile up and down Alberta Street in heels because I just couldn't get enough of shops with names like Frock, Flutter, Collage, Imp, Bolt, Swoon, Red Bird and more. We ate at places called Hula Hands, Pizzicato, Picazzo's, and I went nuts over the New Seasons funky grocery we went to twice. Let's just say I got a finger puppet, heirloom tomatoes, 10 different kinds of Luna bars and $15 cookies at the green grocer.

Gas was even a bargain at $3.22 a gal for 87 with no self-service allowed to support entry-level jobs. I do think all the grown-up hippies have re-located there as I lost count of VW buses-seriously. We all agreed they needed lots of collage and painted daisies on them. There was a baby blue one right out of my 1970s teenage dreams.

Michelle and her family were fun to hang with. Even her cats were amazing!
Julie Collings and friends (Deb is fun!) also joined us one day. Julie has a new book out, Pretty Little Felts, which she signed for me. Just adorable projects! Julie also produces ArtNest in Utah. Oh yeah, and she has a family and four children and makes art. Nothin' to it.

Several other artists were on hand signing books, including LK Ludwig of Extreme Visual Journaling and Nature Journals, Kelly Rae Roberts of Taking Flight (I bought a journal from her), Sally Jean Alexander, whom I met at ZNE, Tonia Davenport of Plexi-Class and jewelry acquisitions editor for F+W Northlight and Mary Ann Hall of Quay/Quarry who is editing my friend Lisa Kettell's book Altered Art Circus that I am in and which comes out this winter. I missed seeing Dawn Devries Sokol of 1000 Artist Journals, whom I met at ZNE, but she had bookplates for everyone. So many great people! It was a joy to finally meet James and Helga Strauss of ArtChix Studio. They were selling collage sheets like mad. I haven't been as active lately but am still thrilled to say I have designs on their Pet Faux Post and Pink Faux Post sheets. Get yourself a bazillion copies! Helga's new mini pins are great, too, and the By The Sea and Mermaid collage products are super. I love the work of my IRL friend Jade Adams on them! It was also a joy to see Mike and Shosh of Hannah Grey again, although I was so exhausted by the end of vendor night Saturday, I was standing about one inch from Shosh and didn't even know it! We were shopping at the tres Francais Vintage Charmings booth of Kate and her sister. More hugs and love were shared in Lisa Kaus' darling booth. I'm so glad some friends bought originals.

I had two classes Friday: the Beachcomber with Beverly Gilbert of Gilbert Designs. I was almost dreading this class, having avoided seed beads like a disease. I didn't have a task light, didn't have beading needles, didn't even know why I picked the class. It must have been good karma, though, because I knew in the first five minutes I would love it. And I did. I didn't even leave the room for lunch or when class ended. I could have attached myself permanently to Beverly. She is so sweet and so enthusiastic about color and what she does. Her jewelry is amazing. Check out her Web site. I'll be posting more pics, and I can't wait to play with my 'bead soup' I bought from her for class. Pictured above are the two pendants I made, wrapping sead beads around found treasures like beach glass, with a mix of free-form peyote and netting stitches. That's me with Beverly. She has a great fashion sensibility as well. No surprise.

The goodies are still needing to be unpacked and photographed as well as my charms (enough for a bracelet) and other swap goodies. I also need to take pics of my work from Traci Bautista's class. It was all just an incredible experience! Can't wait to do it again.