Finally, A big Snow and Lots More !!

First, I must thank all of you who left such helpful suggestions for working through my Blogger problems. I have made some adjustments and we will see how things turn out in this post. If you do leave me a comment and you to try to enlarge the photos, let me know if it works for you!!
Now on to today's excitement. We FINALLY had a real snowstorm!! Iam not sure who was more excited about a potential snow day, The Daddy or the kids!! each ahd their noses firmly pressed against the windows at various times throughout the afternoon and evening. They actually called for the day off at about 9pm last night. Virginians don't really know how to deal with real snow, nor do they have the equipment to handle clearing of all of the country roads.
Becca was out the door ready to paly at 8:30 am, eventhought he temperature was 20 degrees. Pepper was overjoyed to ahve a playmate, Buddy took one look at the cold white stuff and decided that he was not a fool. He stayed inside curled up on the couch!
We actually got about 9 inches of very dry snow, but after a bit of packing Beccca and buddies managed to get in about three hours of sledding. I now have three pairs of soggy wool mittens to dry out!!
My wonderful garden dragon looks as if he is wearing a Russian Fur hat and the birds were not impressed with the white coating that adorned their birdfeeders!
The only negative about this storm was the fact that I had to leave my long anticipated weaving class about three hours early to beat the storm home.The Fredericksburg Spinners and Weavers Guild sponsored a wonderful weekend of Gourd Workshops taught by Gourd Artist Marla Helton of Newcastle Indiana. Marla came equipped with all sorts of wonderful pieces for sale and tons of wonderful supplies to create fabulous gourd creations of our own.


The class that I participated in was a combination basket weave, tapestry weave and ceramic vase class. I ahve never seen anything like this and it particularly appealed to me because it was so colorful and full of fabulous texture.

This picture shows you a sample of the finished produc, to the left of the shot in front of my friend April. On the right Ann is working on weaving in the spokes of her vase. We had the pleasure of being able to work in the Liberty Town studio of Lynette Reed. All the glorious paintings behind April and Ann were done by Lynette!!

This picture shows you what my vase structure is. It all begins wiht a very cool ceramic cylinder that marla has designed specifically for her project. The vase has a closed bottom which you see here, and a rim on each end that has holes through it. Into these holes we placed spokes of reed, and then did a triple weave to hold them in place and to create pockets for a second set of reed spokes. (You are looking at the bottom of my vase)

Here are our vases in various stages of done-ness. This was the point at which all of our cell phones ang, practically in unison, from worried spouses asking if we knew that it was snowing. You ahve to get aon the road immediately- yikes!! They don't seem to get it yet, art comes first every once in awhile.( Ok, not really , but it seems that it is alwyas ok to interupt the art classes!)


My piece was very naked at this point, but I have been working on it today, so I will ahve more pictures for you tomorrow!!
We have just gotten word that the kids will not have school again tomorrow- more soggy mittens, but happy kids!! the biggest kid has to go to work however!
I will get out to clear off the bird feeders if the wind does not take care of it tonight!!



















It is 15 degrees and the wind is blowing- it is March 2nd!! I am more than ready for spring!!!!!

My First Coptic journal!

I have been wanting to learn how to stitch books together for a long time. I have books on the subject but the words just seemed to blur before my eyes and I could not get my "little gray cells" wrapped around the technique. One of my good gal pal artist friends agreed to show me how it was done as she was stitching up a book to be used as a Journal.


I created covers from a piece of chipboard that was backing a paper pad. I painted signature pages for each signature and ripped plain card stock for the interior pages. Then, last night with awl, waxed linen and needle in hand, I sat down to stitch the book together. My stitches are a bit tight, I was warned about this, but all in all, I am pleased and I GET IT!!!

Request for advice!! iam havong real trouble trying to figure out how to make my photos enlargew hen the viewer clicks on them. I can't find hints or help anywhere- how do You all do it?????????????

Blogger has seen fit to load these shots on end!! GRRR! this is the open cover and the cover of the first signature. This little book has a total of 3 signatures.

Last signature and inside back cover.

The stitched spine.

I know that this is an everyday occurence for many of you, but I am very excited to finally have a grasp of how this is done. I plan to make many more books for gifts in the future!

Here is an update on the next stage of my Cosmos Watercolor. I added in the first layer of background and the flowers have now really taken on their form. My next class is Monday and I will have more to show of this project then.

Here is the first step.

First glazing of the background.

Fredericksburg Diamond

I thought that you all might like to see where I love to hang out and sometimes where poeple buy some of my art!!



This is the exterior Of Liberty Town, the wonderful art mecca owned by potter Dan Finnegan.

Here is a shot of the front entrance which gives one a tiny hint of the wonders to behold after crossing the theshold!

Sorry about the glare on this shot but if you look carefully you can see the stained glass surround of the front doors.

Today I had my second class in another watercolor session that I am taking under the direction of Ariel Freeman. The subject of this session is painting White Flowers. When thinks about it, this subject presents a host of challenges, the main one being painting a subject that is supposed to be devoid of color. Actually the white flower reflects the colors surrounding it and you get the shape of the white flower by painting in the background around the flower. Pretty cool though a bit difficult to wrap ones brain around, at least it is challenging for me.

I am painting white cosmos. Here is my first glase of color and I probably won't do too many more layers. The rest of the painting on this piece will take place behind the flower with a tiny bit more definition to each blossom.

Another challenge is taking a good picture of white flowers painted on white paper!!!! This will be changing very soon!!

Stay tuned for further updates!

Is It Done.........

I am thinking that it is!! I added a few touches and I am very happy with it. I have not decided whether it will be submitted for the call for art, but it is a step towards submitting a piece. It is at the very least, a start of the process.

I created some new collage papers to use. i made some text, paint scrapped green paper and created leaves for the pears to add another color and to spread move the eye around the entire collage. I think that the green really gives it another jolt of color and works well with the other colors in the collage.

Here is a detail of the leaves:

And another:

So now to seal it and frame it.

The next little project was a new pair of earrings. i am not sure why I HAD to Create these NOW but I just HAD to. That is how I work most of the time- I get an idea and I have to run with it. I do write things down for latter use but sometimes I just have to DO IT NOW!!!!

Thesew ere such fun to amke and I used what I have!!!!! LOVE THAT! STASH BUSTING!!!!!!

I used some of my vintage mother of pearl buttons, white glass beads and ss wire, hand dyed silk ribbons to make my fun new earrings! The buttons move as they are a bit off center as the wire goes thru one of the two holes in the buttons and the bead spacer lets the buttons rotate. They remind me of the Jetson's decor!!! I think that I must make more for my Etsy shop!!

As many of you must know, there have been terrible wild fires in Australia. I have been terribly worried about many of my art friends who live in Victoria ,the area affected by the fires. The pictures on the Internet and in the news have been horrendous and heartbreaking. All of my gal pals are fine but very sad and a bit shaken. I ahve been e-mailing back and forth to check up on them during the past several weeks. I decided to deal with some of my worry by working on a page in my journal. I used all of the postage stamps that I have saved form all of our art correspondence and added their names as a small symbol of my feelings for them and to focus my prayers for their safety. Working on this pretty simplistic page really helped! Art therapy in action!!

soory for the glare- I counted the pages with gel medium and I did not notice the glare when I took the photo!

Something New

I am starting to work out some ideas for a call for Artists that has just been released by Liberty Town Gallery in Fredericksburg, Virginia. SO, last evening, with this in mind, I started messing around. I dragged out paper bits, a canvas that I bought ages ago, some of my acrylic paints and the gel medium. I started by tearing up pages of all kinds of text into small rectangles roughly the same size. Then I sketched out a basic plan right on the canvas and started applying the text swatches with the gel medium. I wanted a linear background so I cut up strips in various widths from a very old book of maps and pasted them down as well. This call for art is titled "A Feast For The Eyes" and is meant to be anything about food. I have had a very hard time getting a decent pear this year, you know the kind that I mean; good flavor, nice texture and juicy!!! Every one that I have tried has been grainy and dry- YUCK! I love the shape of the pear and I have been seeing the shape all over the place. You might say that I have developed pears on the brain. So I decided that the collage was going to be about pears. I ripped out pages from an old cookbook with recipes and or instructions about choosing pears and preparing pears.

Here is a picture of my first stopping point. (shown sideways thanks to Blogger-GRRRRR!!!)

Then I began to work on the pears themselves and stopped again.

Well this is ok, but It needed more. So I wnet at it with a charcoal pencil.

Better, better, still not sure that it is done.

Here is a detail shot.

I need to let this be for a bit and visit it every once in awhile and see what it tells me. I had fun with this and I am planning to work on some more, maybe I will look at some other fruits!!

iIwould love to know what you think amd any suggestions about what the collage needs would be greatly appreciated!!

Thanks for your input!!

Hugs!

And the Winner is .........

Dawn U. of Instanbul Turkey!!! I had not met Dawn till I posted this giveaway. This is one of the many things about Art Blogging that I love!!! It has opened up such an amazing world for me!! I have met and become friends with so many wonderful people from all over the world. It has enriched my life to the point that I can't imagine not having Interenet access as a part of my life!!
I have e-mailed Dawn and she has responded. She is thrilled and told me that it has been kind of a hard year for her. So here again, we see another example of how our art can impact the lives of people that we don't even know!!!!! By reaching out and making a very simple offer we can greatly impact the lives of people half way around the globe. Amazing and Mind Blowing all at the same time!!! Art really DOES make the world go round!!!!!
Now I want to send a huge thank you to all who visit my blog and especially to those who take the bit of extra time to leave comments. Your comments and support mean the world to me!!

New Street Team Crusade!!

Time for another wonderful artistic experience with Michelle Ward and all of the wonderful crusader artists out in blogland!! No, this is not about FOOD!!!!! This Crusade is all about using partial images to add interest, texture and mystery to our artwork. the idea is to make the viewer wonder about what they are looking at. To get people involved and to ask questions like, "How did they do that?" " What am I REALY looking at?"
I have been taking baby steps towards getting a Visual Journal off the ground. I have been creating some background pages and collecting images and stuff to include in a potential journal, someday!

I have a pile and an envelope all ready to go, but other things always push this project ot the bottom of the list. When this crusade first got posted, I decided that i needed to find a way to fit it into what I was having to do to make it more of a TA DA than a TO DO!! ( Don't you just love that- CREDIT Michelle Ward of course!! Make it a Ta Da instead of a To DO!!!!)

I was creating labels in a mad rush to get some artwork down to a local gallery for some pre-Valentines sales (fingers crossed). I ahd some background pages already made. Iwanted to creat labels using gesso resist and spray Glimmer Mists and I thought that by using the already created background page as my "drop cloth" I could add more layers and texture to the journal page and create the tags at the same time. I am not sure that this will yeild the air of mystery but I do think that I will achieve partial images and texture and interest.

This was my starting"drop cloth"journal page.

Then using gesso and some of my favorite stamps, I stamped on the blank tags.

Now you can see the stamped cards and the bits of gesso overstamp on the "drop cloth" sheet.

Next I lined up the dried tags on the Background piece and sprayed away with several colors of Glimmer Mists. (I am begining to notice that I use these sprays quite often!)

Here is the final result. I think that I managed to achieve my goal of playing with the challenge, making it work wiithin my work time frame and achieving lots of interest and texture for my journal page. So now I am one step closer to getting this Journal page done, but at least now it is ready to add to my book so that when I have a moment for adding more, it will be all ready to go!!



Here are the tags that I needed for labeling my artwork. Now I can move these from my To Do list to the TA DA List!!!!

Here is one of the pairs of earrings (loaded sideways again-grrrrr) and ready to go off to be sold!
Yet another TA DA!!!
Thanks so much Michelle, for the inspiration, the energy and the From To Do to TA DA concept!!!
Now I am off to visit the blogs of other Crusaders to see what marvels they have wrought!!

Edited-2/23/09- Several folks have asked how I get the Gesso of of my rubber stamps. If I am using an unmounted rubber stamp I have a bucket of warm water at the ready and I throw the paint covered stamp into the bucket. As soon as I am done stamping, I use an old tooth brush to make sure that I get all of the paint out of the stamp. If I am using a wood mounted stamp, after stamping I take it immediately to the sink and scrub it gently with the toothbrush in a bucket of warm water. As long as you don't leave the wood mounted stamps soaking in water, theyw ill be fine. If for some reason they do come unglued then you have an unmounted stamp!