Criminal Collaboration

Thought I would update by blog, haven't done it in awhile. Today six of us got together at Pat's studio. We all were doing our own thing. Pat was working with clay, Barbara was collaging a frame and clip board that she will be teaching to some school children. Elaine was stamping and coloring some tags for her tag book. Myrna was working on some cards. And Rhoda was working on her fabric paper. Then there was me. I had taken some canvas paper to work on. I gessoed a few sheets and once dry, added some acrylic paint. Eeeeek is all I can say. It looked terrible and I knew that it would be going in my "what am I going to do with this?" stack. Myrna who was sitting next to me, jumped up and said you really need more colors. I said "and what colors do you think?" Well, that started it. Myrna grabed different colors and squirted them on the sheet. Using a paper towel she spun the paint, dabbed the paint using all different colors. Then Pat said here is some sequin waste, so Myrna started stenciling though it. She added while paint with the end of the paint brush. Someone yelled you need some gold. Rhoda said here is some copper paint, use that. Then more fun began. Barbara threw over some tissue paper that she had stamped on. I used a medium to glue it down. Next came Rhoda's blue paper and that got glued down. Elaine had some little black squares that she nicely donated. Pat gave us a numbers stamp, to stamp some number on. But we decided to use a few letters instead of numbers, so a stencil was cut out and Myrna stenciled the letter E on it. We all couldn't stop laughing at what we were throwing on the work of art. Finally we said, I think this is done. No one was willing to sign this collage, so I asked each on to give me one word to describe it. Myrna said "Cramps", Elaine said "Lovely", Barbara said "Abomination", Pat said "Basquiat" and Rhoda said "Waste". I still can't come up with one word to describe this. We did come up with a name, it is now titled "Criminal Collaboration aka Unsuccessful Therapy". It will be glued on a piece of mat board. I will add some holes to the side, have each of the "artists" sign a tag and attached them to the work.....I really don't what we will do with this, but everyone says "Beauty is in the eye of the Beholder", whoever that may be.....

Myrna's Backgrounds

Have to show you the other neat background that we did. A big thank you to Myrna for showing us this one. Take a piece of cold press watercolor paper, lay a line of acrylic paint on the very top of the paper. Use an old credit card and scrape the paint down the paper. Run another line of a different color and scrape that down the paper also. Then take a spritzer filled with water, spritz the paper and then using the credit card, scrape down the paper again. This really turns out great. I do have to admit that Myrna did the darker one on the left of the picture. She was nice enough to give it to me. Guess she knew I would grab it anyway.....LOL

Thanks again Myrna for another fun techinque we did.

Background Papers

The Stamp Crew met on Saturday and we had some wonderful Show and Tells. They were sew kewl. Barbara E showed us some wonderful background papers that she did and we all fell in love with them. So of course on Sunday a group of us got together and had to "do it". Of couse we couldn't remember everything Barbara told us so we had to give her a call. She was so terriffic telling us how. These backgrounds are made on Gloss Paper, and after some experimenting I did, it doesn't work on Photo Paper. We had some regular Gloss Paper, sprayed some Memory Mists on two pieces, put one on top of the other and squished them together. When you peel them apart you get the greatest backgrounds. Do this on some waxed paper and after you are done playing you get some really good waxed paper to use too. We all thought that these looked like what you would end up with if you were using Encaustic Wax and it was a lot easier. I did try and emboss on one to see what it would look like. Turned out fine. Really didn't give much thought to the stamp I used, but I am sure that if you want to make some cards, colleges, whatevers anything will work. Here are a few of the ones I did.

Another fun Day

Another fun day. I guess I haven't been good at uploading to my Blog. Hate to say it but work gets in the way. But I did get to go to Stamp Shack yesterday and take two more fun classes with Margarita. We had a great time. I have to say that we got to iron and clean.....nope it sure was a lot more fun that cleaning the house and ironing blouses.... The first class was doing a collage card. I had never used Golden Soft Gel Medium with a stencil. Notice the corners of the picture below. We got to spray the watercolor paper, stamp an image then stenciled using the gel medium, used watercolors around the stencil, then ironed the card. There was a lot more to it but it turned out great. Really have to do more of this techinque.










Then we got to do the first page of our Altered Book Collage Classes. The first techinque was a Liquid Polymer Clay technique. This is where we got to "clean". We used a ceramic title to spread the Liquid Polymer Clay and had to clean it real good before we used it. This technique took awhile, but we really had a fun time. I have to "clean" up the page by cutting away the liquid clay but wanted everyone to see it in it's "almost done" stage.

Everyone's page turned out great. Now we have to do the back of the page so that we can use it in our book. Can't wait for next month to do some more techniques. We were going to be doing the techniques for the book every other month, but due to a little baby on the way, we are doing it every month now.

FUN TIME TODAY

Today was a really fun day at Stamp Shack. I took two classes with Margarite and had a ball. She is such a great teacher and always comes up with such great techniques. The first class was called Fused Fibers. We started by coloring tissue paper using Memory Mist Sprays. Put that on the side and started with the substrate. We used watercolor paper, applied a thin layer of Light Molding Paste and then added pieces of ripped colored tissue paper that we did, lace, sequin waste and netting. We added more of the Molding Paste between the layers of fibers. Then we got to heat set it. You would think that we would be using a regular iron to do this, but Margarite brought in a Euro-Pro press. Once the piece was heat set, we added a thicker layer of the Molding Paste and heat set it again. Then we could stamp on it, color it with water color crayons, just about anything. My piece needs a lot more color, but the techinque was just great.

Then we got to do another class. This one is a book that when opened it will turn into a wall hanging. I wish I had my camera with me, so that I could have taken a picture of her book. We used a piece of crinoline for the base, spread on a 50/50 mixture of water and Gel Matte Medium. Added fibers, sequins and anything else we wanted, spread on another coat of the 50/50 mixture, then covered with white tissue paper. Heat set it with a heat gun, then sprayed it with the Memory Mists. Once dry heat set it again using the press. We then did the other side. The silk fabric came next, we sprayed it with the Memory Mist sprayed some water on it and then heat set it using the press. Then we stamped the silk using Staze-On ink.You can of course use an iron to do all of the heat setting, but it will take longer and if you have or can get an iron with out the steam holes it works better. Now I will have to cut the book fabric into four pieces, along with the silk fabric. Then I can collage the silk along with other papers, lace etc. and then bind it all together.

This was so much fun and it is amazing how you can use things you just wouldn't think of to use.

Stitching on Metal

Thought I would start cleaning up the art supplies that seem to love to be all over the house and found some pieces that I had packed away. Haven't done much sewing lately because I really would have to clean up just to get to the machine. But when I found this piece I thought I really should try and unearth a sewing machine. I loved to sew on metal shim. This piece has dyed tissue paper that has been stamped on, melted tyvek, metal shim that has been embossed and colored with alchohol ink stitched on to the base and machine embroidered Celtic pieces. Maybe tomorrow I really should plug in a sewing machine.