Lucky, lucky me!

Ever hear people say, "Oh, I never win anything"? Have you said it yourself? Have I been one of those people? Well, maybe a time or two... but no more! I joined a fun blog-hop last week... organized by the delicious Ricë Freeman-Zachery, whom I had the pleasure of meeting in Portland at Art & Soul just recently, to celebrate the release of her newest book, Destination Creativity: The Life-Altering Journey of the Art Retreat.

Ricë had gathered up an armload of talented art blogger friends and asked them to spread the joy by participating in a nine day book tour "blog hop". On each blogger's appointed day, they posted their own review of this amazing new book and offered a chance for readers to win a great giveaway. We "hoppers" virtually visited a blog each day, having much fun along the way... then entered that day's drawing by leaving a comment. The prize? An autographed copy of Destination Creativity! With such irresistible enticement, I gladly hopped along and entered at most of the nine blogs... some of which were delightfully new to me, now bookmarked and subscribed to for future soul-feeding.

Well, Jupiter aligned with Mars or something like that and I had a fantastic surprise in my inbox yesterday... a congratulatory e-mail from Day 8's participant, the very artful Jen Cushman, letting me know that I had won the draw! How sweet it feels to be a winner. I really can't wait to cuddle up on the couch with Ricë's book when it arrives, dreaming of next year's Art & Soul... or maybe even an art retreat destination that's a bit farther-flung than my Portland back yard. Thank you, lucky stars. (And thank you Ricë and Jen!)

Art & Soul 2011- Part Two

Had a wonderful time yesterday in Lisa Call's "Charm School" workshop at Art and Soul. Playing with PMC (stands for Precious Metal Clay) for the first time made me nervous at first. After much trepidation and doubt on my part, I did finally learn that I actually can push myself a little and end up with a lovely bling-y reward in the end! Yes, my friends... PMC + fire = nearly pure REAL silver charms that are uniquely your own!
My charms really show their organic handmade-ness... which doesn't bother me in the least. I'll admit that I hurried through the process of rolling, stamping and cutting out the clay bits, due to fear of not getting them finished, dried and into the kiln by our lunch break. I can see now that I'd have rather put more thought into choosing the rubber stamps and shapes that I used, but I still love the outcome.

Some of the other students had previous PMC experience and weren't quite so intimidated by the necessary careful handling... fear of having it stick to everything, drying out too soon, etc. I saw some really wonderful  textures and patterns in some of their charms!

You can see that many of our charms look to be sort of tarnished... and that is by design. They came out of the kiln looking a rather funky matte white, then were wire-brushed to a bright, gleaming silver which I didn't get photos of. These have all been dunked in a bath of liver of sulpher to give them a dark oxidized patina, then tumble polished.

These next shots are Janne's work... a woman who came to Art & Soul all the way from Norway, and turned out to be friends of another good friend of mine. Such a small world! Janne managed to get her bracelet assembled and it looks really wonderful.

We also learned how to make our own headpins from fine silver wire by melting the end in a torch flame to form a lovely little silver ball. I'm now asking Santa for my own Blazer butane torch.

I'm still working on polishing my coiled links and jump rings, then will get busy assembling my bracelet. This was a great class and reinforces my desire to take off in this direction and make more jewelry.

Art & Soul 2011- Part One

It's finally here... Art & Soul week, Portland 2011! How I wish I was one of the lucky attendees for whom this is a true retreat... staying the whole week in the hotel, far from home and so-called "real life". But, since this event happens practically at my back door step, I always just dip in to a class or two and try to juggle everything else in my life around it. Saves a ton of cash, but I miss out on fully immersing myself in art, camaraderie and inspiration for the full week.

My first class was Lisa Kaus's "Color My World". I've been wanting to take a class from her since Art & Soul 2009 when a friend of mine reported how much fun it was, and how much she learned. We covered a lot of ground, first playing around with Golden fluid acrylics, crayon and graphite pencils on a primed piece of loose canvas. That was meant to warm us up, get us comfortable with sloshing paint around and not worrying too much about making things perfect. Here's a shot of Lisa doing a demo and making it look simple...

Lisa's style is funky-folky... very loose and comfortable, with layers and layers of color. Now I know how she gets creates those pieces that seem to glow from within! She is not afraid of color, and just encouraged us to keep adding more and more... blending water-soluble crayon over layers of fluid acrylic paint, then highlighting with graphite sticks.

Being massively sleep-deprived on this particular morning, and not feeling particularly tuned in to my creative self, I chose to copy one of Lisa's original designs to use for my own class project piece. She offered a number of examples we could trace with graphite paper onto our prepared boards. I chose this sweet and simple little bird design. Very glad I did that, as it saved me wasting time dithering over the design. The whole point was to play with the color techniques... layering and blending, then finishing the piece with a coat of hot beeswax. I wasn't going to risk going home with an unfinished project!

Lisa's birds tend to be in shades of blue, so I went the opposite direction... being in a very red-yellow-orange mood on this particular day. When I got home, my husband took one look at the bird in the detail above and said, "Angry Birds?".

I added some vintage paper scraps and an old stamp as collage details. After getting to a "finished enough" point in class, I was able to do the final step of coating it with hot beeswax, which is something I'd like to play around with further. Note to self:  Check Goodwill for a small crock pot to dedicate to beeswax!

I have to admit, there are some drawbacks to the wax coating... one being the smell! The wax Lisa uses is a refined white beeswax, not the lovely warm yellow and yummy-smelling beeswax I have here at home. I'm sincerely hoping the odor will dissipate soon so I can actually stand to be in the same room with my finished panel. It's really rather unpleasant... which I was not expecting!

It is also tricky to photograph these waxed surfaces, as I discovered today. The colors looked very muted or faded in many of my shots due to the wax itself picking up reflected light. Finally figured out a way to get a good image (the last photo posted above) of the full piece that does justice to the true color saturation. I think of this piece as a practice exercise... certainly not a fine piece of art.

Painting on flat surfaces is not something I'm naturally drawn to, but this class helped me get past a little trepidation in that regard. All in all, a positive experience. I met some great people and am now lusting after a large set of Lyra Aquacolor crayons and more bottles of Golden fluid acrylics!

Teaser

Another of my favorite Trick-or-Treat kitty dolls, designed by the adorable Donna Veal of Moonchild's Primitives. This one was donated to a fundraiser auction for the Humane Society of Southwest Washington. If you can't adopt a real-live kitty, consider buying a ticket to their annual dinner and auction on October 22nd and you could bid to adopt Teaser for your very own!

Teaser sporting her rusty backdoor key.

She can't believe it's already time to greet this season's Trick-or-Treaters.

Upcycled pull-tabs make great hangers.

Wild Rag Doll Rumpus!

Let me say this up front...  I have completely loved Portland artist Junker Jane (aka Catherine Zacchino) and her wild and crazy rag dolls ever since I saw her Misfit Circus dolls in Art Doll Quarterly last spring.

They are unlike anything I've seen by ANY other dollmaker and they instantly gave me inspirational chills.
I've been following her blog and Facebook page ever since and continue to marvel at the new creations she comes up with. They are sometimes dark and creepy, which is just exactly why I love them... and can't look away!

Junker Jane's Monster Tibby

Jasper... by Junker Jane

 There is no mistaking Junker Jane's style... so while many of us have no doubt used her technique notes in ADQ to try creating our own versions, there is just no way to capture the essence of an original Junker Jane. But, that didn't stop me from trying! I kept one eye on the ADQ spread and Catherine's "how to" notes while patching together the rag doll I made for the 6-yr-old daughter of a niece of mine, and mimicked the Junker Jane style as best I could.

**Please Note: I would only EVER make one of these to give away (while giving full design credit to Catherine). I'd never sell one or let anyone assume they were my own idea.**

"Sasha"

Ava loved her...right down to the blue pony tails & Junker Jane-style stitched mouth, which she thought was a "necklace". She named the doll "Sasha" and proceeded to include her while dancing to Lady Gaga!

Making this doll was fun and quick. The construction technique is to machine applique and hand-stitch everything on the flat base fabric surface, then stuff. I used vintage fabrics and vintage buttons for the eyes.



The end result made me happy, though I realized how far short it fell from the ideal of the original. (Which is as it should be, I suppose!) Mine is too cute, too tame... not quirky-weird enough. That is HARD to accomplish, believe it or not!

Another recent Junker Jane creation sparked my inspiration... her "Witch Marigold"...

Jane's "Witch Marigold"

I fell in love with this seriously intimidating witchy woman, and started pining for my favorite season (Halloween) to arrive. So, of course, I had to try to create a Junker Jane rag witch of my own.

Marigold's rather plain cousin, Mumphy.

As you can see, mine is more like Witch Marigold's mild-mannered, simpering cousin. This one was also given as a gift to the daughter of another niece of mine (again, with full credit to Junker Jane and never with intention to copy and sell). I bow down to the creativity and wonderfulness of the original Junker Jane. In my opinion, I haven't even come close!

I've learned a lot from attempting to re-create her style. I love the techniques, the upcycling of vintage bits... and just the overall grunged-up look. But, I've got a lot more to learn in just "letting go" of my need to make things perfect. Trying too hard gets in the way of creativity, and this was really difficult for me. I realized I needed to be able to let loose and access more of my spontaneous inner child artist, which is mighty hard to do at my advanced age.:) 

I can't wait to see more fantastic work from Junker Jane and hope you'll all check out her blog and her etsy shop!