Folk Fest Art

Finally!  See what I caught with my iPhone or camera...I was enamored with the creations of metal pieces like you can see in several images below.  Hope you enjoy these too.  It's just a small sample of the show.

More Style

I left this one out...

Travel in Syle

Every year the weekend after my birthday Folk Fest is held north of Atlanta.  I used to live near the facility and could visit every day.  In recent years, I've had to miss the event.  

Not this year!

I went today.  And I could show photos of some of the wonderful, imaginative art.  And maybe I will tomorrow.  

But today, I want to share that some of the artists travel in style!

I just love Folk Fest!

December Daily

These are two books I made for my sister and sister-in-law, following the December Daily model created by Ali Edwards.  The idea is that you have a place to record the 25 days of December: the ordinary, the decorating, the events, the ordinary, the small special things like a favorite coffee drink only available during the holidays, the excitement, the giving, the wrapping, the ordinary...

Ali says she puts her books away each year with the ornaments, and then they have fun looking at past books when they come out each year.

I used a combination of purchased templates, recyled material and stuff I had on hand.  I will put mine together tonight, and mail theirs today.

I hope that by getting a ready made book to work with, this doesn't feel like yet another task, but a fun chance to capture family traditions and memories. They can take a photo a day and print them at the end, put sticky notes on pages to remind them what the words should be, or do it as they go.  And since they each have children with birthdays in December, I suspect that those days will be easy to fill in and cameras will already be out.

Plus I bet that the oldest children would be willing to take charge of a day that they write about for the family so all the work doesn't fall on mom.

Off to find envelopes!

The Beginning

I've been following Julie Fei-Fan Balzer's Art Journaling week.  This weekend was the first time I had to spend on trying some of her tips and techniques.  Below are some 'base' pages I've created using water colors, acrylic paints and the beginnings of collage.

It's pretty fun, really.  I find that if I let myself think too long about it, though, I freeze.

I don't want to mess it up. But I keep telling myself that with layering, I can just coverup something that I'm not happy with.

And anyway, it doesn't have to be perfect.  I can embrace the imperfection.

Marigold Paper

About two Memorial Days ago, I painted a chest I found at a thrift shop.  It was a Thomasville chest and in great shape, but the top was formica and the body was painted a mustard yellow. 

I painted it a Ralph Lauren blue, put Anthropologie knobs on it in a Chinese red color and moved it to my bedroom to mull over what to do with the top (I desperately needed storage).  I considered mirror tiles, glass tiles and ceramic tiles, none of which I know how to install.

Last week I got a catalog from Paper Source and they had the most beautiful papers - but one in particular caught my eye: the one with yellow, orange and red marigolds with light blue background and a turquoise border.

Bingo!

This is what I came up with .  I will eventually put a glass top on it, but I am still deciding if the top needs a coat of whitewash to tone down the intensity of the color.  One of the cuts is not quite right, because I didn't have a large enough working surface, but I decided that is a character item, and I'll just get some blue paint for that edge or piece it with leftover paper and go with it. 

Isn't the color match wonderful? 

Germinating

So, I've been looking for some art workshops to go to.  More in the order of arts and crafts workshops - the kind that have a variety of things to try.  I've looked at Squam (which has not been ruled out, mind you), a scrapbooking workshop because they are really more than scrapbooking - they are about techniques, and photography workshops which are harder to find than you might think.  Unless you want to travel to Europe (yes, please) and are within your budget (not so much).  

Cloth, Paper, Scissors magazine has a new workshop this year, CREATE, which is in Chicago.  It looks so appealing because it's full of things I've never tried. Plus the thing that caught my eye in my mother's Jan issue is one of the projects! 

Mary Englebreit just finished one in St. Louis that I couldn't attend because of timing, but believe me, it's on my calendar for next year.  And there's one called Silver Bella in Nebraska that sounds wonderful.

But.

One has to travel by air to all of these because none of them are in the vicinity. I can't envision lugging art supplies which include dangerous paint brushes and, worse, paints, oh - and exacto knives and other questionables in my luggage, checked or not. So I tried things closer to home, and the only one I found was Donna Downey's Inspired Artist workshop, but I found it too late.  It's next week.

So.  What's a girl to do?

Find one in metro Atlanta - anyone hear of something in our area? 

OR

Start one up.

Guess which one is the most far fetched, scary, ridiculous, hare-brained notion I've had since sky-diving?

Experiment in Art Journaling

I've been seeing these artsy pages that people make. So I took some of my stuff and tried to mimic them.  Not so bad.  I blew up and cropped an old photo scanned at 600 dpi, and put it on my paper/paint experiment.  Then I tried some of the style of journaling you see.  And glued on some of the new/old vintagey flowers.

Hmmm. 

Oh, and this is an iPhone photo.  I didn't feel like going to get my big camera, and the slight out of focus is fine, I think.  That way not everything is given away.

This afternoon: clearing away clutter.  Ugh.

Latest Projects

I've been taking two online classes.  I've made more progress with one than the other.  Today is show and tell.  This isn't all from that class, but it should give a flavor.  Some are created manually and scanned in, and some were created digitally.  I highly recommend having some sort of create-ing in your life.  It makes everything else richer!

The Christmas Art Journal

Okay - I've got it put together, and thought I'd show you how it's turning out. Of course it won't be final until I use it as a journal.




I notice as I look at these, I have my page 2 in the 3rd page position. That #2 is a Santa shaped playing card...



The reindeer was in an unrelated pack of Christmas stuff. But he fit right in, didn't he?






This was an experiment. There are these transparent Hambly overlays that I haven't seen in stores around here. So I made my own: I printed a holiday pattern on a transparency film I had, and stitched a white piece of cardstock to the back with my mini-fake battery powered sewing machine.




Love this one.

That's a vintage Santa from the Night Before Christmas on the back of the preceding page...to make room for a photo or journaling I cut the story lines into strips and stuck them on top of Santa...The facing page is a baseball card protector cut to fit and it will hold 8 photos or mementos.

Cut up a page protector, cut a bit of Christmas tree lace and stitched them together along side the lace to make a page pocket. Behind that you can see a vintage educational bingo card.

This might be my favorite page...I put together scraps from other pages to make the front and stuck them to a solid piece on the back.

Here's another one I particularly like. The girl is on two or three foam stickies for depth, and a photo or note will slide into the white card with the circular cutout below.

This one will have journaling on the front, and a photo on the back.

A vintage page with O Come Let Us Adore Him is the last page.

To be honest, I have about 4 more pages to make, but the binder rings are strained now, so I won't make more until I get bigger rings.

This has been a lot of fun to do. Now to see if I can stick with the journal part through December!

Connections

This is something I did recently in an online class I'm taking. The class is called yesterday and today, and it's meant to help you focus on words (journaling) and pictures. I'm miserable at words when it comes to my own experiences and feelings. You know, the serious stuff.

If you look this starts with all black and white (the past or heritage) and the second page ends in color (now).



These were scanned copies of originals so that I could get them all the same size without forever altering the originals.

If you've never done it before, try taking heritage photos and making a timeline - even if you don't paste them into some permanent arrangement - and see how striking it is to see your own lifeline materialize in front of you.

The Art Journal or December Daily

I became intrigued with a concept called an art journal recently. I wasn't quite sure what one was until I used my favorite tool, Google, and looked at a number of them. They seem to range from a collection of art techniques to art + traditional journaling and many things in between.

At this blog I found a concept I liked. It was a mix of the traditional scrapbook with the art journal. December generally gets away from me, and it's easy to lose sight of what Christmas is meant to celebrate. So, I thought I would do an art journal to help me slow down and focus on each day in December. Not every day will be specifically Christmas related, but I thought if I had to document the 25 days of December, it would help me focus. And I've always loved the Twelve Days of Christmas as a Christmas theme, and this journal reminds me of that.

The first principal is to build the foundation of your journal now, before the rush of December is on you. Then all you have to do is take your photo or jot down your memory and finish off each of the pages. I made a start on that this weekend.

I bought an acrylic cover from Etsy much like the one at the blog I linked to above. It helped me visualize (now that I've done this and made some pages, I can see what I'd like to do next time). Once I find some letters I like, I will add 2009 and possibly some more...I'm looking for some metal letters and numbers. The contrast with acrylic and chipboard will be nice I think.

The idea for me is to make mostly simple pages with some more labor intensive ones. You can see a brown craft paper edge on the lower left...it has no design on it yet. I'm waiting for a package of Christmas ephemera to arrive from Etsy (I'm excited, it's vintage). The Joy page was made with card stock, photoshop and an HP printer. I'll add a small photo and journaling above. One page I think will cover traditions that I look forward to: nativity scenes, the caroler figures I put out, things like that.

This is some paper in the soft aqua color I'm in love with right now. There's a vintage combination of red and aqua that is my all time favorite - do you remember seeing it?

And below are two pages: one is a recipe card that I thought would be a cute way to note holiday baking that I can recall. My grandmother used to make fruitcake cookies every year, even though I can't think of anyone who liked fruitcake (besides me - I liked hers). And her favorite cake was a Lane cake - it only appeared a few times and always at Christmas. Then there was ambrosia (orange + coconut only) and my mother's fruit salad.

Behind the recipe card is a baseball trading card page that has been cut down to fit. It will let me put 4 2.25" x 3.25" photos in the sleeves on both sides. That one would be good for holiday decorations at home, or perhaps city decorations.

This last page is a canvas. I've painted it with sky blue acrylic paint and while the paint was still wet, stuck on a piece of acrylic. On top of that I sprayed something called Glimmer Mist which gives it a faintly pearlized appearance. There's a little drop of it on the bird, at the end of the wing. I will likely journal on some cardstock and then attach it to the upper front, and attach a corresponding photo to the unsightly back of the canvas.

Above are bits and pieces I have in a stash to use with the ephemera I ordered. The cardboard pieces I will probably paint white and then go from there. I loved the shape of the piece and cut in half to have two pages for this book.


Working on this book just this little bit this weekend has had the effect of making me look forward to the holidays more. And the art is a nice balance to the hustle and stress at work.

Already it's doing what I hoped. I'll share more with you when I make the rest of the pages.

Is there anything you do to help you slow down and focus on important occasions or holidays?

Sunday Glass Class, befores and afters

Before I show the afters from yesterday, a word about today's project: circles. Take a look at the material below. Do you see a circle occurring naturally? No. The circle project went well for the rest of the class, but I seemed to be circle challenged. My clear layer was about 1/4" larger than my colored layer, and that was after I asked for help cutting from the instructor. So absorbed in this circle business was I that I forgot to take pictures of the projects around me. Lea made a beautiful bowl with a clear layer, a layer of clear and white opaque streaky glass and then blue and aqua squares around the outer edge.

Mine was clear layer, pimento red layer and then orange/coral streaky glass and yellow glass squares. I'm crossing my fingers ;) The glass is then fuse fired or tack fired. Once that is done, the piece is placed on the mold you chose and slump fired. That's about what it sounds like: you fire it to a temp and for a long enough time for the glass to soften and take on the shape of the mold. Mine is a 9 5/8" bowl that I made a little smaller at 8.5".

The second project of the day was a window hanging. The base was clear glass and then you filled in your design with colored glass from the scrap boxes. Below is Signe, hard at work.

Lea was making a floral scene to hang in her bathroom window. See the green at the bottom and the red flower petals and blue sky?

And here's mine. Think abstract nature scene: yellow sun, the many shades of blue that the sky is, a tree, white wispy clouds and a strip of green grass at the bottom. The clear gap on the lower half got filled in with darker blues - you know, the way the sky is darker at the edges. I have it set to be tack fired, which means everything retains it's shape, but may be it should be fuse fired where everything mushes together. Thoughts?

Coasters you saw yesterday before they are tack fired:

Coasters after tack firing - the single below matches the lower right above:

Everything retained it's shape but was heated enough to anneal (fancy word for bond, I think). I like the coasters. I need to find some little rubber feet. Oh, and don't worry about the white smudge on the one below. It's dust from the kiln that I haven't wiped off.

Here's my pendant before. You take a clear glass base and add two support strips top and bottom. Just under the top support strip, you place a thin strip of this fire fabric stuff. Then, a colored layer on top, it's aqua in my example. And then a piece of dichromatic (one color at 90 degrees and another color at 45 degrees) glass. This is fuse fired so that everything merges together into one piece.

Pendant after firing:

I hope I've encouraged you to go play with glass! I learned today that you can slump fire a wine bottle and they make a spoon rest shape, or a serving piece. The instructor said they have to be fired higher since they are generally blown glass. There's more to glass than meets the eye!