Blue Hands 4-Ever (Or So It Seems)

Keys4Art2011 -- Day 4

The Paper Niche

Plantation, Florida

Today was the first (and last) day that I wasn't the only one up at the crack of dawn.  We had to leave Elena's early to make the 2+ hour drive to The Paper Niche, an awesome scrapbook store in Plantation Florida (that's near Ft. Lauderdale for those of you who like to know such things).

We piled into three cars, and after enduring rush hour traffic, we arrived, anxious to begin our class with Beatriz Guzman.  Bea is one of the most enthusiastic and cheerful people I've ever met, and you just knew that there is nothing she loves better than teaching and sharing what she knows.  Bea had designed a special class for us; we'd be creating a large canvas album to commemorate our retreat, and our class kits were overflowing with supplies.

First we had to dye our canvas pages and album cover, since they'd need drying time.

                            Mixing up the blue....paint, water, glossy Mod Podge, Glimmer Mist and glitter



Each person got a plastic paint tray for dunking our canvas.

Which resulted in this:

And when I tell you that I've just today seen the last of the blue go down the drain, I'm not kidding. I think I almost gave my manicurist a stroke.   But well worth it.  Maybe not to the manicurist, but to me, for  sure.

Here are some of the pages that Bea created for the sample album:



We embellished the blue backgrounds with stencils, masks, stamping and more.  And there were certainly enough things in the class kit to complete pages, but I chose not to.  I have not decided what I'm going to put in this book, so I mainly concentrated on the backgrounds, and will add photos and embellishments at home.

There were times when everyone was so into their own zones that the room got very quiet.



My cover:

This was one of my favorite techniques.  We made a "shell soup," mixing adhesives with small shells in a bucket.  I know there was something else in there, but don't remember what.  Anyway, we each scooped out a cup of the soup to use as we liked.  I put some on my cover, above, and some on an inner page:

I decided to use my mermaid page as a sign in.

Here are a couple of my backgrounds.  Lots left to do in this book.

On the day she arrived in Key Largo, Lill had her birthday.  On the 14th, Sarah would turn 40.  Unbeknownst (oh, don't you just love that word!) to them, we all made tags to go into a special wire receipt holder that Elena purchased for each of them.  We surprised them both with a cake and the gifts while at The Paper Niche.

Bea showed us a great method for blending inks with a white chalk ink pad. 



Do you remember the embossing technique Tim demonstrated during the 2009 12 Tags of Christmas....the one where chipboard letters were covered with metal?  Bea made this frame for Elena using self adhesive metal tape from the home improvement store:

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And then she showed us how she did it:

Then there was the art doll collage she made after taking Christy Tomlinson's She Art class:

And we all made one too....cut to fit the plastic sleeves that came with our canvas albums.  Here's mine:

Check out the clock in this group photo.  That's not A.M. folks!  We spent the entire day at the store, making art, going shopping (oh yeah!), eating (we had two meals while there; well, some of us had three), and just having a wonderful time.

(Back row:  Val, Daisy, Lill, me, Sarah, Jen, Julie, Linda, Jacquie.  Front row: Gina, Elena, Teri, Beatriz, Sue, Tracy, Marita)

Tomorrow: charms, painter's trays, and some scandalous behavior at The Marlin restaurant.  But I might not actually be able to post tomorrow's Keys events tomorrow,  as I am going to be downtown all day learning wax techniques from Claudine Hellmuth!!  Oh yeah, I know I'm one lucky duck.