Bunny Girl

This past Sunday I took a wonderful class at Michele's Little Bird Creations studio.  Honestly, when I signed up I thought I'd just enjoy hanging with my buds Pat and Teri, and never expected to love it so much.  After all, I am not much of a doll person.  But under Joanna Pierotti's instruction, I really did fall in love with my bunny girl.  What, you might be wondering, is a bunny girl?  She's a small (about 6" tall) bisque doll with a bunny ear hat on her head.  I didn't think to take a picture of how she looked when we started, but bisqueware is ceramic that has only been fired once, and has no glaze on it.  Joanna taught us her techniques for painting and glazing her so she looks like she just came out of a kiln.  And then we dressed her.

Here is how mine looked after the painting and glazing, before her arms were attached, her wings created, or her clothing put together.

 

Here is Teri's doll at the same point.

 

 

I believe this one is Kelly's.  Some clever person figured out that our detail brushes fit into the openings for the arms, and that made it very easy to hold the dolls while painting and glazing.

 

 

We used bits of fabric, lace, hankies, ribbon, layer upon layer, to form the outfits.

 

Here is mine, followed by Teri's and Pat's.

 

 

 

Although we all started out with the same doll, the way we painted and dressed them gave each a distinct personality.  We used plain old acrylic paints, and Joanna demoed her painting techniques, including how to paint the delicate roses on the bunny hat.  Painting the details of the face took a steady hand and a tiny brush.

 

I added a few things and took more pictures when I got home.

 

 

 

 

And then, in my box of miniature items, I found the perfect place for my bunny girl to live.

 

 

I made a very girly, adorable doll!  Who'd a thunk it?????



 

 

 

 



 









More Metal, and "Etching" the Easy Way

When I was at CREATE this past summer I was lucky enough to take a wonderful class with Leighanna Light.  Click here to see what we did.  She had some samples of other projects with her, and one was for goddesses that really caught my eye.  So I was happy to take Faux Etching for the Folk Goddess at Art Is You.  I just love using bits and pieces of metal to create these unique wall hangings.  I'm especially fond of the one that uses a nicely aged Altoids tin as the goddess's body.

This is the very beginning of construction.  I was trying out different things for my first goddess.  Those legs are typewriter keys. 

 

 

The look of etched metal you see on the tin is the faux in the class title.  It couldn't be easier.  We stamped on the already darkened tin (torched, or, as Leighanna informed us, placed on the barbecue) with matte medium, and then coated the whole thing with a liquid patina.  It starts out black, but within a few days it was rusty.  You'll see that in a bit.  In the photo above you can just see the rusting in its early stages.  Once it got to the point I liked, I sealed everything I'd patinaed with a metal sealant.  Otherwise, it would just keep rusting until eventually it would fall apart.

 

 

This is a piece of metal that has the technique, waiting to be used on the next goddess.

 

 

Here are my two pieces right after construction.  One used the tin as the body; the other used flat pieces of metal.

 

 

 

And here they are at home, after some additional rusting and a coating of sealant.

 

 

Leighanna provided the faces and the metal for the bodies, and the set of typewriter keys.  We brought an assortment of charms, beads, metal scraps, etc. to finish our pieces.  The hat above is actually a leftover part from the sconce I used in Michael DeMeng's class.  If you take a close look at all the goddesses I think you'll recognize plenty of stuff you'd find in your own junk pile.







 

 

What follows:  Leighanna snapping photos of our creations, and then, the class goddesses (some finished, some still works in progress).

 

 

 

 

And how about this one; not a goddess at all, but a pup!

 

 

 

The organizers of Art Is You are actually accepting early registration for next year (no classes announced, just reserving a spot for the event), and you better believe I'm in!  If you only have the time and resources to attend one such retreat next year, my advice is to go with Art Is You.  And you have plenty of time to start saving.  It's truly a class organization.

 













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.