What A Wonderful Art Adventure!

Finally, after years of drooling over the work of DJ Pettit, I was able to take a class with her.  Not just a class, but a four day workshop.  And even better, it was held at Donna Downey's fabulous studio in North Carolina.  But wait....the icing on the cake.....my great friends Elena and Jacquie were there too.

This is DJ's sample.  We'd be making our version of this book.  Pretty damn fabulous.



My short flight from NY was uneventful (always a good thing when we're talking about flights), and as I strolled over to the baggage area, my suitcase was the first one out on the carousel.  An omen that this was going to be a stress free weekend.  I waited for the flight from Miami, and the three amigas were on our way.

We stayed at a Hampton Inn, not far from Donna's studio.

 

 

Nice, comfortable, clean, and coffee in the lobby 24/7. 

 

Our first art adventure involved walking across the street where there was a Tuesday Morning and a Hanover Fabrics store.  My travel mates had the idea of buying a sewing machine for us to use in class (so as not to have to share with 20 others), and then returning it at the end of the weekend.  Shhhh, don't tell anyone; I know that's not the PC thing to do.  But when I spotted the Janome mini machines in Hanover, that idea was scratched, and the two crazy Cubans each bought one.  At only 5 pounds, the ideal machine to travel with.  Then some fabric and lace purchases, lunch, and we comandeered a shopping card to transport everything back to the hotel.

 

A while later Donna picked us up and took us to the studio, where we chose our table, set up, and then did a "little" shopping in Donna's store.

 

 

 

Inside, Donna's beautiful, colorful art is everywhere.

 

 

Our table.  This is the last time it would look this pristine.

Waiting for each person:

 

Donna even managed to make an accoustic tile ceiling look good, by covering some of the tiles with her fabric.  Not to mention some snazzy chandeliers.

 

 

Real paintbrushes hanging over a window.

 

Check out the green decoration.  It's all paper plates!

 

One of the two bathrooms is decorated with paintbrushes altered by a wide variety of artists.

 

 

This is a view of the store, taken from the classroom space.  Temptation!

 

 

Thursday afternoon we did a lot of prep work, tearing watercolor paper into 6x6" pages, then adding gesso and texture to both sides of the paper.  We were also given a sheet of muslin, which we tore into strips, dyed with a wash of acrylic paint, and then decorated as we liked with our individual color palettes.  There was a lot of stamping, dripping, and splattering.  We would later be using the muslin strips as hinges to attach the pages together.

 

DJ doing a demo.  She explained everything to the group as a whole, then made her way around the room, working with individuals as needed.

 

 

 

My muslin strips, drying on the back of my chair, the only place I could find to do this.  The floor beneath my spot was already full of drying watercolor paper.

 

The next day we added some paint to our now dry pages, and DJ explained her process for taking a photographic image and painting right over it.  This was also the day we would begin adding some stitches.  Between the sewing machines that Donna had, and the ones people brought (or bought....after seeing the Janomes, several students headed over to Hancock to buy their own), practically everyone in class had one to use.  At my table we threaded both machines and used whichever was available when we wanted to stitch.  We usually had one threaded with black and the other with white, but in this photo they both have black thread, because that is what the three of us were using at the time.

 



 

Here are a few of my pages at this point.  In addition to painting and stitching I also did a little stamping and stenciling.

 









 

This is the crow image that DJ provided for everyone to use for our covers.  I think just about everyone used it, but my friend Jacquie had brought a photo of her mom at age 15, and you should see the fabulous job she did with that. 

 

 

 

We used gesso to block out anything we didn't want and then started painting.  This is my painted crow.  I tweaked it a bit more after this was taken, but you get the idea.  The cool thing is, even with the same image, everyone had a different color palette, and everyone's crow looks unique.

 

 

 

Before this post gets as long as War and Peace, I'll just end it with a photo of a sight we saw many times each day. Donna and Karma.  How cute is this?

 

 

 

More to come......







Air Travel

Well, you don't know what
We can find
Why don't you come with me little girl
On a magic carpet ride

 

 

The lyrics from that Steppenwolf classic stayed in my head the entire time I was working on this page.  Dating myself, aren't I?

 

I had the entire weekend to do my page for Sox's book in the Kindred Souls round robin.  Her theme is air travel, the time period, late nineteenth century, and her preference is steampunk.  Naturally, images of zeppelins, hot air balloons and the like immediately came to mind, but I wanted to do something a little different.  So I put Sox's heroine, Magdalena, on a magic carpet as she comes in for a landing in Persia.

 

 

 

The background was mainly done with stencils that I thought supported my location.  I found the carpet image and buildings online.  My Magdalena is from Graphic 45's Steampunk Debutante collection, and I enhanced her hair with some tiny watch parts.

 

 

 

 

The satchel was constructed from grungepaper, inked with walnut stain distress ink.  Some faux stitching, the strap, the slide and the "hardware" made with dots from a glaze pen, finish it off.  I think it looks like leather.  Oh, and that's an old map of Persia peeking out of the outside pocket.

 

That same map, only larger, covers the back of the page.  I stenciled over part of it with black and gold paint, and used that area for my information.

 

 

 

Let's see......according to the artists that preceded me, Magdalena has also been to Cuba, London, Paris, and the far east.  I wonder where she'll turn up next......and how she'll get there.

 

On an unrelated note, I may be missing for a few days.  On Wednesday I'm flying down to North Carolina where I'm meeting up with my pals Elena and Jacquie for a long weekend workshop with DJ Petit at Donna Downey's studio.  I have wanted to take a class with DJ for ages, and to be able to AND hang with my Florida peeps.....priceless!



 





Getting Ready to Hit The Field

Not baseball, but field as in field journal.  Along with some of my usual art journal peeps, I'm getting ready to begin yet another one of our collaborative efforts.  We're calling this one Journey of Dreams, and it will be in the form of the sort of journal a scientist or adventurer would carry around to take notes, do sketches, maybe attach a bit of ephemera to the pages.  We'll each establish a character embarking on some sort of a journey....maybe to far away places; maybe all over one city; maybe even all in the mind.  As our books travel from artist to artist, the journey will continue.  I'm so excited about this concept I already constructed my journal!

It started with this box of watercolor paper, creased down the center to form a card.  Who says it has to be a card?

 

 

I've used these papers before to construct journals, and they make one of a decent size, about 6x8".

 

 

 

But I wanted this one to be smaller, really pocket sized, so I just sliced the folded pages in half;  I now have a book that is about 6x4".

 

 

 

The construction couldn't be easier; the folded pages are glued together, carefully lining them up at the spine.  This results in double thick pages, sturdy enough to withstand the rigors of the journey.  The two end papers, which are single thickness, are glued to the covers (I just used heavy cardboard for those).

 

 

 

I found a decorative napkin in my stash that had a travel theme, tore it up and used it to cover the cardboard, keeping the journal nice and simple.  No bulky embellishments in this project!  I used fluid matte medium, over and under the pieces of napkin.  The shine you see comes from a bronze glaze I used over the whole thing to give it a little extra color and protection.

 

The same bronze glaze was used on the end papers, just to give the book a more finished look.

 

 

I used a very strong glue (Ailene's Super Thick Tacky Glue) to attach the pages to one another, and weighted the book down until it dried.  The bond is really strong, but what I like best about this method (besides that I don't have to struggle with sewing signatures), is that the pages lay pretty flat when the book is opened, making it easy to work in.

 



 

 

Then I decided to make a removable cover with some sort of closure, like a journal sweater to keep it safe as it travels.  Again, very easy to do.  I started with a rectangle of felt (not craft felt, but a good quality wool felt), about 2 1/2 times the length of the book.  I did not measure anything; the size was estimated.  It's very much like those paper book covers we used to have to cover our text books with in school.  At this point I did open my sewing machine, though the stitching is very basic.

 

 

Here is the front; I added a little decoration in the form of another piece of felt and some ultra suede.

 

 

 

I'll get to that ribbon on the side in a moment.  Here is what the cover looks like opened flat.  You can see that I just folded over a bit on each size before sewing all around, creating slots that the journal covers slide right into.

 

 

 

The closure is a long length of tattered silk ribbon.  My friend Pat gave me a beautiful button that I attached to the end.

 

 

 

All you have to do is wrap the ribbon around the book a couple of times.

 

 

 

Then slide the end with the button under the wrapped ribbon, and voila!

 

 

 

I don't think this project will launch for a month or so; in the meantime I've been scouring Pinterest for images of field and travel journals.  I created a board; if you'd like to see what I've found so far: 

 

























http://pinterest.com/eileennyc/travelfield-journals/

 

 

 



A Coffee Loving Ancestor Emerges.....

Last week I received my good friend Pat's Vintage Ancestors book, and I just love the way everyone has continued the theme that Pat established at the very beginning.  One way or another, all her ancestors were involved in the tea business, and the stories created for them are just wonderful.  Of course I'd go with the flow, but with a tiny little twist.  My contribution to the Tilly-Lipton clan, one Hazel Tilly, was definitely the black sheep of the family; horror of horrors, she hated tea!

Here is my two page spread:

This is a very simple layout, almost like a scrapbook.  The background is a vintage coffee and tea adverstisement that I printed on lightly patterned vellum, cut to the size of the two pages, then split down the middle so that half is on each page.  After I wrote my story (in my head), I just went on a search for pictures to illustrate it.  Thank you, Pinterest!  Thank you, Google images!

Here's a closer look at the story, and remember you can click on any of the photos to get a larger image.

 

 

Hazel's travels took her all over the world, but it was in Denmark that she found true love, and married there.  Why Denmark?  I'll get to that later.

 

 

 

Now, what is the meaning of the statement on the coffee cup?  Does that hinge actually work?

 

 

 

Why, yes, it does!  And what secret is revealed?

 

 

 

It seems that the Keurig coffee maker empire had its roots in the union of Hazel Tilly and Henrik Keurigsen.  Who knew? 

 

What inspired my twisted tale?  I happened upon an article giving the history of the Keurig company (very interesting TRUE story, by the way), and learned that keurig is the Danish word for courage.  I already knew I wanted my ancestor for Pat to be a coffee drinker, and Pat and I both love our Keurigs.  The rest, as they say, is history.  Totally invented history, but still......

 

I can't wait to get the book back to Pat.  I know she's going to love it.  I've said it before:  maybe you can't choose your relatives, but in our little collaborative art journal world, your friends can choose them for you.











Twirly Swirly Dresses and Lacy Girly Pages

I had a very artful weekend, which is always a good thing, but especially when here in NYC it went from sweater weather to 90+ overnight.  Yuck!  Not that I need one, but it was a great excuse to stay indoors and get messy.

On Saturday I went downtown to Michele's studio for yet another great class with Sue Pelletier.  Spending time with my artsy friends, creating a special canvas......priceless!  We altered little dresses.  They were gessoed, painted, embellished, and stiffened.  And then they were attached to canvases we covered with dress pattern paper, tissue paper, and assorted other items.  I used a wide gallery wrap canvas, which allows for more decorating opportunities on the sides, and best of all, it's ready to hang when you get the piece home.

I didn't take a photo of the dress I chose before altering, but I think it was a light blue with tiny dark blue polka dots.  I also used the back of the dress as the front, because I liked the opening.  Well, enough blah blah blah, here it is:

 

 

Me and my peeps, and our swirly twirly masterpieces:

 



 

Is that fun, or what?  And yes, that is a pink bow in Pat's hair.  In case you were wondering.

 

And that's not all I did.  I received two art journals last week, both from the Kindred Souls round robin.  Carol and Gloria both requested a vintage look, with Carol also asking for an inspirational quote.  So I had two opportunities to bring together fabric and paper and sweet embellishments.  First up, Carol's page.

 

 

Carol supplied grungeboard pages, and I covered mine front and back with kraft paper that first received a faux leather technique.  I originally saw that last year on Anita Houston's blog.  Click here for all the details.

 

Over that went some torn strips of printed fabric, and then the focal image, which was printed on cotton and has some batting underneath.  It is attached to fabric cut with the Sizzix Doily Frame die, and surrounded by a bunch of little Prima flowers. 

 

 

 

I made some stick pins and added them.  If you look above the pins you can see the word "timeless."  I actually used metal letters for writing on leather.  I figured, hey, leather, faux leather....let's see what happens.  It worked!

 





 

 

And the quote:

 

 

 

The back:

 

 

 

Gloria requested vintage shabby chic.  I treated my focal image just as I did for Carol:  printed on cotton and backed with some batting for added poof.

 

 

 

The background paper is by Prima (the Melody collection), and it was enhanced with a lot of sparkle, thanks to my Sakura clear stardust pen.  I outlined just about everything. 

 

 

The butterflies were cut from scraps from the same Prima pack, using my Sizzix Embosslits Beautiful Wings die.  I covered them with Glossy Accents for a different texture.

 

 

 

Two more handmade stickpins.

 

 

And a few more Prima flowers, sprayed with some Perfect Pearls Mists.

 

The back:

 

 

 





















More Prima paper, more butterflies, and more doodling with the Sakura pen.

 

All in all, in spite of really sucky weather, a pretty great weekend.