Collage Girl Up Close

I decided to show some close up's of Collaged Girl because in the pics I showed in the original post it was hard for viewers to see the details and textures used. Enjoy!

Mother/Daughter Adventure in Enamel Pendant Making

I decided to get creative for my mom's birthday present this year. She enjoys being creative but there's not a lot of opportunities to take classes in her small hometown area. So, I purchased through the Memorial Art Gallery's Creative Workshop program an enamel pendant making class for her for when she came up to visit and I we both took the class together to celebrate her birthday. http://mag.rochester.edu/creativeworkshop/ I should tell you that neither my mom nor I have had any experience with enameling with glass which is what this class was about.

We started our day with massages at Onondaga School of Therapeutic Massage,http://www.ostm.edu/ and then headed to the afternoon pendant making class taught by Yvonne Cupolo. yvonnecupolo.com This is my second class with her (I made the Sterling Silver ring at her class last fall- see earlier blog for details). I like that the classes are small and the teacher has a lot of patience for all of us first timers. When you think you did something VERY wrong and ruined your piece she always found a way to fix it and make it better.

We even got to create more than one piece. My mom made herself a necklace and earring set and I made a necklace for me and one for my sister who lives out of state and couldn't join in the fun but I wanted her to be a part of this special day.

My mom and I loved the class. Designing your piece is so much fun and easy that we could have spent tons more time there creating and trying different techniques and designs. Would highly recommend this type of class to others.

Collaged Girl- An experimentation in extreme mixed media (well for me that is)

This is one of the experiments I tried while at Saturday afternoon art with Cindi and Leslie. I want to get better at mixed media work. Someday's my efforts are better than others. This one ended up turning out particularly well compared to how it started out.

First I started out with an interesting size/shape sheet of watercolor paper. I then put all kinds of scrap paper designs on the paper. My goal was at this point was experimenting with getting more texture so I have tons of different textured paper on this project. Then I used water color crayons on the exposed water color paper (simply because I couldn't resist trying those materials for the first time). I then used acrylic paint in shades of blue, purple, green, brown and white and smeared them around randomly. (I used a blow dryer in between coats because patience is a virtue I'm always trying to work on but never quite get there.) Oh, I also used a textured clear paint that is basically like adding sand to your picture. I wanted to put an image on the picture but I tend to stay away from actual images of people because I tend to stink at them. Leslie showed me how she goes about making a face and this art work shows my attempt following her instructions. Way better than I usually do. I added vintage music paper strips for the hair and circles for the dress.

Overall I am pretty pleased with this experiment with art materials. I pushed myself to try new things and the outcome is pretty darn good. Things I learned; make sure to use permanent ink for stamping which I thought I was but turned out not to be when I attempted to mod podge over the finished product. Also I'm not 100% sure if I adore the flowers on the hair but I did this part at home and my materials were more limited. Any thoughts?

Mixed Media Attempt

Here's one of my more recent attempts at mixed media. I just went with it and basically experimented more with layering and stamping. It turned out okay. I give myself an A for effort.

For the Love of ART and Creating!

My wonderful friend Cindi gets together with her good friend Leslie just about weekly to go wild and create art. Talk about an amazing art studio- Leslie's got it! They both graciously allowed me to tag along one Saturday afternoon and make a mess with them. Part of the wonderful experience was touring Leslie's home where every room is an opportunity to behold one of Leslie's amazing pieces of art. She takes random found objects and combines them with other materials to create eye catching masterpieces. Talk about jealous- she has more creativity in one hand than I have in my entire body. I could simply watch her create all day long. She has an innate style through experimentation and technique that leaves you wondering; "how the heck did she do that?". Her model is similar to Cindi's and mine; "there are no rules to using art materials- just use them". However; she has one additional model that I aspire to work towards; "keep going and no fear".

Anyway, here's the crazy part- she doesn't think people would purchase her artwork! She has loads of her work at her home but has never ventured out to sell any of it. She creates mixed media pieces, creative yarn dolls, yarn tapestries, felting images, most everything and anything. She is not a one dimensional artist that's for sure. So...I'm on a mission to get her to start selling her work so others can enjoy it! What do you think? Like her work? WOULD you buy it for yourself or someone you know?

She was featured in the Nov/Dec issue of Clothe, Paper, Scissor magazine. She was in the paper house/mixed media article!

Take a look at Leslie Werlin's mini art gallery below:

This is made from a piece of wood found laying around. Can you see it?

Mixed Media Journal Image

Repurposed Plaque Awards

I decided it was time to get rid of all of my HS and college awards and trophies. I decided that the plaques could be reused into necklace hooks or coatracks. I took off the award metal and then lightly sanded the wood. I painted them and then used various materials I had to create a certain look.

The two mosaic looking plaques were created out of a watercolor picture I created (that is in another post). I cute out the strips and mod podged them on. I did several coats of mod podge and then several coats of varnish. I had wooden knobs around and painted them and put them on as the hooks. On the larger plaque I used scrap booking paper for a layer and then vintage music paper.