Whoosh! There went the last two weeks

Well, I was doing so well there with the reverb10 prompts, and then all of a sudden I didn't even have a chance to think in the privacy of my own head about whatever I wanted to--I had to think about the thing I had to do next.  And I very consciously make an effort not to overcommit myself too!  I shudder to think how things might be if I didn't do that.

2007 bookmark/gift tag for the PE coach

It was primarily the end of school for my kids that sucked up my time.  At my son's school the families give gift cards to the teachers at the holiday party, and ever since my first year there I felt that although that was absolutely the best gift to give, it was also rather impersonal and lacked any "wow factor".  So I volunteered that year to make bookmarks that also served as the gift tags attached to the cards.  I cut each one by hand, selected reproductions of vintage schoolbook covers that fit with each teacher's subject area, and fastened them on with eyelets.  That year there were only 12 . . . this year there were 47.

2007 bookmark/gift tag
for a kindergarten teacher

2007 bookmark/gift tag
for a humanities teacher

I made custom embellishments using fragments, punched out individual tags, wrote each teacher's name on the tag, made the envelope for the gift card from the signatures that families had left on a sheet of paper in the lobby (scanned it into Photoshop Elements & added a layer of generic winter scenes--we strive for multicultural rather than Christmas specifically), folded each one into an envelope, tied ribbon around it to keep it closed, then tied each tag onto the ribbon.  As you can imagine, if you made it through that entire sentence, it took me a while!

I could have had help if I'd gotten prepared a little earlier, but that's my own fault that I didn't, and honestly, I didn't mind.  I recognized that it was important to me, and when I thought of using fragments to make a decoration for each one, I had that inner feeling that nothing else was going to do, so I might as well just get on with it and enjoy the process.  And I did!  Unfortunately, I didn't even have time to take pictures of the finished products, so nothing to share visually from this year's gifts.

2007 bookmark/gift tag
for a science teacher

At the same time, I also had to make a double recipe of shepherd's pie to take (my son got put in charge of the food committee this year, so I felt obligted to contribute something more than my usual plastic utensils & paper plates).  Then there was finding our enormous crock-pot from the boxes in the garage so I could take it to my daughter's school for their party, and getting all our holiday cards ready for sending . . . I didn't even have a chance for a few days there to read my blog list, and I ALWAYS do that.

Things seem to have settled down now, although I have a cold my daughter so generously passed on to me (luckily she doesn't seem to have shared her ear infection too) and I am hosting Christmas dinner for 11 adults & six children.  I am looking forward both to blogging and making things again.  Yesterday I did have a very successful day making a present for a cousin who'll be here for Xmas . . . I'll post about that soon as well as revisit some of the reverb10 prompts I've missed.

Wooden Tree Ornament

A couple of weeks ago I got a wooden ornament from Archiver's, and today I finally had a go at decorating it.

I began by stamping my Eclectic Omnibus wooden stamp in Archival Ink--Sepia on all sides.

Then I inked the ornament with Distress Ink--Fired Brick, using the tool and foam pad.





After that, I used my Tim Holtz Fabulous Flourish stamp with Brilliance--Gamma Green ink and covered the ornament with flourishes.  This required multiple stampings; just one didn't cover the whole thing.

At this point I assembled the ornament.  Then I used Stickles Xmas Red to add dots of sparkle within the ornament, and Stickles Cinnamon along the edges.  I thought about using Distress Stickles but decided I wanted more sparkle.

The only other thing I might do is to go over some of the flourish with a sparkly green gel pen . . . I'll have to see what it looks like once the Stickles are dry.

It was fun!

Windy Snowmen

Although I am still fighting off a cold and don't sound too pretty, I have had a productive morning finishing up the set of five snowmen blowing in the wind. Hard to get into the mood when our high here is supposed to be in the low nineties today! But I have so many other things I want to do, and I can't allow myself to do them until I get the cards finished that I have started. (My problem is always finishing things--I like the fun part but then there's always the homework with the finishing touches--that's why I say this is good therapy for me.)

The tags are from projects on Tim Holtz's blog, but he leaves it up to you to decide what to do with the tag once you're finished. I finally came up with copying Vince Guaraldi's "Christmas is Coming" piano music (I play the piano so had it easily to hand) after reducing it to 80%, inking with Distress Inks, and then adhering the tag to that. The name of the music isn't on there anywhere, but I know what it is, and it makes me happy. I can even hear it playing in the background while the snowman does a happy dance!

Making backgrounds for a snowflake Xmas card

I didn't have the same cards that I did last year to produce a snowflake Christmas card this year, so I tried using the Creative Cards by Swarthmore that I'd picked up at Jerry's Artarama. I couldn't reproduce what I had done on the smoother cards, of course, and the ink didn't look the same either. So I ended up doing lots of paint with Cobalt Blue, Cerulean Blue Deep, and Titanium White. One I used bubble wrap on, but most of them I just painted.

When dry, they still seemed too dark, too bold, so I added yet another a layer, this one composed of 10 parts Titanium White, 3 parts Cobalt Blue, and 1 part Cerulean Blue Deep. I brushed some on with a paintbrush then quickly took a wipe (the Inkadinkado Crafters Cleanups) and smeared it all over the card, then waited a moment and wiped again to remove some of it. I think I finally ended up with some good backgrounds. Got messy though!

Trying Something New--Matte Gel Image Transfers; Xmas Cards

All right, I am continuing to force myself to do something, anything, just don't get bogged down in choices and decisions. Thus I have two mini canvases drying now that I have followed the directions on this project from QuietFire Design to the letter (except that I had already gessoed the canvases--we'll see if that makes any difference).

When I was in England last summer, I saw some lovely 3D stickers of Oriental scenes, and I thought it would be nice to put them on small canvases and hang as a set. So I'm doing one image transfer for that project, and the other one is just a fairy on a 2x2 canvas. When it's done--if it's all right--maybe I'll hang in in Kayleigh's room, or I guess I could keep it and give it to her for a Xmas present.

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I'm still trying to decide if I want to give the full court press to making Xmas cards this year (and possibly selling some of them). I'm going to have time during the day, and if I spend maybe a week being very clear with myself about the designs I'd offer, I think I could do it. Need to look into Google shops and etsy shops again since it's been a year and policies/procedures may have changed.

I do feel a distressingly familiar feeling coming up again, which is that I have all these techniques in my bag now but I don't know exactly what I want to do with them. The fact that Kayleigh lost the Bunsen burner for my mini-chemistry set is extremely annoying, because I was getting to a point where I knew what to do with it but I don't want to finish it without that, nor do I really want to spend another $16 on a replacement. Anyway, I may be coming up to a hurdle to deal with again, because I still think that much of what I do is not very personal for me. The things I've done that were it's very clear to see--the Magic challenge was definitely all me, and I was pleased with the war piece even though I wouldn't give it to anyone. But there seems to be a large gulf, or maybe more properly an abyss, that I am going to have jump sooner or later. What am I afraid of, that I have nothing interesting inside me, or that I have no taste? I *must* be willing to experiment and accept that not everything will work out. It's only by doing that I'm going to really get anywhere, and I can't give this up.

Turning out the Christmas Cards

I've been consumed the last month or so working on Xmas cards. Am trying to be healthier about it than last year, and thus am enjoying the whole process more and not driving myself nuts by taking all the fun out of it. Some card designs I've made ten of and others only one, and you know what--that's no big deal! Last year I required myself to make five to six of each design, but then I also was following directions for each different one then, and this year I'm trying to stick with what I've been doing lately and just seeing what develops. It's still hard, but I'm having fun, and what I'm producing is okay even though I didn't know how it was going to end up when I began.

Lately I've been going over the Tim Holtz 12 Tags of Christmas from both 2007 and 2008 obsessively, trying to hone in on techniques that I can and want to use. I loved his Day 8 tag from last year and made a bunch of those this year. Then I wasn't sure what to do with them so set them aside for a few days. Finally I thought of using some of the really twee paper I had from a Christmas paper collection I'd bought my first year when I didn't know any better, cutting a panel to use as background, and sanding it to get the right distressed look to tie everything together plus obscure the tweeness of the paper at the same time. Doing that turned some of the most boring paper into some of my favorite! I love love love the sanded-paper look and want to go around sanding everything now.

Also pleased with myself because I figured out how to put the tag on the card so that it could be easily removed to use as a bookmark (as per a friend's request who wanted to buy some from me). You wouldn't believe how hard it is to find directions to do such a thing! I found plenty of entries for crafters selling cards with removable bookmarks, but some were perforated and the rest didn't share how they'd accomplished such a thing. For this novice that was a little discouraging. So I'm telling what I did to create a removable tag on a card:
--decided where on the card I wanted the tag to lay
--placed a strip of double-sided tape ON THE CARD (not the tag) where the tag should go
--placed a slightly larger strip of removable tape on top of the double-sided strip, with the removable tape sticky-side UP
Then the tag can be placed on the strip of removable tape and pulled off at will. Really not so hard, but boy was I pleased with myself to come up with that! (Full confession: the first time I placed the tape strips on the back of the tag rather than on the card. Ah well.)

Thoughts on "Beginnings" of All Kinds

Our challenge topic for November/December is "beginnings", put forth by myself. We are taking two months to do it with all the holidays, Thanksgiving travel, etc. I am making lots of Xmas cards and trying not to stress myself out too much. My mind keeps saying that I "should" be doing lots of things, but I try to cut that off right away and just enjoy playing around with different things.

I am amazed at how fast the transition has been for me from following very detailed instructions to create a clearly defined end result to just playing around and seeing where it takes me. Really, I thought that would be much harder for me to do! I think that all the projects and reading I've done have really paid off, which is how I typically do things--immerse myself in information for a while, then I surface and start synthesizing what I've learned to execute it in my own way. From somewhere I have gained a lot of confidence that I didn't have just a few months ago.

One of the things I did that has produced some lovely embellishments to use on my Xmas cards was to make some monoprints with alcohol inks on glossy white paper (I think I used red pepper, oregano, and the gold metallic mixative). I thought they might work as background panels for something else, but they didn't, so I then put some gold peel-off stickers I got in England last summer on them. They looked nice but like stickers put on paper (which they were, of course!), so I put Glossy Accents over the exposed parts, and they really look quite nice now.

With all the coupons Michael's has been handing out the last few weeks, I've been adding some neat things to my inventory. One is the Sophisticated Finishes Patina set, which I'm dying to play with but may not get to until after the holidays (sob). An idea for one of next year's Xmas cards is to cut a big Xmas tree with upturned corners, patina it, and punch holes to hang little ornaments from on tiny jump rings. Or, maybe, just do the tree as is once it's patina'd--embellish it by putting a star on top or something.

Anyway, about beginnings:
--One idea would be to do a collage with many different images of beginnings on it--January calendar, blank book (3D element), wedding ring or announcement, graduation picture, clock or timepiece of some sort, etc. This could be good practice for identifying a focal element and arranging different items, and it would be fun to use the different media for blending things together, especially now that I have the encaustic medium.
--I really like the idea that a beginning is also an ending and have found it very hard, in fact, to separate beginning from ending when thinking about this challenge. It would be another mixed-media piece, but maybe I could fashion a Mobius strip out of something, perhaps with words or a quote written along it?
--I also thought of doing a sunrise somehow, maybe in Art Deco fashion and tearing strips of paper to serve as the sunrise. This would be a landscape-oriented piece.
--I could make it personal and do a collage of beginnings for me: first house I remember, anything else significant. Must admit this seems the least interesting of all so far though.
--Some artistic representation of the beginning of a fractal--see quotes below. Now that could be quite fun!

Quotes about beginnings that might be interesting to muse over:
--The beginnings of things, of a world especially, is necessarily vague, tangled, chaotic, and exceedingly disturbing. ~ Kate Chopin
--"In my beginning is my end." ~ T.S. Eliot
--"Play is the beginning of knowledge." George Dorsey
--"Solitude is the beginning of all freedom." William Orville Douglas
--"At the earliest drawings of the fractal curve, few clues to the underlying mathematical structure will be seen." Ian Malcolm

1 July 2008, on plane to England

Notes on Somerset Studio Gallery Summer ‘08:

p. 32 “I think my luck stems from my ability to search and find items I can build a story on.”
Good idea—start with an object and build a narrative around it. Create something that fits into the narrative and uses the object. Put the story on the back.

Xmas ornaments p. 38
Sandwich two images back to back and enclose between glass slides. Wrap with silver tape and apply Stickles over the tape. Wrap with wire to form a hangar. Attach wire with beads to bottom.

p. 52 “Legend”
Attach smaller canvas with hinges to a larger one. Add a handle. Hang two tags from bottom.

p. 58 Create a collage like this using Kayleigh’s face. Handtint the photo.

p. 73 I’m really interesting in trying the encaustic medium. Must ask Joy if she has any—she always mentions encaustic. Try it on Claybord. Can buy from rfpaints.com and at Jerry’s Artarama.

Maybe a biweekly challenge is the thing to suggest to A. Alternate picking the theme.

Really like using miniatures on a large canvas—see “Enchanted Garden” p. 77