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.

Stalled and Figuring Out How to Escape

I am stalled on my holiday cards, which is a real shame because I have bits & pieces of works-in-progress scattered all over my desk and the dining table. It's driving me nuts! So tonight I realized what I need to do is blog about it to help figure out WHY exactly I am stalled and HOW in the heck I'm going to get out of this. I want to do some other things, but I am disciplined enough to not start any other projects while these are unfinished (also, I would have nowhere to put new materials!), but I find myself avoiding the situation instead of buckling down and getting them done.



Why is that, I finally asked myself this afternoon? I was hoping that this year I'd be more efficient with my holiday card-making (the only time of the year I ever make cards), but it is turning into a slog. Part of the problem is having to create materials from scratch. Some of the cards use die-cuts (store-bought) of Tim Holtz' grungeboard, but often only one of an item comes in the package, so if I want, say, three of something, I either have to buy another whole package to get one element (NOT an option), or I have to use the punched-out piece as a stencil, trace the shape on a new piece of grungeboard, and then cut it out. That's not fun, I don't like doing it, and that's a large part of what I'm avoiding.

So, in the future, what I need to understand is that I am simply not going to make multiples of something if I have to do that. I thought making just a couple extra wouldn't be a big deal, but it turns out it is. At least now I recognize that and can apply to future holiday seasons.

I also need to have giant inking sessions. It's a pain in the neck to get everything out & put it back all the time, plus it takes forever to scrub the ink off my fingers. I'd rather do it all at once, because I do like doing it, just not the cleaning up so many times.


Good, that's two big things dealt with. Now I need a plan to prod myself back into action and wrap this stuff up by next weekend. I think it's doable, but it will take some work on my part. Maybe an incentive as to what I can do when I'm finished would be a good idea? Not a bad thought, I believe. Will have to ponder what it could be. . . .

Back from Vacation

Today the kids and I got back into town from a wonderful couple of weeks spent at my parents' place in rural Kansas. It is always a restorative trip for me and the children too. I never do get much time to actually do things of my own, so I have learned not to lug along a whole lot of stuff thinking I'm going to get to play more than at home, but I think the enforced break is a good thing. There is also usually a visit to either the Utrecht store or Creative Coldsnow's Westport location, both in Kansas City. I was quite pleased this visit to find the Golden Van Dyck Brown in fluid acrylics there, which I have been looking for--I know I could order it online, but it's just so much more fun to pick it up in a store and walk out with it.



As I said, I didn't get to play with actual materials much, but I did manage to find some time here and there to do some of the projects in Susan Tuttle's book Digital Expressions; the images with this blog post are a couple of the results. The building is the one-room schoolhouse that my grandfather attended as a boy; it's just down the road from my parents' farm. The other abstract image was lots of fun to play with, and there were no brushes to wash up afterwards!



I did spend some time thinking about what I want to do over the next few months and realized that I don't have any free time if I do everything. One decision I need to make is whether to sell any holiday cards this year. If I do, I need to get cracking on those, get them posted up on my shop site, and fulfill the orders pronto. I also have to decide if I'm really going to offer an after-school book arts class at my son's school in the fall. (I offered it halfway through the spring but it didn't make.) That's going to take some work to pull together as well.

Other projects in my pipeline are doing something with the painted papers I did before leaving on vacation and finishing the Renaissance triptych book that's been lurking for some time now. I also saw something in the latest Cloth Paper Scissors (I think) that I would like to send in an entry for--a book limited to no more than 6x6", if I remember correctly.

I was also contemplating what to do with the 7gypsies printer's tray I got recently (shame to let those Archiver's coupons go to waste, even if I don't know what I'm going to do with something yet), and I thought it might be fun to do some of the ideas from Mixed Media Self-Portraits and do one in each tray. That's a pretty large undertaking--unless I purposely made myself do it in time limitations. Guess it depends on why I decide to do the project--practice doing instead of thinking, or really delve into the self-portrait concept . . .

And on top of all those things, I forgot to mention that I wish to finish the projects in the online Complex Collage class that Julie Prichard & Chris Cozen are offering . . .

Much to think about, and much to do!

"Bathtime" is completed

So pleased that I finished "Bathtime"! Got it done in time for my private showing :-) with two friends on Wednesday last week, who came over to have wine by candlelight and talk about what we are working on.

The background began with a layer of Daniel Smith's gold gesso, then a layer of Mars Black Heavy Body acrylic (using bottle caps to protect the areas that were to be bubbles), then clear granular gel. After that I started painting with interference blue, violet, and a touch of red. I used gel medium to get the iridescent glass balls to stick initially and then dropped Crystal Lacquer onto them to make sure they stayed. I finished it off with layers of gel medium, including one tinted with Phthalo Blue (Red Shade) that really helped to unify everything.

The inset panel is aquabord, image stamped with dye ink, background originally chroma jewel watercolor sprays from Stamp Zia, then gel medium on top, acrylic paint on top of that, and finally 4-5 layers of clear tar gel. I am pleased with the result even though I originally envisioned this as a much darker piece. But I did lots of fun things (using the gold gesso for one) and got to play with neat textures and interference paints. Love those!

My friends liked it a lot--said the different textures all worked, loved the effect of the interference paints under the layers of gel medium and clear tar gel, liked the brushstrokes, loved the way it looked different under different levels of lighting . . . all in all a good reaction.

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Separate revelation: I realized that I don't really think visually, so what I am doing messing around with all this stuff??? Sigh.

Ongoing Projects

I have so many things to do I thought I'd better make a list:

1. Finish "Bathtime" piece
This requires continued messing around with it. I think I am on the right track--this evening I painted interference violet and blue paints over both the clear granular gel and the black background, and it ended up reminding me of wisps of steam rising up in a hot bathroom. The rivulets of clear granular gel remind me of the condensation that forms on the mirrors and drips down. I think the "bubbles" are going to work out all right with the glass balls over them, but I'm not sure yet. Should I put some kind of border around the circles--and if so, what in the world would it be? And how to adhere the balls to the piece is yet to be decided. I am going to need to paint some overall covering over everything too, and I need to decide what that will be (soft gel, heavy gel, gloss/matte/satin, etc.). Finally I have to decide how to integrate the nude woman panel into the whole thing. Using glass mosaic pieces at the corner of both the small panel and the large one does a good job, but I need to decide if I should add some blue & purple swirls into the fog at the bottom of the inset panel, or if I should add just a few streaks of interference red paint to the larger background panel. Or what the heck--maybe both!

2. Finish two fairy canvases
I have the idea of wrapping each with wire and having crystals strung on the wire. That's also how I could attach the bottle with glass shards inside to the piece. Also need to put a couple of layers of gel medium over them.

3. Complete house accordion book
The cover is done and the signatures are sewn in, but I need to add text to them. I think I'm going to put stuff in from Alain de Botton's The Architecture of Happiness. I need to decide what the test is, lay it out on the page, and execute it.

4. Complete Renaissance women's triptych
The triptych itself is done, but I need to make a final decision on the paper for the signatures, choose the embroidery thread for sewing the signatures, create and add text & illustrations to the signatures, and sew them in (must also choose beads to cover the spine sewings). I think I'm going to use the Katherine Phillips poems, because its weirdness is useful to demonstrate the small box that women used to beat their wings against, some more successfully than others.

5. Finish off the little blizzard books I made a few weeks ago. They need covers (or to be incorporated into something larger) and text on the pages. I haven't thought about these much so am not sure where I'm going to go with them.

I'd really like to wrap up these projects so I can think about the new book styles I want to try and also figure out some different ways to use the beautiful chiyogami papers I received for my birthday last week. I am now a proud members of those in their forties! And happy to be there.

Paint-Sample Album

Tonight I made one of the books out of Re-bound--the paint-sample album--with an eye towards doing it in the book arts workshop I might teach at my son's school (if anyone signs up for it!). It took me about an hour and a half from beginning to end, so if I want to do the whole thing in one session for the workshop, I am going to have to prepare some of the materials ahead of time--probably cutting the paint samples and sheets would be the obvious thing to do. I wanted to use this as an opportunity to get them familiar with using a paper trimmer though; maybe I'll figure out where I can fit that into an earlier class and just save them until we are ready to assemble the book. That's a good idea . . .

I didn't have the right hardware for the top so had to use brads until I can make a list to get the right stuff. It looks pretty cute and I think everyone will like the hinge on the top cover. I made some mistakes and judgment errors, which is good--I'll be able to point them out in class and use them to demonstrate certain things.

It was fun to go start-to-finish on something. Having the possibility of leading this workshop in front of me is doing wonders for my activity in the studio. I always did work better with deadlines!

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