Spaghetti confetti collge

I went to Art is You in Minneapolis last month and met Lori Sparkly Franklin.  I had just seen her work in Somerset Apprentice magazine and was excited by her artwork. http://sparkly-heart.blogspot.com.  Her personality was lovely and I spent a bit of time enjoying her work.  Anyway, I came home from the retreat and couldn't wait to try one of her confetti spaghetti collages.  I plan to do another one really soon.

Ikea Raskog hack

My art room is FULL!  I've been trying to find a way to get my paints in the same area near my desk. I've seen the Ikea Raskog cart RÅSKOG Utility cart  $29.99 Unit price on several artist sites and decided that I could squeeze one more thing into my room if it would hold all of my paints and inks and art mediums.  I purchased the cart and spent the hour putting it together (maybe not that long, but enough time to know that I wish I could buy it already assembled).

I had it filled completely in no time and still had a significant amount of paints and mediums left over.   I began to look for containers that would stack and give me more space but I couldn't come up with the right combination that would be useful.  I looked through Ikea catalog and found a small file cabinet whose dimensions would fit inside the cart.  LENNART Drawer unit  $14.99 Unit price

I purchased the file cabinet, put it together and WHAT!!!!! It wouldn't fit in the cart.  After tinkering with it a bit, I realized that I could make it fit on the outside, plus I would still be able to store things on the top.  Yay, yay, yay!!! Here it is put together.

Here is a closeup of the bolts

Here is the cart partially filled with paints and mediums.  I think it's a winner!

We were on Martha's Vineyard this summer and saw the President playing golf. Yes, the President of the United States, Mr. Barak Obama!!!!  Talk about excited!!!  When he gave a shout out, you'd have thought he called me by name!

Lunar Eclipse

Last night, I ran outside and took a picture of the lunar eclipse.  It was incredible to see the red moon.  I was in Michigan, visiting my mom and did not have my tripod.  This would have been a very funny post if someone had taken a picture of me trying to hold the camera still.

Autumn collages

Last month, I attended an art retreat in Madison, WI.  The women from a Tracy Verdugo workshop were invited to spend a weekend playing.  I decided to use that time to try a technique I'd seen on the internet that was similar to an artist called Finnabair.  The process requires you to coat lots of small items with gesso, add them to your substrate and then spray with color sprays to bring color back in.

On our way to Wisconsin, my gigantic can of gesso opened in my carry bag.  What a mess!  I had lunch by the lake and picked up some natural items that I coated with gesso. I coated lots of other materials with gesso and put them on the collage.  The altoid tin on the right opens to reveal another fall scene, with brighter colors.  I then sprayed them with several colors of color sprays and highlighted with soft waxes.  The base is a sheet of metal covered with sheet music.

Celebrate

This is a collage that I made while preparing for a foot surgery.  I love this dancer image from Local King rubber stamps.  I was thinking about how great it will feel to dance once the long recovery is over.

When I haven't posted on my blog in a while, I feel the need to explain the absence. There's no good reason or special explanation, I just haven't put anything out there.  So with the new year comes new resolutions to post more.  Here's a new post with my first finished artwork for 2013.  This is a mixed media piece where I enjoyed making the background with paper and acrylic paints and then adding "stuff" from my art table.  I used the deer from a die cut on my Christmas cards this year and there were a couple just sitting there that went perfectly in that opening.

IOCSA Calendar Swap

 I was involved in a calendar swap through one of my Yahoo groups.  I was honored to do the cover and I enjoyed the challenge of trying to use as many different kinds of supplies.  There is paint, inks, sprays, die cuts, acetate, paper, metal, wax, color pencil, fabric, stitching, and loads of other supplies that were used on the cover.  After thinking about how much effort I put into the cover, I thought... "that's silly, every page will be open or a month EXCEPT the cover."  Oh well,  I also had the month of May - below.

In the Northern states, we usually wait until May to plant our annuals.  I was thinking about gardening and getting back outside during May and found this quote among one of my stamps.  The die cut of the branch tree is one of my favorites and last year I took some pictures so I could put myself in the chair.  It came in handy for this calendar page.

I hope everyone who received one of my pages will enjoy them.  I sure love the ones I received in return.

Uncle Marv's Anniversary gift

Uncle Marvin sent us 2 handmade wine glasses and a new marble cheese board as well as some beautiful cheese knives.  I guess he wanted us to celebrate our anniversary in a special way, so we did!

Lady With Wine

It took me a long time to finish his young lady with wine.  I started some time in August and now it is October.  I think I am the slowest artist alive.  I have lots of unfinished art objects in my collection and this morning I decided to finish this one.  The best part, the hanger is already manufactured on the back.  I can hang it today.

 I found some metal calendars at a fantastic price.  I was hoping to use them for some family Christmas photos, so I wanted to make sure I could glue paper over it without the original layer lifting.  I gesso'd the whole calendar.  I had some garbage rings laying on my desk where I had cut apart a binder.  I laid those into gesso to get some texture.  After the gesso dried,  I had some wine glass napkins laying around so I glued one onto the bottom of the calendar.  I got out my sketching pencil and drew in the woman and her hair.  It was funny that her face shape was similar to the wine glass shape and her hair was from the circles I had pressed into the gesso.  YAY!  I wanted to put a dress on the woman, so I sketched that in but couldn't see it.  So I used more gesso to cover the rest of the napkin.

 I stopped working on the piece for months when it was at this stage.  I was clueless what to do with her.  I liked it so far, but I knew I wanted to put wine glasses on the page too.  Clenching my teeth this week, I promised myself to finish it before starting on another project.   Here are some closeups of some parts of this artwork.

Imagine a dream

New art that started out as an experiment.  This was a black frame with white writing all over it and a 6x6 opening in the middle.  I gessoed over the writing making lots of texture and leaving some parts of the original frame showing through.  Then I put it away for about a month.  I took it out again and painted some colors onto it.  I stuck it in a closet for at least six months.

The other day I was experimenting with some watercolor art and made the piece in the center.  I remembered the frame and went back to work on the frame, adding lots of mixed media to marry the frame and the watercolor.

 Close up of the watercolor piece.

 Close up of the floral stencil to the left.

Close up of the sun on the right

 New place of honor in my home art gallery

Colors of the flowers on my deck.  Do you suppose this is where the inspiration for the new artwork began?

Traditions

Every year, we start our preparations for the annual barbeque by making the barbeque book.  This book holds the to-do lists, recipes, planning, hotel accommodations, shopping lists, etc.  I used to keep everything in one notebook but one year decided to decorate the notebook.  Now, it is how I get the ball rolling.   This time the book is made from fabric that I monoprinted, stamped, doodled and free-motion stitched.  I would give you a peek inside, but then you would know all of our secrets.....

We also love to punish ourselves by painting the deck every year.  Every year we say that the deck looks fine, but then we change our minds and pull out the paint brushes.  You'd think that we would hire out this job, but some of us (Harrison) just doesn't feel right if he can't take on some kind of home repair project before the bbq.

Number One Son always gets assigned as helper.  Some traditions never go away.

Kitchen Cabinet project

 We do a lot of cooking at our house and realized that our cabinets have taken quite a beating.  Here is a picture of some of the damage, mainly in the area of the kitchen sink.  Most people are kind enough not to notice when they are over, but we were getting pretty disgusted.  I went to Home Depot and Menards and bought a couple of markers that were supposed to fill in and blend, but they did not work.  So, I called several cabinet restorers and received bids between $800 and 1700.00 to repair.

As I was mulling over what everyone said about how they would refinish the cabinets, I thought about an old trick I had used on some furniture nicks before.  Good old Sharpie Markers.  I decided to give it one more try using the supplies in my CRAFT ROOM!  I pulled out several colors and chose a small drawer.  I used several colors and carefully colored in each little nick, making sure to blend the area so that one color was not highlighted.  Then I realized that it was going to take forever, especially on the bigger areas of the cabinet doors.  I made a couple of mistakes with the markers and remembered that the Ranger Alcohol Blending solution cleans up permanent ink.  While I was getting out the blending solution that is stored with my alcohol inks, I thought that maybe I could use the alcohol inks for the bigger areas.  I had some inks from probably 10+ years ago and decided to try them.  They worked great but dried quickly, so I had to use lots of blending solution to soften the big blotchy areas.   

After much time on my hands and knees, and a trip to Michaels for the Minwax wood seal and finish, my kitchen cabinets look new again.  I got so carried away that I did the wood legs on the kitchen chairs too. Yesterday, we had 4 different people stop by and say they did not see any difference between the ones I finished and the others.  HOORAY!!!!!  

Here are the finished cabinets.  Under the bright lights, you can see the places that were really badly damaged, but I promise that in natural light with the naked eye, they look very natural.

Repaired

Damaged

Decorative Screen repair

The photo above is the new addition to our screen door that leads to the deck.  Sorry about the poor picture.  It was hard to shoot into the sun.  Next is a picture of the screen door before I jazzed it up.  I repaired the screen next to the handle with some duct tape.  I thought I did a decent job, but hubby said, no way!  So, I thought to make something decorative to cover the duct tape.

 I rolled out a huge sheet of clay, made a paper template of the area to be covered and cut it out.

Then, I stamped it all over and added mica powder to the raw clay.

I cut out some house shapes and baked it in the oven.  I made 2 - one for each side of the screen door.
I had to trim it a bit to fit and make some adjustments, but I love that we have a creative piece of art that is functional and decorative... Quite proud of myself!

I couldn't let those yummy backgrounds just sit without adding more to them.  I got out my spraypaints and stencils and added the swirls and blocks.

It was too stark, so I toned it down with some white and yellow paints.

 Close up of the texture.

The original writing underneath was a story about the start of our annual barbeque.  I sketched in the basic outline of a figure.  Also, I have printed off some pictures and want to add them, so I blocked off some areas that looked like a city scape.  More to come....

 There was also that other canvas.  I added some loose circles in the corner.  Will see where this one goes too.

Three bottles of paint

I started off the day trying to use up 3 bottles of paint that I got for a great price last summer.  They take up too much room in my paint drawer and so I want them gone.  Fortunately, I had 2 canvases from a garage sale that I thought I could use up the paint on backgrounds.   
So, I smeared the paint around with a credit card.  I put a lot on this one and left it in the sun to dry.

 Then I started on the next one.  Here was the original piece of art and it is very pretty.  I almost hate to cover it up, but... I wanted to play.

 The first thing I did to this one was to write all over the background with a blue Sharpie.

 Then I smeared some paint on with the credit card.

 I decided to drip the white paint...

 Then smeared it with the card again.

 So, I went back to the first one and saw these groovy cracks in the paint.  I liked that.  I think it cracked because today's temperature is over 90 degrees.

 I still had lots more paint, so I squeezed an s shape in white paint

 Then I smeared it around in a curvy fashion.

 I decided it needed some paper and had this calendar that didn't get used.  It's already June for goodness sake.  What else could this be used for?

 So, I adhered some of the pages and some die cuts to the painting and let dry.

 I looked at the first painting and started rubbing some paint away.  LOVED the texture.  I may do some more of that.

 I had some die cuts of flowers and decided I wanted to add them to the painting.  I was only going to do a few...  I got carried away.

 Here are the two side by side.  I was going to stop here for the day, but there was still way too much paint in the bottles.  I really liked that bottom of the 2nd one with the yellow showing through.

 So, I grabbed some yellow paint and smeared it on the background.

 I started getting this yummy texture.

 I think I am going to do something different to the bottom, so I kind of left it alone. I can still see some of the paper I added.  I think I am finished with this one for today.

Back to the small one with all the flowers.

 More paint is needed!

I got some great textures.

 You can still see some of the flowers

 And I added some random dots in the corner,

 Here's the background on this one...  Finished for today
 
And here are my hands,  Ready for a new manicure this week.