ArtFest and SB page, next installment

My second ArtFest class was "Fabric Paint Party" with Lisa Engelbrecht, which I was frankly a little afraid of. Lisa Engelbrecht is a wonderful calligrapher; her work seems very polished and elegant, which I knew I could not do. (Personally, I don't feel I'm a "polished and elegant" sort of person, in life or in my art.) Lisa Engelbrecht's website gallery, with examples of her work, is here... go check it out! But as I found out, there was no need to be intimidated at all- Lisa was very welcoming and gracious, and really, it was all about experimenting with the materials and paints, to see what would happen... now that, I can do! haha! The pic above is my workspace, partway through the day. These materials are ones I've never really worked with at all; liquid inks with very intense colors, walnut ink crystals, pigment powders, things like that. It was really a lot of fun, and the element of the unknown was definitely part of it-- you could never be sure what would happen when you painted the ink on the fabric, or what it would look like when it dried. Our class project "goal" was to make fabric pages and a cover, to sew into a fabric book with pages featuring words of things we love. (mine isn't done yet, but after looking at the pics here again, I really do think I need to get it out and finish it!) Here are some of my classmates; we laid our pieces out on the tables multiple times throughout the day, so everyone could take a look and see how each of us was interpreting the directions. (it was a beautiful day, so we also draped some of our pieces on the open windowsill to dry; thank goodness it wasn't very windy!)

And for a change of pace, these two pics are not class-related; they are of our dinner companions, who would come and join us every evening during the dinner service.

They were so docile, they were seriously less than 10 feet away from the patio, and would just hang out, keeping us company while we enjoyed our dinner inside the cafeteria... very pretty!!

Tthis is a closeup of the piece of fabric that will eventually become the cover of my book. We worked with all kinds of mark-making materials, not just brushes-- twigs, bamboo skewers, ink droppers, etc. And, all kinds of materials to color the fabric- liquid inks, markers, gesso, and some luxurious pigment powders I've never used before, called "Schminke" powders. (seriously, you need to click on this link; just the photograph of the containers is great!)

These powders were so light and fluffy, it was almost like working with powdered sugar. You would sprinkle them onto the wet paint or ink, and they would settle in the most wonderful, shiny, sparkly patterns. (the picture above does not do it justice at all; you'll just have to get some and try it for yourself; I definitely would love to have some in my art materials!)

These two pictures are two of my finished pages-- the page above has a bit of stenciling on with oil pastels (the pink squares), some sparkly gel pen (the heart), and my first attempt at "calligraphy" type writing.The page below is more "organic" and is more of my favorite subtle blues and greens. It got a bit too wet while I was working on it, unfortunately, so the writing ran a bit, but I still like how it turned out. I may add some paper and other collage materials to my pages before I finish them-- I can't leave my beloved paper out entirely, now, can I?? :D

Below is the SB layout I made for this class- again, I didn't want the papers or page design to overwhelm the colorful photographs, and hopefully, they don't. The background is a light grey, and since most of the pictures have teal/purple in, I chose purples as accent colors (with a little shot of yellow- the opposite of purple on the color wheel- to brighten it up). This is another Alison Davis page design, with a few changes- my photos are larger, and I replaced one of the background strips with the fabric squares. When I first designed this page, the black strip was horizontal, but I just couldn't get the photos to work on it that way. I tried-- believe me; I tried!! (again, it gets frustrating when I can't get a page to work.) It finally hit me to turn the page 90 degrees, and then it worked:

So really, if I was to show you the sketch, the only things you'd probably recognize from it are the long strip with the sewing and the background strips... the photo arrangement, title and journaling placement, etc. was all changed to work with my photos. That's the beauty of sketches-- they give you someplace to "start from" but you can still modify them as needed, so your page ends up looking like "you" in the end.

The area in the close-up could have been a title block, I suppose, but since I put the title down the side, I ended up just using this area to feature some of the actual pieces of fabric made in the class. We all made a few pieces of extra fabric, cut them up into pieces, and traded them with the other students in class. I still have more pieces of painted fabric... hmmm, now what to do with them? (after I finish making my book, of course!)

ArtFest SB layout (and another recap!)

okay, so this recap is technically a bit of a re-run (so to speak). Remember this class? Lush Layered Canvas with Roxanne Padgett, where we painted, scribbled, stenciled, and stamped on fabric? See photo below of my table during class. (click here if you want to head to Roxanne's blog, to see what artsy things she's been up to.) (My previous post about it is here, if you want a refresher, and more fun photographs of lush layered colors and patterns. ) because after all, Roxanne's motto is "fear no color" and she does not!! her work is FULL of colors and layers that just draw you in and make you look at it again to see what else you can find in it. During the class, I took photos of some of my pieces while they were in progress... I blew this one up and changed it to B&W. I printed it on the copier, and ended up using it as background paper on the SB page I made about this class- how cool is that?!? (see my finished page below.)

FYI, the page background is white, so that's why it looks kinda funny-- the 12x12 white background didn't photograph all that well, but it really isn't a randomly-shaped page, I promise. I wanted to let the photographs be the focus, so I didn't want to use too many patterns and colors elsewhere on the page, but when I found the paper with my own pattern on, I couldn't resist. I added two different washes of blue acrylic paint over the B&W pattern, then ran upstairs to the SB Cottage bathroom so I could dry it with my hair dryer. (I was way too impatient to let them dry by themselves- haha!) I added the scalloped pattern by punching circles out of some collage pages I bought from Teesha Moore (while I was there), so this page is a "complete ArtFest" creation, with the help of an Alison Davis scrapbook sketch for the general page layout (I love these sketches-- I personally like having a "starting point" for a SB page layout). I'm on a roll, so come back soon for another ArtFest recap!

street art SB page(s)

I knew when I took the graffiti photos a few weeks ago that I wanted to scrapbook them, and very quickly, I found the exactly perfect paper for it- yay! love when that happens!! (the skyline paper below). I knew that somehow I wanted to get the urban, paint-y feel to my pages, too. And I also knew I had a lot of pictures I wanted to use but didn't want to crop them at all, so wasn't sure how to do it. Enter the 2 peas in a bucket website, and their monthly class (with Shimelle Laine!), 4x6 photo love. This layout is the result- sort of a "page-and-a-half" layout, with a sneaky trick to it: it looks like just one page, doesn't it?? But look closer-- it's not!

It's really a 2-page layout (almost), as seen above. (the page protectors are supposed to be sewn together on the edge, too- I just haven't gotten my sewing machine out yet.) The link to the class is here: August 4x6 photo love: how to get (8) 4x6 pages onto a layout. (besides being useful, the classes are fun to watch; there's always a couple layouts along with a video for every month, which I love-- it's always fun to see someone else's process for making a scrapbooking layout.)

Close-up of the skyline with title. I cut the skyline out of the patterned paper and applied it to my base paper. After trying the title stickers out, I decided it was too dark for the red stickers on by themselves, so I lightened it up with a bit of gesso as a "background" for title.

I also tried out my spray inks on these pages, to give them sort of a "messy, gritty" kind of look. Not sure how successful I was at it; I think I may have overdone it a little, but it looks okay. (I really need to remember to stop right before I add that last thing, to let the layout percolate a little before I keep going with it.)

I do love the papers I chose for this layout; gray cardstock, and patterned paper from the Basic Grey Wander line; usually I think their patterns are somewhat overwhelming, but I think it totally works here. The staples work, too... and the fact that I had problems with the stapler just adds to the "urban" feel, right? lol!) I quite like the way this came out; the fact that the "title" area" is above all the photos and tricks the eye is a lot of fun... even though I did ruin a couple page protectors (okay, three, actually) trying to trim them down to the right height, I think I'll definitely use this layout idea again.

I do have quite a few more graffiti photos I want to scrap, so you'll be seeing more of them soon. (not sure about the spray ink, though- that might take some practicing before I break it out again!)

life (and death) in the AZ desert {garden}

So, life in the AZ desert isn't all art journaling and scrapbooking... not hardly! Gardening is hard sometimes, even in the desert--you'd think that cacti and succulents would be pretty no-care and hardy, wouldn't you?? But that isn't always the case, as we just found out, in a pretty disheartening way... This is a picture of one of our favorite garden plants, a Blue Agave (the plant used to make tequila). It was given to us by a friend; when we planted it, it was probably only a foot and a half tall. It grew into a very impressive plant-- the photo above is from 2009 (I couldn't find any newer), and it had grown quite a bit since then. I'd say it was about 5 feet tall and at least 5 feet in diameter earlier this summer; after the saguaro, it was the main focal plant of our front yard. A couple months ago, we took at least 6-8 young plants (pups) off of it, to give it more room to grow. And then last month, this happened. We wondered: did we nick the roots when we dug up the pups?? did we not water it enough?? did we over-water it?? We had no idea. Then, it got worse: A couple days ago, Tom wiggled it from the center "growing stalk" and it tipped right over... there was nothing left under it at all!!

In talking to a friend of his, Tom found out what had happened: Our agave had been attacked. By a nasty bug called the agave snout weevil. The picture above is a close-up of (what used to be) the crown of the plant (it smelled horrible, by the way-- like rotting vegetables, or garbage). Turns out, the smell was from bacterial growth that started when the adult weevil drilled into the leaves to lay eggs; after that, the crown of the plant had been totally decimated by the larvae. Tom did the difficult (and very sad) job last night of cutting it up and putting it in the trash. It was quite awful, actually-- not only could you could see the larvae working their way through the plant base, but you could actually hear them chewing! ick!! honestly, it makes my skin crawl just thinking about it!! From what I've read on the internet, this pest is a difficult one to fight; apparently that's why you don't see many agave specimens that are more than about 5 years old. (which is about the age ours was, unfortunately.)

Regular gardening mishaps usually don't phase me: sometimes plants die; you re-plant, and go from there. But this one feels different-- more disheartening and more "personal" somehow, knowing it wasn't anything we did that caused it. I'll never look at a glass of tequila in the same way again, actually. (and I definitely won't ever eat the worm!)