What does Sunne Spot Studio look like?

What does a drop-in community art studio look like? How does it work?
Well, start here:

It began as a plain room. I added some tables. And bureaus to hold lots of paper, glue and scissors. :)Then I wanted a special table to accomodate the making of ATCs

So a good carpenter friend came to build one.Here it is finished with lots of layers of polyurethane on it.

It has shelves below to hold all of the paint, and rubber stamps, and paper punches.They are filling up fast. We artists need lots of ways to express ourselves, y'know.

Today I tried out that back table - to see if it worked. I need some party favors for my real life Grand Opening Party on Sunday the 13th ,as well as for my virtual birthday blog party next Wednesday(!!)

I laid out my cards...

Painted them with gesso...

Then painted them with acrylic paint...

And then a little more paint... the freezer paper underneath gets pretty painted up too.

I have them all resting now, drying overnight. We'll see what they look like tomorrow, and then I'll get to adding lots of juicy accoutrements. Drawings too, and maybe go through my stash of wonderful art quotes.

Please do drop in tomorrow and I can get you going on your own set of ATCs - remember: this week is our free, trial-run week so you can make art for free. 8:30 - Noon.

This is one of my favorite quotes recently:

"Don't ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive." - Howard Thurman

Progress in the Sunne Spot Studio

Well, haven't we been busy...

I have been having little moving parties into the Studio, and just this week I had a carpenter friend build me a wonderful ATC table along the back wall. Artist Trading Cards have been such a fun project in the past couple of years that I decided to dedicate a specific part of Sunne Spot to making them. Along the 17 foot table there will be a station for painting (which can also be used for painting art journal pages and canvas), then a station for rubber stamping - and just below the workspace there is a shelf that will hold the chests of stamps. On down the line there is space for collaging - with a collection of magazines and some gluesticks below, and also a place for making and adding paper punches to one's ATC (or greeting card, or collage) - with a full stash of punches in their chests on the shelf below.

I am busy putting layers of polyurethane on the new back bench and the two big work tables (freshly sanded by the aforementioned wonderful carpenter). Then I can place the supplies and we are ready to go!

I took some "before" pictures and then forgot to bring the camera home with me. >sigh<

A lot on my mind, I guess.

And then I will take some "after" pictures. Good.

We have a Free Drop-In Week coming up, (a whole week of free studio time!) and I hope that all of you who are nearby will come to our Grand Opening Party on June 13th.

Belfast ATCs and other news

I had a lovely time yesterday at Natasia's Belfast, Maine Library ATC Swap. I arrived only a couple of minutes late and the room was jumping! I met lots of old and not quite so old friends ... Peggy, and Rachel and Laura and Chris. I got a wonderful trade from the girls at skipthechips. I made a couple of packing tape transfers with the group and finally found out that I have a tendency to rub too hard and take off the ink as well as the paper! I made a few cards and have a stack of half-made cards to work on later.

If you want to trade for one of the three atcs just send me an email: robinsunne@robinsunne.com.

We will trade addresses and get these babies on their way!

I am not at all sure why these last two pictures uploaded sideways ... it isn't the way they are oriented within my photo program or on my desktop ... very odd ... my electronics take on a mind of their own!

Anyway: a thrilling surprise showed up in my mailbox: amazon.com has just taken on the listing of my two books! Now the wierd thing about this is that both their listings for Nannee and The Great Library ATC Swap are more expensive than the places where I regularly sell them, because they have to make their cut, you know. So I will recommend etsy for Nannee and lulu for GLAS, but I really appreciate being tagged by amazon and hope to publish again in the future in a way that works out even better for our partnership.

My next book out is a picture book about Chang E. She is the Lady of the Moon and presides over the Chinese and Viet Namese Festival of the Full Moon in September. I actually wrote the book years ago for our local Full Moon Festival. My job now is to prepare it for print.

With sewing in between for meditation.

(And I was going to give you a peek at the latest, but now my camera has decided to glitch!! How does a card lock and how does one unlock it??) (I'll find out and get back to you.)

ATC Birthday Party Success!!

Well, that was So. Much. Fun!

I had birthday wishes from old friends (24 years and counting), newer friends, folks I've only met once, and people I've never met at all from western Maine to Northern Ireland to New Zealand with CO, MS, VA, and GA in between.

WOW!! It was great! A couple of people talked to me about doing it them selves for their own birthdays. I would highly recomend it. I just put my pictures here on my blog and then sent out a couple of notices to two yahoo groups that I am in, (ATCs and unschooling) and a select group from my address book - all folks who appreciate the finer - and smaller - things in life.

I am sending out 20 cards actually. Some friends didn't ask for a card, but I was feeling so happy and full that I just kept addressing envelopes.

Thank you all very much. I had a great day!

Happy Birthday!!

It's my birthday! I am going to give out party favors: I have started my day in the best possible way, lazing around in bed until nearly 5:00 then a couple of hours playing with some of my June ATCs. Now it is time for the presents! I will show you some of my artistic endeavors and then you can write to me - robinsunne@robinsunne.com - and I will send you whichever one you tell me to! I wish you all a great day!

Here is Postage Stamp Landscape:

And: Inner Peace (non-violence):

Sharing Our Gifts has a tiny booklet in its pocket:

Do Your Dream:

Love Poste (also has a tiny pocket with a small card):

We Live In Community (was hand drawn on a brown paper bag):

Lotus (hand drawn on glazed tissue paper):

Friendship (done in the March technique from The Great Library ATC Swap due out this week!!!):

Art Washes Away (from the soul the dust of everyday life. Picasso) (two more little pockets!):

To Invigorate, Stimulate ... Make Joyful (has some candy wrapper faux postage stamps):

Random Act of Art (also hand drawn on glazed tissue paper):

Throw Paint! (Life is a great big canvas, and you should throw all the paint on it you can. Danny Kaye):Good Morning (is a card within a pocket):

And last and fabulous is Where Are We? (which has a 10 page book in its pocket!):

NOW REMEMBER: Please send me an email with your choice and your mailing address to robinsunne@robinsunne.com, don't comment here as it is both laborious on my slow speed computer to get the messages and also it doesn't protect your private mailing address as much.

Have a lovely, lovely day!

R

Yesterday's Swap at the library

Yesterday at our Library Swap we focused on pockets on our ATCs. Pockets can hold notes, cards, or books (tiny ones) and I think that they could also hold coins, birthday money, small photos, even a tiny toy. We were a small group - the pull of the georgous afternoon was too much, I guess - Well, here are some photos of my progress yesterday:

The pocket on this one, above, is on the upper righthand corner with a small card that has a golden heart drawn on it. The image is from an old stamp book that I photo copied and enlarged.

Below are two that have a different kind of pocket on them. I cut a small slit in the middle of the card, double-stick-taped the back around the pocket area and stuck the card onto a plain cardstock base. Then I slipped the photo or card into place.

Details of how to make regular pockets are in my new book: The Great Library ATC Swap - due out this coming week!!!

My ATC Brown Paper Background

Well good day all. Here's my Brown Paper Background so far:

You can see there, just above 6:00 and at 8:00, two coins - Pondsong's idea from the comments on February 1st - but these are paper copies of coins, the brown paper was too thick to take a rubbing which was my first alternative idea to her idea of putting real coins on the paper. Here is the sheet of coins that I copied, I have got Chinese yuan, Greek drachma, Italian lira, Canadian dollars, I think that those are UK 5pence, and some US half dollars. I adore holding coins - even more than paper money ... silly me ... (well, I'd rather just invest those) ...anyway, those heavy round clunks that they make together. Big beads.

These are paper ones.

I would like to show you some of the ATC's that I have made to date:

The one on the right has an image from an old book of postal stamps that I enlarged a lot. It is shiny with acrylic gloss medium on it as both glue and finish. The one on the left is drawn with markers on watercolor paper.This one also has acrylic medium on it, with stickers - the houses - and sticky letters. I get outraged at the CEO's of corporations who spill their pollution everywhere. Though here I am using plastic gel meduim and plastic coated stickers... sigh ...These two are from a series on trauma. I was thinking that when people are first coming out of a traumatic event - international terrorism, natural catastrophies, domestic violence, any of it, that it is tough to gather the brain power to even ask for help. So I got to thinking about what we all can do to help each other. These cards were one background at first, painted/drawn with Portfolio brand oil pastels - think watercolor pencils, only lusher! I worked on pretty heavy weight watercolor paper, and when the painting was done it looked like a storm at sea. Good background for trauma recovery theme. I cut the painting into regulation ATC sizes and added words. The big letters are stick on, and the handwriting was done in permanent marker.

I went to the funeral, yesterday, of a woman who was a remarkable teacher on the subject of trauma recovery. For years she taught, well, life skills to people who had not managed to learn them elsewhere, things as basic as how to hold a conversation and make it true. Bitsa taught us how to see the child of "God" in everyone, even ourselves. She just pointed a whole lot of us in the correct general direction. May I just say, here, Goddess Bless Bitsa Hoag Turner and her family in this time of transition. My love to you all.

And here are the Guardians, corporeal images of the ones which make it possible for us each to find what we need. Thank you.

(Here's a fun link as a treat for your inner - or outer - child: http://countdown.tentwostudios.com )