ArtFest 2011

ArtFest 2011 was great, loved my classes and soaked in all the exuberant art vibe that comes with this amazing event. Coming back is always kind of let down as you re-enter back into real life, job, laundry and myriad of chores large and small that make up the days, but ArtFest manges to help re-charge the creative batteries no less.

Took Michael deMeng for two classes, "Lonely Hearts" and "Pretty Vial Things". The heart box was just a little wooden box, distressed using Michael;s signature techniques, constructed the heart from Apoxy Clay, first time using that but liked since it air dries. Mine turned out very folk-arty and I love it.

My altered bottle for the next Michael class was a "Shoe Potion" (Jody doing something about shoes....shocking, I know!). More apoxie clay, DAP texture and Barbie doll shoes. The toughest part of this was finding the Barbie shoes, when I was a kid you could buy just the shoes separately, not so much now, had to schlep to 3 different stores in Bellingham, finally found a set of shoes and almost had to throw down in the Barbie Aisle with a 6 year old to get them.

This potion, ingested pre-shopping will guarantee you will find your favorite shoes, on sale and in your size.

The class with with Orly Avineri, "Deck of Roses". Working with a big pieces of watercolor paper she showed us some great techniques with liquid ink, distress ink pads, gesso (black and white) and varnish. These cards still need some pen work but I love them as the photographic images are of my own roses that I slave over every summer.

Here are some pics of Fort Worden, the venue for ArtFest.



Altered Stiletto & Mouse Adventure

New altered Stiletto for the ArtFest gallery, the theme is birds so lots of bright feathers. This shoe was made in memory of my sweet friend Sherri, many of the materials for this shoe were ones that were also used during the last retreat she hosted at her Sparrow's Nest Studio. Body of shoe was covered in altered paper towels and sprinkling of glitter. Heel was painted and then a random application of some Jones Tones foil.

In another shoe related story The Vermin (aka the Cats) have outdone themselves again in the mouse department.

We were sitting watching TV on Sunday and I had not seen the cats in the living room for a bit which usually means they are up to something so I went to find them. They were in the bedroom staring very intently into my closet at my shoes. The back door had been open and they had that "we have something cornered" look in their eyes. After shooing them out of the bedroom against bitter protest and shutting the door I looked around in the closet really good and could not see anything..... and then noticed that one of my brand new 3 inch heels had suddenly grown a long skinny tail. There was a BIG fat mouse tucked into the shoe, the shoe is a peep toe so his little face was peaking out the toe and his tail was hanging over the heel. I picked up the shoe VERY carefully because I did not want him to bolt and then be wandering the house for eternity.  Managed to get mouse, shoe and myself out to the back yard and let him go. I am sure he was pretty traumatized, what with being trapped in that leather prison with two cats breathing down his neck. We think Apollo caught him, and so I guess we have to stop calling Apollo "The Big Marshmallow" and start calling him the "Mighty Hunter".




Ice Queen Art Shoe

The latest shoe is finally done, as usual I started out with one idea (all white) and it morphed into something else, but I am pretty pleased with the result. The curved shapes were made by tracing portions of a french curve, lots of detail work involved with gluing on the silver trim. Plaid's new product, Extreme Glitter and then some Stickles gave the white accents and the blue body that extra sparkle I wanted. Rebuilding the heel's once they are cut off takes some time, you have to balance the shoe just right upside down and they glue on a few elements at a time, let them dry and then do some more. E-6000 is the best glue for non-porous items, once it's dry it's very sturdy. This one will be added to the items for sale on Etsy.

Christmas Eve is tomorrow, my best wishes for a happy and healthy holiday season, whatever your faith happens to be. Our holly tree is in full glory right now, it's the only tree we have in the back yard and during the summer I mostly curse it. You really can't get anything to grow underneath it and trying to clean up or garden around it means risking getting lots of sharp holly leaves jammed into your person, but it completely redeems itself this time of year.

I made a quick trip to Jo-Ann's today to get some fabric and check out all the Christmas stuff that is always on sale and came across this great little addition to my holiday village for next year.....and it was 70% off! Now all I need is a Michael's one and I will have the beginnings of a Craft Store Village.

Encaustic Collage

The Sparrow's Nest retreat was great fun, many wonderful pieces of art were created and some who thought they were not artist's realized that they actually were. Huge kudo's to Sherri and Tracy, who worked incredibly hard to make that event the success that it was. My teaching portion was making encaustic collage pieces, I had so much fun with them that I came home and made some more! The technique is simple, you collage onto a hard surface, in this case I used panel board. Fortunately Gerry had been covering the inside of his shop walls with panel board and there were lots of end pieces left, he and our good friend Mike were kind enough to cut them into my desired sizes and now I have a huge stack for future encaustic projects.

After collaging you brush encaustic medium (refined beeswax already mixed with damar resin) over the collage and fuse the medium to meld the brush marks together. I put a thin layer of gel medium over the collage to prevent the paper from darkening too much. While the wax is still warm but not mushy you can make a toner transfer of an image of your choice. Finishing touches are buttons, rhinestones, glitter and foil tracings.

I have at least 40 more boards stacked up under the desk ready to be worked with so I foresee more of these coming in the future.

The final major home improvement project of the year has been completed, concreting in front of the shop, garage and pad where the camper sits. It was a major project, but looks great, Gerry says he can't wait to wash his cars on his nice new driveway instead of in the gravel and dirt. Behold the awesomeness of Gerry's New Manly Driveway.....

It is very nice not having all that dirt tracked into the garage and then into the house.

Felines are doing good, Dana had to go the V.E.T this morning to have her butt glands expressed, totally NOT fun. I told her the night before she was going in the Magic Box to the Special Kitty Spa for her Treatment, but she's not stupid and she knew darn well she was going in the Evil Kitty Carrier to the Bad Place, where the Not Nice Man with the Rubber Glove messes around with her Patootie. She was super ticked off when she got home, she kept hissing at me, her brother and imaginary things I could not see. There has been liberal application of cat treats to take the edge off.

Classes for Fall

I will be teaching at the Sparrow's Nest Studio this fall and winter, there is a new "classes" tab at the top of this blog to click on for details, Layered Shrines, Surface Explorations and CD/DVD Memorabilia Books are the classes on the calender. The Sparrow's Nest also has many other wonderful classes by very talented teachers and a retreat on 9/24, still a couple of spots left!

Surface Exploration's is a new class, student's will come away with a sampler like this of many different techniques.

The wet weather has come, the garden is doing OK but some things are pooping out. Got enough red tomato's to can a bunch of salsa, I was fairly liberal with the Habanero and Serrano peppers so it will have some kick to it. The kitchen still smells like a mexican restaurant when you walk in. Dilly beans will be next, my friends and family love them and those who are real nice to me will get some for Christmas (heh!).

Prescious got 2nd place in her class at the Silver Reef Casino car show Gerry attended, we are so proud!

Layered Shrines and Devious Deer Mice

It's been a long time since the last post, there has been a lot going on, visits to and from family, the house, shop & studio exterior being painted and putting together new classes for the winter and spring. Summer finally came and now it seems to be going again. I will be teaching at the Sparrows Nest Studio in the winter and spring, I will post the blog link soon for the fall retreat information and class schedules, blog, facebook page and restreat details are being worked on as we speak. Mixed Media is my first love and my new classes will be focusing on that. One of the new classes will be Layered Shrines as wells as a class on Texturing, Stenciling, & Resist Techniques. Here are a couple samples of the Layered Shrines.

The garden is doing good, the sun needs to hold on long enough the for beans and tomatoes to mature so the fall canning extravaganza can commence. Catnip will most likely be cut and hung this weekend so the spoiled felines will have their fix this winter. Dahlia's were late but well worth it, I have several dinnerplate varieties and they never fail to impress.

Here is the catnip, about 3 feet tall, it will be dried, stripped and dispensed as needed or when they are bugging me and I want them to go sit in a corner and just get stoned.

 
Speaking of the resident felines for those who do not get my facebook feed I will pass along the story of Donald the Deer Mouse. The story must first be prefaced with the statement that neither Dana nor Apollo are hunters of anything larger than a Pounce treat or a small insect, unlike their dear late brother, Wolf, who successfully brought down humans and non-humans alike in his illustrious 16 years.
 
Anyhoo, I was awoken at 1:00 am a few days ago by frantic scrabbling and squeaking in the vicinity of the foot of the bed, after leaping out of bed, turning on the light (I am now blinded and do not have my glasses on) I vaguely see a rodent of some sort racing across the floor and disappear behind the dresser. Neither useless feline, I mean beloved companion animal, was quick enough to catch it before it went into deep hiding and they promptly went back to sleep, sensing the immediate fun and games were over. It appears one of them had actually caught something that was capable of moving under its own power, brought it in and left if for Mommy to deal with in the wee hours of the mornin'. Am I not the luckiest cat Mom EVER!?
 
Not really wanting to disassemble the bedroom at this un-godly hour I sort of go back to sleep, had strange dreams of herds of mice running, lemming fashion, across my prone body. Next day the great mouse hunt begins, furniture is moved, flashlight shone into every crevice and cranny, found enough dust bunnies to make Martha Stewart break down into a fit of hysteria, but no mouse. So now he's in the house, the cats have clearly lost interest and are of no help. So why not just put out a trap....because I have a soft spot for little critters and its was not his (or her) fault one of my defective cats dragged the poor little guy in. Hoping it would find a way out on its own or the smell of mummified mouse would eventually alert us to its location we went on with our lives. But...lo and behold 3 days later I am sitting in the recliner catching up on Mad Men when I see it scamper across the floor and disappear under the couch, both cats are still completely oblivious, their nap/butt-grooming/cat snack obviously of much higher importance. Great, I think, now I have to put Don Draper on hold to try and corner it, trap it,  and get it out of my house. That little sucker was quick, I mean, blink of an eye quick, and he's big, like bigger than an ordinary mouse and he's got a really long tail and big hind legs, so I figure he's a deer mouse and now we appeared to be involved in a relationship of sorts, so he needs a name...like Donald (Draper). He scoots into the laundry room and hides under the washer, I open the back door, wave my arms in a grand gesture and point to the beautiful, great outdoors, he runs by the back door, ignoring the beautiful, great outdoors, sees me and runs back under the washing machine. I construct an elaborate deer mouse tunnel from the laundry room to the beautiful, great outdoors from small pieces of furniture and boxes. He comes out, munching on a piece of kitty kibble he found under the washer (Martha is sooo dissapointed with my housekeeping skills), leisurely makes his way through the Funnel of Freedom, wanders out the back door and into the beautiful, great outdoors....I do the happy dance, I am smarter than a deer mouse.

Lizard Shrine

Finally finished my Lizard Shrine today, inspired by the Michael DeMeng class "Cave of Pages" that I took at ArtFest this year, including Michaels custom paint color concoction of Quinacridone Nickel Azo Gold and Quinacridone Crimson, aptly named "Serial Killer Red", although I keep wanting to call it "Dexter Red". Used the DAP Tub and Tile caulk to make the texture on a couple of the layers and painted the red with some black sponging on some gothic text for the top layer. Fibers, metal washer, charms, beads and metal corners finished it off. The lizard is just one of those plastic toy lizards you get in the kids section of any craft store. I like him and will find some spot in the studio to hang him on the wall.

Mr. Lizard has a stylish collar made from a jump ring, feather charms and some beads,

We finally get hot, hot, hot summer weather after the worst spring in memory, now its in the high 80's and 90's, everybody is melting, although we are definately not as bad off as the poor folks in the east coast, yowzers! The garden is happy though, there are now baby green tomatoes on the vine and beans are over their snit and growing fast. Here are some garden pics, including some macro. Just so you don't think I'm making it all up here is a shot of the thermometer taken about 6:00pm tonite.

I didn't even have to plant these yellow beauties, they came from seeds dropped last year, free flowers, can't beat that!

Altered Art Shoe for Stiletto's on Parade

It's that time of year again, the Stiletto's On Parade altered shoe contest at  12th Street Shoes in Bellingham, is just around the corner. I dropped my shoe of today, and the contestants go on display at the Solstice Walkabout in Fairhaven on June 18th. The public can vote for their favorite shoe on the 18th and the shoes will be on display that weekend also....and in a shameless act of self-promotion I am hoping you vote for mine! This years entry (did I mention I won the People's Choice award last year...again with the self-promotion!) is called Deep Sea. The shoe is covered in specialty paper, texture was added to the toe and heel with DAP Tub & Tile Caulk and painted with acrylic paint. The inside was painted and spritzed with glitter, 'cause you can n.e.v.e.r have too much glitter, same with the painted caulk. Gold bead trim, blue fabric trim and some glass pebbles finished off the embellishing. The final touch was a little green octopus, or squid sitting on the toe with rhinestones for eyes.

12 Street Shoes is located at 1204 Harris Street in Bellingham, their motto is Shoes, You Can Never Have Enough...too true. Some persons of the male gender don't process this information correctly, boys, shoes are simply jewelry for our feet, 'nuff said.

Art for Sale, now on Etsy

Once again, I have braved that crazy thing called the Internet and now have my Etsy shop up and running. Etsy is a site devoted exclusively to the sale of handmade and vintage items. I have two art shoes for sale there now, more shoes and other Blue Dahlia Studio creations to come! Link below and at sidebar to left.

http://www.etsy.com/shop/BlueDahliaStudio