Spring Fling

Next to my art gardening is my next biggest passion. When we purchased our property the landscaping was minimal which was good in that it gave me the opportunity to start with a blank slate. One great thing was that the lovely lady who owned the home before us had put in some roses, I think they had been there for quite some time as the base on this red rose plant is about 4 inches across at the base. This is the very first rose of the season....she's a beauty and fragrant too. No idea what kind it is though.

Rhododendron's are plentiful in our county, although they don't always bloom every year, however, this year every single one of mine did. Here are two that frame the front of our house and a close up of a gorgeous peach one.

There were also some Peonies that were in residence when we purchased the home and like clockwork they come back every year, big and fluffy. VERY messy to clean up when their done, but worth it every year.

Not much art has been done in the studio for a few weeks for reasons I won't go into here but since this was garden themed post I thought I would show a "Garden Box" that I did a few years ago. The box is dedicated to my Grandmother Eva, a wonderful woman and fantastic Grandma. The pictures are from vintage specialty paper, I placed glass microscope slides over selected areas to highlight them and bordered them with some micro-beads. Real feathers, dried flowers and text from my Grandmothers high school biology book finish it off.

FX pictures

Have not posted in a while, there are some projects that are being worked on but not quite done yet. In the meantime I am having a complete love affair with my new Droid smartphone, I found the FX Camera App on the Droid Market and downloaded it. Very cool, here are some pictures taken just a minute ago.

This is my Hosta that is coming up in the shade garden, picture taken with the Toy Camera mode. Gives it a retro kind of look.

Here is Apollo sitting in the flower bed, in the SymmetricCam mode. He looks quite entranced with himself.

Last but not least here is my Cinderella Party Shoe as Andy Warhol would see it.

The possibilities are endless with this app, I am sure there will be more to come.

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

ArtFest Projects

ArtFest was awesome, as usual. House 15 at Fort Worden was a happening place, what with all the incredible art we made during our classes, all the junk food and wine we consumed and some laughing-til-we-cried moments. My Day One class (Cave of Pages)  was with Michael De Meng, an assemblage artist, known for his slightly dark themes. I knew this was going to be a stretch for me, but in a good way. We took cigar boxes and using Michael's custom paint schemes created layeres of foamcore, thick paper and whatever odds and ends caught our fancy. The texture on the layers was made using specialty papers and Dap Kwik Seal Tub and Tile Adhesive, which dries quickly and can be painted.

The final layer was a filmy piece of fabric I had left over from Halloween, giving my vintage nude lady some modicum of modesty. The black half circles inside are old typwriter daisy wheels cut in half. I coated the sides with the Dap and using very thin washes of color was able to get this cool marbled effect.

Fantastic class and now I totally have an art crush on Michael De Meng.

Day Three was with Jill Berry (Three Letter Words), a very talented lettering artist. Using 3 small canvases painted with black gesso we traced some roman capital letters and then painted around the letter, using dry brush techniques and adding images by painting negative spaces. My word was "Sun", I have not finished it yet,  but am showing all three for continuity.

We painted the edges of the canvas too.

Day three was with Bee Shay, more of a technique class than a project class so I will post photos when I get an actual finished piece done.

So, another successful ArtFest, I shopped, I ruined my fancy french manicure with paint, I ate way too much candy, and was completely exhausted by the time I got home. Managed to pick up a nasty bug somewhere and have spent the past two weeks fighting sinusitis and bronchitis, but am out of the woods now and not hacking up a lung every 5 minutes.

Altered Shoes

Off to ArtFest first thing Wednesday morning. Completely changed my mind as to what I wanted to put into the gallery, I originally was going to do some encaustic pieces but when I tried to decide which way to go the encaustic muse decided to take a three martini lunch and not come back to the studio so I went with really makes me the most happy and that is.....SHOES....of course!

For me the shoes come the easiest, there is some planning involved, I usually I have a basic idea in my head but they really just flow out of me once I get started on them. First up is "Cinderella's Party Shoe", once the glass slipper was off and tucked away in the castle vault this is my interpretation of what she would wear to a fancy ball.

The shoe was covered in specialty paper, the inside is simply green tissue paper glued down with white glue, buttons, rhinstones, fancy trim, ribbon and some pieces of an old rhinestone necklace I had laying around finished it off. The heel is glass pieces colored with Pinata ink and some jewelry findings all glued together with E6000 (a super strong multi purpose glue for non-porous objects).

Since the theme for ArtFest is Once Upon A Time I thought if I had Cinderella then I better have something on the other end of the spectrum, so this next one is my shout out to all the "evil" ladies in fairy tales, although I am sure they were very misunderstood and just needed a group hug. Struggled with a name for it and have tentatively settled on "Wicked".

The shoe was covered in some black netted fabric and adorned with chunky glitter, fancy black and silver trim, the heel was the most challenging part, I glued on pieces of that glass you use for mosaics.  The decoration on the top is just two 5/8 washers with some microbeads glued into the center.

I think I am almost ready to go, there is a large pile of art stuff on the studio table to be crammed into my rolling craft carrier, lists laying everywhere, and cats are starting to freak out because they know Mommy is going somewhere and of course the best way to help her is to plant their furry butts in the middle of the open suitcase.

Finally, I am asking my readers to send out a prayer for my very dear friend, Sherri, who was going to ArtFest but ended up having to have quadruple bypass surgery yesterday, which went well thank goodness, but she has a lot of recovery time ahead of her.

Encaustic artwork

It's a glorious sunny Sunday here in Western Washington, the weather goddess kind of faked us out for while and sent some winter weather but the good stuff is back now. I finally finished my web design classes at the community college and have the software loaded up in the computer and am working my way through my huge manual. It is actually quite enjoyable, I love the "a-ha" moments when I do something right and it looks all purty. It will take a while before I have one designed for myself but I will get there.

ArtFest is just around the corner, the chatter on the Yahoo Group is reaching a fever pitch like it does every year. They have a gallery where you can display up to three of your pieces and I decided I might do some encaustic (wax) stuff. One of the classes I took last year at ArtFest was with the wonderful Judy Wise, a encaustic guru, the techniques I learned there along with the Encaustic Workshop book by Patricia Seggebruch  led me to these two pieces. Basically it is fusing specialty paper with encaustic medium (melted white beeswax and damar resin), adding layers of images, stickers, rub-ons and some texturing with oil paint, and more layers of medium. Finished touches were some gold foil detailing and addition of a micro-bead border on the blue piece. Great fun except the studio smelled like wax for a couple of days! Spousal Unit wanted to know what I was burning down.

The theme for ArtFest is Once Upon a Time so I am going to apply myself to making at least two pieces to take with that idea, perhaps something with fairies or dragons.

Last but not least I have to leave you with what seems to be my increasingly frequent cat pictures (Crazy Cat Ladies Unite!) but this was to cute not to share. Picture of Apollo is slightly blurry, I had to take it through the studio window, before he proceeded on to some other important thing, like chasing bugs.

The motto for this one is, "If you really don't have anything better to do, just sit and stare through the hole in the fence".

Sage that survived the winter, also a test from my mobile device, trying to get it to post to my blog.