Art Metal Jewelry, Photo Book & Upcoming Classes

After altering my template for the CD/Memorabilia Book I came up with a Photo/Memorabilia Book, same binding but the pockets hold 4 X 6 photos and another photo is attached to the front of each pocket/page. The photo corners allow this one to be changed at your whim. I made this one for moi to hold my pics from a trip to the Butchart Gardens on Vancouver Island, BC last year.

Have also been messing around with some art metal, basically sheets of brass, aluminum or colored aluminum that can be texturized, colored and made into all sorts of fun stuff. This pendant was made from two layers of medium thickness aluminum, textured and colored with Pinata Inks, eyelets were set in to hang the chain and embellishment at the bottom.

In other good news the Paper Zone has put me on the schedule for more Shrink Plastic Charms and Sticky Note & Memo Pad Booklet classes, the dates are as follows:

Shrink Plastic Charms: July 10 and 24

Sticky Note & Memo Pad/Booklets: July 17 and August 7

And now a plea to any weather deities that may be listening, PLEASE STOP RAINING ON BELLINGHAM, its getting old, the slug army of darkness is getting ready for a total takeover, and the lawn is now a lovely shade of moss, with just a hint of grass.

Its has been a while since a crazy cat lady picture so before anybody goes into withdrawal here is Apollo practicing his Certified HP Printer Technician skills. Nothing voids your warranty faster than a big, furry cat paw stuck up into the innards of your printer.

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.

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.