Art Journal Cafe- Handcarved Stamp Challenge

France Papillon and Carol Lechatquitousse have issued a challenge over at the Art Journal Cafe  to carve your own stamps. There is a video tutorial as well! I'm fortunate enough to have a small stamp block started- I took a workshop at Diana Trout's studio a while ago, and she gave us a little block that we carved- we used it during the workshop and I brought it home, where it promptly got buried under other stuff. Well, I finally found it, and carved up the rest of the block. Here's a picture of it, along with some of the images it creates.

 

And here are all six of my new stamps. I am challenging myself to use all of the images on my page...

I worked on my `portrait a little more, so here's where that is now...

And then I made a few toner copies of it so I could play with the image, without ruining the original. After adding my stamping with pigment and solvent inks, I added more color with paint, Portfolio pastels and some Neocolors for her face. I got a little carried away on painting the face, and ended up making a hole in the paper right on her chin! So I just got that part off. Et voila- here she is. Its not intentional, but she definitely has a mad hatter look to her, don't you think?

 

Here's what my workspace looked like when I was done....

I think I'll make another page out of the scraps. :)

Calendar Journal Page- Masking Tutorial

I really did have so much fun making this calendar journal page. I played with masking fluid- i took a watercoloring class many years ago, and just loved  working with this stuff. (It's kind of pricey, and I used half the bottle doing this page, but I read that you can use plain ol' rubber cement instead- have to give it a try.

Ok, so I opened up the last page in my handmade journal and painted the whole thing with watered down acrylic paint. After I did that, I painted on random sized circles with the masking fluid. Here's the best I could do photo wise to try and capture the process- the shiny parts are where the masking fluid has been applied.







Now, I pulled out my handy-dandy gear stencil and started stenciling on a coordinating color paint, and then pulled out my homemade spray ink and continued spray randomly all over the page.

 So far I have this:

 Hmmm.... needs MORE! I stenciled through sequin waste with a contrasting color and added some stamping with purple Stazon ink.

And now its time to peel! , with my favorite lovely assistant, my little girl. Whee!

I did a little reverse masking, since I thought the inside of the circles needed some loving...

(It was hard to catch the action- again, the shiny parts are where the masking fluid is...)

 Of course, you already have seen the results if you read the original calendar journal post but here's a little close up :

I'm already eyeing up a canvas I did a few weeks ago and want to change. Rubber cement, here I come!

Forgotten Portrait

Today, I found a small pile of old drawings in my closet. Among them was this portrait. I don't remember when I drew this- its reminiscent of a charcoal I did in 1987 that got destroyed when my high school caught on fire (arson). There were a lot of combustibles in the art storage area, of course, so everything that I had done so far that year was destroyed. Maybe I started another to replace it? Either way, I am off to the copy store tomorrow so I can use it in a journal page.

Art-is-You Hurricane Sandy Relief

The wonderful ladies at Art-is-You have put their heads together and came up with a plan to provide some much needed relief to the victims of Hurricane Sandy. If you go to their website, there is a button to donate- any amount is acceptable and will help. You can donate food cards or gas cards as well. There are many artists donating their artwork to this cause, and if you would like to donate, you will be entered into a raffle to win beautiful one of a kind artwork. One, in particular, Kecia, has created a beautiful painting by candlelight, since she still doesn't have electric. Another, Jenny of Everyday is a Holiday, has blogged about her experience here.

Calendar Journal Page - November

I thought I'd give the Kate's calendar journal challenge another go.Here's a link to her colorful and inspiring blog- the Kathryn Wheel.  I keep seeing such beautiful pages, but I haven't created one in months. The problem was writing in the tiny little spaces- so I decided to make a big calendar page in a Teesha Moore style amazing 16 page journal. So this space is approximately 24 x 10 inches.

Update- I am having so much fun with this! ....love how the black journaling adds to the page.

I added a tutorial here, about playing with masking fluid,  if you want to see how I made this page . 

Lynne Perrella's Class at the Ink Pad in NY, and a Hurricane

This past Sunday, I went to Manhattan to attend a class taught by Lynne Perrella and hosted by the Ink Pad.  I have always admired Lynne's use of color and pattern, and was very much interested in learning some new techniques. Actually, it was her stamps that caught my eye about 13 years ago that first got me interested in collage and mixed media.

(Feel free to skip-  Unfortunately, I couldn't sleep all night- I must have woken up every 45 minutes, so I was tired, and anxious, as I am prone to be when I do not sleep well. On top of that there were storm warnings- it was announced that the transit system was going to be shut down at 7 to prepare for Hurricane Sandy, and since I took New Jersey Transit to get into the city, I was anxious about getting out. Long story short, I left early. Before I left the class, I got to have some time with Lynne- she went around the entire room giving assistance (and provided a handout- woohoo!) and she helped me solve a layering problem in a way I never would have figured out. Anyway, I haven't touched it since I left Sunday, but here he is:

Next up- Hurricane Sandy, new friends, and collaging by candlelight.