Spring Workshops

How about celebrating Spring with an art journaling workshop in my newly redecorated studio! Now doesn't that sound like fun? I'm so looking forward to having students here again.  I have the line-up right here at the top of the page. Blogger has a new (to me) feature to add "static" pages to your blog. Super cool right?

I'm still participating in the March Challenge over at Ning. It has been a real de-stressor. If I have 4 minutes, that's what I got.

If I have an hour, that is very nice too.

Journal Meet at A&S Hampton

Thank you all for your lovely emails and comments. I think that nasty cold/flu is finally retreating and I'm looking forward to answer everyone this week! Do you ever just get completely run down and emptied? I think that's where I was.

We had a great weekend watching my daughter graduate from college and walking all over campus and Chestertown, MD, which is a lovely, tiny little town on the Eastern Shore and in the middle of absolutely nowhere. We stayed in the dorms so were on hand for all festivities (whether we wanted to be or not ;). Here is a picture of Bess chatting up George Washington. She's home for a week before reporting to her first job, coincidentally at Valley Forge National Park!

So here are some pictures from the Journal Meet at Hampton. That was a total blast. Marie welcomed us with loads of space at Collage and we passed books around, supplies, ideas, exchanged emails and generally had a fabulous time. It was a cozy cocoon of sharing and good vibes. Thank you all for coming and spreadin' the joy!


I brought materials along to make bubble paper:
Bubbles (the blowing kind)
Ink
Bottle caps
Straws

Here's what you do:
Spill a couple of teaspoons full of bubble into a bottle cap and add a healthy squirt of ink (re-inkers work well)

Insert the one end of the straw into the bubbles and blow! As the mixture bubbles up, catch it on paper.

This is really a crowd please and great for outdoors. Kids love it.
If you are outdoors, you can lay large pieces of paper over the grass or a picnic table and blow the bubbles above the papers, As they land, they will pop and leave a beautiful pattern on the paper.
Adios for now,

Art & Soul, Hampton 2009 Part 2 of 3

Paper Quilts! There were some very devoted peeps in this class. I'm thinking this could easily be a 2 day class next year so that we can have more time for paper decorating techniques. The above quilt has a sample of just about all of the papers we decorated: the blown ink is so effective here with the black and white pop.

We made loads of decorative papers using rice paper, book pages, pattern and tissue papers, and very messy trademarked ;) processes. Some of the very delicate or brittle pages were varnished so they wouldn't tear when sewn. Here are orizomegami papers and the highly refined brown bag technique:Here are some book pages using the Sumi-Smoosh:
The big sewing moment: I love the gecko and the artist is sewing with green thead to carry that color throughout her quilt. The torn hearts and overlay of mesh is very effective.
Here are some finished quilts. This is so full of color and movement like a party on paper. The color and line travels beautifully holding the composition together.

This quilt really made great use of the blown ink papers and the image transfers (the butterflies). I liked the assymmetrical composition which holds together so well because of the use of the brown colors of the butterfly. The butterfly shape is reflected in the blown ink shapes.
This is so cool, grids on top of grids. There is so much push-pull with the underlying images and layers of grids. The artist was still working on this and I'd love to see how the final product looks as it's going into such an interesting direction.