Happy Valentine's Day

I participated in a swap with the In This House and Garden group. We each made six small banners, decorated in a Valentine's theme. I received some beautiful banners in return.

More Collage

I'm really loving the collage and mixed media class I'm taking with Eydi Lampasona. We're using gel medium to adhere mulch, leaves, twigs, stones, dirt, pine needles, and anything else we can find out in the parking lot, to a gesso'd-board. The gel medium needs to be spread quite thickly. After it dries for a day or so, then you gesso over the whole thing. Then you paint. The first one I did is on canvas. I used purples, reds, blues, then put a little gold on top. This picture doesn't do it justice, but I'm real pleased with it.


I'm so enthusiastic about this technique, that I did another one a couple days later. I used purples, yellow and red. Then I put black on the twigs and branches so they'd stand out. I'm not sure what I'll do with this, but I really like it. But shouldn't we like all our art?

Collage Class

I'm taking a collage and painting class at the Boca Raton Museum of Art with the wonderful Eydi Lampasona. Eydi calls it "Urban Archaeology" because we are using found materials to make papers, including leaves and twigs and rusty objects. She makes good use of plain white tissue paper, which we alter to use in collages. One of the easiest methods is to spray a sheet with water, drop diluted fluid acrylics, and let it dry. I especially like how splashes of gold paint look on top of other colors. It's a messy job, best done outside. Since I live in Florida, and the weather's nice this time of year, I do it on my back patio. Here's a photo of my sheets laid out to dry. I weigh down the tarp with rocks or paint tubes so the wind doesn't move it around.



This first one is typical of the colors I like to use: blue, red, purple, then add some gold.


I used fiery red and oranges here.


Blue is the standby color I always seem to use.


I challenged myself on this last one and used some green, which is a color I never use in my art. I wonder what I'll do with this? All of them I can tear up and use on a canvas or board. Or use as a background for a journal or an ATC. I used some pink and gold paper for the background on my Valentine banners in a previous post.

Necklace Round Robins

I'm hosting two necklace round robins over at my Charmsters group. For each one, there are eight women participating. (I'm in both groups.) You start by buying or making a chain, and creating a focal piece for it. You also make a book to go with it and a box to put it in. Then for the next eight months, they travel around the country to each woman in the group. She adds a charm or something to it. In September, we'll get our necklaces back and will see how everyone has added to our design.

One of my necklaces, I call Blue Dreams. Since blue is my favorite color, I thought it would be fun to have a necklace with all blue elements. I bought a silver chain, cut it in pieces, and made a clasp. The focal is glass beads hung by chain, and silver wire that has been bent and hammered. The box is an old cigar box that I painted. The book's covers have been altered with acrylic-painted tissue paper. And the whole thing is tied together with beautiful yarns.



I called my other necklace Natural Beauty. I love the look of wire, copper, and stones. I chose a few beads that look like stones and glass. They're strung on sterling wire and wrapped around a piece of copper sheet that I cut and torched for color. The box is a cardboard box that was junk mail. It contained a spot for a CD and business cards. I adapted these for the necklace and name plate. The notebook is covered with a sheet I made by sandwiching tissue paper, polymer medium, and twigs and leaves from my backyard. I then brushed a thin glaze of orange/brown over top. The whole thing was tied together with various yarns, but I didn't get a photo of that.