It's good to be home

Art Unraveled for 2008 is over. After 8 classes in 7 days I should be horizontal and comatose by now but I'm A-OK. I guess I haven't hit that wall of fatigue YET.

In the meantime I am still on a high from today's Funky Found Object Canvas Village with Leighanna Light. There was an earlier opportunity to take this class but it didn't work with my schedule so I've waited a long time to take it and I wasn't disappointed.

Above is my just about finished piece. The piece has layers and layers of goodies. I was so into the building and layering that I made 4 canvases but only had time to paint on the one.
Here's piece two. We started out by layering pieces of papers to cover the canvas. Next we added the forms for the buildings. The piece looks shiny and milky in parts from the gel medium we added with a palette knife. It was like frosting cake. The key, beads, metal numbers, bingo game pieces, velcro dots, wooden parrots, etc. were embedded into the gel. We also used skewers for mark making and outlining. It was sort of a blind process since the collage was obscured under the opaque gel.
Piece Three-I was going for speed with the background here and only used 2 papers. One from Traci Bautista's class and a patterned napkin. Plus my last 2 pieces measured 5" x 7." It's hard to see from the photo but the sun is made with a nipple from a baby bottle. I found 2 in Leighanna's stash of goodies and they just had to be part of a piece. Pods from ?????? were used for the sun rays. Some of the goodies I use today have been in my stash since my early days in AZ and some date back to high school. What a perfect way to use these little treasures-and a bunch of junk!
#4-Last one of the day. 7 Gypsies (discontinued) patterned tissue paper was prominent in the background with a little bit of the same napkin as #3. Leighanna shared her stash of papers and the shell, buttons, bead, plastic clothes pin, the denim round thing and the frog closures came from my goodie box. See Dad, I do use all that stuff I brought home from Mom's sewing room!

Wow, the shell has memories. As kids we used to go day trips as a family. I think I bought the shell in a bead shop in Laguna Beach.

I'm going to go backwards. The Chicklet and I had an early start yesterday. I had an 8am appointment I dragged her to and then we went out for breakfast. That warm cup of coffee was a good start to the day. I've driven by this building and been attracted to the bold shapes and colors. I finally got the camera out and took some shots.

Yesterday's class was a welcome respite from the frenzy of painting and collage all week. I took Beryl Taylor's Mini Art Quilt which was fantastic. Bird Brain here forgot to take a picture so I'll share the details tomorrow.

As tempting as it was, I didn't go to the vendor fair. With the school year starting 2 weeks later than usual, I've had to stretch my summer paycheck an extra couple of weeks. 'Nuff said...

Hidden Layers with Traci Bautista-class started on Thursday evening and continued all day Friday. By the time we went home Thursday night we had "canvases" that looked like this:
We started out with a sturdy piece of paper and spread a layer of modeling paste before layering more pieces from a variety of papers. I never knew to use modeling paste like that.
After overlapping pieces of hand made papers, tissue paper, napkins, pages from books, kitchen wipes, paper towels, legal pad papers, lace and more we set those aside to dry for the next day.
Traci then demo-ed some stamping techniques and using modeling paste with stencils for creating dimension. I continued my love affair with one of the embossed wall papers from Wed. night to stamp with. Above is patterns on patterned scrapbook paper. Below is a sheet from a legal pad.
Can you see the eye chart "Eeeeeeez?" That's modeling paste used with a Coffee Break stencil from Frenzy Stamper. That pretty much took care of Thursday night.
We started out Friday morning with paint-lot's of color, stenciling and stamping. By lunch time my work space was filled with sheet after sheet. See that spot of purple? I dug it out of the trash can. Looking at everyone's work it was funny to see each individuals' palettes. I was going for variety and ended up with my usual-vibrant red, warm yellow, teal green and cobalt blue.... You'll find the same exact colors on my piece from Lynn Parrella's class 2 years ago.

I took the above picture right before heading out to lunch. Guess what? I forgot to photograph the pieces at the end of the day. Looks like I have my work cut out for tomorrow. I'll have to write a note on my forehead-"Finish photographing AU projects"! Problem is, I don't spend a lot of time looking in the mirror. Seen my hair lately? I'll write the note on the back of my hand instead.

Tomorrow, (Monday), is my last day before reporting back to school on Tuesday. Chances are I'll be in my classroom tomorrow cleaning and prepping, (and taking pictures of projects). OR I'll be collapsed in bed-I hope not!

The Chicklet begins fourth grade-where has the time gone?
Marissa