Sunday, February 12, 2012

Back to Making Art

I've been keeping these goodies to myself for a few weeks. Here are my chunky book pages for the recent Art Unraveled chunky page exchange.
A little background. Art Unraveled is a yearly, week long art retreat held each August in Phoenix. I've attended workshops with artists from all over the US for about 6 years. Attendees come from the US and abroad to join in the fun and art making. I've met some wonderful people and learned so much.
Part of the fun of learning is sharing our experience. We do this in a small way with a technique exchange. Those interested sign up to make chunky pages, a 4"x4" page, using techniques learned from recent AU workshops.
I had an idea in mind and then looked around the studio to see what I had on hand for the project. I knew I was going to have a window so I decided to use a punch and would cut 4"x8" pages to fold in half. I made some samples to make sure my tools would work with the thickness of the paper and with the aluminum tape I intended to use for a border.
 Next step: dig through my stamps. I was looking for stamps with text.
 The result-multiple stamped papers ready to paint on.
 
I did add one strip of paper torn from books to each paper for an added layer of text. Cut strips of aluminum tape.
My "spray booth." I've used sprays and gotten color all over my table unintentionally. I now use this box when spraying and have prevented further accidents. I use some paper scraps under my project to absorb excess color. I keep the scraps on hand and use them in collages.
 The painted pages.

Although I tried out all the tools and techniques ahead of time, I had difficulties and had to make some modifications along the way. The butterfly punch that worked well on the cardstock, did not work with the added book page. I had do dig out a die for the butterfly shaped windows.

The border punch didn't work multiple times on the aluminum tape. The adhesive gummed up the punch. I settled on punching the card stock and painting it silver. The "Plan B" silver paint was an adventure too. My favorite bottles were dried up!
The finished paged with a butterfly transparency sandwiched between the folded cardstock.
The techniques were inspired by two of the workshops I attended at Art Unraveled 2011, Ingrid Dijkers "Octopus' Garden" and Daniel Essig's "Window Sampler" workshop.

Marissa

1 comment:

  1. Beautiful!! I went to Art Unraveled a few years ago and loved it! Isn't it fun to get so inspired then still make things from it months later! Nice work!

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