I've Got a Ticket to...

 It's been awhile since I've taken an online art class. Sometimes, I manage to get the project done, but other times I get a good start and then get busy with something else. There's still a lost project I started years ago that hasn't resurfaced...

 I fell in love with this diamond binding when I saw the class sample. I had to learn how to do it. Out came some children's books that were piled in a corner. The little guy with the measuring tape standing on the goat was too fun to cover up. Then the idea of adding a Saguaro cactus next to him flashed. I was on a mission to find the perfect cactus.

 It was intimidating... Everyone was talking about book cloth on the the class message board. Ten years of making books and I'd never used book cloth until the week before I started this class. The solid colored cloth bored me. Out came the paint and the stencils! Finally tried out the Jane La Fazio stencils purchased at Art Unraveled last August. Ooooooh........ Love..... Stencils are my personal form of crack.

 The hunt for the perfect saguaro meant facing a foot tall pile of Arizona Highways magazines. A page was turned and who was there saying, "hello" but the Arizona raised goats. They found their spot on the inside of the book covers. They're missing their glasses. They're special order and need to get picked up so they can match their studious buddy on the cover.

 Oh, yeah... The online class is called "Ticket to Venice." We were invited to tag along on Miss MaryAnn's trip to Venice last month. My passport is currently expired but we can find plenty of adventures around town. I'm keeping this book local. Got home and raided a pile of Phoenix Magazine and Phoenix Home and Garden.

 After years of talking about going, The Chick and I finally went to Luminarias at the Desert Botanical Garden. It drizzled the whole time we were there! We had a great evening that ended with dinner at IHOP and hot chocolate.

 I was thinking I'd be chronicling future adventures. Then a pile of tickets, brochures, from past adventures emerged. There were some evenings with glue and tape craziness going on. A production of the Sun Serpent at the theater at Tempe Center for the Arts.

 Vintage Arizona Highways magazine and vintage style postcard from an article in Phoenix Magazine. Hoarding good sh** pays off! My Arizona adventure started in august 1989. Going to have to start digging for photos but in the meantime...

 The fashion gallery at the Phoenix Art museum has some great exhibits. Frothing at the mouth good stuff. Picture taking isn't allowed in the gallery. Brochures it is.

A few images from an exhibit at ALAC-Arte Latino Arts and Culture Center.

There are many more pages to fill. You might have caught a glimpse of bingo cards, colorful flowered paper... The book pages alone were a variety of found papers. I started to wonder if it was too much but while adding items to the pages, it was all good. The ideas keep coming. The book will is going to fatten up! Better it than me!

Marissa

New Journals

 Sometimes it's nice to get out and join like minded friends in acts of creating. So that's what I did 2 weeks ago. I joined Jane Eileen and friends for her Canvas Journal workshop. We each received a piece of canvas to paint and print on. Mine is drying on the right.

 Once dried, I sent mine through the sewing machine a couple of times. Then we stitched the sides and slid them onto the binders. These books are so forgiving. The pages can be taken out, worked on and placed back in any order.

 My finished cover with "Wow" for the title. I'm thinking whatever I put in there is going to make me go "wow" when I look at it...

 The second new journal. I took a workshop with visiting artist, Kelly Kilmer, at one of my favorite spots, Frenzy Stamper. This book is a lot of fun with flaps and fold outs with every turn of the page.

My book cover was plain green when I brought it home but I spent some time with paints, stencils and stamps tonight. I re-bound the book as well, adding beads to the binding.

 I completed 4 collages during the class. We were encouraged to journal but I haven't yet.

 You're welcome to add your own imagined commentary.

 All the images were made using found papers and magazine images and textures.

Have a great weekend!

Marissa

Postcard Swap

 I have a long list of blogs that I follow. It's hard to keep up with some of them but my timing was on target when I was able to join this post card swap this past spring.

Participants were to make 10 postcards and mail them to the addresses provided by the swap hostess.

The cards were made in March and the instructions were to send them out by the end of the month.

Desert spring was on my mind so I decided to dig out my green scraps that included magazine clippings, museum announcements and scrapbook papers. The desert flora and fauna have been collected from some of my favorites: Phoenix magazine, Phoenix Home and Garden, and publications from the Desert Botanical Garden.

The sewing machine was humming! These are the first of 15 cards made. I'll share the rest of my cards and the cards I received throughout this week.
Marissa

Collages this week

Every evening I plan to go to bed at a reasonable hour and yet, i manage to get distracted and stay up late. Today Kelly Kilmer sent out all the prompts for this month of her "A Prompt a Day" online class. I only happened to peek at January 31st but nothing else between then and today. Ooh, the suspense!

There's no pressure to get the pages done in order or by a certain time. That's up to each participant. She's already taking registrations for February. Hmmmmmmm... I'm strongly leaning towards continuing. I've been challenged to go beyond my comfort zone, the group is creating cool work and our online community is great.
Color, movement and rhythm. I'm more self conscious now but I've always loved to dance. I've got the Latin hips even if I don't know all the dance steps! The other night I was dancing The Swim with the Chicklet as we listened to an old Monkees tune.Speaking of swimming...if we weren't at the local pool in the summer, we were heading out to the beach. My brother lived to surf. We used to make cracks that he had webbed feet. I went on to spend more time at the local pool with swim team and lifeguarding. I was spoiled to have an Olympic size pool in my backyard.
The Chicklet takes swim lessons every Summer. I tell her she's growing a fin on her back like her mom, lol.More water. Until I moved to Arizona I lived near water. Even if I grew up in the San Gabriel Valley, the beach was a short drive away. Every trip to California is an opportunity to get my ocean fix. It doesn't happen often enough.
Does the picture look familiar? It's dated but I adore this shot of the Chicklet and I taken at the beach. We spent the afternoon on the beach with good friends. Last night's page. It's interesting where the prompts have lead. I've remembered things I hadn't thought of for years. My journaling is still hit or miss as far as being readable. I've created pockets between every two pages to slip the prompts in. I may rewrite the journaling and slip it in the pockets to make it easier for the Chicklet to read at some point. I have no qualms about letting the Chicklet read this journal YET.
Marissa

New Collages

The new year started with a new journal. I'll be hauling this one around until March. I took a composition book with blue, green and pink vertical stripes thinking I would emphasize the cool colors for a winter-ish theme. As you can see it didn't quite fall into place. I did like the image of the hand drawing and glued that onto the cover. If I tuck my pen in right, it looks like it's in the hand. Cheap thrills. I admit it, I am a cheap date.

Pocket page. I continued with the electric blue theme. Some things I like, some.....my focus has been elsewhere.

I was still in the mood to cut and glue. One more collage in the journal.

Studio time got sidetracked over the weekend but I'm still keeping up with my Prompt A Day pages. My first album purchase was Elton John's "Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy."
If I could walk out the door and go anywhere... Hmmmmmm... Should I go somewhere I know or somewhere I've dreamt of going to? Norway or Africa? Mexico or the Northwest Territories to see Polar bears? Finland or the South Pole?

I could drag the Chicklet to anywhere in Arizona and we'd have a good time. I hope she gets to travel the world. That sounds corny but it's true. I may not get far now but I've been more than lucky to have traveled to and lived in far away places.
I don't get to LA much anymore. This was one of my favorite destinations. The front porch of my parent's house. I'd sit in the sun like a lizard to get warm. Or I'd write in my journal. Or I'd sit on the top step, lay back and take a nap in the sun.
One of my chores was to clean up around the plants. It was a relaxing task. Lots of greens and pinks and purples. I miss having a garden.
Marissa

Halloween Eye Candy

I'm at school and don't have the name of all the wonderfully talented artists who made these pages. Of the 33 or so pages made for the Halloween Swap these are just a few that I fell in love with. The above page uses painted embossed wallpaper for a background and layers of collage elements.
Simple and adorable. I love the kitty and especially the off kilter the "BOO" with buttons.
Funny! What a smile! The distressed painted background had us all oooohing and ahhhing!
Love the textures, love the shoes. I can hear kids singing,"Trick or treat, smell my feet...."
Rosie Posie's Trick AND Treat splendor!!!!!!! Amazing!!!! I'll have to check the Chicklet's candy real close for any of these kinds of goodies.

Marissa

I got an Itch

I got in one of those moods today. I got fed up with looking at this monthly calendar I carry with me all the time. Some people have electronic gadgets, I have this:It does the job but it's B-U-T-T ugly. Today was the last day I was going to look at this. Did you ever do this as a kid?Take a brown paper bag and make a book cover with it?I pulled out a brown bag, fitted it on the planner and tried to figure out what to do with to the cover.Although I'd pulled out a pile of collage papers, I decided to paint the background.Then I went back to my pile of papers and trimmed and glued.The inside covers have a deep enough pocket to tuck papers in. I'll probably end up adding altered envelopes for another layer of pockets.
This is the result. Painterly, with some collaged elements and no more ugly planner. I may go back with a bit more stamped paint to bring together the papers with the background.

It was a full day of classes with Kinder in the morning and 5th grade for the rest of the day. I worked on the planner cover during breaks and at lunch. Teaching was interesting. I croaked my way through classes. My voice is pretty much gone.
I pulled from my Art Unraveled experience again and did Continuous line contour drawings with my students. We started out with drawing faces from their imaginations to give them the hang of the continuous line. Then we moved on to drawing objects. Some students were perplexed and others enjoyed themselves.
I was floored when I saw this drawing. This child has been a student of mine year after year. All those years I've seen project after project blown from not following directions.
Something must have clicked because she did an excellent job. Look at those curls! I'm sending this one home in a frame!

We ran out of cough medicine tonight. Hopefully, no one wakes up with a coughing fit tonight. Cough, cough!

Marissa

Summer Break-Day 1

Boy, was I wiped out over the weekend. It's go, go, go that last week of school. Then all of a sudden that last bell rings, the kids get loaded onto their busses and it's all over. We usually ride the busses the first week and the last day of school but my wonderful partner in crime, Kelli, our grrrrrreat music teacher rode my bus for me while I finished the book above. Thank You, Kelli!

It was a gift for our principal, Angela, from our staff. Earlier this year, Angela was one of 8 school principals selected as finalists for the Rodel award. Four of the 8 were selected to be awarded $3000 and the opportunity to mentor other principals. Their profiles were in the newspaper and the winners would be announced in the paper as well. Unfortunately, Angela wasn't one of the Rodel winners but our staff knows we have the best principal ever.

In addition to the two schools I've worked at, I traveled to a couple of others and got a taste of other school climates. I feel very, very fortunate to have worked for Angela for 12 of my 13 years in this district. Many of us do. As a result we all wrote letters that were compiled into this book. Kelli presented Angela with her book on Friday at our end of the year BBQ. It was an unexpected surprise. Those are the best kind!

Since I'm on an aluminum tape kick, that's the technique used for the covers. The "A" stands for Angela and dolphins are her favorite. Tim Holtz's texture hammer was used on the dolphins and a, (sewing), marking wheel was used to add texture to the "A."Saturday was "Collage Day" with Sylvia Luna at Frenzy Stamper in Scottsdale. Look what we made!

Sylvia had us work in prescribed steps. It was different than I'm used to so it was great to learn another way to get started. First-layers of paper pieces. Then inks, then some gesso. At some point we were given a focal point to use. The pickings were slim so I used something I probably wouldn't have picked on my own. Another break from the usual. It's a good thing! Next paint was used or was it stamping? Then more paint. Above was my first effort. It's OK but not my favorite YET. It'll get reworked some more.#2-I like it! Again, we used the same steps. Glue some paper pieces down, include focal image(s), rub inks, dry brush gesso, stamp...tweak here, tweak there. I want to finish it off with some handstitching.

Sylvia had a container full of papers to rummage and pull from. There must have been some kind of medical/ailments dictionary or encyclopedia. The above image came from the "death, sudden" page. Creepy! Creepy-er when I added the words "Death, Sudden" above the male and female figures. I may not be in the best mind set to start dating again.....
#3- At this point everyone was buzzing along. I broke with Sylvia's steps and glued down a layer of the paper towel I'd been blotting with. My focal image was meant to be the dark shape to the left but my 4th piece influenced this one. The male silohuette came from the left over piece when I cut out this guy:
#4 is CREEPY but a pleasing kinda creeepy. This last collage came together in minutes. I took some scrapbook papers, tore them into strips and glued them down. The patterns on the papers were still visible but became richer with inked rubbed in. I skipped the gesso and stamping, although stamping would have added a bit more depth but I'm still really happy with this one.

The armor image was left by someone else as was the postage stamp of a mideivel figure. The scissors repeat the "X" of the armor as well as the idea of the cut away flesh.

All the papers and images are from Sylvia's stash. We didn't have to bring anything but scissors, an apron and an open mind.

Although, I hadn't planned on taking this class this weekend, I'm glad I moved the date up for it. It was perfect for my half dead state-of-mind. Being told what to do took some of the pressure off. When my brain woke up, I did my own thing and that was perfectly OK too. There 8 of us in the class and as always, it was fun to see how different everyone's pieces came out.

Sylvia's teaching this class in two weeks at Mystic Paper in Old Downtown Mesa. Sign -up!

Now that I'm home I can call the evap guy, the plumber and the handy man to get some much needed maintenance done on our "castle."

Happy Monday!