Getting Down to Business

An upcoming excursion to Los Angeles necesitated the making of new business cards. New cards, to me, means painting paper for printing on.

 

Day 1

 I gathered a pile of stencils, some still in their packaging. (My stash is forever growing).

 My go to "kit" of card stock, gesso, cheap brush, brayer, scrapers, plate/palette, bubble wrap and a paper plate holder.

I started by stenciling gesso through the plate creating a sunburst pattern.

 I worked with several papers at a time often burnishing a second sheet over a freshly stenciled paper. Extra gesso transfers to the top sheet and the papers dry faster. The design on the second sheet is often my favorite as it's more uneven and distressed looking.

A finished gessoed paper. Why use gesso for the first layer? As later layers of paint are added, the gessoed pattern absorbs less paint creating a variation in the value of the color.

Day 2-Color

My art business, Studio Artology, is represented with a color palette of turquoise blue, lime green and bright red. I divided a set of papers to be painted in each color. First up, greens. I decided to stencil and stamp greens over a set of papers. If you're not familiar with my passion for dots, you're seeing it now. Stencils, bubble wrap and discarded die cut leftovers were used for the green sheets.

 A red sheet, close-up. A slew of paints and inks were used for the final layers. It's exciting watching the papers develop with each spritz and wipe of the brush. This one had me worried with too much white showing through for printing and readable type.

  The growing stacks on the drying rack. I didn't want to leave and have to wait until the next day to see how the colors turned out. Patience isn't a well developed virtue of mine.

 

 Day 3

Forget the coffee! I headed to the drying rack the first thing the next morning. I wanted to swim in the depth of the colors.

One problem. Painted papers create wrinkled papers. Not ideal for running through a printer.

 Say, "hello" to my tried and true solution. Ironing the paper. 

The finished sheets.

The final steps included running the papers through the printer, cutting the cards to size and experiencing a few thrills of excitement.

The business cards were well received and definitely unique and representative of my art making. 

Marissa

Look Out!

Look out! It's book making time. Here's a collage from this past year. I like to play around with eyes. I'm not big on figurative imagery but multiple of eyes, lips, etc., are fun. I have more eyes waiting to become a cover on a composition book.

I had a bit of a task last spring while my finger was healing from the gardening mishap. Create a book for our retiring principal. She asked that it be purple and teal, our school colors. Dolphins, the school mascot, were quite abundant!

 

The spine was three inches wide but the book was still bursting with notes and scrapbook pages full of well wishes from staff members.

The hardest part to getting started was deciding the size and basic construction of the book. There were two items I envisioned. The fanned envelopes pictured above and a beaded binding seen below. Yes, those are paint chips we wrote messages on the back of in the envelopes. One day I will be banned from the the paint department at Home Depot...

The spine was constructed from book board wrapped with hand painted and stamped canvass.

Beaded bindings make me drool. In a good way. The book construction is somewhat informal but the beads add texture and subtle bling. If "subtle" can ever go with bling... 

 The interior pages consisted of scrapbook papers, papers in braille and hand painted papers. I went to town using newly acquired stencils from Crafters Workshop. Who knew that painting could be a challenge? Although I didn't need my index finger to hold the paint brush, I had to lean it against the healing finger. It was an education on how every inch of the hand plays a vital role. Healing was not going to keep me from making the book I had in my head.

More paint chips and hand painted envelopes. It was a sad moment when I went to Home Depot looking for Mickey paint chips only to find out they no longer carried that line of paint.

Paint chips, flash cards and rubber stamping were sprinkled throughout.

Making the book was a cinch in comparison to gathering my own thoughts and well wishes to share.

 

When words fail me, I create. I gathered bits and scraps and went to work on the sewing machine.

I created two facing pages, the #1 page as a pocket for a #1 card I wrote on and slipped into the pocket.

Shoe boxes full of my scraps stash. Postcards, magazine images, LOTs of candy wrappers...

It's all fair game for artmaking. The Craft Fair season is starting up here in Phoenix and the scraps will be soon be flying through my sewing machine as I build up inventory for the upcoming season. 

What a blessing to not fry the moment I stick my head out the door :)

Marissa