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Friday, September 14, 2012

Inspiration Deck - part two

Continuing with my Inspiration Deck tutorial:

I wanted some layers and texture on my cards so I decided to paint some tissue paper.
This is ordinary white tissue that you'd use inside a gift package.  You can buy it anywhere, even at the dollar store.  Or pull it out of one of those empty shoeboxes you probably have in your basement.
Once again I lightly iron it to some freezer paper.  This gives it a lot more strength while you apply paint to the fragile tissue. 

 I started by loosely rolling on a layer of craft paint, leaving some white parts showing.

 Then I took one of the $2 rolling pins I found at Goodwill and wrapped some rubber bands around it:
 and I squirted a big puddle of darker blue paint on a plastic cutting board and rolled the pin through the paint:
 and rolled it on the paper to make interesting lines and splotches:
 I did the same thing on a greenish-yellow background:
 Next, I squirted some gesso on big bubble wrap, smeared it around with my foam roller, and used it to print on top of more blue paper

 then I rolled some green paint on smaller bubble wrap and printed another layer on top of that:
 Took I took some of that rubbery stuff that you can use under throw rugs to keep them from slipping and rolled on some green paint and then some blue paint and made a print with it:




I took some corrugated cardboard in the form of a coffee sleeve,  rolled black paint on it and used it to print lines in various directions




 I squirted water into the remaining puddle of black paint on my cutting board to thin it, rubbed an old toothbrush in it, and then flicked black paint all over one of the sheets:

 This thing pictured below is a homemade stamp.  I found the round things at the dollar store - I think they are supposed to be used on the bottoms of the legs of your chairs to protect your floors.  They came in a big package in different sizes.  I glued them to a piece of foam core board to make a sturdy stamp.  I covered them with black paint and stamped those cool, checkered circles:


 Then I hung all the sheets of freezer/tissue paper up to dry.
(I love my clothesline in my art room.  I screwed two hooks into the ceiling at opposite corners of the room, tied loops in the ends of a cheap plastic rope, and hooked the rope from corner to corner.  When I want to use the room for something other than art it's so easy to slip off the hooks and tuck away and the hooks just stay in the ceiling since they are rather small and inconspicuous)

In part 3 I'll show you how I used this tissue with my already prepared backgrounds.
(but now I'm off to IKEA!  yippee!)

Inspiration Deck Swap - part one

One of the best swaps I did last year was Jess Brogan's inspiration deck swap.
Each person took a deck of playing cards, decorated them and adding inspiring quotes and sent the deck to Jess.  She swapped all the cards and mailed me back a deck with 52 different cards, from 52 different artists, with 52 different inspiring quotes.  
This is the deck I received last year:


Don't you wish you had one of these?
Well, you can!
I was thrilled when Jess announced she'd be doing the swap again this year.
You can read all about this year's swap on her blog, In Search of Dessert.

Jess asked me if I'd make my deck early this year and give everyone a sneak peak at the process.
Here are  my finished cards for this year's swap.

You totally need to join this swap.  The deadline is November 15th - that's two whole months from now.  And before you go saying "Karen, you are out of your mind, I don't have the time, patience or resources to make 52 different pieces of art in the next two months!" follow along while I show you my quick and easy methods for making beautiful cards out of the most basic supplies and household items.  I'm going to post this in multiple parts since it's so photo heavy.

To begin:
Do you have stuff like this?
 
 
 Then you can make a deck.
In a single weekend. I kid you not.
Read on.

FIRST, I laid all my cards on freezer paper, covered them with regular old copy paper and lightly ironed them so they'd stay in place.





Then I grabbed a cheapo foam paint roller from the hardware store and rolled it through some gesso and primed all my cards in a few quick stokes.





I liberally squirted two colors of craft paint on the cards and went at them again with the foam roller to lay down some quick color.



Now I hang it on my clothesline to dry while I work on the next step.
Read on for part 2.

Monday, September 10, 2012

one collage, two collage.....

red collage


blue collage


Converting the art room back into a guest room for a five day visit from a beloved friend. I should be sleeping, but I had to squeeze in a few more collages while the room was still mine.

Sunday, September 9, 2012

collage practice

I finally bought this book:


I learned about this book, and the author's collage a day blog  from one of my favorite mail art friends, MadMadge (aka Spokane Madge).  (seriously go see her blog or flickr stuff because her collages just knock me off my feet)

The intro to this book opened up a huge space in my head and now all I want to do is work through all the exercises in this book without stopping. He illustrates the very basic principle of background/middle ground/foreground in a way that totally changed the way I look at my collages.

The very first exercise in the book is '"five minute collages".  I spent several hours Friday night sorting images into back/middle/foreground and scanning favorite images so I could print them on different types of paper.

and then I started gluing into a sketchbook like a mad woman.
I don't actually set my time for five minutes like the book suggests, but I am working quickly without agonizing over every choice and without over thinking.


Here are some of the quick, no-thinking collages I've done over the past few days.  









I'm so full of good ideas, I don't want to stop.  It's killing me to call it a night and go to bed, but that Monday morning alarm is going to ring in about 6 hours.  Time to peel the Mod Podge off my fingers and hit the pillow.
I will be dreaming of layers.

Wednesday, September 5, 2012

Swap stuff

I'm currently part of three round robin art journal/sketchbook projects.
Last weekend I worked on two different books in my group that leans a little toward the dark side.

One of the photo albums I found at the antiques store on vacation features page after page of this couple:
They never smile.
Not once in the whole book.
I'm becoming a bit obsessed with them.

These two pages feature the unsmiling woman and snippets of song lyrics that get stuck in my head.




I'm also doing a really cool mail art round robin.
We took four sheets of cardstock, folded them in half and stitched them together to make a little zine.  I make art on the front, and use the back like a postcard, taping up the three open sides of the booklet and mailing it to the next person in the rotation.  When she gets it, she cuts the tape, flips my picture over, and does the same thing on blank pages before resealing it and mailing it along.
This is the brain child of Mandy (aka FarStarr) she explains the process better here.

This has been totally fun and fast moving.  (Unlike the journal round robins that have been dragging on and on and on)  I've had three zines go through my hands so far (including the one I started) and here's what I've done:
 

  
 


And speaking of Mandy - I'm going to meet her in a few weeks!
She lives about an hour away and she's hosting a letter-writing social and I'm going and I'm really excited. Details are here in case any of you live in the area of Massachusetts and want to join us. 


This next one was for a nun-themed postcard swap:
 
And I was lucky enough to get one of the Tofu Millennia mail art postcards:
This is a collaborative project.  Each person fills a space on the postcard and mails it to someone of their choosing.  (Thanks Jill for sending me mine!)

Here's the card I got with the layer I added on top:

As Tofu gets the completed cards back, they are posted here.
This was such a super cool idea one of my mail art swap groups decided to do our own collaborative round robin.  (okay, it was Mandy getting things going once again) There are 8 people in the group and so I took a 6"x8" card and divided it into a grid and filled in my first tiny little box and mailed it off.  Can't wait to get it back with all 8 boxes filled.



I completely cracked myself up decorating the package for the mystery bag swap I did recently:
(inside was crammed with various tidbits from my stash)

And since we're speaking of swaps...
don't forget to hop over to Mail Me Some Art to see some of the great art that's been coming in and out my mailbox, and while you're there you could get in on the fun.