Collage class...

The other weekend I went up to Frenzy Stamper in Scottsdale to
take a class with Cindy Kovack that was called Fractured Masters.
It was definitely a new style for me and at first I thought it would
be easier than it was. We were told to pick a focal image from a
whole pile of images that Cindy had brought for us to choose from.

Her main instruction was to go with what you immediately liked,
not to think about it for too long. I found my image almost
immediately, and that guided the rest of the choices for my collage.

We had to find colours that matched our main image and then the
fun began, looking through magazines just looking for colours. I
had a couple of pictures that I used for my background and I am
sure you would never know that most of my background is made
up from photos of people who are covered in tattoo's!! The colours
in the photos really went well with my main image which is the
colour blocked picture.

When I had done most of it Cindy and I knew it needed something
else and she found the triangular image for me which I added on.
Despite the fact that I liked my choices of image and background
my main image seemed to fade into the background, so when I got
home I added black dimensional paint around it. Even that did not
seem to make much of a difference so I added white, which helped
it stand out more. 

I am not really sure if I like this piece yet. Now I know what the
process was, I think I should have perhaps made some different
choices. I am always usually someone who likes to weigh all the
options first and this time I did not, maybe that was good for 

me to get me a little out of my box :)

Canvas crazy...

Since I took the Larger than Life class with Alisa Burke at the
Create event in May, all I want to do is graffiti style painting on
pieces of canvas or fabric. I just finished doing Alisa's online class
"Graffiti Chic 2" which is really an extension of what we learned
in the class. I love the freedom of this type of art, you just keep
going back and adding layers and if  you don't like something
you just paint right over it! Believe me I have done that on these
canvases. Actually the piece above is done on muslin fabric with
very watered down paint, a new thing for me and I really enjoyed it.

Now this piece is the last one I did on canvas before I did the
muslin piece. Again as with the previous ones I showed here,
to me it is not finished, needs more layers. I am just leaving them
out on view in my house hoping that the inspiration as to what to
add next will hit me. I have always been a "less is more" with my
art work, some call that "clean and simple" in the scrapbooking
world (which is where I started on this art path). So now I have
4 pieces of painted canvas and 1 piece of painted muslin, what
am I going to do with them??

The best laid plans...

This weekend I was supposed to be in Carson, CA to take classes
with the fabulous Teesha Moore and then attend the Carson Stamp
show. My family left at the beginning of the week for 2 weeks so
this was a great break for me in the middle of their trip.

I was going there with my very good friend Lisa who was really
excited to be going to her very first art retreat. We spent all Weds
e-mailing back and forth, what clothes do we need? are you taking
a jacket? will it be cold in the classroom? what art supplies should
we take? is toothpaste a liquid? etc.

Thursday I drove over to her house then we went off to the
airport, it was not busy there as we had checked in online
and we were carrying our bags on, there was only 1 person
in front of us at the security check point, we were so excited!

We got lunch then went at sat by our gate for the flight. Twenty
minutes before the flight the gate person apologized to us for
our wait, we were puzzled, then told us that our flight was at a
different gate. We rushed over to the new gate, which was not

close by and then saw our flight had been delayed, oh no! We
patiently sat there and kept listening to the announcements telling
us when the next update would be. After several times of
extending the delay it was finally announced that they had
cancelled the flight, nothing else was said or offered to us.
Luckily Lisa had got us on standby for the next flight but alas
after waiting and waiting that one was full. Whilst waiting for
that one we had made a reservation for the last one, that one
ended up also being delayed to the point we were told we could
fly to another city or go in the morning. This was when we looked
at each other and decided that this was just not meant to be, Lisa
called her husband and he came and picked us up.

So I arrived home all alone with the bags I had packed that same
morning, feeling really, really upset that we did not get to go. The
next morning we decided that we would go out for a nice lunch
and then get together to work in our art journals. We had a great
lunch out with a delicious dessert and then today spent most of
the day with another friend playing in our journals and had lunch
delivered to my house.

Thursday was not a great day but I could not have spent the day

with a better person, thanks Lisa :)

The Sketchbook Project 2012...

Yes I decided to sign up for this year's round of the Sketchbook
Project even after the stress of getting it finished on time this year.
If you have not heard about this and would like to know what it
is all about then please go here. For the 2011 project I did not
find out about it until late last year and received my
sketchbook in mid October. At first I was so excited to take
part in this project but once I had the book in my hands I was
nervous to start. I did start, and I finished it and sent it in on time.
In fact you can even view some of my pages online right here.
My theme last year was called "In 5 Minutes...", I decided to use
each spread to ask a question of sorts and by the last few pages
I was running out of ideas. This year I thought I would go with
something more abstract and so my theme for this year is....
"Monochromatic".

I actually started my book over the weekend, shockingly I did not
make a plan for this. I just got some art materials out and started,
this is not like me at all as I usually like to think about
something for a while and then start. I was wondering as I sat at
my desk colouring in my pages, how many people plan their
projects out and how many just go for it?

I am showing off 2 of the 8 pages I have worked on. I honestly had
no idea what I was doing when I started except that I wanted each
page to be in their own monochromatic theme. After I finished the
first 2 pages it started to look like each page was a very simple
maze, so now I am thinking I may try to somehow incorporate
that into my theme.

I have high hopes this year of not getting stressed out about this as
I have a much earlier start on it. I know a few people who
participated last year and am wondering if they will also be doing it again this year?