Faux Chihuly with a Twist....

I'm demoing a product called Dura-lar by Grafix next weekend at Artist & Display. It's thick, not 100% transparent, but can be shaped (carefully) in warm water. The plan was to use glass paints, which I have none of, and since I love alcohol inks, thought this would be a great substitute.

I've had this great song by Kirstin Andreassen going through my head ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EELEjeYzfjM ) it's SO FUN! "Crayola dosn't make the color for your eyes". Great inspiration for color!

The 'look' we're going for is that of Dale Chihuly ( http://www.chihuly.com/ ) an amazing glass artist. His colors are fabulous and his pieces undescribable! Tough to replicate with alcohol inks because of the way they react.

I'm going to play around some more & see what I can work out. Not sure Mr. Chihuly would appreciate me calling this a Drunken Chihuly Technique (due to the ALCOHOL inks) but it makes me laugh. So for now, it's Faux-Chihuly with a Twist!

Trick or treat!

Poking around, doing something other than I should (as usual) I came acrosss Lisa Vollraths Ten Two Studios site. She had used Marie Anntoinette images to make fab Ribbon Fairy's. I needed to make something special for a friend for her Halloween Birthday, so I new this would be a fun idea to use.

Halloween Cards

These images are all from Altered Pages and were used for a card kit I designed, using windows and tranparency sheets.

Happy Halloween!!!!

These are some Halloweenie ATC's I did recently. Images are from Phenomenon & Lisa's Altered Art

Which Red Lead Image are you???

I am the birthday girl!!!! here's my ATC for the swap. My head got a little big (wink, wink)!

Side Step Card

In a continued attempt to be organized (laugh if you will), after my Creative Background Class I was putting writeups away with samples. One of the techniques I covered was the Masterboard Technique which uses Distress Inks and Gesso. I made such a lovely background (IMHO) that I wanted to create a card with it as a finished sample of the technique. Well, Bonnie showed off another fabulous design on her blog at http://www.craftiblog.wordpress.com/ and I knew I had to make it! Bonnie has such an elegant style. CLEARLY not me, but I do love the card designs she shares. Well, so much for organizing! I did use the MB paper for the winged chair and DID use it on my side step card! That's got to count for something. Loved making this. Although I'm still not sure why I always adjust measurements. I better check my trimmer & Score-Pal....

And MAYBE, rather than just scanning, I'll take a photo of this so the dimension shows! Watch for updates......

Happy Halloween!

Ok, it's my favorite holiday. This piece is for the collage class I'm teaching this Saturday at Artist and Display (http://www.artistanddisplay.com/). We'll be working on a 9x12 canvas, using acrylics, images, stamps and LOADs of ephemera. I have several samples, but want everyone to do their own thing. Since some of the images I printed were Halloween-y, I wanted to be sure to have a piece done with those images. It's been a while since I've worked on a canvas, and I forgot how much fun it is to paint.

Off to merry ol' England...

Not me, but this piece I created for a swap. The theme was Elements: Wind, Water, Earth, Fire.

Simple enough or so I thought! I doodled, sketched, researched, and came right back to my original idea. A small banner-like piece. It's 12x9-ish. I should have done the cloth pieces on a lighter fabric. I used canvas cloth. I was looking for movement to depict the 'wind' part. I ended up adding ribbons & fibers, so Lyn will have to 'blow on it' to get that movement! I didn't like the idea of 4 stips of cloth, I typically do things in odd numbers not even.

I used color washes from Ranger, Stamp Zia, Stewart Superior, Tsukeneko, Glimmer mist and Radient Rain. It seemed a bit naked, so I added a little calligraphy at the bottom.