Long time no see

I am off on my first ever trip to Europe. The first planned trip 22 years ago was interruipted by a called off engagement and a pregnancy. ( not in the same relationship ).
I will be blogging my adventure here.

http://artymartytravels.blogspot.com/

You are welcome to join me in spirit

Mika inspiration

At CSR in March I was delighted to be able to take a class with the wonderful Laurie Mika. I wasn't sure if I really needed to add another medium to my list of materials I like to work with. Another area that needed tools of it's own and could develop into another money sink. I was wrong. Of course I needed to learn how to play with polymer clay. And what fun we had.

I decided more play was needed and stamp camp in September provided a wonderful opportunity. There was a whole unallocated day for doing whatever we wanted so I packed up the car with the portable toaster oven ( thanks Eliza ) preconditioned polymer clay, pasta machine and stamps and powders and paints and of course Laurie's book Mixed Media Mosaics. Being the person I am, decided to start at the beginning and work my way through. Had some company along the way with the wonderful Therese. At the end of about 10 hours I had a whole lot of tiles and not much idea what to do with them. But a little more time and I ended up producing two lovely pieces.

Grace is a 4 x 4 inch canvas board. I used the cuttlebug Fleur de lys folder for the black background and a stamp for the foreground. I am considering turning this into the front cover of a journal.

A lady of quality is mounted on a disused wooden stamp block. I love the way she has turned out. You can click on her for a larger image.
Thanks Laurie for the inspiration and the new media to play with. I can see more fun days coming up with polymer clay.

Long time no post

Well suffice to say , It's been a long time dear readers. I have been doing bits and pieces of art but neglecting my poor blog. I have about 10 posts in my head but, rather than be obsessive and try to catch up in chronological order, I will just start from now and jump backwards when I get the time.

I have been platying a bit with texture and I bought an app for my iphone from the wonderful Michael deMeng called shades of alchemy. He lists some of his wonderful recipes for layering and pooling washes with videos and instructions. Having never taken a class from the master, I felt as if I was receiving personal tuition. So when this month's theme for paperarts was stone angels, I just had to play with his washes. This one is verdigris. I couldnt resist adding just a touch of copper gilding wax. Combined with texture paste and glimmer screens, I am pretty happy with the result. The trim down the bottom is from grunge paper and a mix of different distress embossing powders to give the look of old stone.

This one was also for paperarts. The image is a faux tin type using silver lumiere paint as the transfer medium from an inkjet image. Just love the ornamental iron embossing folder for the cuttlebug. You can use any acrylic paint for this technique but I particularly like the effect with silver.
I will try not to leave it so long. Have lots to share. Keep an eye out.

Love M

What to do during a 24 hour shift

Up until now I have kept this blog for more arty pursuits. But I find I haven't posted much this year and that is partly because I haven't felt able to share the other half of my creative side which is my cards and stamping. I really came to this world of mixed media via sewing ( especially heirloom sewing ) and then rubber stamping. Card making is still something I love to do so today you get to see some of that.

The 24 hour shift was yesterday. Now don't get me wrong. I will work until all the work is done but in a hospital with no emergency and only elective surgery and maternity it can be quiet on a long weekend especially Easter. The hospital only had 20 patients or so and most of them were well so what is a girl to do? Luckily, DD has a significant birthday coming up and needs some invitations.

So this is the product.
I love this folder for the cuttlebug and the Martha Stewart punch. I had to make 25 of these and , of course, underestimated the work involved.

I have decided the easel card is my new favourite construction. I just hope the people who receive then can work out how to display them. Thanks for looking.

Creative Soul Retreat 1

You know your life is a little out of balance when you get back from artist retreat and it takes two weeks to even unpack and start to blog about it. But here we are and if you have the time to read, I would love to share some of it with you.
Here in Australia we don't get a lot of opportunity to take classes from international tutors. I can only read with envy about Art Fests and the like across the Pacific. So , when the opportunity comes, I jump and for me that meant attending Creative Soul Retreat organized by Bevlea Ross with her trusty helpers Eva and Lucy. To take time out for nourishing the artistic side of my soul was a pleasure. The place was gorgeous. Up in the Dandenong valley just outside of Melbourne, nestled in some lovely countryside with vines in pastures and surrounded by sweet smelling trees, one couldn't help but awaken the senses and slow down.
I had signed up for three days of classes with Judy Wise and planned to finish with Laurie Mika. I was a little concerned that I was putting all my eggs in one basket but I love Judy's work and was really looking forward to spending three days with her.
I was pretty disappointed as well as concerned when Judy announced her impending surgery which would prevent her from coming to Australia. I nearly dropped out of the retreat but I had paid and put aside the time and really wanted to go. Judy organised a replacement and I hoped that Jan Harris would be able to fill Judy's shoes.
Well fill them she certainly did. Jan turned out to be a wonderful warm woman with a gentle quiet nature. I am sure she was nervous on her first day. I am so glad she had the courage to come in Judy's place. We ended up getting "two for the price of one". Jan taught Judy's techniques and added her own twist and we had a ball.
In the end she was one of the best teachers of art I have ever had but more of that in the next post.

Our first class was waxy layers. I love bees wax and I love collaging with it. In honour of our class I had made twinchies for a swap using Bees wax. The theme was Leonardo de Twinchie. and here is my piece.

But for class we had larger canvases to complete. I found myself really floundering at first. I didn't bring large images and my muse was pretty rusty. The smell of bees wax must have got to me because I eventually found some inspiration and created my first piece.

Those of you who are not from Australia wont recognise this very attractive woman but she was the youngest parliamentarian in Australia and then the youngest leader of a political party. Unfortunately her party imploded despite her best efforts. The wonderful texture in the top left corner is from flooding the canvas with Shellac and then lighting it. It reminds me of the rot setting in around her. I am happy with the piece.

Later that day I did another piece more in my old style. There were lots of fun techniques to play with like toner transfers and foiling. I just had to go to Bunnings to get a number for the house of ill repute.
Thanks Jan, It was a lot of fun and the class loosened me up for what was yet to come.

One World, One heart give away

What a wonderful experience this One World One Heart magic carpet ride has been. I have visited over 500 blogs. Unfortunatley couldn't get to them all and continue working and have seen some wonderful work. I had no idea art dolls were getting so funky and there is such an array of beautiful jewelry out there as well as some very talented painters.
I have found some new favorite sellers on Etsy and, lets face it, have enjoyed the extra traffic through my blog and the compliments. Who doesn't enjoy compliments. My google reader blog roll is bursting to overflowing but I am going to enjoy continuing to read a number of the blogs that I visited.

So thanks to all involved for your generosity and thanks to Lisa for starting it all. I am sure you have been extremely busy but you have contributed in your little way towards some seriously good vibrations going around this world of ours.

So, without further ado, with the help of the random number generator thingy

I have drawn my winner and it is Amanda from
http://amanda31gifts.blogspot.com/.

But you see, I was so touched by the number of comments that I had to add another give away. I chose another of my soldered pendants.

And this time the person chosen was pegyapl from the Philipines.

Her blog is here and I love her painting.

So thanks to everyone for entering. I really enjoyed it and look forward to next year.

More soldering

When you are going to get out the soldering iron there is not much point in just doing one charm. So I had to justify it and make a whole bunch more. I made some new collages and scanned in my DJ Pettit class painting as well as a canvas I did in a swap.

I'm getting better at cutting glass. The 3 x 2 inch slide I bought last year cut nicely into a twinchie and two inchies. And I worked out a little missing step from my previous efforts. Probably obvious to many others but it helps to flux the jump ring! Doh. It made that step so much easier.

Now I just have to decide what to do with them.
Suggestions?