Friday, September 30, 2011

Spicepaper from the kitchen

I was experimenting with paper towels when I saw some great stain patterns that were left after cleanup yesterday. A blog post on Cloth Paper Scissors prompted me to try some kitchen ingredients for mixed media surface enhancement, so I got some curry powder and some Chinese Five-Spice Powder and sprinkled them on very damp paper towels (white with fiber). It looked good - after it dried a bit, I brushed off the small clumps and painted some gloss acrylic medium over the surface.

Once the paper dried, I adhered the spicepaper to a journal cover frame that I had constructed and covered with Kraft paper. A little gold leaf added to the texture. The results were fun, a cross between aged canvas and distressed leather. And it smells like a spice bazaar!See what you think--too bad you can't smell it:







Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Font fever

Design mode has kicked  in and I went on a font hunt for some letters with a craftsman look. I found some beauties - here's a sample board with just a few. Fonts are so expressive all by themselves no matter what the words might be.

Saturday, September 17, 2011

Prest-o Change-o Studi-o

Behind in my work as usual, I had to do a quick change from a collage and drawing studio to a clay studio in about half an hour today. Actually, I've organized my tools so that it's fairly easy. I keep all of my clay tools, clay press molds and carving tools, and rolling boards stacked in one area behind a kitchen butcher block shelf. And I have baskets for the collage material - here are some pictures which show the transformation. Pretty slick re-purposing in a small space!





Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Judging book by cover?

I agonized over how to present my work to the Cloth Paper Scissors editors before I packed it to mail it off. I ended up "re-imagining" some of those brown kraft expanding office folders. I put a strip of mat board in the bottom of the two smaller ones to hold them open, then scored and trimmed the flaps to make fold-overs with punched holes and ties. The larger one was done the same basic way, but the iPad cover was too large for flaps, so I skewered it with some bamboo toothpicks.
If *I* were the judge, I'd choose *me* based on the creative packages alone - - too bad I'm not!




Thursday, September 8, 2011

Cloth Paper Scissors Finalist

Yesterday I received an email from Jenn Mason, editor of the popular national art/crafting magazine, Cloth Paper Scissors published by Interweave Press. I am a finalist for Artisan of the Year 2012!
In this post, I described working for this in the studio - and I'm happy that they liked the work!
Here is another piece from that set of three submissions:
I am pretty amazed, but happy that I seem to be on the right track - good to be validated by a community of incredibly talented people.Stay tuned!