Cruising to the Caribbean

As a child I was fortunate enough to travel to a lot of wonderful places and countries.  I love traveling and seeing new cultures, tasting new foods and sightseeing.

Then I bought a store and traveling for me, apart from trade shows, ceased.

So I jumped on the chance to teach on a Mixed Media Cruise last year.  Cheryl Mezzetti asked me to co-teach with her aboard the Royal Caribbean’s Freedom of the Seas. We traveled to St. Thomas. St. Marteen, and Coco Cay in the Bahama’s.  We also had three days at sea, which is when we taught classes.

The first class I taught was an Art Journal that could be used as a photo album, travel journal or technique journal.  There were different techniques used on each page.  Unfortunately I still have to complete the interior of my own album with the souvenir’s I collected.

art-journal-cruise

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Paris Tag

I love to make tags, last year I made a new one every week.  This year time seems to have run away from me.

This was one of my favorite tags from last year.

Paris Memoirs Tag

Jan-10-SP Jan-10

This was made with book paper and an old atlas for the background. I colored the papers with Distress Inks.  Stamps were from Tim Holtz as well as the Filmstrip ribbon and I also used the Tim Holtz embossing folder on the Ten Seconds studio metal.

 

 

The A2Z of Me

In the last post I mentioned that we also have another Art Journaling class, the A2Z of me.  This class is done in a small watercolor Moleskine Journal.  We started with the letter I.

Here is the page I completed:

I Imposter

The background was done with Gelatos and Gesso. Archival Ink was used for stamping and a Signo Uniball black pen was used to journal.

Each month we randomly pick a letter but skip blank pages so when we have finished the alphabet it will be in order.

I love this class, we do a quick background technique and then spend time cutting out imagery, stamping, chatting and hopefully writing.  We each pick a word that corresponds with the letter and it is fun seeing what everyone else does to complete their page.  I always try to pick a word that is personal to me rather than generic.  In June we had the letter “V” but when I sat down to do the journaling  I could not remember the word I had picked so I was unable to complete my page.

Art Journaling

I thought I would start to show some of the images of the Art Journaling classes that we have at the store.  We actually have two classes going on every month.

Adventures in Art Journaling, this class was the one we started with.  We work in a Moleskine notebook.  Love this book.  Just the right size and I love that the paper is thin.  We can always add gesso if we need to.

The other class that we have is the A2Z of Me.  Each month we pick a letter of the alphabet randomly, do a background and then add imagery and write about the word we chose to go with that letter.  We are also working in a Moleskine journal but this is a small watercolor book.  We skip pages in the book and then go back and complete them when that letter comes up, this way when we are done, the book will be “alphabetically correct”

This photo is from the very first Adventures in Art Journaling class back in February 2012.

We used Dylusions sprays, stencils, and stamps along with Ranger’s Archival Inks.

This was the morning class

Multi

and we had so many sign ups I repeated the class in the afternoon.  This page I finished off with book paper, Faber Castel pitt pens, Ranger’s  black gesso,  rub-ons and stamps.

Art-Journal---StarsI

We have been having so much creative fun in these classes that I have been asked to host a third class, so as soon as I figure out what journal and what theme we are probably going to add it.

 

I am so excited and honored

today Ranger Ink (one of my favorite companies) featured my project on their blog.  I made a mini book for my Dad for Father’s Day.  I used Claudine Hellmuths Multi Medium to transfer an image of the town where I was born onto watercolor paper.  It worked fabulously!  Here is the link to the project: http://rangerink.com/studio-moments-with-dad-mini-book/  

 Cover4

This is the photo image transfer page that you see through the cover of the book. It is from Birmingham, England the town I was born in.

Birmingham-Photo-Transfer

This is a a photo of Dad and Me, I have a photo transfer of London in the background.  Accents are from the Tim Holtz Idea-ology line

Dad-and-Me

the tutorial is up on the Ranger site if you want step by step directions.

I am so honored to be on their blog!  Thanks Ranger Ink.

 

 

a new beginning

I had a blog, I still have it, I started it in 2007.

It eventually evolved into the stores blog,  I found I could not keep up with the daily posts so I handed it over for someone else to write it. Giving up the daily blog posts gave me back some much needed time to run the store and create classes.

In time I found that I missed my blog, my little corner of the web where I could sometimes show a piece of art or write something funny.

So today I am starting a new blog, just for me, a new beginning . . . .