Bar Harbor, Maine

We are in Maine for a few days visiting Steve's family. They took us out on their boat, here's a picture of a lobster boat stopped to collect lobsters. Notice the seagulls that follow them around while they work. Guess they get some free food!

The next pic is in Bar Harbor, a beautfiul town. This is the door of an Inn right downtown.


Dear reader, hope you are well.
Barb V

For Beth, tube rivets

Beth, this piece has some hand dyed fibers under mica, the frame is attached with tube rivets.

Collage Discovery Challenge, Lesson 1

Canvases from the first "lesson" of the TreasureArtTrends Collage Discovery Workshop Challenge. We are using the book by Claudine Hellmuth's book, working thru trying each technique. The first four techniques are for backgrounds.

"Dance" started with the paper-pulling background technique. Learned some interesting stuff on that one, like if the paper is wet, you can scratch a lot easier. The paper was a piece of music. It was a bit too busy and that threw me, and it didn't end up as well as it could have, but I do love the lady dancing!

All these use acrylic paint. The top left has an opaque layer of dark cherry and a transparent layer of a mix of fuchsia and coral. Love that dark cherry!
The top right demonstrates using petroleum jelly to give a "peeling paint" look. That was interesting even just getting petroleum jelly since I didn't have a clue where to buy it. What does it get used for? Found it in the same aisle at CVS with the bandaids. You have to seal the opaque layer with gel medium before you smear some jelly where you want the paint to come off. Then use a wash on top of the whole thing. It was fun using the heat gun on this, the paint moved around on top of the jelly. I'll definitely use this technique again as it was high on the funmeter. CH is very into using fingers, even with paint. Clearly I'm going to enjoy her workshop in Bonita Springs! Better take my apron...
The bottom left should have turned out better. You use a big blob of titanium white and smear it around. Then use deep stamps (I used some metal ones that I got on Granville Island a couple years back at Maiwa) and whatever else to make impressions in the thick layer of paint. You can write, use your paste paper tools, whatever. Then it has to dry overnight. The top is a wash, and here's where it didn't quite work out. Since I left ridges in the white paint, they obscured the stamp images. Also, the fuchsia wash isn't quite dark enough, the colors she used in the book are much more interesting with this technique. But I shall try again with different colors.
The last canvas shows my favorite technique, paper pulling. This makes a terrific background and, dear reader, you are sure to see it again! This was an old dictionary page, starting with an old piece of paper adds to the whole effect, something that would have helped in the piece "Dance".

Hope you have a creative day,
Barb V.

Henrietta and Ruth Ann

I wish I could have met Henrietta, but alas she is probably long gone. The old photos I have of her are all from 1916, where she looks to be about 20 years old. I am much taken by her since in every photo she is grinning or laughing, and it looks like her friends were always laughing with her. I wonder what her life was like and hope that it was as beautiful as she was.

She has shown up in some of my ATCs and one altered book, but I just can't seem to stop wanting to put her happy face on everything. Here is a necklace that I just finished. It's sterling. The black stones are onyx. The chain is fun, I used 16 g ss wire, balled up an end, hammered it flat, then put a hole thru it. The next link goes thru, with one hammered flat ball end bent. It's kinda wonky, but I like it. Everything got thrown in liver of sulfur (except the photo) and then polished in the tumbler. The photo is a copy of the original on some really good paper that I found at Jerry's Artarama. I wanted the shape to look like a torn piece of paper, what do you think?

Hope you are well, dear reader.
Barb V.

The orange cat wears fuchsia

Since several projects are always underway, sometimes stuff spills over. Does that happen to you too, dear reader? The old lace curtain grabbed at Trash 2 Treasures for the Trash 2 Art projects got painted with my favorite fuchsia color. The lace was being cut up to use on the Red Queen (which you haven't seen yet since it would be unseemly for the Queen to be seen not completely clothed!). And these Gothic Arches were just lying there, and whoopee! doesn't the lace look nice on them? Don't you love when that happens? Remember the Textile Show in Minneapolis? Well this morning I was reading an old Surface Design magazine (Gallery, Sept. 2006) and came across the work of Lynda E. Andrus. Her Grandmother's cabinet is in the Gallery, and here is what she has to say about it: "My work consists of using mixed media and multiple techniques. I have crossed the boundaries of fine art and fiberart. I take an idea, then address the materials and techniques I need to execute it with. The union of fibers and fine arts opens up a whole new world of exploration."

Dear Reader, as some of you know, Barb V. is into walking and is trying to join up with a group who would like to do some walking somewhere fun like Tuscany or Provence. I'm hoping some of my friends from Green Mountain will want to go!

What about the orange cat? She had to go to the vet yesterday, and they put a lovely fuchsia bandage on her paw where they took the blood. She didn't appreciate it much though and we had to have it off quite soon after returning home.

The Red Queen Principle

The Red Queen said that you have to keep running just to stay in place. Isn't that what life feels like?
Well, that's what I've been thinking about a lot lately and so it ended up being explored in this shrine. The mat board and recycled paper came from Trash 2 Treasures. There is an art challenge coming up, you need to use 75% materials that are gathered from Trash 2 Treasures. This shrine is more or less experimental since I wasn't sure what techniques to use. Shrines are very popular right now in the altered art world. It seemed like a good way to start.

You need a very sharp knife to cut the mat board or it will rip. Since mine wasn't, the next step was to cover up those rips. The recycled paper makes nice papier mache.

Since books are part of my shtick, there's a book in it's own niche, made from some of my very own handmade paper. This paper is very nice smelling too, since the teacher, Trish Halverson, brought some tea in that day and we added that to the pulp.

The food references didn't even occur to me until just now, but the sticks on the book binding are bamboo skewers that I painted, and the tin with the shell on the left was a food mold of some sort. Hm. That's the cool thing about creating stuff, though, isn't it, how stuff just sort of comes out without you realizing until later. I love that.
Here's the back, if I hadn't managed to take the picture right in front of my lamp/magnifier, you could probably see the top better, oh well.

Hope you are on top of it all today, dear reader.
Barb V.

My little corner

Right now this is a corner of the "studio", really the big bedroom of our house. My helper is Alice, and she would dearly love to play with something (anything!) on this table. But she has learned that if she wants to be on the table, then she must stay in the basket. I've tied a little ribbon and bead on the inside and sometimes she will play with this. If she starts looking too interested and not sleepy enough, then I give her a little eraser from a stash that is okay for her to have. Later I'll find it on the floor somewhere and return it to the stash.

When we move, the studio will be a separate building and there won't be any cats in there. But that's okay because we are building a huge porch for them. It will be all the way around on both floors, so that should be quite enough play room for them!

Got interested in Gothic Arches after hearing about the Gothic Arch Challenge from Keron Lee on the Yahoo group ClothPaperStudio. Keron has a great art blog. Right off I saw the possibilities for a book using this shape and have started two using some of the fab watercolor paper that I got at Trash 2 Treasures for free! (They got it from a dumpster behind an art supplies place that closed!)
Yep, they are various shades of coral, fuchsia and purple. So far. Just a start for the backgrounds. The other set is blues and greens mostly. With some bits of underwater map and water related old music sheets. Guess I need to take a picture of that. What did we do before digital cameras anyway? LOL! I don't think the second set is going to be a book, but will have book like qualities. I think a book that you can't open. Like an altered book that has a hole in it, only a handmade book instead. Hm, well, maybe I better just make it and then show you.

Hope you are well and happy, dear reader.
Barb V.

So many projects!

How are you supposed to have time to work on your projects, and still blog? Hm. Well, someone pointed out that I haven't got any of my current stuff up here. So first I'm going to put some pics from two recent swaps.

These are the cards I sent for the Vintage Bird swap sponsored on the Yahoo group TreasureArtTrends. The base is watercolor paper, then various art papers and ephemera. There's at least one layer of acrylic glazes. For some reason, one color is never enough for me. These are my favorite colors right now, fuchsia and salmon. Or raspberry and coral. Some of the birds are from Dover CDs. Then some silk ribbon and a bit of hand dyed/painted old lace and some sequins. Somehow beads and sewing always end up getting into each of my projects. The beads on these are holding down the sewn on sequins.
Here's a journal page from a swap in ClothPaperStudio, another yahoo group. See - my favorite colors and sewing too.

Some lot of maps that I came across had this old technical drawing that was from the 60's. Back when they did engineering drawing by hand. So I cut that up and used it for the journal pages. It had a great old quality to the paper. And some of the pages had parts of the drawing on it which I thought was really cool. Can't wait to get started binding the journal so I can started using it. The pages that I got in return are terrific and make me feel like I could have done better. But since I always feel like that, I'm letting that useless emotion go.

Okay that's enough for now, hope you, dear reader, are well and happy and working on something fantastic.

Thinking of Minneapolis the day before

Having been on the bridge in Minneapolis the day before it went down, indeed less than 24 hours before it went down really made me have to stop and think for a while. There were two women who died, the report said one was 50 and the other in her 40's. And I thought of my friend, Laura, who is in her 40's and me, 53. And wondered, still wondering, what were their dreams and hopes. Were they laughing and sharing?

My friend Laura had never even seen the Mississippi before, and one night we looked up from the bus and saw the moon over the Mississippi, yes, on that bridge.

The next week Laura was asked by Robert Lu of Ornament magazine to send him her wonderful beads to be photographed for the next Ornament magazine.

What would those women be doing now? Would they have gone on to splendor and glory as will my friend Laura? I am so sorry for their families and friends.

I finally put some pics up on my website of the "Nothing New" show at the Textile Center, an utterly marvelous place. I spent hours in the library looking at just a few of the hundreds of books they have on fabric and textiles and related topics. Stop in there if you can.