Artistic Artifacts

We had a wonderful time with Laura Cater-Woods at the Annex this past weekend. The workshop was 3 full days- we began on Friday with color exercises and ended up the day making bits for our work. Over the 3 days many continued to make “bits” and a few of us did get some sewing into the mix.   Dianne and Jen loved the gel printing, And I mean LOVED the gel printing!! They both created wonderful fabrics. the challenge was to make transparent fabrics….

 Here are some photos:

These are color chips and Laura would toss out a challenge and in teams we had to create the answer.

I switched my digital camera to black and white and took the 2 photo’s …. really I was cheating…..

Fabric Samples created by Meghan.

Many Demos occured over the 3 days, here is Laura using foil. I do believe that everything looks better with a sprinkle of foil.

Here I am sewing. Jen had brought a bag to share, and a vintage scarf and flower hair barette was all I needed to get jump started. I created sheer collage fabrics, mounted on regular fast2fuse in 4 panels and will hang them in the window using knitting needles.

It was so wonderful to be sewing!!

Sunday we continued to work. We had to force ourselves to stop at the end of the day to share.

The first to share was Jen.  Jen never moved from the gel printing station. I can’t wait to see what she creates with her new fabrics!

Dianne was the other one who did not want to give up the gel printing station-she also created wonderful printed fabrics.

Elizabeth went for the transparent fabrics, a wonderful combination of techniques. Check Elizabeth’s blog to follow her creation.

Susan was expanding a work in process, this gel print has some paper solvy on it and created wonderful crevices.

Tama came to us from NC and a great addition to the group. This was a piece of fabric that had been painted on trays and picked up the impression. Tama had several panels, with windows and hand sewing - I missed that photo.

Jan had some fun with transparent fabrics and learned some more about her sewing machine!! very happy girl!

Meghan completed several panels with gel printed and transparent fabrics.

And Laura went home with purple shoes.. so even the instructors have some fun!!

I have said this before, but it is important enough to repeat. Taking a workshop with Laura Cater-Woods will expand you as and artist- it is well worth the time and money- check out her website for future workshop dates and locations and treat yourself!!

Of course please check out Artistic Artifacts for future workshops and products to use in your mixed media art.

Lutradur, what is it? and what do I do with it? Leave it to the talented Lesley Riley to find an out of the ordinary material that is not paper and not fiber - but can replace either easily!

Lutradur is a non woven interfacing that has BODY! And is translucent. I have played a little with it. Using Lesley Riley’s new book: Fabulous Fabric Art with Lutradur as a guide I wanted to see what photographs looked like on Lutradur. 

I used my wonderful photographs of the bridge of glass at the Tacoma, Washington Glass Museum. I took Lutradur weight 100lbs, placed it on an 8 1/2″ x 11″ sticker and ran it through my epson printer. I also printed a glass photo on the EQ cotton Lawn prepared for printing fabric. The Lutradur gave the print an abstract feeling, light, airy and without details. Hold it up to the light and you can see through the Lutradur. The cotton lawn a finely woven fabric gave great details. What else can I do? In Lesley’s book she shows samples of treated Lutradur, either before or after printing.  Seal the Lutradur with matte medium and or gesso first, then print. This one I goofed and actually had to email Lesley and ask what I was going wrong.- When putting a medium, gesso, and/or paint on the lutradur, in order to maintain the translucent quality….. you MUST water the medium down, A Lot! I swear I read the book…..some of it … the photos are very instructional…did I really need words?? My gesso sample did not work at all. But I did add matte medium to printed Lutradur after the fact and it sharpen up the photo a bit.

Another trick is to paint, foil, it and lace the Lutradur, all of which create very cool treatments. To create a lace effect on the Lutradur you wave a heat gun slowly over the Lutradur and it will disintegrate quickly.  For every treatment, gesso, medium, paint, foil, etc that you add to the Lutradur will create a resist/protection to the heat.

My first project with Lutradur was creating a screen. In Laura Cater-Woods’ class Off the Wall we created double sided screens. I fell in love! Laura will return the Artistic Artifacts Annex for a 3 day intensive Off the Wall class. You can register on line via the website or send me payments to hold your spot!

Link:

 This quilt is assembled with a gel print on the left side which was printed with acrylic paints and red batik fabric. The next layer is yellow painted lutradur that I held a heat gun on it to create the lacy effect. The photo is a vintage fabric postcard printed on EQ Cotton Lawn. I have embellished with beads and red velvet leaves.  Lots of fun!

Created at the same time as the Red Quilt. The background is that wonderful printed marbled fabric - I free motion quilted it, highlighting the marbling before the layers were added. The yellow hand dyed fabric creates a corner bottom left, blue painted and heated lutradur to create lace then the green wonderful vintage hand dyed netting and photo printed on EQ Cotton Lawn.  Embellished with glass leaves, optical lens and blue hand dyed rayon fluer de lie.  Most all of these items are available for purchase, including 2 weights of lutradur on my website: www.ArtisticArtifacts.com

I mentioned a Shoe Rack Fabric Sale in my newsletter.  If you don’t already receive my newsletter and would like to the sign up it is on the front page of my website lower left side. www.ArtisticArtifacts.com  Here is a quick photo of fabric that is on the Shoe Rack at 50% off. It includes all types, cotton, silk, velvet etc….. sorry instore sale only.

Our most recent meeting was held Sunday, April 19th 1-4:00. This meeting is open to all interested altered art artists both paper and fiber.  We spent most of the time catching up, show and tell and listening to Karen Scudders adventure to Artfest on the West Coast. We all want to go back with her next year….

I acutally had show and tell this time, my progress on my beach journal and 2 mini art quilts using Lutradur. I will post photos in another blog entry.

We had 2 guests, Meghan’s mother from NY.

And Kelly’s daughter hiding under the table. She came prepaired with crayons and paper.

Here is Karen with a sunny smile for all at the meeting! Kelly told us a cool tip, when making paper mache use wood glue for a wood feeling to the finished product. aha!

Meghan worked on the journal prompt!! And in fabric no less! the only one who did!

 April’s journal prompt is : Self Portrait

Then we had Karen tell us about ArtFest and I was so engrossed that I did not take photo’s of her wonderful journals or Elizabeth’s show and tell.

 The next meeting is May 17th. 1-4:00 hope to see you there!

At the time that Digital  Essentials came out, another photo book arrived on the market called Blending Photos with Fabric 2 by Mary Ellen Kranz. Both books are published by the Electric Quilt Company. Both books are a must have for anyone working with digial cameras, computer photos, and social networks. 

Digital Essentials by Gloria Hansen is a technical handbook, a step by step instructions for Photoshop, Photoshop elements and Paint shop Pro. Gloria speaks in English! and for anyone who has asked a computer question on many on lists Gloria is generous with her knowledge and information- that comes through in the book as well.   Personally, I have to do everything for my website (the computer is my friend….not!…. working on it).  And I have had to learn how to adjust photos to post on the web, creating and importing spreadsheets for my store data as I go- somedays my head feels like it will explode! And I have to run to my stash and pet fabric!! Gloria walks you through the different types of photo files advantages and disadvantages of each- information that is useful for anyone posting photos on power points, websites, blogs, or facebook.  I have not gotten to the section on layers, I want to do it when I can play with my computer- I think this will be interesting to create mixed media collage and improving photos.

Do you already have the book? Please add your review to the comments section. Thank you.

Digial Essentials is on sale in Artistic Artifacts website at 10% off cover price:

http://www.artisticartifacts.com/mm5/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=A&Product_Code=640&Category_Code=

 guess I need to get to the “sharpen your image section” also!!

The other book, Blending Photos with Fabric 2 by Mary Ellen Kranz presents easy to follow instructions also.  Right away I learned several useful tips about my digital camera. Ellen talks about taking photos to use as artwork, recommending several angles to take of the same viewpoints. Also included are several quilt projects to walk you through using photos- projects both traditional in technique and basic art quilt ideas.

Do you have this book? Please add your book review to the comments section! Thank you.

 This book is on sale 10% on Artistic Artifacts website:

http://www.artisticartifacts.com/mm5/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=A&Product_Code=632&Category_Code=

Also available from Artistic Artifacts are EQ pretreated cotton lawn fabrics to print photos on: http://www.artisticartifacts.com/mm5/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=A&Product_Code=7955E&Category_Code=im

Check out the quilts and photos on this blog: http://www.miamithreads.blogspot.com/

artist Judy Momenzadeh does fantastic work!! Elizabeth forwarded her blog to me, thank you Elizabeth!

My comfort zone is with fiber, but I love the idea of collaging with paint, paper and fiber. The creation of an altered book, journal, or painting using ever popular drawing and painting techniques just sucks me in and when I see a book that might help me further my knowledge or loosen up my editing button,  with these techniques I BUY IT! I have gotten to the point that I enjoy putting color on paper, the Stewart Gill Paints have done that for me, but adding drawings, words, photos, etc and I just don’t think I have what it takes.

While visiting Sue Bleiweiss’s blog http://suebleiweiss.typepad.com/sueb/ she had posted a review on this book: Journal Bliss by Violette.

So I ordered it. And it just arrived, A copy of for me and several for you to purchase on the Artistic Artifacts website:

http://www.artisticartifacts.com/mm5/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=A&Product_Code=2784&Category_Code=

The book is pretty cool.  Lots of great photos, diagrams and examples of journal techniques, including background paint techniques using the most wonderful tool there is ……. a plastic credit card!!! She includes borders, faces, writing styles, doodling, words and even how to construct and embellishing a mailing envelope!! It is light and easy inspiration.

There is a quote that I especially like and is appropriate for me at this time:

“When my daughter was about seven years old, she asked me one day what I did at work. I told her I worked at the college- that my job was to teach people how to draw.  She stared back at me, incredulous, and said, “you mean they forget?”

 Yup, I have forgotten how to draw and paint and I want it back!! I think Violette is going to help me! and you! Hurry while inventory is in stock!

 I have a little addition to this post. Yesterday, I picked up my niece, Celia from School (she is 5)  and she came to my house until her parents arrived home from work.  Her favorite place is my studio, usually to play with fabric scraps, but yesterday she was in a drawing mood. She grabed paper and colored pencils and started drawing. When I asked her what she was working on, I was told: “random things, just drawing”. Random?! Where did that come from? (did I say she is smart? LOL!). She asked me to join her in drawing “random” things, so I did. I tried for a little while to keep up with her without great success, so I ran to get Violette’s book….. Celia couldn’t believe that there was a book like this!! she looked at every page 2 and 3 times and we used it to get ideas for our random drawings and I introduced her to a new word: doodling!!

We have just returned from a week in Hilton Head SC.  It was cold! but we determined northerners braved the cold, windy days on the beach. My brother, sister and their families came with us as well. We were missing a few -

The cold must have freaked out the sand dollars because we found tons on the beach. Celia, Layla and I had bleaching duty to clean the sand dollars. (okay I dealt with the bleach, not for little kids) When the sand dollars are alive they are brown and blend into the sand. Normally it is a treasure hunt to find any sand dollars, but this year the high tide left many!!

 Great face huh? I truely dislike having my photo taken!! But my 2 helpers are cute as a button.

Always on a trip I need an art project. My husband and son roll their eyes as I try to crame my studio into one LL Bean bag, needless to say a couple of smaller plastic bags sneak their way into the car.  This year I had a project in mind to work on - a journal about the beach. (talk about out of my comfort zone!) I had begun painting backgrounds for the pages in my book several weeks ago, the first layer of paint so to speak.  I paint and sell Stewart Gill Acrylic paints through my website. Stewart Gill paints are wonderful!! I love these paints!! Have you tried them? They are so creamy I paint with my fingers or a credit card, rarely with a brush. The product line just begs to be layered, thus improving and adding depth to your artwork. 

On Wednesday, it was so cold we did some thrift store shopping and I found several great illustrated books to add photos to my journal.  I will post samples of my journal pages later, still working on finding words.

And here is the family photo of all who attended the week in Hilton Head.  Thank you everyone for a great time. Reid hope you enjoyed your birthday at the beach!! I love you all!!

Bonnie has given me an award- how wonderful Thank you!! I am thinking that Hazel told you about me?? maybe?? Bonnie your woven artwork is wonderful!! I too was a weaver. I learned so very much and have friends who I will keep through out my lifetime. My loom stands in a corner, waiting for a worthy home with a new owner, my sewing machine has replaced it. 

Bonnie’s blog: http://weavingspirit.blogspot.com/

But I side track…. The award is gratfully accepted and according to the rules I will nominate 8 other blogs.

1. copy the Kreativ Blogger award to your blog
2. put a link to the person from whom you received the award
3. nominate 8 other blogs and
4. link to them
5. then leave a message on the blogs you nominated

Here are the eight bloggers I have selected in no particular order.

http://www.cater-woods.com/weblog/

http://moonlightingquilts.wordpress.com/

http://www.janedavila.blogspot.com/

http://lesleyriley.typepad.com/

http://studio78notes.blogspot.com/

http://fiberlines.blogspot.com/

http://suebleiweiss.typepad.com/sueb/

Artistic Artifacts is in Cleveland Ohio at the Original Sewing and Quilt Expo at the IX Center.  Our booth number is: 610. The hours for the show are Thursday, Friday 10-6:00 and Saturday 10-5:30. Here are the photos of the booth- a sneak peak so to speak:

Come visit us, get inspired and of course shop!! See you there! Judy

Vintage Revisited is the baby of Mary Kerr. She gathered 19 quilters from around the country, various levels of experience and gave us a challenge. Yes! I was part of this wonderful challenge, my first ever! This challenge was right up my alley!! But there were deadlines…… and rules…..which I am not good at…… But I did complete all 6 quilts. Yeah me! Over 2 years Mary sent each of us the same vintage quilt block, we had to incorporate something of the block into a 24″x24″ quilt. We could use a part of the block or all of the block our choice. My first quilt incorporated a vintage embroidery, and that began my challenge within a challenge! Each of my 6 quilts incorporated a vintage embroidery.  We at the Annex will get to enjoy the quilts in person, we have block #5 now hanging on our walls.

Here is my quilt:

 Linda Cooper’s Quilt and check out Linda’s new website: http://lindacooperquilts.com/

This is my favorite… by Lisa Ellis, check out her website: http://www.ellisquilts.com/

So that is your peak at vintage revisited Block #5. Come by the Annex during open hours to enjoy these quilts upclose and in person.  If you can’t wait to view each block on it’s own visit Mary’s website: http://www.marywkerr.com/index.htm

 Mary will also be teaching classes at the Annex for you to create your own vintage challenge. First class is Thursday April 16th 12:00-4:00. Register online at: www.ArtisticArtifacts.com