In or Out?: My Mixed Media Collage

Here is the first of ten mixed-media collages I made about a week ago as part of a guided exercise in the book Kaleidoscope. In a nutshell we were told to assemble certain types of art materials and then I followed the directions on what to do, but they were vague such as “paint five surfaces” and “write one word” and “scribble with a pencil”. I was forced to work quickly and without the time to put much thought into what I was doing.

This is a fantastic book which is actually a collection of previously published articles from art zines. There are many different authors who wrote the articles in this book. There is also a lot of interesting art contained in the book, again, from many different artists.



Technorati Tags: mixed media collage.

Art Making Has Resumed

At the library fundraiser book sale I went to a week ago I picked up a bunch of books on art and photography.

Throughout the week I have been reading these books, mostly as before-bed relaxation reading. My creative juices started flowing again.

Yesterday I was busy doing things and going to appointments and that prevented me from making art when I had the urge.

Last night after dropping my kids off at a Harry Potter sleep-over party I took some time to cut apart food boxes (breakfast cereal etc.) to reuse as bases for making art. As we finished the box I’d toss it on the dining room table. So I went through that stack and cut up the pieces.

Because I had larger sized panels of thin cardboard I was inspired to try a technique I read about in Kaleidoscope by Suzanne Siminaitis. (That book is great but I don’t have time to tell you a ton about it right now, sorry.) However I decided to go to bed.



My cats woke me up at 4:50am playing with something in my bedroom. I was unable to get back to sleep. So I got up and did the project.

I had chosen the project “mail art postcard book”. The exercise was supposed to be a surprise of sorts. There was a list of materials that we were to assemble. Then we were not to read ahead at the directions. We were to do what the directions said. This was to be a fast, intuitive thing. A timer was to be used to time each step, we had only a little time for each technique.

I will admit that when I bought the book I did read the directions. And they scared me so I didn’t do it back then.

However I had not peeked at them since then, and I had forgotten exactly what it said.

Assembling the materials took a lot of time since I had them scattered around the house. We also were to pre-assemble these things then we could not change our mind. So for example I selected a few colors of acrylic paint and that took me some time to figure out what colors I felt like working with.

I had five pieces of cardboard and I was to use both sides. To give you a gist of what I did, I had five minutes to write one word on each side. Another time I had five minutes to completely paint over three of the sides. Another time I had to collage five items onto each of three surfaces.

At one point we were told to completely paint over three boards which I had already done a lot of work on. That directive was killing me. I was tempted to not do it. But she said, “you have to do it”. So I did it. I actually watered down the paint so that the stuff underneath shows through.

At this point in time I have ten surfaces which are a combination of acrylic paint, Sharpie marker, paint-ink-pen, rubber stamp ink, rubber stamped images and collaged papers.

The next hard part is that we are supposed to cut down these larger boards to 5x7 inch size. After that we are to use the scraps to make new postcards.

In the end the recommendation is to pick seven 5x7 inch pieces to bind into a book, two for the cover and five interior pages. The rest of the left over postcards we are advised to use as mail art.

However I really love some of these collages as full sized pieces and I simply cannot bring myself to cut them up. They are not dry enough to do that anyway, at this point. I will let them dry further, then will scan them. On another day I’ll figure out if I really want to chop these up.

This was a challenging exercise to work so quickly and to keep moving from working with one media to another.

I can’t wait to do it again.

What I’m Up To Lately

I have not made any art since getting back from vacation.

I am busy with planning out my children’s homeschooling year for 2007-2008. That is taking many, many hours.

I'm also on a house cleaning spree. I'm trying to keep things uncluttered. I am busy packing then unpacking. The laundry seems endless.

In the last four weeks I’ve been book hunting. I’ve held a homeschool curriculum tag sale at my home and bought stuff from other people. I’ve attended a huge used curriculum sale in Massachusetts. I have visited two used book shops which also sell rare books, in two states. I have been to a gigantic library sale here in Connecticut. So I am up to my ears in “new to me” books and am busy sorting them, cataloging them, and organizing them/putting them away.

I also have been having summer fun and spending lots of time playing with my children.

I am in a bit of an art lull.

I have even resorted to not reading art books since getting home. I am in a mode of doing a lot of living real life not immersing in books.

The only creative thing I’ve done is I’m writing more and blogging more on my other (main) blog.

I am a bit burned out of ATC swapping and am fed up with problems with “problem swappers”. I go through cycles of feeling annoyed with the problem people then rebounding. So now I’m in that funk where I am feeling let down by swappers. Frankly at this point in time I have no desire to swap art with others. Right now I am hosting two swaps and those will end in August. I must force myself out of this art lull by the deadlines. But whether I’ll sign up for new swaps to participate in or to host is unknown to me at this point in time.

Creatively what is on my mind is this:

I am itching to try lino block cutting. I do own a starter kit and want to use it. But frankly I’m too busy right now.

I want to do more rubber stamp carving but right now have no new, uncarved rubber to use.

I am itching to try woodcutting but am putting that off until I use the lino cutting starter kit I own. (Side note: I have found it easy to experiment with designing and cutting my own rubber using a book as a guide. However I looked into a nonprofit art instruction place near me and they want nearly $500 for a beginner class on woodcutting and the same for a beginner class on monoprinting. Wow.)

I have been interested to try monoprinting. I worry that right now I don’t have a proper press. Buying one is not in the budget, I am pretty sure they cost hundreds of dollars. I guess I could start with simple prints that use a brayer (which I own).

In May I found this old book at a library sale for 50 cents, Printmaking by Henry Frankenfield.




This little book outlines everything a person needs to know to make prints. It covers everything from linoleum (lino) cutting to woodcutting. It covers lots of stuff, from printing on cloth to printing letters, printing in one color or multiple colors. This is the more old style book that keeps things simple and covers a lot in few words. This book left me feeling that I could most certainly do this and even do it without taking a $500 class.

I also suspect that if a new book on this topic were to be published the author would drag out the subject, take up a lot more words and they’d increase the word count and make the whole process seem harder than it is.

Anyway this old book left me thinking that the most important thing to do is to just TRY IT and as a person works with the tools and the materials they will learn by DOING. I think that is true of every art form but really I think lately it is not stressed enough. Instead we are led to believe that to try something new is SCARY and requires a lot of up front information and they assume we are all needing to be led by EXPERTS. Well, Mr. Frankenfield, your book was published in 1964 and you are still influencing people like me to JUST DO IT. Thank you!

Metal Crafting---
Again I want to try my hand at working with metal. I have been re-reading Metal Craft Discovery Workshop by Linda and Opie O’Brien. This book outlines cold fusion techniques, that is, you don’t use heat or a solder to seal the metal. I don’t know anything about making my own jewelry but I am tempted to make some funky metal jewelry with using old metal cans and cookie tins and such as the base material (free stuff I have on hand already).



I also was looking at a book on metal called “Metal Mania” by Lisa Vollrath. This book is self-published and is a soft cover with a comb binding. The book is only sold through the author/artist’s website, Ten Two Studios and it retails for $15.99. The thing I like about this book is that Vollrath makes learning to solder seem easy. She gives step by step instructions with photographs for each step. I appreciate that she gives her tips along the way.

I was speaking to my husband and he said that we already own some of the materials necessary to solder. Additionally since my mother used to do stained glass I am going to ask if she has any unused copper tape cluttering up her house that she’d give to me.

I am getting the itch to try to make some charms for necklaces or pins.

I think that the ability to solder would be a good thing to know.

Who knows maybe if something I made comes out decent I can sell it on etsy and actually make a few bucks.

So that is what is on my mind lately. I am pretty busy and trying to have some summer fun this summer. It is ending up to be an “out of the house and having fun outside with friends and family” type of summer rather than a “stay inside and make art and crafts” type of summer.

I hope your summer is going well!

My ATCs: Gold Leafing Pen Resist Technique

I made the following ATCs for an ATC swap centered on the challenge to make ATCs using the technique of gold leafing pen resist with watercolor paint. I learned this technique from a book called “Artist Trading Card Workshop” by Bernie Berlin. The book is fantastic and I highly recommend it.



Before I share the finished product, I will share the trials and tribulations first. This swap had many starts and stops before I was able to finish it.

First I had trouble getting the Krylon gold leafing pen to make splashes. I finally figured out that I needed to push down on the pen on the paper then to flick it upward and the paint would splash out. Also I took the pen and flicked it downward toward the paper. However once that resulted in the pen flying apart, whoops.

The first time I put the gold leaf on the paper. A little while later I thought it was dry. I painted it and the gold leaf smeared everywhere and it was ruined.

The second time I put the gold leaf on the paper and let it dry for two or three days. I then used a cheap set of watercolors and used green and blue. The colors looked muddy and horrible. I did not use that sheet.

The third attempt was that the deadline was approaching and I was going on vacation. I took a new sheet of white watercolor paper with the gold leafing already splashed on it. However when I got to my destination, I could not find the sheet. I had taken other art materials with me so that I could spend time making ATCs but was unable to work on this swap. I was very frustrated.

When I got home, which was less than 48 hours before the deadline, I was faced with unpacking the luggage or working on the swap to get it out on time. I decided to work on the swap! I made a new splashing of the gold leafing pen and I used a heat gun to dry it. I will say it bubbled up a bit kind of like what embossing powder does.

I made just one sheet. I used old paints I had from the days of doing Waldorf-education inspired preschool at home, using the liquid watercolor paint made by Stockmar. I used yellow and red. The colors blended well and made lovely shades of oranges and reds and yellows. So all the ATCs in this series are with the same colored backgrounds since I ended up with just one sheet of decent painted backgrounds.

“A Sign of Summer”
I made a packing tape transfer of a butterfly image from an old field guide. Hand wrote the words onto the background using a Micron pen.


“Summer is here.”
Made a packing tape transfer of a butterfly image from an old field guide. Hand wrote the words onto the background using a Micron pen.



“Columbian Coffee Pickers”
Cut out image from a Berkley and Jensen coffee bean package and adhered it. Edged with an embossing pen and black embossing powder.



“Pilobolus”
Cut out image of the Pilobolus dance troupe and adhered it to the background.


“Fantasy Stamp”
Collaged used postage stamp onto the background. Rubber stamped design in black ink onto the edges. Rubber stamped and red embossed image from Nick Bantock line at the top.


“Breast Cancer Fund the Cure Find a Cure”
Used several used postage stamps to make a collage onto the background. Note that I chose to cut them up as the postal worker used a thick Sharpie marker to “cancel” the stamps with which was ugly and cutting the stamps inspired this abstract design.





Technorati Tags: artist trading card, Bernie Berlin, Artist Trading Card Workshop, collage.

Baby Wipe and Paper Towel Paint Technique

I had heard of this technique on chat forums about making ATCs in the past. Now the technique is represented and explained in the book "Artist Trading Card Workshop" by Bernie Berlin. Since I knew it before and it is not a big long process I'll explain it here.

You basically put paint onto a baby wipe. Period.

Some people use baby wipes to clean up their ink or paints. Then they dry the used baby wipes out and use them as backgrounds.

For mine, I did some with watercolor paint (intentionally) and some with liquid acrylic paint (intentionally).

For some of a different but similar technique I used paper towels to clean up alcohol inks, another time: rubber stamp ink and another time: acrlyic paint. Then I used the dried out "rags" of paper towel to make backgrounds for the ATCs.

Each brand of paper towel and baby wipe has different patterns or embossing to them, so there are numerous possibilities. One baby wipe brand we had in the house was covered with tiny teddy bears. I didn't want that but maybe someone would like that.

You can either use the solid sheet as a flat background or you can tear the toweling or wipe randomly and layer it onto a stiff background material with acrylic gel medium as the adhesive. Let it dry then do whatever you want on top of that to make an ATC. This of course would also work for other things like larger collages.

Have fun.

Finished ATCs for Swap: Watercolor Paint on Baby Wipe

Phew. Today I finished my ATCs for a swap with the technique of “watercolor paint on baby wipe”. That technique makes the background then we get to do whatever we want on top of it to finish the ATC. This technique is one that is taught in the book “Artist Trading Card Workshop” by Bernie Berlin.

I had made the backgrounds quite some time ago.

One set came out much, much brighter than I intended. The colors are bright red and a bright blue (together on one background). Some of them were more mixed to make a deep plum purple color.

Each time I sat down to make these ATCs I had creative block. Those bright colors were just killing me. They look cool, don't get me wrong, but they are a bit like tie-dye shirts rather than what I am used to working with.

As I blogged last week I’ve been very busy doing outdoors fun stuff in the late spring and this early summer. I have not had a lot of time to make art. I have been squeezing it in here and there. But in reality more of what was happening was squeezing in time to sit and have creative block. I'd plan to make the ATCs then I'd sit down and just be frozen. I'd stare at those backgrounds and my mind was absent of ideas.

The deadline for the swap is tomorrow so I just carved time out today and forced myself to do it.

I know from reading what others have said, to just “make art” and the block will lift. I literally forced myself to make some ATCs and the first ones had mistakes and failures. I started off trying rubber stamping. Even the black Staz-On ink was not making dark impressions, it was coming out light despite there being adequate ink on the stamp. I then switched to embossing with rubber stamping which does not at all work on that background, it was so odd how the embossing kind of sank into the baby wipe and disappeared.

I then switched to sifting through my papers, ephemera and found some good stuff but it was not jiving with the background colors. The second set was a jade color green, by the way. It was frustrating but I kept going.

I finally made some decent ATCs. I then seemed to find one great idea after another. I forced myself to stop when I finished the tenth ATC. I only had to make six! So it got to a flow point where I just was on a roll and so I made some extras.

In a few minutes I’ll scan them, write my name on the back then seal the envelopes to get them ready to go out in tomorrow’s mail.

Frankly I am glad the swap is finished as I was under a lot of pressure to get them finished before the deadline. I am very good about doing my swaps on time and am a stickler about it with others so of course I am holding myself to the same standard.

I have two swaps left to go, one with a June deadline and the other in the second week of July. I have not signed up for any more swaps as I want some time to relax and do summer stuff.

I’ll post the scans when I have time to reformat the scans into an up-load-able format.



Technorati Tags: artist trading card, ATC.

ATCs for Greeting Cards

I have been thinking of an idea. Then a friend from my ATC trading world emailed me saying she did a very similar idea. The base premise is the same, use an ATC as the front of a greeting card.

My idea was to take some of the store-bought blank greeting cards that come pre-folded with envelopes and to put an ATC on the front as the decoration. I was thinking about ways to attach it that would allow the recipient to realize what they had was also an ATC and to have it removable.

My first idea was to use clear fishing line to sew the card onto the front of the card. I imagined sewing in the four corners, enough to keep it attached. The clear color would not obstruct from the design of the ATC. This would be cut off so the ATC could be kept, if one wanted. I thought of putting some note on the back of the greeting card to say the front is an ATC and to explain what an ATC is. I figured since I was giving this away this would not get me into any trouble with the ethics of ATCs which don’t allow for selling of the ATCs. I planned to do this with ATCs made by other artists, which I own due to the fact that I swap ATCs with other people. I have a bunch here that are high quality but just not my taste. The ones that are for holidays would be just perfect for this use.

My second idea is to glue a clear plastic pocket sleeve onto the front of the card, then slip the ATC inside it.

Coincidentally my friend emailed me with a similar concept. She didn’t know what I was thinking but said that she had been adhering ATCs to the front of greeting cards with glue. The recipient did not know that the design was an ATC. I think it is funny that we were both thinking of similar ideas and that she had already been doing it. She said the recipient of a box of cards said she absolutely loved them. What she did was make a box of greeting cards to be used as thank you notes and gave them as a gift for a baby shower gift. She said the guests loved them also.

Tonight I plan to give the fishing line idea a try.

Update: The sewing idea didn't work. I went to plan B with the plastic sleeves and it worked. I made over 40 of them last night and today. They look fantastic, actually, better than when they are in a 9 sleeve card folder inside a binder.

Two comments came in today about making slits in the paper and tucking the ATCs into the corners. Thanks for sharing that idea also. I will try that too.

My ATCs: Paint on Paper Towel Technique

Here are six of the ATCs that I made this month for an ATC Swap using the technique "Paint on Paper Towel" to make the backgrounds.




Technorati Tags: artist trading card, ATC.

My Collage: Marilyn Monroe

I made this 5 x 7 inch collage a few weeks ago. I made it then cut it into four pieces to become four artist trading cards.

This was made while in that wonderful creative flow zone while listening to music. I just relaxed and let the collage put itself together while I sifted through my ephemera.

Elements used:
background is tissue paper that came with a new pair of mens shoes (replica of stock quotes)

Marilyn Monroe images from a book that got water damaged and mildew-y

book and watch image from gift wrap paper which a mail art swapper gave me

hand and drink from junk mail

butterfly die cuts (punches) of magazine pages

garden image from a garden seed mail order company (junk mail)

two images from a UNICEF mail order catalog that I used a square die cutter (punch) to cut from

orange-ish piece is a photograph from my wedding that I altered with bleach

Scraps from other projects:

map images with white gesso painted on the top

purple tissue paper

Technorati Tags: collage, artist trading card, ATC.

My ATCs: Made With My Hand Carved Stamps

Here are nine ATCs that I made with some of my hand-carved art stamps (rubber base).

The skull one was carved in July 2006 with a base inspiration image of a Pirates of the Carribbean logo which I modified.

The two in the upper right hand corner had backgrounds made with paper towel and Ranger alcohol inks. This technique was learned from the book "Artist Trading Card Workshop" by Bernie Berlin. In the book they used paint but for this as I said I used alchol inks. Actually what I did was work on making backgrounds for ATCs on glossy cardstock with alcohol inks and these paper towels were used for clean up and then recycled later into actual backgrounds. I love to reuse instead of putting things in the trash, some good things come from reusing or "re-purposing".

The smiling face was based on a doodle I made in my art journal while watching TV.

Technorati Tags: artist trading card, ATC, hand carved stamp, rubber stamping.

Some Thoughts on Doing Transfers

This week in between running here and there I have been working on some transfer techniques for an artist trading card (ATC ) swap. The theme happens to be “cemetery angels” and we can do what we want with it, but that is secondary to what I have to share today. To be clear the swap is not about transfers but that is what I chose to do with my cemetery angels.

I have learned yet again that when working with transfers the result is unpredictable. It is very much not a good idea to leave working with transfers as a last minute thing if you are working with a deadline.

Earlier this week I did some Citrasolv transfers. I learned some lessons. I was using toner based print outs from my home computer printer.

1. I tried a Citrasolv transfer onto glossy cardstock which had been colored with alcohol inks. The glossy paper didn’t take the transfer well and it smeared very easily. It was as if the ink slid on the glossy surface. Secondly when it dried the Citrasolv bleached out the color of the alcohol inks.
2. I did a Citrasolv transfer onto a heavy cardstock with a texture. The transfer only takes onto the very top surface of the paper’s texture. So that didn’t look so great.
3. I saved the original paper which the transfers came from and used that to make an ATC, so far that is the best one of the bunch.

Some of these mistakes are going to be thrown in the trash. One turned out looking very ‘artsy’ and ‘cool’, I think. Yet because this is an ATC swap I worry about the recipient of this. If they are a fan of the scrapbook and sticker crowd they will think this transfer is a piece of ugly trash. My son said it looked awful and asked if it was garbage. I am in a bind. Today is the deadline to send out so I will make time today to work on this project!

Working with transfers is fun. But again, they are experimental, results are not guaranteed, and in the process sometimes original things are used and ruined and you must have more source material to use if your first attempts end up in the trash bin.

I will share also that the images I used were digital photographs that I took. That was an outing in and of itself to go to that cemetery and take the photographs. I then altered the photographs using my computer and Photoshop elements to change them to black and white and to play with the lightness and the contrast. That took time. I then made toner print-out’s and used those for the transfer. So for this project of mine the work is not just in doing the transfer but it was in the prep work behind it also.

I need to get offline now and go work on more Cemetery Angel ATCs. Wish me luck.

Technorati Tags: artist trading card, ATC, cemetery angel, Citrasolv transfer, transfer technique.

Thoughts on Making Photo ATCs

I just finished a swap of flower photo ATCs.

I found the most fun part was keeping my eye peeled for good subjects, then taking the images.

Not as fun was looking through the photos on the computer to see which came out well and which would look good on an ATC.

Very not fun was uploading the photos to Costco’s photo developing website then driving down there to get them.

Not fun was realizing I sized the photos incorrectly and that each needed individual trimming.

I made way more photos than I needed for this swap of nine ATCs so I had a lot of work to do.

I didn’t want to send the ATC out on just photo paper so I then trimmed very thick paper, thicker than normal cardstock, to ATC size. I then used Golden acrylic gel medium in soft gloss to glue the two together.

During drying, they warped a bit, bending in a slight arc. I can only hope that they will flatten out over time or that when placed in nine pocket sleeves that they will lie flat.

I now have a ton of left over flower photo ATCs to swap out.

It was a very different process to have the creative thing done separate from the construction. I am more used to collage when the creating is done at the same exact time as the construction.

I got the ATCs packed up and ready to go out in today’s mail.

Now I need to scan them and upload the images to my blog if I can find the time to do that!

Technorati Tags: artist trading card, ATC.

Working On Flower Photo ATCs

For the last month I've been taking digital photos of spring flowers, both "just because" and also for a flower photo ATC swap I'm participating in.

I kept forgetting, though, to look at the images and select which would be good to make the ATCs with. I finally sat down and did that yesterday.

Then I had my husband resize them and upload them to Costco to be printed out. (I don't print my own photos at home.)

Today I ran over to Costco to pick up the photos.

After dinner I trimmed the photos. I cut the cardstock to ATC size. I then adhered the photo to the stiffer, thick cardstock background.

They are drying now then tomorrow I will sign the backs and send out my swap for Flower Photo ATCs.

I also have a lot of extras for future trading on hand!

This is the first time I am making ATCs with straight photos (unaltered).

I also saved some of the trimmings and will alter those with bleach then use them to make abstract collages in the future.

Spring Activities Hinder Art Making

I have been busy with spring activities, or shall I say our family has?

We have been doing hikes and other outdoor adventures in Connecticut State Parks as part of a competition/family event called No Child Left Inside/Great Park Pursuit. So far we have gone to five different state parks (one was a 90 minute drive each way and another was over two hours). The driving and the activities have been using our time.

We had a few year-end special Cub Scout events. I spent a day outdoors at another nature preserve where my children take a class, for the special last day/graduation, last week.

I have attended two different two-day conferences which took me away from home and got my mind completely off of art.

We took the patio furniture out of the garage and put it out on the deck. Yesterday I spent the afternoon cleaning out the garage, sweeping dust away, spider webs and getting rid of a mouse nest.

The fun we've been having as a family and spending time outside has been robbing me of my art-making time. I think that is okay to have things fluctuate based on the seasons. However I am signed up for swaps for ATCs and I'm now getting down to some deadlines, down to the wire.

I will be making time today (even if I have to stay up late) to finish some ATCs and get them ready for swapping.

I think then I will have to slow down on signing up for committments to do swaps. I'll give myself time to enjoy the summer with my husband and children and will make art when I feel like it. Hey, I may just stockpile ATCs to swap out in the future and resume hosting swaps in the fall with gusto (using ATCs already 100% completed).

I hope you enjoyed your spring and that you also enjoy your summer, whether it is still making a lot of art or whether you are slowing down a bit for the season!

My ATCs Made Last Week

ATC Quilt with Red Flower

ATC Potato Beetle with Asparagus

(Apologies for purists, I should have matched the asparagus with the asparagus beetle. However I was in my right brain mode not my left brain mode at the time.)


ATC Asparagus Beetle


ATC Five Rectangles



ATC Green Car

Technorati Tags: artist trading card, ATC.

Made Five ATCs Friday Night

Friday night while my husband prepared dinner I sat at the kitchen table, chatted with him and made five ATCs.

I pulled out already-prepared backgrounds which I made in the past.

I pulled out a little Rubbermaid container which I have tiny scraps of paper in and cancelled postage stamps. I scattered these little papers on the table and began looking through them.

Certain postage stamps jumped out at me as interesting. I then looked for backgrounds that would compliment those colors. Working quickly I pulled paper scraps with other complimentary colors.

Using acrylic gel medium soft matte (Golden brand), I adhered the papers to the backgrounds.

Voila, four ATCs were finished!

For the last ATC I looked through a falling apart insect field guide for interesting images. I chose a potato beetle and cut it out very carefully (not easy). I then collaged that onto a background which was a crackle finish made with acrylic paints. It needed something else. On the next page was some great artwork showing asparagus and the eggs of the asparagus beetle on the stalks. I chose parts without the eggs and cut them out carefully. I made an interesting composition that looked good to my eye and voila, the fifth was finished.

I have been trying or wishing to have a many hours long block of time to make some ATCs in. It is not working out due to a busy schedule of appointments and going places and being away from home for the whole day and things like that. I am left to squeeze in time here and there to make ATCs in.

Also yesterday it was brought to my attention that a scan I uploaded just a few days ago which was viewable and fine is no longer viewable here on my blog. Blogger is having problems with photo uploading abilility. Now something must be amiss with just viewing graphics/photos that were already uploaded in the past. I barely have time to blog here let alone deal with problems like that so for a while I won't be uploading scans of my ATCs, I guess.

Photoshop Elements Computer Program

A couple of people have asked me about Photoshop which I have said that I use. They have commented that Photoshop is expensive and that they can’t afford it.

The program I use is actually Adobe Photoshop Elements. I am told that regular Photoshop is much more expensive than Elements. Elements does what I need it to do.

I received my copy of Elements as a prize for having a photo published in a photography book. Therefore I don’t know what the two programs cost.

I do very little with my Elements program. I use it to take scanned images and to resize them and to trim the images of excess white space. I use the program to take a higher resolution scan and to resize it to a lower resolution so that it can be uploaded to Blogger.

I have done some digital image altering with the program. I have also turned some photographs into an image that looks like a rubber stamp then used that as the pattern for hand carved rubber stamps. Turning images into black and white then using them as transfers is something else I’ve done.

Technorati Tags: Photoshop, Photoshop Elements.

Bird Mixed Media Collage

I wanted to make a 5x7 inch collage that I’d then cut into four artist trading cards. This is what I made last night. For some “me time” I declared the after dinner time as art making time. While this went on my husband ran an errand with my sons and then the children played a game with each other while I cleaned up. It was then bedtime and after a few minutes of reading aloud the kids went to bed. Normally we watch one TV show together as a family but the kids had a punishment yesterday of no television that day, so that actually gave me more time than I’d normally have, a little window of more time to make art.

I began with a recycled cereal box for a sturdy base.

I covered the brown cardboard side with a piece of white paper with a yellow floral pattern on it.

I then used a technique that someone shared on a chat list over a year ago. It started with first using waxed paper (the kind you wrap food in, or that people used to use to do so), as a surface covering while working on other art projects. In the past I had painted a bunch of backgrounds for ATCs with acrylic paints and with homemade acrylic glazes. I also had used some rubber stamps with acrylic paint and acrylic glazes and to clean them off I stamped them onto this waxed paper. One of these stamps says “believe”, you can see that clearly in the collage. When the project was done I then let the waxed paper dry and saved it for use in a later collage.

I took the waxed paper with random paint and glaze on them and tore them to shreds. Using Golden Acrylic Gel Medium Soft Gel Matte, I adhered them to the background. They looked translucent and interesting and covered up most of the floral paper in the background.

I adhered a piece of fiber that another mail artist sent me to the collage.

I added an image of a flower that someone sent me; it is a computer printout of a flower printed onto a transparent plastic sheet (why does the right name for that product escape me now?).

Using sequin waste again sent to me by a mail artist, I added blue and white chalk rubber stamp ink.

Before I set it with a heat gun I added a bird rubber stamp (stamp credit Martha Stewart crafts at Michael's Craft Shop) and used blue embossing powder for the bird. I accidentally let the powder go onto the not-yet set white chalk ink so that was a mistake. I then melted the embossing powder of the blue colored bird. I then added two more bird images using white embossing powder.

Lastly there was an empty area that needed something. Using a garden seed catalog image of purple flowers, I made a packing tape transfer and adhered it to the collage. I chose to do a packing tape transfer as the rest of the collage was absent of typical collage of the image on white or other colored paper. I felt the image was too detailed to cut it out around the edges of the flowers and leaves. I felt the colored background was so pretty that to have this be a packing tape transfer that would let the background show around the edges of the flowers would be perfect.

After scanning this collage I cut it into four ATCs.

I used these ATCs for an “Anything Goes” swap on Swap-bot.

I really loved the look of the collaged waxed paper with the paint and glaze on it. I should change from using old newspapers as my standard table surface protector to using the waxed paper as I would love to have more of it to use in future collages.

Since the collage used waxed paper, paper, fiber, images on plastic, paint, glaze and ink this is technically a mixed-media collage.

Technorati Tags: artist trading card, ATC, collage, mixed media collage.

Currently Reading: Celebrate Your Creative Self by Mary Todd Beam

About four nights ago I wanted to read a book with art techniques before going to bed to unwind with. I selected from my bookshelf, a book I bought in August 2007 and one that I have not read in months, “Celebrate Your Creative Self” by Mary Todd Beam.

This book is about painting techniques and also mixed media. The art style is abstract.

Mary Todd Beam is an artist and a workshop teacher, who now shares some of her teachings in this book.

The book starts out with some basic art principles. The book is an interesting format, kind of a like an art course in a book format, you read the book and you learn what the teacher would be telling you. Then the book is like an art workshop in a book format. Different techniques are taught with well-written instructions that are easy for beginners to understand. Nice color photographs show each step in the process. For each technique there are several examples of finished artwork from different artists.

When I read this book I am left with encouragement to just go and play and make art for fun. We are encouraged to try different things and to really enjoy the process.

Lucky for me I already own so many of the art supplies that are used in this book so I can start right in with trying some of these techniques. Some of the frequently used materials are acrylic gel medium, gesso, acrylic paint (opaque), liquid acrylics (transparent) and some other things like aluminum foil (yes, the kitchen wrap variety).

Just looking at the finished artworks in this book was and is inspirational to me.

I jumped right in to try a technique using wax crayon resist which I hope to share with you soon.

I don’t mean to sound pessimistic but I doubt I’ll be creating works of art like Mary Todd Beam but I know I can use some of the principals and the techniques to make artist trading cards (ATCs) with and also to make backgrounds for collages and ATCs.

I am sure that amateur and professional artists who prefer making large paintings will also find this book very useful as well.

For an idea of what Mary Todd Beam’s artwork looks like you can check out her website.

Presently Amazon does not offer a “look inside this book” feature for the book but the author has some scans of some of the pages of this book on her site, here.



Technorati Tags: Celebrate Your Creative Self, Mary Todd Beam, painting techniques.

ATCs from Qatar!

What a surprise I received in the mail yesterday. I received some ATCs and extra suprise goodies including candy, from a mail art swapper who lives in Qatar!

Who knew that someone all the way from Qatar was a Swap-bot member and is swapping ATCs and mail art? I think it is fantastic.