K.C. Willis Collage Camp!

This past Wednesday I took a fantastic class at The Urban Barn in Escondido: "Collage Camp" taught by K.C. Willis. I had a great time, learned a lot and laughed a lot. Visit her website Lipstick Ranch. The Urban Barn is a great place for a workshop like this, with a huge back room with a roll-up door big enough to drive a truck in, so it was very light and airy. KC brought lots and lots of supplies for us to use; all we needed to bring were scissors, glue and some embellishments. She also brought some kits, "KC in a box" that includes her DVDs, so I got one of those too. I'm looking forward to watching them.

Here's KC setting up before class. You can see a little bit of the fabric pile we had to choose from, and she brought lots of samples for us to look at for inspiration. In the background you can see some of the cool old furniture that The Urban Barn specializes in carrying.

KC talked about how she got started making the fabric collages and how she grew her business into the successful one she has now. She is a great storyteller; it all was quite fascinating.

Her instructions were really good. Considering I had no idea what the class was about, I was pleasantly surprised that I didn't spend any time sitting there wondering what the heck I was doing there! One thing I hadn't realized when I signed up for the class is that it involved (gasp!) using a sewing machine. But I survived with the help of KC and Christine, who's machine I used.

We started with raw canvas, attached pieces of fabric front and back, then kept adding more layers of fabric with glue and/or sewing machine. The images are on fabric using T-shirt transfer paper. All the fabrics and lace were stained to one extent or another with coffee to make them look old. She had some fantastic "birds nest" paper, some corrugated cardboard and some paper with some stiff fibers running through it. This added another interesting dimension to the layers. The most fun was giving the edges of the fabrics and also the paper a burnt look with a paint stripping gun.

Another thing she had were "clumpies", the tangled mess of threads that end up in the washing machine when washing torn fabrics. We used blobs of clumpies as part of the embellishments; very cool.

My friend Davielle was in the class too, and we happened to pick the same image to work with. Here is a picture at the end of the class showing our two projects side-by-side.

After class, Davi invited us to her lovely house where we had a nice relaxing dinner and chat. I had thought I would finish it right away after I got home, but I got somewhat stalled on the embellishments and also the quote. Indecision, indecision. When catching up on my email Thursday I noticed coupons from Michaels so on Friday I went and loaded up on stuff - Sharpie paint pens, some rub-ons, but most importantly flowers and jewelry embellishments to finish this and also in preparation for KC's class in February, a 2-day fabric book class at Urban Barn, which I'm already signed up for.

So today I had great fun finishing the project! I'm really happy with it; now I have to watch her videos to see how to prepare it to hang on the wall. I'm tempted to just grab some little nails and nail it right to the wall!

For more pictures (as usual I forgot to take enough pictures during class), see my good friend Sally's post here:

http://sillysalcreates.blogspot.com/2010/07/kc-willis-rides-again-at-urban-barn.html

And also this post from Jackie; without her efforts, the class might not have happened:

http://theartinyou.blogspot.com/2010/07/kc-has-left-buildingthank-you-very-much.html

Thanks Jackie! Thanks to Urban Barn for providing the setting. And thanks KC for a fabulous class!

Matchstick house project

Last weekend I went up to Orange County to have a get-together with some artist friends that live up there. My friend Tracy put together a little project that we could do quickly - a matchstick house. We started with little pieces of cardboard that we covered with old papers. The house part has a triangular top on it, but then there's a larger triangle piece we also covered with paper. Then we put the matchsticks on - they are from the long fireplace matches. Tracy thoughtfully had a variety of sizes already cut. Then they got torched a little with a creme brulee torch.

Here is a picture of the samples Tracy brought; they show the progression of making the house.

Then came decisions as to what to add to it - little flowers, seed pods, etc. Another friend had brought some stamps so I found a heart stamp I liked. We didn't quite have time to put all the stuff on so I brought it home with a few things I wanted to add.

Those who know me know I like to have a little color. I took Tim Holtz distress inks and added a little color in the background and on some of the sticks. Of course then I was kind of on a roll and didn't think to take intermediate pictures, but I added the things I had already planned to add and then stalled. What next? I added some bird seed in the lower right corner, but didn't know what else to add. So I started pulling out possibilities. Here is the house surrounded by things I was trying to decide from.
I decided it need just a little bling so I added the fairy charm. I had a bird's nest charm, but it looked more like spaghetti and meatballs so I added some dark brown alcohol inks and then some paint on the eggs. I like the Tim Holtz hardware & picked the circle tag that says Listen - it spoke to me more that day than Wander. Then I was still in a dilemma because I only had small heart charms and I wanted a heart on the top too. So I got out my package of PaperClay and made a little heart, stuck it in the toaster oven till it was dry and painted it with acrylic paints. Voila! I was finally done. This was a very fun project! I made it more complicated than it needed to be with the addition of the PaperClay heart, but it was still fun. Thanks Tracy, Stephanie and the others, you know who you are!

It's half past 2010 already!

With the Blog Hop for US Artquest's design team happening this week, I hopped around the blogosphere checking out the cool projects and left comments at the appropriate blogs. Several of the artists were kind enough to come visit my blog and left some kind comments. I realized I only blogged once for the whole year of 2009 and not at all yet this year. I will admit I've been very depressed for quite some time and just haven't felt like pretending everything was OK. Through the miracle of modern pharmacology, I've been feeling a lot better for a little while now. Too bad I had to diagnose myself and go tell the N.P. what to prescribe for me - but that's a different rant.

I've been taking lots of great classes the last couple of years in various things, but the best have been the painting classes from Chris Cozen, who is a member of the Working Artist program with Golden Acrylics. She lectures and teaches around Southern California - if you get a chance to take any of her classes, I highly recommend it!

It's not like I didn't enjoy the other classes I took, but I am drawn to painting and collage, so I'm going to try to focus on that - we'll see how that works out, haha! Me and my multitude of hobbies!

I'm also taking online classes from Julie Prichard and Chris Cozen that have been awesome. I have learned so much from them. The classes are Color: Beyond the Basics and Complex Collage; both under Project Deconstruction. You can get more information and sign up here.

Here are 2 paintings I created in classes with Chris and actually finished to my satisfaction - a first for me.

and

The first one started as an exercise in analogous colors. Of course since I love purple, I had to start with Quinacridone Magenta and Dioxazine Purple! The tan colors are actually gold, so they pop a little in real life. When I started the background for the second one I felt I should work outside of my comfort zone a little and started with various colors of yellow and Quinacridone Nickel Azo Gold. The orange rectangle with lighter spots is a piece of really cool paper that Chris brought; wish I could find more like it! The pictures are of my mom and dad (and uncle in the 3rd picture). I'm happy with both of these paintings because they seemed to flow together right from the start, thanks to Chris's expert teaching skills!