apples and pears

Last Wednesday I took my first class in stained glass work. I was prettty nervous to start with but Jim and Rachel at Maine Art Glass Studio in Lisbon Falls calmed me down right away. If you've never been to their gallery it is well worth the trip. Jim is a bug nut and there are the most beautiful arrangements and displays of butterflies I have ever seen. They also show glass art created by a variety of artists. Right now there is a quilt show too. The gallery is located in the interior of an old brick church--just a beautiful spot for all this glass work.

The first part of class I practiced cutting lines of window glass, straight and wavy, and then breaking them off from the bigger piece of glass. I thought this would be hard, but as long as I used good pressure on my cutting tool, I did pretty well. Jim then gave me a pattern to trace on more window glass that had to be cut out in a certain order--which I figured out right away--in order to get all the rectangles and triangles. Then I got my first pieces of art glass--gold, red, deep green, and a bumpy-textured brown--and a pattern of an apple and a pear. I traced the pattern onto the glass pieces, cut them out, took them to the grinding machine and smoothed all the edges, washed them, dried them, and then began to copper foil the edges. My homework assignment was to finish foiling the pieces, which I did. My next task in class will be to solder the pieces together.

My other homework assignment was to design my next piece. I actually found a photograph of a water lily that I loved with parts of two lily pads showing in the water around it. I enlarged the photograph and traced the outlines I chose to use in black marker. I have all this beautiful glass, so I looked through the boxes and chose some pieces that I think will work. I'm not much of a pink person, so even though the photo showed the water lily in shades of deep to lighter pink, I am reinterpreting it in kind of a pinky brown and white glass with deep green lily pads and deep blue-green rippled glass water.

I'm not going to class tonight because the weather forecast is so bad--certainly don't want to drive 30 miles or so on ice. I've traced the pattern onto the pinky-brown white glass and think I will try to cut it out on my own before next week's class. I'd love to be able to take in pieces ready for the grinder.

The other idea I'm batting about is how to make the lily stand 3-D out from the water and lily pad glass even a little bit. So I'm going to cut some extra pieces for base pieces to solder the upright pieces to and I think that might work. The more I can envision what I want to do, the more Jim will be able to help me bring the idea to reality.

I'm already working up an idea for a waterfall for another piece. And then there's the ideas that are percolating from the children's book FEATHERS FOR LUNCH. I made some shrink art jewelry pieces of the cat and some of the birds and I think those designs would work as patterns for stained glass. I've already resketched the cat to look more like my calico cat Miss Joon--as she is my oldest cat, about 20, it might be nice to immortalize her in a way in glass. Plus all her patches could be really cool in different tones of black, brown, and orange.

My mind is working overtime...

more water and mist

Here are a few photos of the water and Memories Mist technique I wrote about yesterday.

water and Memories Mist

Tonight's experiment involved water, Memories Mist, and a package of time cards. I found the time cards at Marden's--250 for $10, they're larger than the biggest tags I have, and are manila tag weight and plain on the back so they work like tags. I had watched a video on Craft TV Weekly that showed how to do this...I spritzed water on a tag (placed on a craft sheet), gently carried the tag flat to a small cardboard box (balanced precariously on top of the full laundry basket--what's more important, creating art or putting the laundry away?!) and sprayed it with Memories Mist. The water acted as a resist and left manila spots where the water had been and the rest of the card absorbed the inky spray. Then I spritzed some stamps and water-stamped images on the tags, put them in the box, and Memories Mist-ed away...the images almost look bleached on the tags. Next I put stencils on top of the tags and spritzed those, gently removed the stencil, and sprayed with the Mist--more soft images. In all I used four stencils and two stamps, a tiny bit of water and Mist and I have a dozen tags ready to use on cards or whatever...FUN! If you don't want to wait for the images to dry on their own, use a heat gun like I did and watch the magic happen more quickly. This was a lot more fun for me than bleach or the Castaway pad, was less messy (as long as you don't count the green clogged mist bottle that sort of leaked all over my right hand), and involved very little cleanup--one paper towel.

If you haven't seen Craft TV on TV, you can watch episodes on your computer like I do (because, believe it or not, I do not have a TV)...all kinds of great ideas in 15 minutes or less, each episode focused on a particular technique and/or product. The shows are archived so you can go back a few years and learn some neat stuff. Just Google Craft TV Weekly!

working with artist canvases

For nearly twenty years my parents did wildlife rehabilitation here at Jean's Jungle. In fact, the Woodshed where I live used to be the rehabilitation center--my kitchen was the fawn pen, beaver and ferrets were housed in the livingroom along with a cage of flying squirrels...you get the picture. Anyway, Pilgrim was a runty Great Blue Heron that my dad cared for, nursed to health, and released to the wild. Every year Pilgrim comes back and fishes in our pond and visits on the opposite shore. We know it's him because he is so small and he doesn't take off when Dad talks to him. I made this canvas this weekend for Pilgrim. I inked up the edges of the canvas and stamped 3 heron images on the left. I photocopied photographs of a blue heron taken by Pat Bither, attached them to pieces of black cardstock, and added the puffy letters. I cut three strips of paper (Basic Grey) and attached those to the canvas with glue dots. I added the heron photocopies, and the two envelopes, and some bamboo pieces from another card I deconstructed, The smaller envelope has a tag with Pilgrim's name on it. The larger one holds the story of Pilgrim that my mother wrote before her stroke. I glued a piece of ribbon across the bottom of the canvas, added a punched circle from the same background paper, and made a doodad from an earring mounted on a rollabind disk.



The other image is of the second canvas I made this weekend, 18"X24", GRUNGE 1-9. I picked up my digits and punctuation grungeboard at Your Maine Stamper on Saturday and could hardly wait to start playing. This stuff is amazing! It's paper but totally flexible and has almost a suedey feel to it. To start my canvas, I divided it into triangualr sections and cut pieces of scrapbook papers to fit which I glued on with Scotch Tacky Adhesive. For each grungeboard piece I tried different techniques. 1: Shabby Shutters crackle paint. 2: Versafine Satin Red ink, Versamark, Firebrick Red Distress embossing powder. 3: pine needles distress ink, shabby shutters crackle paint, Glossy Accents and copper ultrafine glitter.
Parentheses: black soot distress ink and copper embossing powder. 4: Versamark and copper embossing powder (looks like metal!). 5. tea dye distress ink and tea dye distress embossing powder. 6. gold embossing powder, glue pen and ultrafine copper glitter. 7: walnut stain distress ink. 8: Pesto Adirondack Color Wash. AND: shabby shutters crackle paint, pine needles and black soot distress inks. 9: tea dye crackle paint and walnut stain distress inks. Exclamation Point: tea dye and shabby shutters crackle paint. I adhered the grunged pieces to the papers with glue dots, added some antique buttons and a beribboned buckle. I LOVE this piece!

canvases were purchased at the Christmas Tree Shops for cheap--9X12 $1.69; 12X18 $3.99

Tim Holtz Challenge

If you are not familiar with Tim's blog, check it out! There were great tag challenges in December and a new one posted yesterday for January. Each tag challenge includes very detailed instructions illustrated by photographs of Tim at work. The December "12 Tags of Christmas" directions are archived. Robyn and I are hoping to get more Tim Holtz stuff into Your Maine Stamper in Winthrop so we make more of this cool stuff and maybe even teach some classes to inspire others to try these materials and techniques.

glass

One evening this week I watched an online video on cutting glass for making jewelry and got all excited about the possiblities of using colored glass in my work. The next day my friend Jeanne called to ask if I would like some glass. Someone she knew had cleaned out a closet and Jeanne had two boxes of colored glass that needed a good home. Talk about synchronicity! I drove down on Saturday afternoon to get it. The colors and textures of the glass pieces are amazing. Soooo beautiful. The tools that I need as a beginning glass cutter were also in the bottom of the box. Now I just need to set up a space for this that is separate from my living quarters--think it's time to clean off the 8-foot store counter in the other room as that would be a really good place to work. There's so much glass--everything from a quartsize container of tiny glass pieces for mosaics to sheets that are nearly 8"X10" and all sizes in between.

Keep This! Box directions and photos

To begin with, I inked up the whole box a bit with Ranger's (Tim Holtz) Distress Ink in Black Soot. I also added distress ink to a piece of purple paper (one of the 4X4 pieces), rubbed on Keep This and the wiggly arrow, added cardstock stickers and bubble numbers for 2008. I taped this to the top of the box using doublesided tape.

The other squares shown are sample pages I have placed in my box. I'm up to over thirty of these little squares in my box now. I used rub-ons, stickers, my own journaling, rubber stamping, collage papers, ribbon, and all kinds of other stuff from my stash of stuff.