Artistic Muse ....

... Hi again!  Another quick class review today.  I've just spent a wonderful crafting weekend with my daughter, Kat.  I've been trying to get her interested for the last few years with very little success. However, I recently introduced Kat to Dylusions sprays and suddenly she was hooked!  Yea!!  Last month I took Kat to the regular meeting of our Art Journal club and she loved, so now we're booked to go each month.

This weekend, we've been lucky enough to have two craft events.  The first, on Saturday, was run by Valerie Brincheck at my local craft shop, Stampeddler.  It was called Artistic Muse.  We were a small class of six, some with experience and some, like Kat, complete beginners.  The aim was to create our own artistic muse, to help us find inspiration and push past the mojo blocks!  We started by selecting polymer clay faces and some wings to personalise as our muse, and then built a collage with found objects. We built up layers, painted with black gesso, added more layers and more black gesso and finished off by adding some colour with metallic paints.  It was fantastic.

Here's my finished Artistic Muse and not in my go to cool colours either!!

This is a 6" × 6" wooden block decorated with lots of wonderful found objects (kindly provided by Valerie).  We got gloriously messy.  And here's a photo of Kat's Artistic Muse:

Once again, it's a 6" × 6" wooden block that Kat decorated.  I love the colours she used to finish the piece - blues, violet and purple - lovely!

Here are photos of the ones that Valerie made, two are 6" × 6" and the other two are 8" × 8".  They are all stunning:

This one is 6" × 6" and was the example that Valerie put on display in Stampeddler.  When Kat saw it she just loved it, so I asked if she wanted to have a go at making one herself.  And we had the most marvellous time.  These are the colours I normally tend to use!

Another 6" × 6" example.  This glows in the light and I just love the steampunk theme.  Check out those cute little googles on the face!

An 8" × 8" example.  I would love to make one this size.  There are so many lovely details in here. Check out the pen nibs in the headdress.

And I think this i my favourite of them all.  Another 8" × 8".  Valerie made this for a friend of her.  I would love to get a gift like this!  And this one includes all my favourite colours.

If you live in the Northville area, keep an eye on the class schedule to see if Valerie runs this class again - it is so worth going.  Thanks to Valerie for the inspiration, to our classmates and to Margene for the use of the class in her shop - Stampeddler!

On Sunday we went to the Art Journal club.  Kat spent the whole session working on a spread in her journal.  I don't have a photo as she's not finished it yet, but I'll share it as soon as she's done!  That's all for now.

Polymer Clay Quilt ....

....  Good morning everyone.  It's a really bad weather day for many places along the east coast today - please take care and be safe.  All the wind and snow is a good reason to stay in and craft!  I don't have a card to share with you today, but I do have a polymer clay quilt!  I went to a craft class last Saturday and this is what I made:

It was a really fun class, where we got very inky and messy.  We used polymer clay to cover the base of a wood block and applied metal leaf, mica powders, acrylic paints and lots of texture.  We cut various shapes to go on top and then added decoration.  The propeller  in the top row is held in place by an old ruby earring!!

Here are a few photos of the work in progress:

That's all for now - got lots to do today.  Take care!  See you soon.

Edited to add:  I've been meaning to add photos of the work done by my class mates - all absolutely beautiful.

This one was made by Paddy - I love the word embellishments she's used on her quilt.  

 

I love the silver, blues and purple on this one made by Cindy.

This one is still a work in progress - Deborah was still finalising her design.

Carol went for a more abstract look and used circles for her all over design.  

The quilt above and below were the samples that Valerie brought to class with her - she made them both.

This was a really fun class!

Collage with stencils .....

... Good morning.  No card to share this morning, just a few of the collages that I made on Sunday.  I went to a craft class held at Stampeddler (my local craft shop) and run by Valerie Brincheck.  I always enjoy Valerie's classes - we get very inky and have lots of fun.

The class description was a "couple of hours experimenting with rubber stamp ink, paints, pastels, and mica sprays to create layered collage backgrounds for journals, card or scrapbook pages".  We were a mixed bunch of seasoned crafters and some newbies, but we all had a ball.

This is the first one I made.  I used a mixture of Distress pads, markers, stains, and various other ink pads.  I picked three colours - Salty Ocean, Mowed Lawn and Seedless Preserves - wiped them onto my craft sheet, spritzed with water and smooched the watercolour paper into the inks.  Then I simply added layers of texture with stencils.  I made sure to include text, organic and geometric patterns.

This was number two - almost exactly the same background colours, just changed out the purple for Mustard Seed.

This was the last one I made.  I was determined to go for colours that I didn't normally use, I had planned on yellows and oranges, but ended up with Barn Door, Seedless Preserves and Picked Raspberry.  I didn't manage to complete this at the class (it was only two hours and we really could have spent the whole afternoon there).  I completed it at home by adding the leaves, the silver flowers (with which I wasn't entirely happy) and the black stars.

These pieces all measure 8" × 6", a bit too big for a card and I don't really want to cut them down, so I think I'm going to put them in frames and have them on my craft room wall.

Today I'm off to a Stampin' Up! class at Karin's which will be just as much fun, but perhaps, not quite as messy!  I'll post pictures of what we make later.  Bye for now!