Printmaking and Painting and My Art Staycation

Today officially starts my week-long  ART STAYCATION! Unofficially, it started Saturday morning. I pulled out most of my art supplies and scattered them around the living room in organized chaos. Saturdays seem to be the day when I just create a mess, painting backgrounds that don't look like much, pulling prints off my new gelli plate, cutting, measuring, mixing and splattering. On Sundays, I am more rested and often manage to figure out a way to pull the unrelated art bits into some kind of unified piece. Sometimes it is just a little edge of a print that becomes an ATC or a tag.

Collage with Gelli printed deli paper and stencils, assorted papers,
vintage royalty free images and printout of original drawing

Collage using vintage magazine ad, stenciled
Gelli printed deli paper and assorted papers

For my staycation, I have a few plans. One is to work on my faces using the Jane Davenport method. I have a vision of doing something bigger than an ATC, incorporating angels and wings and Medieval illuminated writing on it. I have sketchbooks and journals full of ideas that I scribbled down in moments of inspiration, so I will pull them out and see if anything turns into a solid idea.

Layers of Gelli-stencil deli paper prints, thermofax prints and assorted papers

I hope to pull my 6x6 series from the Julie Balzer workshop into one piece, maybe even hang it on the wall. Strangely, our walls are kind of empty, and my husband keeps saying: "Why don't you hang some of your work up?" Why indeed? Well, much of it is in art journals--can't hang them very easily. Some pieces are too personal, too in-your-face and I don't want to look at them every day. Some of them remind me of where I have been, emotionally, and looking at them evokes feelings I don't really want to revisit.

There's a couple unfinished projects on the horizon: my finishing the hand-quilting on my grand-niece's handmade fabric piece, repairing broken jewelry--some commercial and some handmade. Then there's the canvases...I made a "junque journal" in a Julie Balzer class, which is now so fat it will hardly close. So, I need a new one. I had some painted canvases that were intended to be covers for the first journal, but they weren't quite right. So, yesterday I gessoed over them. I had used some fiber paste through a stencil, and the gesso didn't cover it, so I used molding paste on top. Still didn't cover it. So that's a back-burner project in two parts...making the canvases look okay, and putting them together into a new journal.

Here's the 2"x3" printmaking experiments from yesterday. Two will be traded, one is a "keeper" and the rest will go in the nowhere land storage bin and either be reworked, added to another project, or used for an emergency greeting card.

Journal Collage with Thermofax

Unplanned collaging in your journal is a great way to keep your creative juices flowing. By letting yourself be totally instinctive, you lubricate your brain and “prime the well” of creativity.

Many writers follow the steps in Julia Cameron’s book The Artist’s Way, and write morning pages to prime their creative well. Artists often follow her process, but do artwork in a journal daily, sometimes in combination with writing. Although I must confess I don’t work in my journal every day because of time constraints, I DO do something artistic or creative daily, even if it is just a doodle while I am on the phone or in a meeting.

One of my journals is just stuffed with little doodled sketches I have done over the years. I often flip through the doodle journal when I am looking for inspiration, and I have translated a lot of my doodles into bigger projects.

One of the doodle shapes that keeps coming up is a swirly twirly heart. A few years ago I sent some of my designs to fiber artist Lynn Krawczyk (yes, the very same person who has a collection of four Artistcellar stencils!), who turned them into thermofax screens. It is very cool to be able to print your own designs on paper and fabric. The screens print very evenly, and even a sloppy artist who is always hurrying (who me?!) can successfully use them. You can read more about thermofax in Lynn’s Esty shop or on her website.

If you want to see some of my other thermofax experiments, check my blog--there are several posts with thermofax work, or click here for a direct link about my thermofax fun.

On this page, using matte medium, I collaged a bunch of unrelated paper pieces—a food receipt, magazine pages, and leftover design scraps.  The word BOOK was from a magazine advertisement; I liked it because it reminded me how much I love to read.

As a central focus, I added an imperfect thermofax print. I printed it with turquoise screen printing ink, and while it was wet, sprinkled embossing powder on top of the paint, then heated it. The heart shape looked okay, but there were some accidental sprinkles on the bottom of the heart that looked smeary. Still, I liked the heart’s color and shape and decided to use it in the collage anyway.

I decided to add some subtle stencils to the page. I used sections of the Flower Piecing stencil here and there with a fine black pen and white signo pen. Next, to camouflage the smeared thermofax heart, I added black dots with a fat sharpie marker around the edge, then added some gradations of white over the smears with my Faber-Castell: Stampers Big White Brush Pen. Last, I took some black and white washi tape, cut it into thin strips, and added them around the word book and above the heart.

Experiments with Embossing and Derwent Blocks

Lately I've been puttering with new materials: one is embossing powder, and the other, Derwent Inktense Blocks. They are both a lot of fun. the embossing powder is kind of messy, and I have tried it on both paper and fabric, and used both ordinary ink and slow drying ink to adhere it. I have more luck with the ordinary stamp pad ink even though it dries fast, mainly because I can see the image. The slow drying ink is not really ink...it is a clear liquid that is kind of oily, so it is hard to tell if the image is where you want it, and if it is fully covered.

The little energy symbol on the bottom left was screen printed, the beige were stamps on recycled teabags, and the top right has a stamp on a batik. The best image was the one done by screen printing an image on fabric using a thermofax screen, then sprinkling on the powder and zapping it with a heat gun. Over the weekend I didn't have my heat gun handy and substituted with a hair dryer--which did not work well at all.

I bought a few inktense pencils recently, and used them on my "Around the World" atcs. They were great--strong color that stayed strong after the pieces dried. So, I splurged and bought some blocks this weekend. They worked pretty well on fabric, and even better on paper. I tried them out on a recycled coffee filter and was pretty happy with the color.

Reiki-Inspired Art-O-Mat Blocks: Energy-Growth-Bloom

Here is my newest batch of Art-o-Mat blocks, packed and ready to ship out.
I used small silkscreens, well, really thermofax screens, which fiber artist Lynn Krawczyk makes.

The silkscreens come out soooo much better than trying to block print onto fabric, and it is really fast, easy and inexpensive. Lynn's esty site is http://www.etsy.com/shop/FibraArtysta. You can send her your own designs or purchase some of her pre-made screens. I also purchase screen printing paint from her, which stays moist and doesn't clog the screens like acrylics sometimes can. The gold paint, however, is an acrylic that I get at my local five and ten.

These blocks are made from my own designs. The one that looks like a musical note is the reiki energy symbol; I printed in gold on purple batik since purple is the healing color in reiki.

The floral is from a hand carved stamp I made, which I then had made into a small screen. I printed it on a rose colored cotton batik. The spiral-leaf is a doodle I make constantly, so I had that made into a silkscreen also, and printed it on both colors of batik.

This is my process in making the blocks:
1-iron the fabric so there are no wrinkles
2-print the small silkscreens on the fabric
3-cut peltex rectangles the size to fit an artomat block (you can also size them for quilted postcards or ATCs)
4-put the silkscreened piece on top of the peltex, stitch the edges of the piece with a zig-zag, and add quilting with a plain stitch
5-glue the artwork to the artomat block (I use sobo)
6-decorate the edges with dots of dimensional fabric paint
7-put a back label on with the name of the artwork and other info
8-wrap them with little pieces of cellophane so they will vend properly from the artomat machines
9-pack and ship, and pray that they sell.

If you want to find out more about art-o-mat, also known as Artists in Cellophane, go to: http://artomat.com/