Tea With Helen

I had my "debut" as a member of the Artistcellar design team yesterday.

For my first Artistcellar blog post, I started with a favorite technique—printing on recycled teabags—and used a vintage photo of my mother, Helen, circa 1934. I printed the photo from an inkjet printer onto printable silk fabric, trimmed it to size, and removed the paper backing.

For the base, I started with used teabags. After drying them, I emptied out the old tea, carefully opened them, flattened them out, and printed on them using white printmaking paint applied to an assortment of hand-carved and commercial stamps.

Once the printed teabags were dry, I randomly collaged them onto cardstock using gel (matte) medium, which adheres like glue, but dries flat, and you can stitch through it with ease.

When I laid the translucent silk photo on the teabag print base, too much of the background showed through, so I applied viva décor inka gold old gold to the central area, which made the silk photo easier to see. I added a little matte medium to hold the photo in place, and edged it with a favorite sheer lace, also adhered with matte medium.

For strength, I added a felt backing, then clamped the artwork to the felt and carefully stitched the edges with a machine blanket stitch. To give the piece even more of a vintage effect, I sponged on extra viva décor inka gold old gold to the edges and corners.

The piece especially touches my heart because, growing up, the kitchen was the central gathering place in our house, and mom always had a pot of tea to share with friends and family around our kitchen table. The dress she wore in the photo was made of a rich indigo velvet and I remember feeling ever so beautiful in it when I played dress-up.

Tea Party Mixed Media ATCs

"Tea Party—Mad or Otherwise” was the theme for the April Roses on My Table ATC trade.  The theme conjured up all kinds of ideas in my head, from charming English high tea to bizarre Alice in Wonderland images. I played and played with the idea, mixing teacups, teapots, forest animals and stuffed animals. I merged layers in Photoshop®, and cut out new and vintage images…but nothing really worked. So, I rummaged through my box of semi-finished ATCs, and began ripping about some old, half-finished work. I mixed portions of my Photoshop® collages (using free vintage images from The Graphics Fairy) with old pieces of my own printmaking , recycled teabags, and snippets of lace. I adhered them to lightweight ATC boards from USArtQuest, then ran the edges along a brown chalk stamp pad to give the ATCs an aged look. I made eight in all, traded four and kept four for myself.

 

 

 

Quirky Paper Dolls as Art Therapy

 

Paper dolls make me feel seven years old. They make me feel like a fashion designer, a crazy artist, sometimes a dancer, and sometimes a wizened old woman. They make me forget about my troubles. Making quirky paper dolls is my “go-to” project when I don’t quite know what to do but I want to have a little art fun.

I use vintage paper dolls or blank paper doll templates, and combine body parts with scraps of paper and fabric. Sometimes I use faces I have drawn or painted, sometimes I use famous faces, sometimes I use vintage photos. I occasionally take apart dolls that didn’t quite work out, like the Frida doll on the left, who once wore a Halloween costume that wasn’t quite right. The little child is a Graphics Fairy image, but I discovered after I printed her on cardstock that she had a head, chest and legs, but nothing from the waist down.  So, I improvised a skirt from some watercolor paper that was printed with bubble wrap—exactly the right color and concept for a little girl!

The shoes, black hat and hands holding roses are from the Graphics Fairy http://thegraphicsfairy.com/. The blue hat used the black hat as a template, but I cut it from my own paper, blue painted watercolor paper printed with a white commercial stamp. The striped band is from an M&J Trim bag. Most of the parts are attached with mini brads to make the dolls poseable.

 

Vintage Typography

Typography is one of my favorite themes, so I don’t know why it took me weeks to decide on what to do for my heARTist Trading ATCs. There were so many directions within typography that I tried three or four approaches, but nothing was really working. 

My family has been watching the old 1970s PBS show “Upstairs, Downstairs”, so I wanted to do something with the Art Nouveau style. I puttered for hours with Nouveau-inspired fonts and played with letters, words, and fabric designs in Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator without too much success. Next, inspired by the work of artist Lisa Occhipinti, I used portions of the swoop of a Q, Z and M Art Nouveau backgrounds, an antique beach, and my own designs—without success.

So, I went back to my old favorite—vintage advertising, and layered Graphics Fairy http://thegraphicsfairy.com/ and other antique images in Photoshop to create this month’s ATCs. I tried about 50 different ideas, and printed the five styles I liked best. I surrounded a Pears Soap ad with text about cleanliness and beauty in an old west-inspired font. The Monaco-Monte-Carlo card was the only one in an Art Nouveau style; I layered a Mucha poster on one of my own designs. The beehive/rose, bird in an envelope and French advertising all multiple vintage images that were layered and softened in Photoshop.

Art Tag Using Vintage Advertising Images

There is a wonderful site called The Graphics Fairy http://graphicsfairy.blogspot.com/ where all kinds of vintage images are available for free. New images are posted daily, and you can also search the site by category to find almost anything, from apples to zebras. I have discovered that I have a penchant for vintage advertising images. I love the antique graphics and fonts and colors. I recently made a 12" x 12" collage in photoshop with some of my favorites. After I printed it out on cardstock (I reduced it to 8x8 to print and flipped the image so that there was a little extra 3x8 piece at the bottom of the page) I decided to cut it up and make art tags. I overprinted the vintage ads with white paint on some of my own handcarved stamps, and also added some recycled teabag 'lace' that I made by printing white on used, dry, empty teabags. Last, I added some extra color in spots with Derwent inktense pencils and blocks to enhance the color and give more of an aged look. I am posting the "before" piece, the uncut collage as I arranged it in photoshop, for comparison. Although I love the vintage images just as they are, I knew I needed to do something to make them uniquely mine. I really love stamping and printmaking, so overprinting the vintage images seemed to be a way to keep the antique look, yet soften it. The use of the teabags over the collage softened the look and the faux lace teabags added a bit of romance. After I cut the tags to the size I wanted, I glued them to commercial tags for strength. There were some little pieces left, so I was able to make a few more tags than I expected by collaging the leftover pieces into some new tags.