Question for you

I have been invited to do a series of art works for Somerset Workshop for October 2008! I will have to produce 2 main pieces that can be easily explained to readers in a series of steps and then many more for the gallery.

My focus will be on altered photos, which is great as I have worked so hard to get it right and have learned lots along the way that I can share!

The first piece that I was thinking of demonstrating is this altered board book wall hanging.

Here is the full image (my camera is not great at taking detailed photos, so excuse the pic) and a one of the pages of the altered book. The book has 5 spreads, I may journal on the pages a little, so I am not quite finished.

Question: Is this a project you would be interested in learning how to make step by step in the magazine? Do you think others would be interested?

Art in the mail

I have never sent 'mail art' before. I have sent art in the mail to Somerset Studio, but I always get it back. Recently, I bought some art from Kelly. It was so wonderful to get her package and to find all the extra creative goodness that she so generously added! It is like having little pieces of her in my home.

I have shared how I am not really ready to part with my art, not ready to have them go off and be big in the world all on their own. So to challenge myself I am going to take this Wednesday Stamper theme of envelopes a little further. I am going to mail it to my friend Shannon.

Not that I think this envelope is all that, but I am including a little piece of art inside. I will admit, this is a safe step for me as I spend lots of time in Shannon's beautiful, eceletic house (for example, on Friday's our crazy husbands are teaching themselves Olde English so they can read Beowulf in the original language!), and I had a little practice when I gave her one or two other pieces recently for her birthday, so if I want to see it to see what I made, remember what I was thinking when I made it, see what needs improvement then I can. But all in all, this is an important step for me in learning to be generous with what I create, one I see so many others have taken (I am amazed at all the beautiful Etzy shops there are!).

(By the way, the stamp I used is another one I carved, I am on a roll:)

More carving!

I have been stamp carving again this weekend. I love that I can make my own stamps, it opens up a whole new world.

The top flower stamp is a design I found in a Dover copyright free book. I printed out the picture and burnished it onto the Speedball Speedycut rubber and carved it with a #2 V-shaped cutter. It is not perfect, but I like the funky, handmade look it brings.

My other new tool is my scanner. I got a HP Photosmart C4189 All-in-one scanner at Walmart for $120 and I have been scanning in old pictures and using them. Now I can do at home what I used to have to go to a copystore to do! Yeah, product development and the advancement of society!

This is a shot of me and my brother when we were little having 'see who can open their mouth the widest' competition. Not very poetic, but I think with my mother visiting from Ireland (she is here for 3 weeks) I have been inspired to use old photos of my life in Ireland in my crafting.