some great stamps

One of the perks of being an AOC for Stampington is that they send me stamps to use. I have lots of them that are wonderful and fit in with all I make, but my absolute favorite is the Clearly Impressed collection by Michelle Ward, Swirls. (and no I don't get a commission on these :), nor am I required to talk up Stampington stuff... I mention them only 'cause Stampington stuff ROCKS!)

I used them in decorating this little handmade book. I am working on projects right now that combine my own words, photos and paint. These swirls have just the right arty whimsical look I was going for.

Dance

Many of the folks that read my blog have children so I thought that you would appreciate these videos:

Behold! The joy and freedom of my 3 year old spontaneously dancing to Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue. (try to ignore my voice telling my son off, the random kids moving in and out of frame and the dark room, we have no natural light in the living room :)





And now for a different mood. This is my 5 year old dancing to my favorite Tchaikovsky music 'Nocturne in C Sharp Minor' with her homemade flower tiara, on a darkened 'stage' with a spotlight (handheld torch) thanks to her big brother.

Indie Arts DVD magazine

I recently viewed an hour long tour of Stampington on a DVD magazine called Indie Arts. It was amazing!

I have long been a Stampington fan (it was Somerset Studio that introduced me back into the arts after many creatively blank years) and have wondered what the place looks like, what happens my art when it goes there, what the folks look like, sound like and all that. I was blown away watching this DVD that explained all that!

You get to hear the founder & publisher, who is a major visionary, Kellene Giloff explain where the magazine started and where it is going in the future. You hear from Editor-in-chief Jenny Doh, who is so wonderful to work for and who has an amazing energy and drive. You hear from Jana Holstein and Amanda Nolan and more. You get to see them sort, choose, arrange and photograph art work for Somerset Studio. It is a must see for all Somerset fans!


Check out this project of mine. It was sent out by email today for the new Stampington & Co. Creative Impulse weekly email. This project, the 2 sided Desk Poem will be located in "The Studio' on their web page which is dedicated to projects made by products they sell in their online store. Stampington are really stepping up their game with all the new publications and now this email program. Gotta admire their ambition!

October check up

I have been busy with homeschooling and art I have not had time to blog. So much goes through my mind about art in a day but I either talk to Shannon or Mark about it or I am just busy doing it. I have little time to reflect and journal. I am still doing my photo a day, so that takes up much of my self allotted blogging time. My art life is trucking along happily and productively.

I am meeting deadlines for Stampington; AOC work and most recently for their 'Project of the Week' slot on their new 'Creative Impulse' e-newsletter. Also, our church is putting on an art show at the end of the month, I am helping in the coordination of it. I foresee that I will be even busier as that approaches. I have all my art done and ready for it, the deadline was October 7, I have submitted 10 pieces, both mixed media and photography.

I have been published twice this month. Once in Sew Somerset and then in Somerset Memories Aug/Sept. In the latter, there are 7 pages of my art work - a 6 page article and then a one page in the gallery!! I feel the article is my best to date, next to the one in Somerset Home Vol II. My friend Shannon Mucha is also in these magazines, we are on the same page in both! How cool is that!

(I, I, I, I..... not a good style of post, but I can hardly see outside my house at the moment, Hello! tell me what you are doing :)

The next Somerset Studio theme

The deadline for the next Somerset Studio theme is October 12 and the theme is Le Chateau. So get creating!

All the stamps in this little piece are Michelle Ward designs sold by Stampington & Co. They are 'Clearly Impressed' stamps, which are transparent acrylic stamps without blocks. They come on a plastic sheet and when you want to use one you peel it off and stick them on either blank acrylic blocks, or, like I do, on the back of other stamps. They are stored on the plastic sheets, which is a great space saver.

and the winner is

Lily picked your name today, Tricia Scott. Email me your address and I will mail you your butterfly reminder. I hope you like it in person :)

For my other friends, this got me thinking I have other pieces that I will be giving away over in the future so stop back by. I have so much stuff here, why not give it away?

Artist On Call explained a little

The Artist On Call position for Stampington & Co. has recently been re-defined. Stampington & Co. sells art supplies and art stamps. The AOC position is designed to display mixed media work that is done using mainly Stampington products. To date much of the AOC work went in the formerly quarterly Inspirations magazine. Two changes are
1) Inspirations magazine will be annual (and includes a catalog of stamps they sell)
2) Somerset Studio and Stampers Sampler will now also include AOC artwork through out the year.

To me this is an exciting prospect. And challenging. While I am working on my next AOC deadline I have my eye on Somerset Studio's upcoming themes, the next one is Le Chateau (October 12) and I am working on a few ideas for that.

Last weekend I picked up a copy of the Stamper's Sampler to see what was in there (even an avid Stampington girl doesn't know all that is covered by the Stampington empire). I was excited to see a photo of my AOC boss, Christen Olivarez, who to date I had only really talked to via email. She is the Managing Editor of Stamper's Sampler.

There are a few other new AOCs. The new AOCs are not yet listed on Stampington's website, but two I know of are Lisa Bebi and Audrey Hernandez.

I have an October 1 deadline for my next Artist On Call work. I am going to be using some of these stamps by Lynne Perrella. Wish me luck :)

Give Away

In Somerset Home I did an article about what I called 'Butterfly Reminders'. I got on a roll making them a while back and have extras. I would like to give ones of these away to someone who would appreciate another bit of art around their house. It would be apt to give away the ones that reminds me to 'Give happily'.

If you are interested please leave a comment and I will do an out of the hat, bowl, basket or something pretty drawing Sept 1.

This piece is 3.5 x 7 inches. All are welcome to 'enter' old and new friends/bloggers!

Green Pepper Press Street Team

Michelle Ward, who is a frequent Somerset Studio artist, writer, designer and all around inspiration, has a fun blog which poses challenges or crusades each month. This months crusade is to add music to my blog.

Well some of you know my love for the music of Irish singer Jack L or Jack Lukeman. One of the highlights of my trip home to Ireland this year was to go see him playing. He was wonderful in person, what a performer he is! His voice just makes me melt, the deepness of it. I can't find any links to my favorite songs of his, but this one will do.

Somerset Home

Living artfully means to me having beautiful things around my home. Before we had kids my husband and I spent our weekends antique shopping (OK, old furniture bargain hunting). We have filled up our home with what we love. Now we only have space left to fill with small things, art and beautiful touches.

After reading the latest Somerset Home magazine I feel inspired to make more things that are beautiful for my home. Just finding the time is the issue! Somerset Home and Somerset Life combined have enough ideas to lat me years :)

I have an article in Somerset Home on p76, Butterfly Reminders, which I am pretty proud of. Somerset have included the first page of my spread in their online sneak peak, check it out here.

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.

The Wednesday Stamper challenge for this week is to show how we use color with stamps. I like to use paint. Here I stamped the dragonfly which is a Stampington stamp with StazOn ink and used Golden Fluid acrylics(yellow ochre, teal and crimson) to paint the wings and body.

Somerset Studio challenges often really challenge me to stretch myself in new ways.

I am working on making something to send in to the special publication Sew Somerset (deadline May 15). I am not a fabric/sewing person, but I wanted to give it a go. I had bought fabric paints at Christmas when I was asked to submit pieces for the upcoming Altered Couture Volume 2 (available May 1, I have 2 altered children's dresses in that publication). I found that I liked working with the fabric paints.

For this is a wall hanging that I used fabric paints on a scrap of fabric I had left over from when I attempted(struggled) to make a quilt for my now 5 year old (my Mum finally sewed it together when she was 3 :). I used my often dormant sewing machine to stitch on the altered photo. I think it is a start, but I have a ways to go with the fabric paint/sewing paper art. Nothing like an art challenge!

I Remember

A while ago I posted about stamp carving. Well I am still at it. I have carved leaves and grasses and fishes and designs which I have been using in my art work. But still my favorite is the eye. It was one of the first things that I carved, I got to use it today for the Wednesday Stampers theme for this week, which is Eye.

Mixing media

This is an example of something I have been working on within one of my larger projects. It is not finished, but I wanted to share that I have been have a wonderful time combining my various loves, altered photography, stamping and paint. I have lately been stitching art pieces together, which is a fun alternative to gluing. I have so many ideas and thoughts, they are almost bursting out of me.

Within the hustle and bustle of being a (homeschool) mom of 4 under 6 I am somehow finding the space to do it all. Creating art for me, at this season, is about finding balance between being the mother I was designed to be and being the artist I desire to be. My arms are wide open to it all.

The joy of Gesso

Gesso is the white paint like stuff that is used to prime canvas. When watered down it can be used to whiten images that are too bright and makes a great surface to stamp onto.

Here is a wood & bead bird hanger I made. The lower one is the bird before Gesso is applied. It is a Dover copyright free image and I find some of them a little garish. The Gesso helps tone it back.

My detailed photography needs improvement, but the words in the pendant say 'Dream Big'. This is something that I really am doing in my life right now. I am burning the candle at both ends, but in a good way. God has given us all 24 hours in a day, I am accountable for how I use mine. So I am dreaming big things and stretching out there, praying about everything and using my minutes wisely. Why not? I have only this one shot at being alive!

In my blog searching I found a link to a group called the Wednesday Stamper and their theme for this week (ending tomorrow) is white, so I am going to add this link to them!

This weekend I have been working on photo altering. I got out the box of photos I took last year on our trip to Ireland and have been sanding and painting a bunch of them.

This one is of a view of Dalkey Island from the side of Victoria Hill about 5 minutes from the house I grew up in, where my Mother still lives. When I lived there I took the beauty for granted. Now that I live in a flat, unbeautiful (hot and humid) part of the States I cherish these photos and memories.

I don't know what I will 'do' with these altered photos. Perhaps I will make a travel journal, or maybe another wall hanging, or I might incorporate it into a larger canvas..... hmmm, ideas are floating around. I love the act of creating.... bringing something into existence that was not before....

SPC

I was not going to do the month of March's SPchallenge until I saw the ever inspiring Misty Mawn's picture. The challenge is use online tools to create or enhance your image, they have a list of tools that can be used. I have been playing around with photoshop for a while and have done tons of fun arty things with photos, so I guess I was a little burned out on it photo altering. But I was able to do this one in 5 minutes with my son helping me (he is going to do his own once I finish this post). I love stuff that is quick and fun and a little different.

That photo is huge, ahhhh... I....