a carved stamp

Still inspired by the flower doodle I started drawing in Alissa Burke's class at Inspired, I decided needed to carve a stamp. I bought a carving tool a couple of months ago and still hadn't played with it at all. For my first carving attempt, I'm really happy with how it came out. I decided to mount it on a woodblock, since I hope to use this one a lot.

I stamped it on a couple of teabags, that had been layered on sheet music. I'm still working with these...hopefully have some more time to play with them this weekend.

just doodle

Sometimes I am so overwhelmed by the amount of craftiness swirling about in my mind, that when I get an hour (or an afternoon, or a day) I don't know where to start. Today was a bit of that, and I jumped around a bit from project to project. At the end of the day, I felt I just needed to sit down and doodle. I'm still really inspired by Alissa Burke, and the class we took with her during Inspired. So I got out my Inspiration Journal, my sharpie, my watercolors and crawled into bed.

I just doodled. And I used colors I wouldnt normally use. And I didn't panic when I went outside the lines.

I had fun, and it made me happy. And thats what this is all about.

Inspired

I had a fantastic time at Inspired. I was very sad to hear this is the last year for Inspired, otherwise I would already be scheming how I could make it there for next year.

Wax On Wax Off - Suze Weinberg This was a mini workshop incorporating beeswax into a little mini notebook. I adore journals and notebooks, so I was really excited for this class, and I really enjoyed it. Basically its just coating pieces of paper in beeswax which is melted in a flat pan, so you can drag the papers through the hot wax, and get a coating. We also used some colored waxes that were melted into a flat pan as well. After waxing the paper we used pan pastels and other methods of adding color and creating texture. I loved it. I'm looking forward to playing more with this, and decorating my pages and adding words to my pages before coating them in wax.

MetalSmith Bracelet - Dawn Gallop This was another mini workshop, using metal stamps. I've looked at buying metal stamps before, so I figured this would be a good way to try it out. I did really enjoy it. Jewlery is not my strong point, but I enjoyed creating our own "tags". I hope to play with these more too. She had our pieces of metal already ready for us (normally we would be needing to heat them and "pickle" them, to get them ready). So we just stamped our our words, and any other stamps we wanted on our tag, and pieced together the bracelet. Simple, but I like it. My "word" was live. My moms was "enjoy".

Encaustic - patricia baldwin seggebruchThis was our first of our main workshops, and I was a little nervous going in. Encaustic had just seemed such an intimidating prospect. It's so simple, and I love it. We were working on EncausticBoards and creating a collage and layering waxes. I had brought some scrap papers and things that I had lying around my desk at home. Again we used pan pastels (I am more in love with these than ever now) to add color (which I think I preferred this method of adding color rather than using colored wax), used a stylus to carve shapes and words in the wax, and stamps. I was really happy with how it came out.

Jewlery Making - becky nunn

Again, jewlery making is not my forte. Found this one to be a bit too cookie cutter, with limited options for creativity. Does have some cute products that I bought, to use in a more creative way than I found this class to be.

Fabric Surface Design - alisa burke

This class was a bit intimidating to me, as I like my creations to be neat and clean, and this felt like a lot of layering different colors and designs, which is challenging for me. She encouraged us to just doodle, the way you would when your on the phone, with a sharpie. Again I normally dont like incorporating my doodles into my "art" because, they are not perfect. But I played with my doodles, and had lots of fun. I have been missing out on the simplicity sharpies, canvas or paper, and adding a bit of color. I also want to try to recreate my "doodle fun" with my digital design program...so I'm inspired to keep doodling. Another fun technique I am excited to try is creating your own "silk screen" using an embroidery hoop and a piece of mesh, and modge podge to mark out your design.

And check out this post on Alisa Burke's blog. See if you can find my dirty little fingers doodling my fabric.

Plastic Bag - tracie lampe

Love this. I just love creating cool stuff using garbage-y type stuff, so this was awesome. I also love I dont really need any new supplies (except to start collecting plastic bags again). Using grocery store plastic bags as our bag base, we cut off the handles and bottoms of the bags, creating a sort of square, layered three of these pieces together, and fused them using an iron (with parchment paper above and below your plastics). We did that three times, so we had three pieces of fused plastics, then sewed them together, so we had one long piece. The shape of your bag totally depends on the plastic that you are using for your base, some bags will shrink up a lot more than others. My bags shrunk a lot, and my moms barely shrunk at all, so we have very different bags. After sewing the bag pieces together, we fused other pieces of bright colored bags and plastics, cut them into whatever shapes and sewed them (using a zigzag stitch) onto the bag. We finished up the bag by sewing up the sides and adding a gusset (?), and bias tape around the top for the unfinished edges, and added handles. My bag shape came out like a little cube, so I abandoned the idea of a bag and instead it will be a little cube for storage in my studio. Cant wait to get out some more plastic bags and try this some more. Ideas are swirling.

Suzi Blu

I was really looking forward

to this class, I had looked at taking some of Suzi's online classes before, so I was excited to try out a class. It was good, but I guess maybe its just something that you need more than 4 hours for. I am hoping to do an online class

with her, to learn more. She gave us "blank" faces and dresses, since there was just not enough time to learn to draw in a four hour class. About half of the class was spent shading the face and the eyes, which I enjoyed since its something I want to learn more about. Then we painted our hair, dresses, and backgrounds. It was fun, but I think there is just so much more to learn. Some of Suzi's students from her online classes were there, and their paintings were amazing. So that is really inspiring.

Some other exciting things from the event.

Our room was awesome. We had a seperate living area with a desk, which was amazing for a crafty event like this. We kept our living room a huge mess of supplies and projects. It was awesome.

Inspired Challenge. In our gift boxes we recieved a small package with some "embellishments" (aka, random stuff) and a challenge to create using everything in the package in some form. It was definetly a challenge, especially as we hadnt brought many supplies with us. I did break down and buy some glue, but other than that I didnt buy anything else and just used what they gave us, and what we had lying around to create a little book using the challenge. I had fun, it forced me to use products I wouldn't normally use, and just create.

Art Night Out - In the marketplace, I spent most of my time loitering at this booth. They had bezels and ice resin...which is something that definetly interests me. We watched a demo one night, and I bought some bezels and resin to try. I am super inspired by this stuff...and cant wait to play. As I've said, it was a fantastic event. Hugely inspiring. My mind has a million different crafts going on. But I'm still trying to get caught up on everything at home that gets neglected when your away. Hopefully headed out camping for a couple days this long weekend, but need to have some creative time as well. Thanks so much for visiting! Have a great long weekend!

in love with

Well, I'm just back from vacation and the Inspired event. Had a fabulous time, and will share full details later this week. Some things I am in love with right now though:

• the historic district of Savannah. I want to live here, read my book in the gorgous parks, and work in a paperstore. I can see it now.
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• Crafting all day. So much better than working. We would get up each morning, head down to breakfast (any day that starts with bacon and a doughnut is always a good day), followed by morning craft time, lunch, afternoon craft time (with ice cream delivered for an afternoon snack), cocktails and popcorn, dinner, a bit of crafty shopping in the evenings, and falling into bed, exhausted. What a wonderful few days.
• PaperSource. I've oogled this website often, but it was the first time I got to visit a store. New plan, I'm going to live anywhere near a PaperSource and work there.
• beeswax
• Having lunch with people who show you photos of their studios, rather than their children.

It was a fantastic vacation, especially the Inspired Event with Donna Downey. I am so inspired, need to get some crafty things going on now that I'm back! I will be back this week to share some of the fabulousness of Inspired.

time flies when you're having fun‏

Where oh where does the time go? All I have to share right now is a leafy tree I drew in illustrator. As usual I have about a gazillion creative ideas in my mind right now, but dont seem to be able to manage my time effectively to get many of them done.

Tomorrow we are off to Savannah, Georgia and hanging out on Tybee Island for a few days, before heading up to Charlotte, NC to attend this really exciting event with Donna Downey.

I absolutely cannot wait. But right now, I still have a ton of packing to do, so I'm off to get that done! When I'm back I'll share some of the awesomeness from the trip!