Fridge Jewelry!

New magnets for sale at Made in Ojai! I think they look really cool on the fridge. Definitely unique, aren't they?

Kids' Mixed Media Class 7/31/09

It's fantastic what you can teach kids who are interested in art! I had a wonderful group of six yesterday for four hours, and look what they accompished!



























We did so much in the class. First we altered photos with bleach, bleach pens, scratching implements and pastels. Then we altered postcards with collage and rubber stamps. Then we collaged a canvas board with neutral papers with text, maps, music, etc. and our one or two favorite altered photos or postcards. Then we painted acrylic glazes over the collage. We added a couple of tranfers over this, which was cool because the text, music and colors showed through them. Lastly, we added more paint and pastels to integrate the transfers and finish off the piece. Cool stuff!

Kids' Art Camp July '09

Melissa and I had 12 kids in our week-long Illustrated Storybook class this summer. The kids worked so hard every day and completed fantastic books. They learned how to plan a large art project and follow it through. As for art techniques, the learned collage; spray watercolor with masks; stamping with gesso as a resist and glazing over with acrylic glazes; cutting and using their own stencils; making pop-ups, pockets and other interactive elements; and lots of options for adding text to their pages.

Here are a few of the class photos and finished book pages.

More Scrabble Journals

These babies are selling like hotcakes! Good thing they're easy to make.

MORE Stencil Portraits

I'm getting a little better at the photoshop conversion and at cutting these, but I'm still struggling with the eyes, especially in photos of people wearing glasses, and with the paint leaking under the stencil in areas where it's cut fairly narrow. But I see progress!

Here's my mom:



And my daughter:



And me!

Stencil Portraits

They're far from perfect, but here are my first attempts and turning a photo of a person's face into a stencil. These are my sister and niece and nephew, and I mailed off the envelope and file folders to them earlier this week. Hope they get a kick out of them!