Altered Book Workshop

 Today i had the pleasure of sharing my knowledge of altered books with 5 ladies new to the artform, plus two friends. The 8 of us created 5 different structures in our vintage books - and completed three spreads using colourful papers, ephemera and embellishments.  Above is a shot of our "show and tell" after the class - where we all get a close up look at each other's pages. 

This was my "Vintage Birds Sing" spread.  I used portfolio oil pastels to add extra color to the pages.

 Next we have our Nature Walk theme - complete with stunning photography from a Sierra Club magazine and glittered butterfly wall decals.  YES - you can use those wall decals in books!  We created a sewn pocket and all used different techniques to sew up the pages before creating the collage.

Here is a closeup of my page.

Finally we created an Asian Theme spread on two pages - plus two triangle points - using an assortment of red and black mulberry textured paper, origami paper and asian text. 

And my page.I like to keep all my collage materials straight and geometric with this style of spread - as i told the class - it is my own self inmposed rule - no torn edges - everything crisp and layered.  Not that there are rules of collage!  Just guidelines i like to follow that can help you get started if you are new to collage.  Because - truly - anything goes!

We had a great class today and i hope to see everyone again at our Altered Books - Advanced Techniques class, coming up in June. Please check out the Liquid Marin website for calendar details.
After the class three of us went to a local estate sale - just before closing, to see if we could find any treasures for future projects. In fact they had started packing up - but what was left was 50% off.

 I grabbed three interested documents - a deed of sale from 1931, a telegram from 1919, and an honourable discharge from 1919!

Next i spied a page from a photo album with these 5 images.

And finally i picked through the "expensive stuff "- you know the jewelry and coins they keep individually bagged, right by the check out table at an estate sale?  Well - at 50% off - these things were a bargain.  Two pretty pins, some vintage buttons, and a fork and spoon in a pretty rose pattern, plus everything else i bought cost less than $10 - um - in total that is!

What a great way to end the perfect day!

Beeswax Collage Workshop with Lucie

My friend Lucie taught the first class at Liquid Marin in San Rafael, CA last Saturday.  14 delighted students created an 8 x 10 beeswax collage masterpiece under her guidance.  We have started a new program of craft classes and it was a great way to kick off the series.
This is my piece - using a combination of pinks and neutral papers for a background - i went with a couple of birds (what else?) on branches made from dark purple handmade paper.  I just love how Lucie's technique to add colour with solid tissue paper creates a colourful border.  And the two toned string created a striking counterpoint to the collage.

If YOU would like to take a class with Lucie or me - please check out the Liquid Marin web site for details.  The next beeswax class will be offered on Saturday, April 2nd.  If you would prefer not to wait that long for an opportunity to "get creative" with paper, there will be an Intro to Altered Books class on Sunday, March 13th and an Artist Trading Cards class on Saturday, March 26th. 

In my altered book class you will learn all about this exciting and often collaborative medium.  I will provide the vintage book and all the tools and materials to get you started creating collage inside a hardcover book.

 

In the ATC class Lucie and I will share our different points of view for creating these lovely mini collages - so you benefit from TWO instructors.  Hope to see you there!

Beeswax Tapestry

I created my second beeswax tapestry collage on Sunday, at a play date with my artsy play date buddies. My camera died and my phone camera decided to be petulant as well. So i only have mine to show you. Once the gals put their finishing touches on their pieces, i'll get a second chance to photograph them.
My tapestry came out of searching through my stash looking for inspiration. I planned only to NOT use any birds.  Yeah - i am trying to break out of my comfort zone! I originally planned to use a cabinet photo as the center piece.  But nothing, as they say, "spoke to me".  So i went instead to a drawer of vintage photographs and grabbed the three shown above. The church on the left is a postcard.  the woman and girl was from a book of victorians with their pets, and the couple in the car with a young boy was an actual photograph.
From there i thought ok, how about a house for this family?  How about a floor plan of the house?  I have several house plan books - i love looking through them and imagining i live there.  From there i thought some vintage ephemera - actual bills and legal documents (bought on ebay), one shows a jewelry store receipt.  Then i found the little book on marriage and ripped off the cover.  Then i saw the paris monuments book cover (a copy) and liked how the orange-y and reddish colour story came together.  From there i invented a trip through europe - perhaps on their honeymoon?  I added maps, monuments and postcards.
Once the entire piece was laid out, i trimmed all the papers and glued them to the canvas.  Then coated it with beeswax and added three dimensional objects like the old key, a little spoon, buttons, and lace.  A bit more beeswax, some black oil pastel to outline the patches and voila! A Family Beeswax Tapestry!!

Here is a much nicer picture of the beeswax collage tapestry i did a few weeks ago. You can see all the lovely birds!

Photos curtesy of Lucie Duclos.

Anyone local to the bay area?  Lucie will be teaching beeswax collage classes at Liquid Marin in San Rafael.  Please check out their website for information about upcoming classes.

Emulating Stephanie Lee

I took a workshop with Stephanie Lee at Asilomar's Art and Soul retreat which you may have read about in a previous post. We did a technique she called "plaster meets wax". Well anytime i learn something new i want to share it with my friends. But i did NOT want to make a gigantic mess, as we did at Asilomar. If you image the mess 20 students could make mixing plaster, pouring it into boxes and then carving into the dried plaster - wow - lots of white dust EVERYWHERE. But still i wanted to recreate the "essence" of those pieces, but how to do it in a 1 1/2 hour workshop? I decided to cut out the "plaster" and just do "wax". I think you'll agree the results were quite interesting.

For my altered book gathering yesterday, after doing a massive show and tell (all my Asilmar goodies!) and swapping our books we got to work. We took 8x10" stretched canvases and used these as our substrates - only backwards. So the BACK of the canvas was where we created our collage. The wooden frame becomes, well, the frame. duh. These were SUPER cheap canvases actually bought at the dollar store in Montreal last summer and carried home by me. I think i got a full suitcase full of them. These were stapled on the edges, not the back - so that made it nicer i think.
I started by coating the canvas (the back - inside the frame) with several coats of melted wax to build up the thickness. fyi i use thrift store crock pots to melt beeswax pellets. Stephanie used an electric frying pan and a large block of wax. Both work great - the frying pan definitely melts faster - more surface area. I selected several images from books and magazines for the gals to pick from. I tried to find edgy dark imagery that would evoke the more contemporary art that Stephanie had as samples. The one she is holding above, i created in her class. I passed around the images to our small group of altered book swappers, but as you can see, two of them chose to go with more traditional female forms.
After we placed our images on the canvas, and added a thin coat of wax to seal, we just carved grooves. First a horizon line - which based on Stephanie's work - helps to ground the piece. Then just continued carving around the image, around the background - whatever. I added fine grooves for grass, Shelley added a spiritual aura around hers. On the advice from Stephanie, about how you are NOT supposed to be able to paint on wax, well but you can, although not too thick, we painted on the wax. You need a nice runny fluid acrylic to get into those grooves. Then just lightly brush paint onto the wax - adding extra to the frame surround as you go. Portfolio oil pastels were used to richen the colour and intensify the look. It was interesting how you could take something and really turn it into something else. Shelley's didn't start out looking angelic - but it really became that way. There is so much depth to her piece that came from layering paint on the wax.
Carol took a very normal looking farm house/barn and the water trough and creating a very hauting piece. By separating the images with the wax - it really had a profound effect. Adding the water spout handle was a great final touch. Dorothy took her image and added many more collage elements - stacks of books, a watch face and then feather butterfly wings. Dorothy is a master at adding words to create a narrative - so a phrase clipped out of a typewritten script Shelley brought to share, completed her piece.
Since my staircase and window from Asilomar was so successful, i tried to do the same thing with the wax. I cut and trimmed some stairs from a decorating magazine and included the candleabra at the top. Unfortunatly the candles were too finely detailed for this method and later morphed into a brass birds nest and a bird - with a branch sticking out of it. Well, that's creativity for you - if you screw up - just go in a different direction.
Thanks Stephanie for the inspiration....! Check out her latest techniques in this month's Somerset Studio. She tells us how to create wire bird's cages - i sense a new project idea to share....

Beeswax Collage Students Rule!

We had a whirlwind class on Sunday with a group of 7 lovely women. One i had previously met at Asilomar, who took the Ann Baldwin class with me. One was the assistant to the owner of the studio where the class was held, the Nova Studio, in Point Richmond, CA. Then a group of three friends, and two "singles". There's my sample in the lower right corner of this pic.

We started with a quick demo of coating the canvas board with a thin coat of wax, and layering on background paper. Next i applied the focal point image, in my case a bevy of bathing beauties. The images were all cut out of the matte photo paper, this allows the image to "live" on the new background created by the papers used on the canvas board. A coat of wax on top initially obsure the images, but a few strokes with the small quilt iron smooths the wax leaving the image clearer on the collage.
I next applied some mulberry paper with gives a hint of color and texture, without obscuring the background, in my case a bit of dictionary paper. Then i added a piece of seam binding lace - allowing the wax to build up in the holes. I demonstrated how you can add colour by melting a crayon on the canvas and moving the wax around with the quilt iron. A heat gun is also used to remove excess wax. I added some shells and beach glass along the bottom and the word PLAGE (beach in French) to the top. I kept things pretty linear and simple - since sometimes trying too hard to make things complicated is not any more interesting! A few beads strung on some copper wire added to the top and voila, a beach themed beeswax collage wall hanging.

The students did a fine job creating two canvases. Some chose to do lively bright pieces, some chose simple understated elements. But everyone created artwork to take home they can be proud to display!