Gauchos en la Doma

Or in a very lose translation to English, we could say Cowboys in a Rodeo.  Except that its not a rodeo, and a Gaucho is not exactly a Cowboy.  Still with me? 

In class I use this layout as an example for a double layout.  When I made it, the store had just received 'wood paper' and I got started.  It punches crisp and clean, it does not curl when glued and it holds ink well as long as it is set, otherwise the ink bleeds.  The grain and coloring of the wood is very appealing.  It was the perfect medium to get a 'nature' theme going.  Pulled the pictures of a Doma and matted those on wood paper with another layer for accent.  Only the picture of the race (I reeeeeally like that picture) got a mat of alcohol inks (lettuce) swirled and air shot to create striations.  I found a background that looks like tooled leather and built my pages on those...  No need for a lot of text because the pictures told the whole story: agility feats.  Highest straight-up jump, fastest horse, etc. giving me the opportunity to use bulleted text on raised tags.  I distressed a bit the smaller journaling block and the tags with Ranger's Vintage Photo Distress ink.  Straight from the pad to the edge of the wood and set.  Great effect!

Lavender Rosette

This card has 5 layers of assorted papers and card stock.  Starting with a copper base, then a purple layer, a cream layer -used the Martha Stuart punch around the corner 'bird' for this one- then lavender velum and again cream card stock where I stamped using Stazon purple ink.  The accents are mostly from Tim Holtz lines: the rosette in lavender vellum; then metal pieces in copper: mini paper clip, key, key hole and the thingy to hold the key (forgive me for getting so technical!).  The ticket that I clipped to the rosette was stamped in purple and embossed in clear.

UTEE pool for Clio

This piece was very easy to make.  A polymer clay little goldfish named Clio.  A pool to hold her... that is a simple rectangle with edges, but I used a color progression (Skinner blend) to give the impression of deeper water on one side.  Then the fins... paper thin and about 1.5" for the tail and a little smaller for the other fins, veined and edged them (although the edge did not come out the way I wanted... scissors are not my friends).  Baked those separately and once the fish was assembled, I filled the pool with Ultra Thick Embossing Enamel and started to melt it with a heat gun.  Once it puddled, I set the fish in the middle and added more UTEE.  3 minutes in the oven finished the job and Clio got her water.  I opened the oven door and let the piece cool for 30 minutes before handling; the UTEE is like molten wax, burns, blisters, and you cannot lift it off of carpet (trust me on that one).

Painting with Foam

Yep, took a regular dense foam and colored this one.  The image is a set of stamps that offer a collage related to travel; I chose a few that would look OK in a vertical alignment: map, old script and a bug. 
Using sepia ink on glossy paper gave the map a worn effect then olive and black for the script and bug.  With finger size pieces of Cut and Dry foam I swirled colors from distress ink pads, using it as a brush... but in circular motion.  Very little ink at first, I rather put several layers than have to start all over because it got too dark.  Once I was happy with  the colors, I set a glass slide over it and moved it around until I found the best combination of elements, marked the location with pencil and stamped the dragonfly right above itself on top of the glass.  Turning the glass slide over I applied diamond Stickles.  Meaning, on the INSIDE of the glass.  The thinner I got the coat, the more the wings glisten, just like a real dragonfly!  Once the Stickles dried, I wiped clean the ink from the other side (dragonfly impression), cut the glossy paper to size and assembled the pendant.

Smile for me

My daughter has a picture of Marilyn Monroe taped on the wall above her desk.  The actress is looking straight at the camera with a teasing look and great smile, almost saying -"Oh yeah, I can do anything I put my mind to it"-  just enough to inspire a college student to reach for higher goals (I can only hope...).  I like the attitude Marilyn has in the picture, so when I came across a rubber stamp with a hint of her image I had to buy it and try something new.  In this piece, I dropped Ranger's alcohol ink (currant) on a square glass surface, added Pearl/metallic mixative and let the ink play around the glass.  Then, with a dropper I put 3 drops of Isopropyl alcohol (91%) in the middle of the square.  It seemed to 'travel' outward and created little textured ridges that left just enough completely cleared glass in the middle.  Perfect size for the face! A blast of the heat gun evaporated the alcohol and then using archival ink I stamped the face.  Applying the same inks to the frame completed the great copper effect; a few fibers trapped between the glasses give the impression of the famous wavy platinum head.

Its foggy in the Valley

Lucky enough to live in front of a park, the view from the window of my studio is wonderful!  And yet, in the Winter months, the fog can make the park look mysterious and a bit scary.  The oak trees are bare and  the street lights have an eerie glow... the old grandfather clock chimes another hour arrived.  The fog is low and something is about to happen.  Take a look

Late one night I got an idea to recreate this image on clay and rolling out copper and brown made a sheet where I impressed bare tree trunks with Stazon ink.  Using metallic Perfect Pearls I was able to layer and blend to give some depth to the scene.  The last detail was the clock embedded into the clay. 

Not quite fuchsia

Even seen a flower you just have to try to recreate somehow?  We had some fuchsia baskets hanging on the porch and the look was amazing.  Since I cannot paint, I tried polymer clay, but my hands were no quite up to the task that week.  Every attempt looked incomplete, perhaps it was not the right medium.  So I pulled out the bead stash and played with a few color combinations... the red flowers with the yellow pearls started to call my name.  Added some fire opal crystals and voila! 

On the short headpins each flower was loaded after a rice pearl and was followed by a crystal.  On the spears, a gold spacer was loaded first, then the flower and then the crystal.  This is a very repetitive project, loading 75 headpins and making the top loop took hours; once those were completed, alternating sets of three with larger crystals I made a pearl string without knots.
 

The Klimt Look

One of my favorite painters is Gustav Klimt.  Gold, bronzes, jewel tones all over and suggestive looks on the subjects.  I had the opportunity to see several of his paintings and especially The Kiss live and direct at the Velvedere Museum.  Man, oh man, I do not think I moved, blinked or was able to talk for half an hour.  Once my brain started to work again, I began to think of a way to recreate the look and effect on jewelry, decadent golds and richly saturated colors, a convoluted design, patterns underneath, geometric shapes as an element... I came up with this piece. 

30 plus years later

When I got laid off, my two best friends took me out to lunch.  We went to the Cheesecake Factory up top Macy's overlooking Union Square in San Francisco.  We asked a friendly tourist to take a picture of us.  And because my friends have been my friends since we met in 7th grade, I had to make something special with this picture.  To make this frame I used the mica shifting technique on polymer clay.  Impressing a deep grooved stamp on the raw metallic clay, then shaving the top layer and finally leveling the clay.  The chatoyant effect (cat's eye) gives the impression that there is something going on in there that tricks the eye, because the surface is perfectly smooth and flat.  Pretty neat, huh?

I liked the technique and had extra clay leftover, so I created a bracelet, a pendant and a pair of earrings; rubber cord holds the medallions together.  Because polymer clay is so light, the earrings do not pull my ears down.  Here is a picture of the set and a closeup of one of the medallions to show the chatoyancy detail. 

Inlaid, framed, inked and happy!

How happy the brothers and sisters are in this picture!  Very seldom we get all the siblings in one State, let alone in one house.  So I shot this picture and knew I had to do something special with it.  They all like to garden, so I decided to punch flowers and a bug out of heavy card stock.  Using a technique I had seen Tim Holtz use, I was able to cover a 1$ frame with metal air duct tape and applied alcohol inks.  Using metal pieces to add some flare (corners, key, pin, etc) just fell into place smoothly.  I backed the picture with a splatered looking mat and it suits the frame perfectly.  My two days of work were rewarded with the best smile from my husband when he unwrapped this present on Christmas morning.  How cool is that!

Polymer Clay Quilt

What a forgiving medium!  It can be very intense to work with and there is always 'just a little more' that can be added/removed/polished/tweaked with... but the results... oh my.  For a person with no limitations, using our hands to shape, roll, attach and manupulate the clay is not difficult.  For those of us who have a hard time using our hands... wellllll that is why I started by saying it is a forgiving medium.  I have created pieces usable in different applications, such as home decor such as picture frames or custom jewelry, and beyond those, cork coverings, imitation rocks... it just works out well.

Polymer clay quilt

This a a fun one! the simple and traditional Tumbling Blocks quilting pattern offers an excellent reward when polymer clay is used.  Each color was cut out from a sheet; a little perfect pearls on the white clay gives the shimmer of silk, an embedded pattern on the black one makes it stand out and glitter on the red one, was the perfect combination.  After baking the individually cut segments, I buffed each and then assembled the quilt on an 8x8 piece of glass.  I ran a bead of liquid polymer clay and created a seamless block. 

Explosion book (ok, it looks like a purse)

This was a wonderful project!  My friend and her boyfriend had gotten engaged and came to visit for the weekend in the summer.  The kids are fantastic, the couple a fun pair.  The dinner turned out awesome (and I did not cut myself or burned my hands, how good is that?!).  We took lots of pictures and then I created this explosion book.  Closes up to only 2" wide and is only 5.5" tall.  I built a 'purse' with artist canvas, added feet (painted with crackle paint), beaded wire handles, three dimensional effects, etc.  Some picture editing, special paper, the right embelishments and a couple of weeks to finish it yielded a very good record of the visit.  I mailed it to her for her XX (we shall not disclose the year of the happy event) b-day in October and I was proud of the results.  Here are other pictures of the completed piece. 

The seams are re-inforced in the back to prevent wear and tear as the pages are opened and closed.  There is only a half a quadrant with narrative journaling (seen on the first page) and the rest of the journaling was bulleted in tags.