Winner Announced and Helloooo Out There

I hope you haven't forgotten about me!  I know I've been MIA lately...

I recently directed a production of The Secret Garden for Gas Lamp Players, the community theater in  my town of Glen Ridge, NJ.  It was a labor of love and required my 100 percent devotion, particularly in the last two weeks leading up to our weekend of performances.  Here are some pictures:

The show created a lot of buzz.  The Glen Ridge town council officially proclaimed November 22 "Secret Garden Day;" our local restaurant created a special Secret Garden prix fix menu to honor the show; and we ended up being sold out for our final performance!

Here's a video from a preview concert-version that some of my cast performed in October:

I couldn't be prouder of the show, and am in a bit of withdrawal, now that it's over.  But I plan to get back to creating more video and blog tutorials in 2014.  

Why 2014?   Because on Saturday, I leave for the Czech Republic to visit my daughter, Mariel, who is teaching for a year in Znojmo.  She's been keeping a blog about her experiences -- I know I'm biased but it's fascinating!

In the meantime, today I am on Ronda Palazzari's blog today, talking about art journaling.  

And I'll be on Stencil Girl Talk on Monday with some holiday projects and tutorials!

And... the winner of my three new stencils from my last post with this art journaling page 

is Linda, who wrote: 

What beautiful colorful work and the more stuff the better on the page. I work that way too! I don't have any stencils and would love to try them. Thanks.

I've already contacted Linda and am so happy to start her off on her love of stencils.  Little does she know that it's addictive! 

Here's a different take on gratitude by Nicole Antoinette, writing about 5 often overlooked things we can be grateful for.   Lest you think I take you for granted, I want to thank all of you who read this blog.  I so appreciate the online community of supportive artists and creative talents "out there."  In this season of gratitude,  I want to make sure you know that I am very grateful for all of you.  

Your comments make me so happy and let me know you were here. I read and treasure every comment and will happily answer any questions as soon as I can.

 

Art Journal Page with New Stencils from Stencil Girl

Remember the circle journal I'm participating in?  Well it was time to create two pages in Susan Jane's journal.  Susan asked us to use trees as our inspiration.  It just so happens that I recently created a stencil with trees, at the request of Stencil Girl creative team member Judy Shea.   I used it, and my two newest flower stencils, plus Carolyn Dube's "Use Your Words" stencil, to make this spread in Susan Jane's journal.

Here are the 4 new stencils!

There are more pictures and a description of my process on Stencil Girl Talk today.  Hope you'll check it out.

There's a video too!



Unfortunately, my filming cut off when I was creating the top of my page, using Carolyn Dube's "Use Your Words" stencil.  You can see the technique here, on Carolyn's blog.

I hope you'll visit at Stencil Girl Talk!  And I hope Susan Jane is happy with these pages in her journal; Tracy Woodsford - Susan Jane's journal is on its way to you!

And there's a GIVEAWAY!  Your comments make me so happy and let me know you were here.  So I will giveaway all three of my new stencils - the two flowers and Judy's trees - to one randomly picked commenter!  So please leave me a message by Wednesday at 7PM EST to be eligible to win!

UPDATE:  The winner is Linda of Artfully Yours!  There's an email on the way and the stencils will be in the mail as soon as I get her address.

 

Living in a State of Grace

As a DT member for One Little Word, it was my turn to pick the word for November.  "Grace" seemed like a good choice.  After all, that's what this month is all about, at least in the US.  So I've been using it, like in this art journal page from my circle journal group...

And in the mobiles I created for a recent blog hop between Stencil Girl and Foam Express.

The Latin root of the word grace is "gratia," which is also the root of the word gratitude. 

This word gets bandied about a lot and means different things to different people.  But to me, at its heart, grace means gratitude for all that is. And not just the good stuff.  The ups and downs, the highs and lows.  The problems and the blessings. 

When we fully embrace all of the events that happen in our complex world, we can align with all that is.  And when we align, rather than resist, we live in a state of grace.  After all, some of our best life lessons come from the hardest times.  Something that upsets us today might later turn out to be a blessing in disguise.

I'm grateful for a lot of things - too many to list.  But one of the things I'm most grateful for is this wonderful community.

Recently, I attended a weekend workshop at The Ink Pad in NY with friends and other members of the Stencil Girl Design Team. 

I am SO GRATEFUL to be part of this talented, supportive group of people, who are so giving with their knowledge and friendship.

In the workshop, taught by the amazing Mary Beth Shaw, Pam Carriker, Michelle Ward and Andrew Borloz, we experimented with different stenciling and painting techniques, and then bound our pages into gorgeous journals. Here I am with the four of them, and Seth Apter, who also designs for Stencil Girl!

Pam Carriker, Seth Apter, Me, MaryBeth Shaw, Andrew Borloz & Michelle Ward

I was also grateful to spend time with my friend Marjie Kemper, to see familiar faces from prior classes, and to make new friends!

I decided that I wanted my journal to truly reflect this special weekend and the gratitude I feel for being part of this community.

In thinking about "grace," what's clear is that it is a constant practice.  Our nature is to resist all that is unpleasant, and cling to that which we like.   Living in a state of grace is something to strive toward.  It is a journey. And so, I've named my journal "Journey to Grace" - to inspire me as I walk this path. 

The stencil on the cover is from October Stencil Club.  The word "OM" is in the tree.  OM is said to be the sound of the universe.  When we chant it, we are tuning ourselves to all that is -- the good, the bad, the seen and the unseen -- aligning ourselves with all of existence. 

Here are some of the inside pages, as yet very unfinished.  Do you recognize some of the stencils?  I loved using them this way... layering and layering until it's hard to tell what came first.  

 

Speaking of stencils - I have four new designs out with Stencil Girl!  Stay tuned for a blog post chock full of demos and tutorials showing you how I use them.

When you hear the word "GRACE,"  what does it bring up for you?  Let us know by linking up at One Little Word.  Anything goes -- just be inspired by GRACE!  I look forwarding to visiting the inspired creations by the rest of the Design Team, and by seeing what YOU do!

“I do not at all understand the mystery of grace - only that it meets us where we are but does not leave us where it found us."  Anne Lamott

And, P.S., if you missed my Thanksgiving free download, here it is!

Your comments make me so happy and let me know you were here. I read and treasure every comment and will happily answer any questions as soon as I can.

 

Mixed Media Tutorial with Foam Board and Stencils

I'm on a blog hop today with some of my Stencil Girl peeps.  And if you've hopped along from the Stencil Girl Talk blog - congratulations!  you're almost done.

We're seeing how foam board and stencils can play together.   I have to admit that when I first received my two big sheets of foam board from Foam Board Express, I wasn't sure what to do with them. 

But it turns out that the internet is full of great ideas, which I adapted for these two projects.

And the best news is that this blog hop has a GIVEAWAY from both Foam Board and Stencil Girl!  Read on to find out all about it.

My first project was a muslin covered "canvas."


Using an exact knife and a metal ruler, I cut one of my foam boards into an 11 x 12 rectangle.


I lay down a piece of sheer muslin that was a little bigger than my board.

Using Xyron's super tacky double stick tape, I folded my fabric around my board so it was nice and tight, and then used a staple gun to tack it in place.

I mixed mica powder, gold paint and modeling glass bead gel and scraped it through the Hebrew Calligraphy and Hamsa stencil using a palette spatula.

I made another concoction with glass bead gel, Crimson paint and silver mica powder and scraped that through my Borders stencil.  I added shading to the Hebrew letters, and washed some purple along the top and bottom, some burnt sienna in the middle, and some crimson around the Hamsa.  I went back in with gold paint to shine up the letters.

This stencil contains a prayer from Numbers, called The Priestly Blessing:

May God bless you and keep you.
May God cause the divine light to shine upon you and be gracious to you.
May God turn toward you, and grant you peace.

I intend to ship this piece to my cousin, who is battling cancer.  The foam board is a perfect substrate, because it is lightweight and will be easy to ship.

Project II:  My second project was inspired by this tutorial for using foam board for a mobile.  Because it is so light weight, it is a perfect substrate.  I started by cutting out various shapes of foam board.  My cat got into the act!

But in the end, I had a variety of shapes.   Choosing the rectangles, I covered them with book pages and a light wash of gesso, and then stenciled them with gold paint.








The gold wasn't "blingy" enough for me, so I went to one of my favorite techniques - stenciling onto tissue paper.  I was using my Medallions stencil (as yet to be released!),


















and Maria McGuire's Greek Borders stencil. 



















I stamped words on the tissue paper as well, and then adhered the paper onto the forms (which I had glazed with different colors of acrylic paint mixed with glazing medium).

 I raided my stash for beads and other found objects, including ceramic pieces from parts of a mobile made ages ago by my grandmother. I used the same stencils to add some more colors to the shapes, and then strung them together, using my awl to pierce holes through the foam board (so easy!) for my needle. 

I hope you enjoyed these projects, and that you'll check out what all the other creatives are up to! Here's the blog hop order:

StencilGirl Talk
Mary Beth Shaw
Carolyn Dube
Julie Snidle
Janet Joehlin
Judy Shea
Linda Kittmer
Leslie Tucker Jenison
Jessica Sporn (you're here!)
Maria McGuire

Here's the info for the GIVEAWAY (it ends Thursday, November 14th @ 11:59PM Central Time)

Foam Board Express is offering a package of five of its 20-inch by 30-inch flat display foam boards, including one black foam board, one white foam board and three additional foam board sheets in colors chosen by the winner.  Color choices include:  green, red, yellow, dark blue, neon yellow, neon orange and neon pink.  Check out Foam Board's facebook page for more great ideas!

and StencilGirl is giving away: Mary Beth's new DVD called: StencilGirl Mixed Media Sampler Journal.

All comments on all blogs are eligible. The combined prize going to one lucky winner.  So get commenting!

Please know that I really appreciate your comments and will answer any questions as quickly as I can.

Art Licensing Deconstructed

My entry into the mixed media world was through the licensing world.  I thought I would take you through my latest licensing project, which was designing this platter for for My Kosher Gift Collection.

The process started when I was contacted by my client about creating a platter for cookies.  The platter would be shown on the same page as other products, and so the color scheme had to work with what was already on the page. 

The client wanted traditional Purim cookies, as well as other cookies, to be shown on the platter. So my first step was painting a bunch of different cookies.

Once we had the size platter we wanted, I laid the cookies out in Photoshop.  Then, we went back and forth, adjusting the arrangement of the cookies, and revising the border.  (This is why I paint "spots" of art - so they are easy to move around on the computer.)  Initially, the client wanted the cookies to look tossed upon the plate, but as we worked together, we decided that arranging them in columns looked more contemporary and interesting.  The platter went through 8 revisions until we reached a final design.

Once we reached a final design, I prepared the artwork for the factory in China that will be manufacturing the platter.  This required creating different files for the artwork that will be handpainted (the sprinkles on the lip of the plate and the bottom hamantaschen (triangular cookie on the left), and decaled.  The different files look like this:

To make sure the factory is using the same colors that I have in mind, and so as not to depend on computers, I "call out" the colors using a Pantone fan deck.  The embossing artwork is the artwork that will be raised and hand painted.  The decal artwork is like a photograph of my original artwork, which will be imprinted onto the ceramic platter.

Sometimes it's a long process; you have to be patient with the back and forth as it is really a collaboration between me, as the artist, and my client, who knows her clientele better than I do.  Once the factory makes a sample, I comment on colors, and make any adjustments required.  Because Purim is in March, the process for this platter took place all in one week!

 Hope you enjoyed this peak into my licensing work.

Your comments make me so happy and let me know you were here. I read and treasure every comment and will happily answer any questions as soon as I can.