Namatase

The collaboration

First we were partnered up with a team member and each person in the group began a piece. (That could be laying down a base coat of color, sketching a design, prepping the surface, or anything else we agreed upon in our discussions with our partner.) Next, each person swapped their prepped pieces with the other member(s) of their group. Finally, each person finished the prepped piece that was mailed to them. Each person is now posting the piece they finished to their respective websites.

The partner

My partner was Heather Thompson who created a lovely monochromatic textured background for me to work with. Having an all white background really allowed the colors to leap off the canvas! I loved all the molding and crackle paste that she used, it was exactly what I wanted!

I attached the bird ( which I just LOVE ) to the top of the frame and it really creates a 3-D effect to my art. I guess I could have trimmed down his feet but I just adore the oversized feet on him, lol They're kinda goofy in the most adorable sense!
( I colored tissue paper with spray inks and glued them onto the bird )

 I drilled holes through the wood frame and the bird came with wires attached to him so I threaded the wires through the holes and tied them off.
( Heather stamped the eyes on the back of the canvas, it's like she just knew I was going to putting the bird there. I thought that was so cute!! )

The heart and flame come as 2 seperate parts so I glued them together and covered the area with some pearls to hide the seam. The flame was painted with acrylic paint 

The heart is covered with red tissue paper which I stamped on first and then glued it on. The wings are also painted and attached with glue to the canvas.

I just love the little banner that I stamped the Namaste word on and I popped it up for dimension.

Helmar Liquid Scrap Dots

Washi tape is the easiest way to add lots of fun without doing much work! I think it really finished off the piece.

Small Starry Nights Washi tape

Rubbermoon
Namaste
La Banner
Beautiful Mistakes

Relics & Artifacts
Rising Spirit I
Finch

Rural Folk Art

Hi everyone!

Here is sneak peek at my canvas I made for today's StencilGirl Talk post.

I do hope you pop over and visit and if you do, please leave me a comment so I know you did! And much thanks because it's little things like doing that which make my day!

Would you pay to be judged?

It's that time of year again where I give away money to be judged. 

::the sound of silence, crickets chirping::

It's a scary thing, entering a juried show...I feel like shouting: "Hey judges, here is my heart art, please like it"...then whispering "and can I have my money back if you reject it?" OK, so I know it's non-refundable, but hey, it's my blog and I'll make absurd wishes if I want to. 

BUT, I rarely do juried shows except for this one because it supports The Arts Council of Henderson County which benefit from the entry fee. 

So there, I am a contributing member to the arts.

This is one of my pieces I will be entering, it took me a year to finish it...not because it was that difficult but because it's a little  a LOT tedious. I had to be "in the mood" to sit down and tear thousand of little tiny strips of paper from magazines that I had to sort by colors. LOTS of sorting and LOTS of tearing.

 Did I mention how tedious this process is?

Even the sides of the canvas are covered in strips of magazine pages. I use text on the sides. I do that so they ( the people looking at my art and ya know those judges busy judging my art ) know it's from magazines, not just cardstock which would be a heck of a lot easier to work with. A LOT easier.

I also try and do some feathering in each one of my pieces for the birds. This is done by cutting out the tiny feathers with tiny scissors and then attaching them with tweezers. I will note that my work doesn't go unappreciated, the other 2 bird collages sold...so yay me!.. it is worth doing, but I am in no way cranking them out. One a year seems to be my pace.

I used 3 types of magazines for this piece:

Outdoor Photographer (for the greens, grays, and browns)

Sundance (for all the pastel and red colors)

Birds and Blooms (for the text for the upper ½ of the canvas)

Yes, I hoard magazines for certain colors.

Will they understand that when I die and they come remove me from my place, that my hoarding was done for the sake of my art?

Wish me luck...on both accounts!

Just shut up Sandee

I can remember the first time I had a story printed about me in the local newspaper and being so excited and then totally dismayed at the picture they posted of me, or the time they wrote another newspaper story about me and thinking...seriously, that is a little exaggerated! My feelings for being put in print have diminished over time because now, my first thoughts are...

what are they going to do to it? 

Now, don't get me wrong, I still have kept every article, every story ever written because it is exciting, it is an ego boost to have you memorialized in print.

But it just makes me wary nowadays.

My latest publication is a feature article written about me and about the upcoming Artists Studio Expo show coming up on July 25th in the Bold Life magazine. If you would like to read the article then you can go here. 

Now I am NOT trying to be sour grapes and all, and I AM appreciate of being featured in the magazine but sometimes I just say "huh?" when I see what they do, in this case it's the picture they put up on the page next to the article. If you go read the article you will see that the picture below doesn't correspond as well to the article as the one I sent to them, which was Night Watch...sigh...oh well, as one of my fellow artist from the Art MoB pointed out to me, any publicity is good publicity.

If you want to see the "how to" behind the Laced in Copper canvas, feel free to check out the Helmar blog post... as it has nothing to do with the article..smh

***update 7 - 19 - 15 ***
( Guess I cannot complain too much because since I published this post, this canvas has sold )

Laced in Copper- $175.00 12x24" mixed media canvas - acrylic, hand stitching, metallic floss, beads with acrylic skins

This is the one that I sent in to the magazine for them to publish with the article, which correlates to the questions that they asked me :) Although they didn't use it in the printed magazine they at least used it in the online piece!

12x36 "Night Watch" Mixed Media Magazine Collage canvas $225.00

I am always amazed that they write anything about me, so I need to just shut up, huh?

Anyway, check back on Sunday to see how the show turned out!

Silhouette style canvas

Well, here I go again. :)

I have an upcoming show scheduled at the Art MoB Studios and Gallery on Dec. 5th ( time is yet to be scheduled for the opening ).

They loved my "Wildlife Silhouette series" and I'm so excited that they do!

All the canvases are painted with ink backgrounds with acrylic silhouettes.

The following 3 silhouettes are painted with the same ink background and DecoArts Black Tie Multi-Surface Satin Acrylic paint, with the only difference in adding DecoArts Interference from their Media Fluid Acrylics line. I wish I could take better pictures to get the true effect because if you look at the paintings from head on you cannot see the Interference paint, but one the light hits it from an angle, the paint really pops. It's quite a cool effect. It also shows up better on dark colors, hence "Flight" shows the effect better and the other 2 are more subtle, but still lovely.

"Flight"

with Interference Gold

"Family"

 with Interference Magenta

"Heat"

showing Interference Magenta

"Patience"

showing Interference Gold

Here are more from the Wildlife Silhouette series, but these are without the DecoArt Interference paints.

"Searching"

"Waiting"

"Wanderlust "

"Falling"

"Nevermore"

Now I just need to come up with a name for the show, not sure if "Wildlife Silhouettes" is enough? I feel like it needs a little oomph. I have enjoyed naming each piece though as they have all "spoken" to me as I created them.

And framing, this series will all be framed in black.

conundrum

What does sandee have lots of, that she hoards and rarely uses?

STAMPS

I try, I really do, but I never use them enough. But I went hog wild with a flourish stamp called Modern Flower Flourish by inkadinkado on one of my canvases. It involved masking and laying magazines up underneath the canvas so I would have a flat surface to work on.

This stamp set comes with 4 flourish stamps in it and I used one that had the flower as the focal point for my roosters' eye. See, the rooster is the steam rising up out of the cup, for what says "wake up" better than coffee AND a rooster!

I've been adding a lot of beading lately to my canvases, which is another thing I had stopped doing and now I can't get enough of! ( You can see that I used a lot of masking to stamp into the design of the rooster, and I added some doodling to fill in any open areas )

One of my favorite parts was the mountain sunrise scenery that I painted on the cup, and then the sunbeams extend from out behind the cup. Go ahead, scroll back up to the main picture if that didn't make sense to you, lol Maybe you can see it better if you look at the overall design!

And lastly, I had to take a deep breath to write the words out in paint, something I had never done before, as I usually do all my lettering with a pen. I was in a quandary about how to get the right color yellow when the answer was staring me in the paint face, the pickle was using a paint brush to do it with. 

Can we say scary?

I have to say I have begun combining spray inks with gelatos and I just LOVE the effect, The wood table top is a combination of Lindy's Dark Chocolate Truffle starburst stain along with a no name gelato ( sorry, not my fault ), but look at that silky finish! oh la lah!

Simon Monday Challenge - I ought to use this more!

Frosted Designs kit reveal - Capture the Moment

Hi everyone, today I am over on the Frosted Designs blog with my last post on the Paper Kit team. I created a huge ( for me ) canvas which I made for my upcoming show in August. I am having a blast painting these big canvases, so much room to do things on; like the silver leafed spoon. I used DecoArts Paper Effects , a thick dimensional writer and Ranger's Liquid Pearls which has a much finer application.

I also have some exciting news too, I'll be designing my own mixed media kits for Frosted Designs! But shhhh....it's a secret that will be revealed next month! :)