Home!

I'm home again from my visit to the Timber Frame Barn in Ohio where I took a surface design class taught by Carol Soderlund called Layers Upon Layers. This class was packed full of surface design demonstrations and instruction- everything from deconstructed screen printing to working with soy wax and dextrin resists, to mixing your own dye paint in any color and value you choose. Fantastic class! Here I am with some of the fabrics I finished in class.

Carol is always so warm, and completely generous with her deep understanding of fabric, dying, and design. Taking a class with her is always a joy so if you get the chance, run-don't-walk.


Before I left for Ohio I posted a short tutorial over on the Sketchbook Challenge blog for creating this simple but effective texture....

After playing with it for a while, I moved the technique from my sketchbook onto a small 16" x 20" canvas. 

And then- just finished today- onto a 30" x 40" stretched canvas.

 (Changes, 30" x 40", acrylics and paper on stretched artist canvas)

The Journaling on this piece was monoprinted with white acrylic paint and was done in one shot on a piece of plastic sheeting larger than the canvas. I'm pretty proud of the way I managed to get it onto the work with only two hands to handle it as floppy as it was and covered in paint. We won't again mention the white stripe of SJ that runs down my left cheek and onto my chin. Did I get any in my hair?

Working through this piece gave me a chance to take a little break from prepping for Festival. As I mentioned in a recent post, I've been preparing collage kits to work with during my demo sessions, and in order to time my pacing for actually creating the collages, I used one of the kits to construct this piece. 

(Bubble Gum For Big Girls, 10" x 10")

This is a 10" x 10" piece of matboard, painted and collaged with (what else?) Stacked Journaling. If you'd like to learn this collaging technique, come visit my table at the Festival. I'll post my schedule as soon as I know it!

In the meantime, happy creating!