Oh, so lucky...

...I am, I am!

I'm an avid blog reader, and recently commented on one of my favourite blogs called Howeswears.  The owner, Tami, is right up my alley with her experimental bent, and she has a terrific Etsy shop, to boot! My comment got me into a draw, and I won, I won - four of Tami's tag stencils/masks packages.

They arrived earlier this week, and I finally made some time today to play with them...aren't they enticing?

I thought the snowflake one was a perfect fit for this Hudson Bay vintage map copy - you gotta know that anywhere the Hudson Bay Company went, it was cold, cold, cold!

I love having the mask and stencil set with these beautifully organic stems...the push/pull effect makes me so happy.

 The swirled clef design jumps right out on this Gelli printed page.

 The 'sticks' stencil fills my craving for geometric shapes,

 as does the diamonds used here on another Gelli-printed page.

All in all, I couldn't be happier - who wouldn't love a gift like this?  Thank you, Tami - you rock!

Book worms...

in this house are very colourful.

I swear they bathe in supercolour before they crawl through my 'law journals'.

They puddle, 

and splat,

 and spike,

and squiggle from one page to another.

How colourful are your book worms?  Share a link in your comments below, and show us how they compare!

Gelli belly...

...is a condition beginning to become recognized by the medical profession the world over. Characterized by a rectangular gouge in the abdomen ( ] ), it is akin to tennis elbow in its creation.  By standing at a drafting table for more than eight hours in a row, you too can create your own Gelli Belly!  Here's how:

Get hooked on the Gelli plate.  Start playing with it using stencils, masks, Q-tips, texturing tools, and the like. Try every possible combination thereof using the Gelli plate blog to the max as a starting point.

Decide you need to teach a playshop in it so others can have the same amount of fun.  Start a binder of examples, because a show and tell is truly necessary.  Include examples:

Texturing Tools

Playing with Crayons

Forever in Blue Jeans

Printed book sheets

Printing with medium

 

Printing with leaves

Ghost printing

Printing until your eyes hurt

Printing with fun foam stamps

Printing on mulberry paper

Printing with cheesecloth

Printing and weaving

See your physician as necessary.  

Every once in a while...

...I take a look at my paintings to see where I've been, and where I might be going.  As always, I'm fascinated by the threads that tie them together.

Patterns, (whether organic

or man-made,

in paper or paint,)

texture, (three dimensional

 or implied,)

and saturated colour are the three elements that are invariable hallmarks in my work.

While they may not be immediately visible on a larger scale, the closer inspections above certainly tell the tale.

Fish Fancy 

Golden Anniversary

Playing with Oranges

Islands in the Sun

Garden Patterns II

Eye of Ra

What are the attributes of your work that tell the world they are yours?  All comments are welcome and merit a response!

My knees have gone to Gelli...

...from all the kneeling as I cover the floor in the studio with Gelli plate prints.  It's astounding how I can lose a full day in there, when my intention was just a quick play time.

I had to do a test run on the recent spate of Tyvek stencils I burned a couple of days ago.

And I'd made some modelling paste texture plates that were begging for a trial run too.  I particularly like this 'gears' one for its subtlety.

Some fun foam stamps created interesting patterns, 

and I stamped a couple of  them, twice, onto another old 'cleaner' print.  Unaccountably, without worrying about the registry of it all, I managed to offset the one side just slightly enough to be interesting.  That wouldn't happen again if I actually paid attention to where it was going!

Overprinting pieces from a previous session yielded some really fun textures and colour,

and these are pieces I'll be happy to use for backgrounds or as smaller focal points in a painting.

 The soft grey over top of the violet is a pleasing combination,

 and I'm nuts about this abstract panel.

I love the look of the stencils, texture plates and foam stamps at the end of it all too.  

All in all, I'd say it was well worth the 'lost time', and I've got some good samples for my Gelli binder, to say nothing of some lovely papers for upcoming projects.

Stencil heaven -

that's where I am right now - stencil heaven.

You know I'm hooked on stencils - designing, cutting and using them, whether my own or commercial ones. I've been playing for the last two days, designing and cutting some hearts from Tyvek that are meant to be layered:

The cut-outs themselves will work as masks, once they are designed some more themselves.

I also road-tested a technique I learned from Julie Fei-Fan Balzer's stencilling freebies this past week.  It involves taking a less-than-beloved piece of paper,

and adding some paint (here some quinacridone burnt scarlet from Daniel Smith mixed with Golden Heavy Gel Medium (I'd already been addicted to the raised surface this produces)

through a commercial stencil

and then lifting the stencil carefully.  What a great way to add some depth and change the look of a piece.

I used the same technique in two different colours to alter these leftover wallpaper strips,

and mixed the remains of the two colours to do the tulips on the left, which I textured heavily just for fun and an alternate look.

Of course I had to play with the layered stencil I'd so carefully cut, so I started with a Gelli plate background and went wild with  Daniel Smith's cadmium yellow (medium) and quinacridone purple, along with a couple of stamps.

I really enjoyed the layering process, so I didn't stop there.  More Gelli plate prints and more layered stencilling,

and now I'm lost in the studio somewhere,

likely buried under piles of colour and stencils.  Please, will someone come and dig me out?!