Art Weekend

Oh, I had a wonderful time at the weekend, meeting lovely new people and arting, eating and drinking to my heart's content.

Here are a couple of the photos I actually managed to take, not enough time to explore much, but I took these on the evening I arrived, just before it got dark. The views of the hills were lovely, especially dusted with a little snow and the house we stayed in is gorgeous - so large, yet comfy.

Now it is back to reality and I have my head down, with renewed vigour for the work ahead towards the finals - examiners come on the 10th May -eek!

Kari x

ATCs for Artescape Weekend

I am looking forward to our artescape weekend and have made some extra ATCs to add to the stash for a 121 exchange.

I made the background collages last week, but finally got around to finishing them off today.

Back to deciding what to pack now!

Kari x

Scary Deco Page

I had a deco to sign on the theme of "scary" so I made this page.

It is a collaged background with text and a map, a manipulated image of a girl and a superimposed skull which I printed out on acetate. I then sewed it onto the background paper.

Acetate and Sewing are my favourite techniques at the moment!

Kari x

Found Art

I found this the other day on a table in the college canteen.

The writing on it says: "We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars" - Oscar Wilde.

One of the joys of being in a creative workplace surrounded by artists is that the banal becomes the sublime.

Kari x

Circus ATCs

Like the everyday book, I made my background collage and planned my images. but lacked the final materials to complete them.

While I was working on my everyday book page, I also finished off these two circus ATCs for a swap. They are made by making a collage, printing some circus images onto acetate and sewing the acetate to the backgrounds.

Everyday Book

Here is the page I have done for the next part of the every day book, I made the background collage at the weekend, but knew I wanted to overlay an image in acetate which I didn't have to hand.

This evening I printed out the acetate and sewed it to the background collage.

Two Deco Pages

A lot of people grumble if they get a block of decos on the same theme, but I think I have found an advantage. You can do one collage, take one image and make more than one page - ta-daaa!

These were for two decos on a fruit theme. I chose a image of a little girl with a basket because we live in a huge soft fruit growing area (believe me, I was as surprised as you are that fruit grows in Scotland, but it does!), the letter in the background is from a little girl in the 1930s to her Mamma and I wanted to represent the girl going into the garden to pick fruit for her.

As usual, I had to use my sewing machine for a tiny bit of stitching round the edges - I tried to resist, I did!

Kari x

Another Background Sheet

Thank goodness it is Friday - I am exhausted! My whole back is very sore, from top to bottom, certainly the worst it has been for a long time and I am having difficulty even with walking.

Now that we are working towards the final stretch at university, everyone is getting rather tetchy in our studio. Fortunately, we are a good group of friends and we can laugh about it, but I don't how long that is going to last!

Anyway, today I was preparing a board, using a very large stencil that I have been cutting and I sprayed a bit of watercolour paper while I was at it. I then "knocked back" the stencil with washes of acrylic and this is the result.

These are really very good fun to do and look great on the boards. Not sure what to use the background paper for, maybe ATCs?

3 New ATCs

And here are the ATCs I made from the background shown in the earlier post.

I made 6, but here are 3 of them.

These are emergency, thank you ATCs as I often include them in letters, parcels etc.

Background Papers

I have a day off today - as things have been busy at uni and I was feeling a bit under the weather, I decided I needed a "sanity day". Everyone should have one - it should be a national holiday, LOL!

Yesterday, in between meeting with the external examiners, working in the canteen and playing with the wax pot, I made some background papers to print ATC images on top of.

This is part of the stencil and paint one. I have some collages that I want to turn into prints to print on top of it.

Eraser Carving

I have been designing a couple of images for carving later on tonight. It is something I like to do when I finally sit down and watch TV.

I have drawn out one of my favourite images, my hare and the Pictish goose.

A Quick ATC

I should be getting ready for bed as I have an early start and a busy day tomorrow, but I wanted to load this up first.

A lovely lady keeps buying my shaped books and I often include an ATC in the package. She has bought so many of these books, that I was running out of ATCs! Luckily, I had this lovely bit of leftover watercolour and a ready prepared image, so made this.

Phew, that was quick!

Kari