Painted Paper Play

One of my favorite things to do is to create painted papers for my stash. Lisa came back over Tuesday night and we painted together. These are the 3 pages that I made, I like to use stencils, stamps and a little collage. This litttle girl came from Lisa. Painting is not Lisa's thing, but she did a great job. Next time she is going to make me make a paper doll and we will be even.

Art with Lisa Guerin

One of my Art sisters I met at Artfest, Lisa Guerin, came over to play in my art studio. She was here to teach some classes. We took the opportunity to get together and make some art. We didn't have a plan, we started pulling stuff out and sharing. This turned in to a great envelope swap. You can see by the smiles on our faces, we were having a great time. Get a couple of art sisters together with a couple of scraps of paper, stamps, glue and paint and we are set! Of coarse, we were thinking our other art sisters who weren't there, Kim, Skip, Judy and Mart. We missed you!

Here we are in my studio, surrounded by all our great art stuff, we worked until about 12:30 that night. We could have gone all night, but Lisa had to get up to go and teach at Tangerine.

beautiful mess

This was part of our beautiful mess. Lisa was showing me some of her tools, like the Zig glue and a great hole punch and another punch that made shapes. Lisa also gave me one her her kits from her paper doll class, she make the best kits. They have tons of stuff in them and they are presented in a artful way.

Envelope Fun

We each got a large envelope and started stamping, gluing and painting. Lisa has quite a collection of beautiful stamps that she uses when she teaches her paper doll classes. We passed the envelopes back and forth between us, getting inspired by what the other had done. I will probably put mine in a journal, as a page.

This was the back of my envelope.

Painted Tote Bag

I finished the painted canvas tote I was inspired to make after getting the book
"Canvas Remix" by Alisa Burke. I painted on heavy weight linen with acyclic paints and I used some stencils I made a couple of months ago, rubber stamps, sharpies and a wite-out pen. I love to layer. I found these great handles at Beverly craft store. I obviously love polka dots!

With a leftover piece of the canvas, I created a small zipped pouch. This will hold my art journal that I carry around with me in my purse.

I made an accordion fold and added single signatures with painted paper, hand stitched to the spines with waxed embroidery floss.

Accordian Fold Journal

I finished this accordion fold journal today. The cover paper is one of my favorite ways to get sheets of painted paper. Whenever I paint paper or fabric, I lay a large sheet of paper under my work, as a table cover. Eventually this paper becomes layered and beautiful and I will add it to my painted paper stash. I usually use 80 lb acid free drawing paper to paint on. This paper is heavy enough to take lots of layers of paint and can still be folded and sewn easily for book-making projects.

This is my work table in my studio right now. Did you ever feel like you have so much stuff to be creative with that it actually keeps you from being creative? Naw, just kidding. I just have to sort through the piles in between projects. And right now I have at least 5 projects going. I'm starting two new journals and working on severval mixed media fabric and paper journal pages. And I started painting some canvas because I really want to make a new tote bag and/or a purse.

These are called "Birds of Poetry" and are going to be published with a "how to " article that I wrote in the next issue of Sew Somerset. These were fun because I have been doing a lot of stenciling in my journals and paintings. So, I decided to stencil the tree design on pieces of fabric before I created the birds.

I Just got a new book by Alisa Burke "Canvas Remix". I love any book with painting projects and this one has lots of good ones. I have been painting canvas for while and I love to layer. In her book, she painted the canvas first with black paint and then added the other layers. I tried it out and it worked just fine. Now I'm going paint another piece with white first and see which one I like better. I had to glue some fabric scraps to mine and sew a little bit. I will add this piece into my stash and it will end in a project eventually. Maybe a journal cover or a bag.