Student's art & workshop pics

I thought I'd start off with the beautiful bunch of flowers that a great pal sent to me after a recent upset.....the lovely Crozza (Jen C) from Victoria surprised me a few days ago with these. I came home from work to find them on my table and thought my hubby, who was away at the time, had sent me some flowers but no, they were from Crozz.
It was a nicely timed gesture and I thank you very much Jen ;-)



A few weeks ago some students of mine did the microscope slide shrine class and I told them I would put the pictures up for all to see....there are 3 sides to each one so they are all pictured here. Nice work from Karen, Netta & Jane.




I took part in 3 workshops recently, the first one was a class called "Crusty Vessels" with the very talented Dale Rollerson from The Thread Studio - if you like all things fabric, threads, paint, textures, mixed-media, then The Thread Studio is the place to go! Wonderful on-line store and she stocks the fantastic Sheer Heaven which would have to be my favourite transfer medium. Here's Dale getting her head around the Crop-a-Dile.



I also did a class with Lesley Riley whom I consider the "Inkjet Transfer Queen". I've been a member of her yahoo group Inkjet Transfers for a few years now and always learn new tips and techniques on it. I have yet to scan in some pics of my sample pieces as there are so many of them but it was really good to try all the different mediums and receiving surfaces to gauge which ones you like the best. I was most surprised by how fantastic the transparency transfer looked onto white gesso painted onto a dark fabric!!! This one I MUST scan as it's just fantastic! Thank you Lesley for a very informative and fun class ;-)

Finally I took Michael deMeng's Altered Pez Shrine class. Due to a hiccup the day before I didn't enjoy this class as much as I should have, through no fault of Michael's or his techniques or anything he did/didn't do. He is a very down-to-earth and lovely man. Very "organic" in his teaching method, he doesn't want you to churn out "Michael" pieces, he wants you to invest yourself in your own work and what you produce is purely you. He is teaching you how to put things together in the literal sense then teaches you his tried & tested methods for painting combinations. It's up to you how you combine them yourself and I found him to be very patient and positive. I was a little hesitant when I found out that in the latter part of the day, after "The Good, the Bad & the Ugly", we have to have a little confo with all the students to discuss our thoughts on our pieces and he then gives his thoughts and positive input to each piece.....but I needn't have worried as it was all very informative and finished the class on an "up". I can't praise Michael's class enough! Sorry you couldn't be there Crozz ;-(


Here's 3 unfinished Pez's....the two on the left are
Jen S's and the funny looking old fashioned
telephone style is mine on the right. I intend on painting it up today so will post a pic when it's got it's colours on.

These next two are Michelle S's and my friend who's visiting from Wagga, Barb T. Two totally different styles, Michelle's needs another coat of paint as she used string to wrap her body (no Michelle, no funny comment...hahaha), which takes a while to dry so she has to finish this off later. Barb's was hardly painted at all, only the Liquid Nails was touched up a bit to blend the colour with the rest of the metals she used to put her "creature" together. These pieces must be seen in real life to appreciate how cleverly the girls put things together. . . . AND they still work as a Pez, dispensing the little slabs of solid coloured sugar that are Pez lollies.

On another note, I taught a class on embossing techniques yesterday at work and I have a regular bunch of girls that come every fortnight. One of them is leaving to go back to Melbourne in a few weeks time and she was really sick yesterday but didn't want to miss her final class and seeing her mates...what a trooper! lol We'll miss you Nicky and hope you'll come back to visit us and time your visit so you can come along for another class "fix"! ;-) The girls were surprised to find the various things that you can emboss with to get different effects.....for example "embossing web tape" which gives a very lacy distressed look as in this atc to the left. This atc also uses the wonderful Sheer Heaven Transfer technique.

Another great product for getting very fine embossed lines is the EraserMax pen by Papermate. You simply draw your line or write a word or do squiggles or whatever....then dump the embossing powder all over it and tip off the excess, then emboss as normal.....beautiful fine embossing. This is great for adding a little dimension and highlighting certain parts of images or even writing words on birthday cards! Much finer result than the normal embossing pens which have a much thicker point like a sharpie! Here's a sample. The very fine lines around the image and on the scarf/hair is the Erasermax pen. If you have trouble tracking these pens down, they are not easily available, we do have them where I work at Scraptivate.

I guess by now you've figured out that if I have an absence from my blog for over a week, it's a mammoth post when I do get back....hope I haven't worn out your eyes ;-)