Circus chunky page & gesso/mag atc's

When I was younger I was totally into reading all of Stephen King's wonderfully spooky books. One that particularly stayed with me was "It". Evil clown from the sewers....stuff that kids nightmares are made of. I know that some people are scared of clowns, I'm not, but as our chunky theme this month for the Altered Book Club is Circus, I thought I'd re-visit the nasty world of evil clowns. I can't wait to see all the varied pages that the girls in this group come up with....I've seen Nat's and it's wonderful! So here's mine....front...



and back....

Yeah, I know.....bad, nasty, evil clowns....sorry, I just don't see them that way, especially as my pet nick-name for my husband for over 25 years is "Clown"! He particularly laughed at the "Evil clowns need love too"....thinks it may become his catch-cry. hahaha

Yesterday at the atc class I taught we did the gesso & magazine image technique from Bernie's book. The girls were not particularly looking forward to this class as it meant more than just cutting out an image and sticking it down....they actually had to draw and call upon their own ideas & inventiveness which had them reaching down in the depths of their creative souls (sounds like a "moving" experience...no?). After being shown the basics, off they all went to fabricate their own little piece of art.

All was going well until one of them (who shall remain nameless....."L"!!!), decided that the nose she had drawn looked suspiciously like a particular male appendage. Of course, she was ready to bin it but I told her she had to try to resurrect it...it was rather funny...had the other girls in stitches. But resurrect it we did, see if you can pick which one it is! Below are the atc's that the girls did in class. Some are not quite finished, need some embellishments, and maybe a couple of words but you'll get the gist of it...as promised girls, no names on them ;-)

Something that I try to point out in my classes is you won't produce fantastically perfect atc's in a class where you're learning a technique for the first time. This is a jump-off point, you go home and if you like the technique, you do it a few more times, hopefully put a couple of examples into your own "technique book" that you keep. Not all techniques/styles are liked by all people but the more you expose yourself to different things, the easier it is to work out what is your own "style" and what sits comfortably with you. End of lecture! lol

Clear word sheets & new atc

I'm in the process of working on my circus pages for our Altered Book Club....trying to replicate the background technique of the atc called "Pursuit" in my last post, the one with the sticks & the bird. Consequently I've not had much time today to get much other art done, though I did get the raffle atc made for our class on Saturday. This time I'm teaching a technique from Bernie's wonderful Artist Trading Card Workshop book, magazine images & gesso....I'll try & remember to take the camera and take a picture of what the girls do in the class and then post it here! Here's the raffle atc...

Many times I've been asked where I get my clear words that I use on a lot of my atc's, the answer is I do them myself. So I've made up 3 different sheets for sale with between 80 & 120 words on each sheet, they are in 3 fonts with different words on each sheet. Not particularly themed, just words that I like! The sheets are $3 each and all you need is to use your craft knife and your ruler to cut a single word out then peel off the backing sheet and it's all ready to go onto your atc, or altered book, or, as in the "Pursuit" atc in the previous post, onto a little metal charm! They are sticky so no need to add glue, gel medium, double-stick tape etc. The sheets are approx. 14cm x 10cm, so they'll fit into a normal envelope for postage which will keep the cost down. Postage to the States should be only around $1.95 (normal letter rate for Australia - under 50grams), Australia of course should only be .50c postage. If anyone is interested, you can contact me on the email addy on my blog.....it says "contact me"....duh ;-) Here's a sample of one sheet....

The Altered Pez & magazine atc's

Painting my altered Pez a couple of days ago from Michael deMeng's class was a great exercise in "let's try this....let's try that". Michael basically teaches you to paint washes on top of each other to try to arrive at a colour that suits you, the main thing is to let each wash dry before painting over the top otherwise you end up with mud! Below are several photo's of my completed (I think!) Pez.

Remember, I did say it looked like an old fashioned telephone! Can you see the ramekin? Or the plastic milk lids from the Devondale Point One Milk containers? Or the bullet casing? How about the chess pieces, the upholstery pins (okay, this one is easy!), or the cogs?

Inside the watch face on the front is an image and it takes just the right amount of light to actually see it. I tried to photograph it, you can sort of make it out....a little blurry....sorry...

On another note, the very fabulous book by Bernie Berlin, Artist Trading Card Workshop, has been a real bonus to those of us who just LOVE techniques! Last Friday we had one of our atc get-togethers that happen once a month with the Art Tarts Club and we all had a go at one of the techniques from the book....magazine images & gesso! I've warned the girls that I teach this will be a future lesson and I think I sufficiently freaked them out....they actually have to draw! I couldn't draw a thing to save myself so it's lucky that you have the basic image to work with in the first place. Here are my attempts at this different technique.

This last one is actually the very first time I did this, didn't use enough gesso to partially obscure the image and I used Twinkling H2O's (the watercolour pots) so it didn't do a great job of coverage. The two above were painted with Golden colours acrylic paints.......love them!!!