Sara Jane's Studio

A Year of Collage - February 2010

Each month I'll be presenting the collage that was created for my Year of Collage calendar set.  Of course February is the month of love, so who can resist and Valentine-themed calendar page?

All of the collages are a great opportunity for me (or you!) to use up things in your crafty stash- which is exactly what I did.  The background is a pretty filigree tone-on tone paper in ivory.  The red paper serving as the frame is an embossed mulberry paper in a beautiful rich red color. 

The Image is one that I had from my collection-I believe it's from a vintage post card.  I duplicated it once to be able to cut out the image of the little cupid on the dove (yes, it was tedious to cut out- but worth it!).  And then (with just as much tedium) I applied snippets of Stampin' Dimensionals to mount the image and give it a 3D feel.

The little "Adore" sentiment was also from my stash, and mounted with Stampin' Dimensionals, and the three little red beads were added in the lower corner as a design element to keep your eye moving around the whole page.  

Happy Valentine's Day to you!

A Year of Collage - January 2010

Some years, when I can make the time, I love to make my "Year of Collage" calendar.  I offer it as a class as well, and even sell a few at Christmas time for special gifts.  The best part, and the hardest part, is coming up with a unique design for each month of the year.  I try to change up the look, the colors, and the techniques, so each one is a piece of art.  And, they are usually sized to sit on the desktop, so I don't have a lot of territory to cover!

This year the calendar is sized to fit in a CD-type jewel case, that opens up and becomes an easel to display the month.  So each design is 4-1/2" wide by 5-3/8" tall.  I start by creating the months in a table format in Microsoft Word, sizing it to fit in teh desired space.  Making the table can take a little time, but once you have it, you can keep copying and pasting it and then filling in the dates.

For January I always think of the New Year's holiday: something bright and shiny and celebratory.  So here I used the graphic punch of black and white papers, and red highlights.  The year was stamped with Tall Tales numbers from Stampin' Up! (retired) using red ink, and then embossed with a red glitter embossing powder.  The month is mounted on Real Red cardstock, and is highlighted with a spiral paper clip and some fun fiber.  I love that it looks a little like confetti spililng over!!

Check back each month to see the new creation.  Maybe by the end of 2010 you'll come join me in making your own for next year!!
 

More Butterflies

You may have already seen that I spent part of my holiday weekend working on the Butterfly Project for Craft Critique.  You can see my other posts here, here, and on Craft Critique.

I made so many butteflies while playing around with all kinds of papers in all kinds of designs that I had to make one more collection.  This one uses butterflies cut from patterned vellum, origami paper, and handmade paper.  Each butterfly has two layers.  One is adhered to the black background.  The top layer is stitched onto the first through the center using gold metallic embroidery thread.  This particular collection was then matted on Real Red cardstock (Stampin' Up!).

 My Bright Butterfly Collection.

I I love how different each of my collections feels!  And it's basically by changing the colors.  Also, the one on Craft Critique has an additional difference in that it is all the same buttefly image, layed out in a 3 X 3 grid. 

Butterfly from upper left corner.  Patterned vellum over origami paper.

If you are inspired to make some butterflies in support of the Holocaust Museum's call, you can get the details from Craft Critique.  There are also lots of other fun ideas for making hand-made butteflies on Craft Critique.  Just mail them in by September 15!!

My Butterfly Collection

I've had fun this holiday weekend making butterflies in support of the Craft Critique Butterfly Project.  I showed one of my projects here previously, and you can see one collection that I made on Craft Critique.

Here is another butterfly "collection" that I made.  As I said on Craft Critique, it feels a little like cheating because I used the exclusive Sizzix die from Stampin' Up! called "Beautiful Butterflies" which will create 6 butteflies at a time!  But it was fun to play with different papers, and then to design an arrangement that I liked.

In this particular collection I decided to use all neutral toned butterlfies.  They were cut from origami paper, vellum, handmade paper, and a paper doily.  The base is a piece of 8" X 8" Pink Pirouette cardstock (Stampin' Up!- retired).   I attached all of the butterlifes i a single layer by stitching through the center using gold metallic embroidery thread, so the wings are free to move with the air.

My Neutral Butterfly Collection.

I haven't decided yet whether to send this one in or not.....Butterflies are so cheerful and uplifting- the whole concept of transformation from a lowly caterpillar into such a beautiful creature is itself inspiring.  I may have to frame this in a shadow box and hand on my own wall as a reminder!

The origami paper butterfly in the lower left corner.

You can get ideas for other ways to make handmade butterflies on Craft Critique.  Just send them in by September 15 to be included in our craft community's effort to support the Holocaust Museum and it's remembrance of children lost during that terrible time.

Another Watercolor Adventure

During my recent class with Zana Clark of Stamp Zia, I had the opportunity to experiment with a watercolor technique and her new stamp designs.  You can see the first experiment in this post.  Below is a second piece that I started and then finished at home.

I'll take you throuh this one a little differently.  This is definitely an example of overworking a piece, and then trying hard to rescue it!  What I have to remind myself is something that Zana says:  "Nothing is precious!"  Meaning, none of my art is so precious and special that I can't throw it away and start over again.  As long as I learn from my errors, I'll keep making art and growing as an artist.

Okay:  So the big mistake on this one is in the waterlily image.  I had really wanted this to be the focal point.  But I made two mistakes:  1) I was using my colored pencils on this image at night, in a poorly lit room, so I did not really have a good view of what I was achieving; and 2) I simply overworked the image.  I kept at it, and kept at it, and kept worrying over it that it became a dull mess.

Below is a close-up.  Yuck! 

 And since I knew I had ruined this image, I experimented with what would happen if I took bleach to it to remove the watercolor background.  The oval in in the lower left shows the effect of bleaching out the color.  However, you can see that I pretty much ruined the black stamped image, adn that the colors just got muddy and unpleasant.  I also found that this particular fiber paper will break down if you keep at it too much with pencil, particularly if you have a nice sharp point.

So what did I do?  I stamped the same waterlily image on white cardstock, and had fun with my colored pencils and a Prisma blending pencil to color it in.  Below is a close-up of the result:  nice and clear image, with pretty decent shading of color.  Much better than above, don't you think?

Since this crisp image now jumped off the page, I tried bleaching both the buddha and the small, round flower medallion.  Below is a shot from the back, showing the bleached areas.

And here is the Buddha image, from the front, after coloring with colored pencils, and bleaching out the background color.  Not too bad- You may think an odd choice of colors, but I did it to bring in the color from the background in other parts of the piece, to keep the eye moving, and to attempt to balance the colors.

Finally, the whole piece is shown below, with the cleaned up waterlily image.

I kind of like it- but not as well as the image with the nude, that I shared earlier. 

So, I am going to keep experimenting, and keep sharing the results!  Check back for more!

 

Watercoloring with Stamp Zia

The Heirloom Rubber Stamp Festival was held in West Springfield, MA, the weekend of June 6-7.  As usual for me, I attended the class offered by Zana Clark of Stamp Zia.  Zana develops wonderful, brilliant watercolors in spray bottles, and then fantastic techniques to use them.  She also designs her own unmounted rubber stamps, and has a new release every year.  So I am always anxious to take her class each year, and see what new things she has come up with.

Above is one of the pieces that I completed during Zana's two hour class period- the finished piece is about 8-1/2" X 11", and suitable for framing, if I do say so myself!  I don't have pictures of the work-in-progress, but I have been playing with the technique at home, and will share those experiments over the next week here in my blog.  We used the spray watercolors, rubber stamps, and colored pencils to achieve these very cool results.

The first step is to take some of Stamp Zia's Fiber paper (which is a little like Tyvek, but is not Tyvek) and crumple it up in your hand.   After smoothing it out, you spray generously with your choice of colors, in any pattern you like.  And then dry COMPLETELY- if you are impatient (like most of us!) your embossing gun will do the trick in about 5 minutes, depending on how wet your paper got during spraying.  It needs to be completely dry for the next step to give the right effect.  That step?  Dip your fingers into some clean water, and flick them at your paper.  The drops will spread where they fall, moving the watercolor with them into wonderful patterns of color and shape.  This is the mottling that you see in the background in the piece above.

Next step:  dry, dry, dry!!  Then, you can do another layer of color, dry, and anther round of splattering with water- and dry.   It creates a rich, layered background for your next steps.

Once you are happy with the background, it is time to start stamping.  Zana is a big fan of Document Ink by Stewart Superior; it is a solvent based ink, and like India Ink or StazOn, is not water soluble.  However, your piece must be COMPLETELY dry (again!) before you start stamping, or the residual water will act almost like a resist and prevent a stamping a good image.

All of the stamps used here are from Stamp Zia.  I started with a large background image of an architectural column- and my paper was not sufficiently dry, so I did not get a good image.  SO, I simply stamped the naked lady right on top of it!  And liked the effect!  So I kept going.  I added the moths, and repeated the symbol three times across the bottom.  At this point, unlike me, I decided less was more, and quit stamping, to move onto the next step:  coloring with Prismacolor pencils.

Above is a close up of the female figure, stamped on top of the architectural column, and then colored with colored pencils.  Yes, I did choose lime green and turquoise for the nude, but it works!  You might notice some actual white in the nude figure.  When I got home, I decided that she did not pop-out of the page as much as I would have liked, so I very carefully painted on some bleach from a bleaching pen to the back side of the figure.  (I held it up to the light so I could see the stamped outline.)  You may also notice a couple of very white spots on the page:  I got a little messy with the bleach.  I think I can fix these with a little colored pencil, however.

Above is a close-up of one of the moths.

I LOVE LOVE LOVE doing this kind of "art stamping"!  If you have any interest, and live in the mid-west, watch for classes by Zana Clark of Stamp Zia.  She also has a couple of video tutorials on her website.  AND of course, I'd love to teach you how, myself! 

Keep creating!

Another Polymer Clay Project

This is the final project that resulted from my recent play-time with the Clearsnap StamPress.  (You can see my review of the StamPress itself by clicking here.)  My other projects were a decorative box, a trinket box, and a not-so-successful box.

 The inspiration for this piece was the polymer clay panel in the center- it was the result of impressing polymer clay with a stamping wheel by Paula Best, using the StamPress.  The center of the panel had four line sketches of faces, but I cut those out with my Xacto knife after baking, so the panel was more like a frame.  It was an interesting exercise to color the piece- it started out as plain white poly clay.  First I tried black acrylic paint- but, yuck!  While it got into the grooves well, the rest of the surface looked a dull grey.  So I wiped that off as best I could, and then tried wiping with a magenta acrylic paint.  Better.  But it needed something a bit more- so I used my finger to "dry brush" on some Lumiere True Gold acrylic from Jacquard.  NOW I was getting somwhere.  The little flower on the right needed something to set it apart, so I painted in just a touch of green in the stem and leaves, and then made certain that there was gold on the raised areas.

The container is a small shadow box from C&T Publishing, and I decided at the end not to use the cover.  In retrospect I realized that I could have also used a small square jewelry box (like the kind that you get new jewelry in).  I covered it with Rose Red Designer Prints paper from Stampin' Up!  Then I filled it with three layers of 3/8" thick foam core- because I wanted my panel to be more forward in the box, rather than all the way at the back.  The top layer of foam core I covered with a Kiwi Kiss Designer Prints paper (also from SU).  The polymer clay panel was attached with OmniStick Glue (like E6000). 

The flower in the center was made from layering three flowers from Maya Road.  They aren't felt and they aren't paper- more like a flocked surface.  A decorative brad is holding them together, and the whole was attached in the center of the frame using OmniStick.

Then came the rest of the embellishments:  a 1/8" polka dot satin ribbon and a fine gold cord were glued to the edges of the back.  Two small pieces of gold paper charms (tiny strings of flowers) are centered above and below the poly clay frame.   Pearl "Dew Drops" are in each corner, and I added tiny red hearts from my stash to each corner of the frame.

All-in-all, it was really fun to work on.  Of course my young 15 year-old friend, Aaron, asked the classic male question:  "What's it for?!?"  Fortunately his sister knew the answer, and I know that you do too!

Keep creating!

 

Dream of Being Queen

I've been working with the product "Fast2Fuse" by C&T Publishing as part of a product review for Craft Critique.  (You can see the produce review itself by clicking here.)  It's a double-sided non-woven fusible interfacing in two weights.  The standard weight is stiff enough to make the fabric panels shown here, and also for other applications such as bowls, boxes, bags, other wearables and home decor.

I made an art triptych that I called "Dream of Being Queen", just for fun!

It's actually a little more than a tritych, in that it has three wide  and two narrow panels.  The fabric is a pretty batik in shades of blue and lavendar with irregular white spots of various sizes.  It has a hand-stitched self-binding, with some added lace and fiber trim across the top.

 Each panel contains a stamped art doll, based on designs by Paula Best.  I stamped the doll parts on Stampin' Up! Designer Paper "Bella Birds" which is in pretty shades of blue, pink and brown.  The faces are from other individual stamps, also from Paula Best.  The wings on the left art doll are Paula Best, and on the right are from a dragonfly image by Old Town Crafts.  All of the images I used are black-and-white line drawings that just beg to be colored.  After stamping with black StazOn ink, I pulled out my Copic markers and played with those, using multiple shades of pink and blue, and a blender.  Some images were further highlighted with a gold metallic Prismacolor pen.  The art dolls were assembled with gold brads, and I did not glue down the arms or legs, so they can still be played with!

 Above:  "Believe" art doll, on the left panel.

For the "Believe" art doll, I mounted the face on a pink scalloped circle, and added gold dots to each scallop.  The heart is an embellishment I made a while ago from black polymer clay, which was then impressed with a rubber stamp, and highlighted with mica pigment powder for color.  The face and wings were colored with Copic markers, as described above.  The little "Believe" element is an engraved piece of metal- I found it in my stash!  It had an antiqued finish to it which I sanded off in order to make it a little brighter.  The round elements holding it are actually upholstery tacks!  I snipped off the point using wire cutters, and attache the remaining top with E6000 glue, at the same time attaching the little loop of pearls.

Above:  "Hope" art doll, on the right panel.

The wings for the "Hope" art doll were stamped and embossed in gold before I colored with my Copic markers.  The face was stamped with black StazOn prior to coloring, and it was mounted on a square of iridescent mesh, backed by a square of Bordering Blue cardstock.  The buttons down the front were from my stash, and I added the little spot of gold in the centers with the Prismacolor metallic gold pen.  Additional gold highlights were added to the legs with the same pen.

 Above:  The Queen art doll, in the center panel.

The Queen art doll deserved a little more elaboration!  Her face was stamped with black StazOn prior to coloring with Copic markers.  The butterfly wings deserved some highlightin, so (because I forgot about my Versamark Pen!) I used a fine paint brush to apply the Versamark fluid from the refill to the wings.  I then used Heat and Stick powder to create an adhesive, and covered with fine, clear glitter.  Small, 4 mm clear crystals were added to her earrings and her necklace using E6000.  (I used a pair of fine pointed tweezers to dip the crystals in the glue in order to apply them.)  Her skirt is made from a piece of textured gold paper that I had collected over the years.  I hand pleated it across the top before attaching with E6000.  The medallions on her skirt, her wings, and her crown are all metal embellishments from my stash.  All were glued on with E6000.

 Above:  A sentiment on one of the narrow panels.

The narrow panels were covered with a gold mesh fabric, and held in place by stitching on gold bugle beads.  The sentiments are from Paula Best, and were stamped and embossed in black on vellum, then backed with white paper.  I held them in place using a cross-stitch in each corner, which was then covered with a small gold button.  I cut the shanks of the buttons with a wire cutter prior to attaching them.

There are even more details which you can explore in the photo gallery by clicking here.  If you have any questions about how I did anything at all, just leave me a comment, below!

Keep creating!

A Little Shadow Box

More fun with the "Aviary Postcards" from Meyer Imports!!  And, I used a small chipboard shadow box from C&T Publishing too!  (Numerous Craft Critique reporters are going to review various products from C&T Publishing.  Check them out by clicking here.)

This adorable little thing started as a white chipboard box with an acetate window in the cover.  The box is only 3-1/4" square, and 1-3/4" deep.  I covered the top and the bottom in coordinating Designer Paper from the Walk in the Park line from Stampin' Up!.  I liked the blue color, and the small print was the right scale for this project.  I covered the inside bottom with Not Quite Navy cardstock, and used three layers of dimensional adhesive to attach it.  Similarly I used a triple layer of dimensional adhesive to attach the Aviary Postcard.  I added a small piece of 1/8" wide gold "German scrap" at the top and the bottom of the Not Quite Navy background, for a little surprise in case anyone looked closely.

This was the easy part. . .  It then took me at least an hour (maybe two?!?)  to pull together all of the rest of the elements to my satisfaction.  What finally got me on the right path was finding the textured pink glass button in my stash.

I threaded the button with a multi-colored silk ribbon that has iridescent edges, and wrapped the ribbon twice around the top of the shadow box.  I tucked a large turquoise bangle/sequin behind the button before attaching it securely with Omni-Stick glue.

I found the rectangluar gold charm in my stash, and added another piece of German Scrap to the left side (only) of the window on the cover.

Along the bottom front I attached a piece of decorative trim left over from some curtains that I took apart.  It seemed too plain, so I added five little, silver, oval sequins, and along the center added a fuzzy piece of fiber that has just a hint of warm color peeking out here and there.

I thought a little more pink and gold in the lower right corner would help to balance the whole design, and I found the pink flat backed embellishment and a gold colored Dew Drop, and then added one tiny gold flower that matches the border of the window.

All was finished by adding a Stampin' Up! rub-on sentiment (from a retired set) to the window in the lower right corner.  If you look too critically you will see where I almost completely ruined it by trying to finish adhering the rub-on without having anything between the rub-on and the applicator.  DOH!!!!

Side view.

And that was it!  As I've said before, I love small things, and I love doing collage and assemblage.  This project was a real pleasure!!

Keep creating!

Christmas Star Book

Christmas?!?  In August?!?!  I know you are groaning, and so am I to a certain extent.  But if you do like to make things for Christmas, be it gifts or cards, it is not too early to start at least thinking about it.  (Groan...) 

And since I seem to be on a roll with my Star Books, I thought I would post this one now.  (You can see my previous post of an Artful Star Book (no particular theme; just pretty!) by clicking here, and you can see one that I made as a wedding gift by clicking here.)

  This Christmas Star Book uses the famous poem "Twas the Night Before Christmas" as well as rubber stamp images and embellishments.  The cover is a heavy, white embossed paper that is reminiscent of snow drifts, and the inner pages are dark blue, silver and white. 

I varied the color theme back-and-forth between layouts, from blue and silver to traditional reds and greens.  And I did my best to match the images with the subject matter in the stanzas of the poem that were on the facing page.

Here are a few more of the pages.  You can scroll through the entire book by going to the Gallery on the right side of the blog, or simply by clicking here.

'Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house....

 

So up to the housetop the coursers they flew, with the sleigh full of toys and St. Nicholas too...

"Now Dasher, now Dancer, now Prancer and Vixen!  On Comet, on Cupid, on Donner and Blitzen!"

What fun!! I'm looking forward already to having this out on display on my coffee table for the holiday season this year!