INSPIRED DIGITAL MAGAZINE

                                                                                       

IT'S FREE!  

From Artistsnetwork.com

                                 http://viewer.zmags.com/publication/6b879b28#/6b879b28/1

EXPLORE NEW ART IDEAS: THE WINTER ISSUE OF INSPIRED INTRODUCES NEW TECHNIQUES AND APPROACHES FOR YOUR ART-MAKING!

Winter is the perfect season for creative exploration. Try out new painting techniques and explore new styles to energize your art. In the latest issue of Inspired, you’ll find creative ideas for using poured paint to create unique effects. You’ll also find an introduction to and demonstration of Chinese watercolor painting. Plus, you’ll enjoy a collection of captivating portraits and figural paintings by a variety of artists in a variety of media! It’s all here in the latest issue of this digital magazine from ArtistsNetwork.com—and it’s FREE.

IN THE CURRENT ISSUE

Exotic Florals: Expand and complement your watercolor painting style with artist Lian Quan Zhen.
Play With Your Art: Discover how to create unique veiled effects in your acrylic paintings using poured paint.
Inspired by People: Enjoy an astounding range of expression for portraying this favorite subject
More Inspiration View these stories, watch video, follow links to more great content and products in the Winter 2013 issue of Inspired!

The Art of Whimisical Lettering - Joanne Sharpe

FROM CLOTH PAPER SCISSORS WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
published by Interweave.com
Go to Interweave.com to sign up for all sorts of interesting newsletters CPS as well as Quilting Arts, Beading Today and others.

This is a great resource for my class at Saskatchewan Stitches Conference this spring

                                                  TXT LETTERING ON FABRIC

7 Tips for Art Journaling Handwriting
by Joanne Sharpe

1. Play around with your own handwriting, creating words and entire alphabets with all the pens or markers on your desk.
2. Write several pages of words and alphabets in many styles of letters, upper- and lowercase, large, small, tall, wide, skinny, and fat. Don't judge, just write pages and pages, sampling your letter flow and creativity.
3. Doodle letters with colored markers. Add colorful patterns, swirls, stripes, lines, and dots to embellish the letters.
4. Look through old magazines and other printed materials to find words and phrases in assorted typefaces and sizes that you find interesting. Cut them out and paste them in your journal. Become a pasting pack rat with anything that you hand letter and make sure it ends up in your journal.
5. Using assorted markers, color in layers and add words on top of each layer.
6. Collect brochures or magaz ine clippings with interesting letter placement and unusual compositions and layouts of text to inspire new ideas and direction for your lettering projects.
7. Do an Internet search for topics relative to lettering, such as lettering, fonts, typeface, handwriting, letters, alphabets, calligraphy, etc. Use your colorful pens and markers to jot down notes and inspirations in your journal as you come across ideas that "speak" to you. ~JS

 

Which one of these tips speaks to you the most? Do you have a lettering tip to share? Personally, I like to experiment with different sizes of pen tips. Fine tips are great for details, but wider tips seem to let me write more loosely. If you love lettering, click here to share this with your followers on Twitter.

Saskatchewan Stitches Conference Samples

"TXT LETTERING ON FABRIC"

Paint and Brush

                                                                        Pen on Canvas

                                                             A to Z Illuminated Letters

                                                              Parallel Pen and Irridescence

These are some of the techniques, pens and brushes that will be presented in the TXT LETTERING class at the Saskatchewan Stitches Conference in May/June.

Register at Hausofstitches.ca

More to come about Gelli Prints!

PAINT STIKS ARE ON SALE

Add to your PaintStik collection with 30% off from Cedar Canyon!

How to Save 30% on Sampler & Starter Packs

 

Saving 30% is super easy. Simply add the Sampler of your choice to your Shopping Cart, enter the code SAMPLER30 in the Special Code box -- it's in the top right corner of the screen -- Click on the Apply button and you should be all set! And yes, you get the same great deal on more than one Sampler.

 

Our 30% Off Sampler Sale ends Tuesday, January 7, 2014. 

This is short notice on this product sale but here it is.

 Go to 

Cedarcanyontextiles.com

THE TEN YEAR PROJECT

Some years ago the Edmonton Needlecraft Guild along with the Greek Kyklos dancers invited Joan Petrakis to Edmonton to teach an emboidery class.  A number of members of the ENG took this class...but not me.  Why was that?  Well I was likely up to my eyeballs in little kids and with husband working out of town most of the time there was little time for fitting in a weekend class and no one to babysit small people.

I have been enjoying the company of a group of friends from the ENG for many years.  The Greek gal had this lovely finished piece on her table at one visit and I complained that I didn't know why I hadn't taken that class.  I loved this piece.  One of the other gals in this group came the following week and flung a package at me saying ' here you are...enjoy'.  It was the kit from the Joan Petrakis class.  Grace had added it to her UFO box and never intended to finish the piece.

Well with that in hand I really had to hop to it.  Well I must have hopped around the world a few dozen times by now.  Grace gave me this kit at least 6 years ago and I have faithfully taken it to the Wednesday stitching group to work on it over all of those years.  And I am finally finished.

Joan Petrakis taught this class in about 1983 - at least that is what the copywrite on her notes say..  By the way these are notes typed on probably an IBM Selectric typewriter with hand drawn illustrations.  Anyone remember that.  This was done long before the iPad and iPod and Adobe Illustrator and Embroidery design software and likely long before any of you even owned a computer.  I have to tell you that my family did own a computer in 1983.  It was a 'portable' weighing in at about 20 pounds (remember those) with a screen about 5 X 5 inches (remember those).

We've come a long way baby!  Here are photos of the embroidery and of Joan's notes for this class.
Enjoy a wee bit of nostalgia...and No Grace I am not giving you this embroidery back.  You can come to my home any time to enjoy it here.  Thanks a mil for your generosity!

Design From Western Macedonia, Greece

Joan Petrakis

1983

Stitched by Jackie Van Fossen

Completed in 2013

Monoprinting With GOLDEN OPEN Acrylics featuring Patti Brady

This video shows a great method of 'print making' with Golden Open acrylics.  I have been doing some print making this summer with my own carved lino cuts as well as gelli plates.  You will be seeing those over the next few posts...in the meantime you can purchase Golden Open acrylics and try this.  (From the Cloth Paper Scissors magazine daily blog post 2.9.2013).  Have a look at these acrylics at

www.goldenpaints.com/highflow

MORE SASKATCHEWAN - MAP JOURNEYS

I have postponed posting more photos of the Saskatchewan Conference for no particular reason except that life at times gets in the way.  But here they are now.

BACKGROUNDS FOR THE MAPPING JOURNEYS PROJECTS

My students were disappointed to miss out on the Sunprinting with Setacolor class last year so since we were a small group I incorporated a few of the techniques from that class into this one for backgrounds.  Using Setacolor fabric paints and laying interesting shapes onto the fabric, they were 'printed' in the sun.  This is a unique aspect of Setacolor transparent fabric paints.  Try it out.  You only need a sunny day and of course the Setacolor Transparent paints.  Leave the fabric quite wet.  Lay out the paint on fabric.  Lay some interesting shapes of stencils or leaves or other items of this sort and let the fabric dry in the sunlight.
Try 'scrunching' up the fabric, or adding salt, or laying your fabric over an interesting texture such as wire or manhole cover or possibly uneven gravel surface.  Students in past years tried these techniques and came up with fabulous backgrounds.

WORKS IN PROGRESS

 

SWISS MOUNTAIN VALLEY

 

Donna was barely home from a fabulous vacation to Switzerland and this was her inspiration.

I am waiting for photos of the finished piece.

 

A WALK THROUGH THE FAIRY GARDEN

 

Valinda really had the juices flowing in her imagination.  Fairy imagery is high on her priority in her work and this is what she chose as her 'mapping journey'.

 

In the class we discussed many different imageries for maps and mapping projects.  Jill Berry's book 'Personal Geographies' was the inspiration for this class.  There are many ideas and ways to interpret 'mapping' in your work and these two were amazing to me..

As usual my students came up with ideas that I would not have thought about...they are always an inspiration to me and I learn something new from every class I teach.

INSPIRATION

 

For new work for me.  This is an aerial photo of Citeus Britannieus in northern Portugal.  I visited this ancient Celtic site on a vacation some years ago.  The mystery still lies close with me.  The shapes and lines - the map of this ancient town where lives were lived on a daily basis more than one thousand years ago - are inspiring for me.  Production of this work will be a series of cloth and paper works.  More on that as the story unfolds.
So for inspiration look to your own experiences and travels for ideas and inspiration.

Summer is in full force here in Edmonton.  My garden is quite lovely right now.  Festivals abound in our fabulous city and I with husband have been on the move a bit enjoying the Alberta summer.

DID YOU KNOW...India Flint has written a really interesting book about natural dyes...ECO COLOUR, Botanical Dyes for Beautiful Textiles.  The photos in this book on their own are fabulous.  Borrow it from your local library and enjoy.  It's summer.  Try out a few of these projects.

Well on to the long weekend and the Heritage Festival.  Another Edmonton summer festival providing inspiration for textile and paper work!