Artfest, day 3

On my last day of Artfest I took Michael deMeng’s class called Lonely Hearts. This was my first attempt at an assemblage ever. I wasn’t sure what I would end up with in this class. I saw a lot of the pieces that students came out with last year and they looked very “deMengy”. Nothing wrong with that, of course, but it’s definitely not my style. I ended up with a piece that I really like. It doesn’t really look like something that came from his class, but I’m happy with it. I learned a lot about his painting techniques and that you can pretty much put anything together with glue or screws. Here it is…

Front

Inside

Artfest, day 2

My class on day 2 was Porthole Pendants with Melissa Manley. She was a great teacher and I thoroughly enjoyed this class! It is completely out of my comfort zone. I’m not a big fan of fire (scary!) and we used mini blow torches to solder which is something I’ve never done before. I think it went pretty well. Especially considering that our class was large and Melissa was busy the entire time! She handled it very gracefully and I felt like I got enough assistance while still doing it all on my own.

Here is my piece from this class. I was definitely thinking of my boys when I made this! The front was really hard to photograph…

Front of the pendant - says, "True"

Back of the pendant - says, "Mama's Lovelies"

plus an extra piece that I made for a friend when I finished my first project a little early…

For a friend with her kids names on it

Artfest, day 1

This past week was Artfest, my annual art retreat. It’s turned into one of my only opportunities to make art in the last couple years. Sad, but true. This year’s retreat was a little difficult with having to leave my babies at home. It was my first time away from them for more than a couple hours. I had a great time, but was SO glad to be home on Sunday!

I’m going to break this into three different posts to highlight my 3 classes. They were all wonderful this year. I had an AWESOME line-up!

Day one was Encaustic with Trish Seggebruch. I took a class with her last year and am totally smitten with encaustic! She’s a great teacher and it’s such a fun medium. Here are my final pieces from this year:

Piece #1: "True Love"

Piece #1 close-up

Piece #2

Piece #2 close-up

Piece #3 "Brave"

Piece #3 close-up

If you love beads, don’t miss this!

The Best Bead Give-A-Way Ever!

I don’t usually enter giveaways, but this is too good to pass up! Denise Yezbak Moore is giving away a ton of beads. Oh, I hope I win!

Artfest 2010

This year was so much fun. Overwhelming – yes, but full of energy and creativity. I learned a lot. I met some fabulous people. I had really awesome roomates. It couldn’t have been much better.

I got to play with the most fun medium I have tried yet…encaustic (painting with wax). I am seriously hooked. It was SO. MUCH. FUN. I made 3 pieces during my 1 day class. The above is one of them. Here are two more. The bottom one is still a work in progress.

fatbook project

fatbook project, originally uploaded by eklektic*photos.

I finally made some progress on my fatbook pages for Artfest 2010. I’m SO relieved to be getting somewhere with this. Now, I just need to make another 52 pages just like it.

The theme this year is fairy tales…

Around here…

This is our backyard about a week ago. It’s absolutely on fire right now. I love fall. It’s definitely my most favorite time of year. And November is my favorite month of all. Thanksgiving is this month (also a favorite) and our anniversary is coming up. Can’t get much better than that!

I had a Saturday at home a couple weeks ago and finished this:

This was one I started months ago and finally got around to finishing. I pretty much hadn’t touched my art supplies since Artfest (in April). Holy cow. It felt good to get my hands messy! I had to warm up a bit for my Artfest 2010 projects. I signed myself up for a Fatbook project where I have to create 50 4″x4″ pages! Plus I’ll probably do something for trades to take with me. I’m really looking forward to it this year. Since it will be my second time going I don’t feel as anxious about it. But I definitely need to get started on those projects soon or I will be way overwhelmed!

Home again

Well, I haven’t had the energy to unload the photos on my camera or photograph the art I made last weekend, but I had a great time. There was so much to see, do and learn and people to meet. Truly overwhelming. I am planning on doing a post on my experience and will include some photos, but it will probably be a few days. I’m exhausted!

I felt pretty good the entire time. Just really tired. I’m sure my roomates would have preferred I could stay up later and enjoy a few glasses of wine, but I’m not sad about missing out. I actually had a hard time believing I was still pregnant. I don’t know if it was all the activities and distractions or what. I just didn’t feel anything. Of course, that makes me worry. However, Sunday marked 6 weeks and a wave of nausea I was very grateful for. I felt much more once I was in the comfort of home.

I missed my husband tremendously. Something about being pregnant makes me want to be near him even more. It just feels good. So, I’m very glad to be home.

What I’ve been up to…

Trying to pretend like I have no idea what cycle day it is! (Thanks for checking on me, Sarah!) I’ll probably test on Friday unless I chicken out.

During my wait I bought a typewriter! I’ve been searching for the perfect one for quite some time. I found this one on Ebay and I can’t wait until it gets here! I plan to use it for art projects. LOVE old typewriters.

Other than that, I’ve been preparing for Artfest. It’s coming up in 2 weeks. It will provide a great break/distraction if this cycle doesn’t work out! I didn’t have time to make any art for trading (that’s a big part of Artfest I’m told) so I put together some little packages of beads that people can use in their work. Dave and I went to our local bead warehouse (Shipwreck Beads) on Saturday to get my supplies. If you are into beads, that place is a must see. It’s huge! Hard to imagine that there could possibly be that many different types of beads. It makes me feel guilty for having such a great resource and not making jewelry! Obviously, we spent way more time there than planned.

Today I am heading to the chiropractor. My back has been out since Sunday and it’s worse today. Hopefully I’ll be as good as new by this afternoon.

Well, be back in a few days with news one way or the other. Wish me luck!

Share

I make things. At least I dream about making things. Usually that’s about as far as it goes. But I’ve been meaning to share a couple mixed media pieces I made for loved ones this Christmas.

This one is for a family friend that is currently going through chemo and radiation treatments and soon, surgery to remove cancer on her lung. It’s very serious and I just keep thinking about how scary that would be. How I would feel and what I would need to hear during such a difficult time. I keep coming back to one thing. Something that I struggle with on a daily basis… Hope. So, this was my gift to her. Hoping that it would comfort her just a little.

And this one I made for my Momma just because she’s cute.

Hope you all have a lovely weekend. We are off to our foster parent class tomorrow. I’ll give you a little more details on how all that is going, maybe next week.