Spring is in the air!

The smell of spring is in the air! Yes, I can finally smell it. It seemed like winter in the northeast this year would never end (Yes, I am believing that it is finally over!). With spring approaching my desire to begin a nature journal has blossomed. I love to study nature and journal and I want to bring these two hobbies together.

As much as I would love to draw sketches in my journal, I am not very good at drawing. (I have determined that I will be taking a drawing and a watercolor painting class in the near future.) In the meantime, I am considering incorporating altered art into my nature journal. Have any of you done this? If so, I would LOVE to see some examples.

Beeswax - Oh My!

Recently, I had the opportunity to work with beeswax. (I attended the second day of Cyndi's Mes Amis d'Art: Wine, Women and Song event in which Cyndi taught us how to use this product.)

I'm always excited by the prospect of working with something new and adding it to my artwork; working with beeswax was invigorating. This is a product that was so simple to use, but one which created an amazing effect.

What I found to be the most challenging aspect of this product was being careful not to apply too much of it onto one section. I found that if I did, it created a layer that was too thick, which then made the artwork underneath difficult to see.

If you've never played with this product before, I encourage you to do so as soon as you can. I guarantee that you will greatly enjoy it!

CHA

I think I am finally settling back to my old routine after having come home from Florida's CHA. As always, it was a fun event. I ALWAYS enjoy meeting new people, and this year there were a lot of new faces...new to me anyway.

ProvoCraft hosted a wonderful gala to introduce their new product which everyone there was greatly (and I mean GREATLY) excited about. (Become a fan of Altered Arts' Facebook page to learn more about it.)

Cyndi, as always, was very open and willing to share her knowledge with those around her, specifically about Facebook. (Facebook and Twitter were hot topics this year.)

We saw some fun, new products. (Again, photos of these can be found on our Facebook page.)

I was very happy to have finally been able to meet in person our talented artist Kathleen Green. We had a lot of fun together! I even brought home a new art piece from her.

I look forward to the next CHA and hope to meet even more of our designers at some of these events in the future.

Note: Photo - Cyndi Duncan, Clara Stacko and Kathleen Green

Altered Art Has Come a Long Way

I still remember the very first time I saw an altered book. It was many years ago at a scrapbook convention. It was love at first sight. Altered art has changed a lot since then. It has expanded from altered books, to designing altered dolls, altered cards, altered boxes, etc. Wait until you see the project appearing in the summer issue of Altered Arts magazine. You won't believe what one artist altered!

How have you expanded or changed as far as creating altered art?

Happy New Year and Confession

First of all, let me wish you all a new year full of good health, love, and happiness.

If you read my challenge of September below, I was supposed to have been one of the participants in my challenge. I thought it was one of the best challenges I have ever come up with. I couldn't wait to get started, and started I did.

Now for my confession. When I was a young child, my mother bought me some science books that incorporated Disney characters throughout the book. I would open these books, grab my pencil, color pencils and papers, and draw the characters. I would get lost for hours doing this. That was the memory that came to my mind when I came up with this challenge.

Alright, so what happened? Well, I decided that I would do this again. I grabbed my toddler's favorite book and started sketching. I drew the characters but was stumped on what to do about the background; then... I saw our designer, Kathleen's, artwork. (Click on her name to the right to see what she came up with for this challenge.) Oh my goodness! I was awed by her artistic abilities. It was at this point that I froze. I looked at my drawing and just couldn't get past the background. I knew I had to complete it, so I just grabbed a bunch of watercolor pencils and started "coloring." I ended up with a mess. At this point, I was left with no other option but to start over. However, the holidays came, mixed in with some extra work, and the project was forgotten.

I have to say that I am disappointed with myself for having compared my abilities with someone else's and letting it shake my confidence in my artistic skills. However, I am pretty sure that I am not the only one who has experienced this at one time or another.

What am I hoping you'll learn from my confession? Something which I knew all along, but for one instant forgot; we should never compare our artwork to others', but instead see the beauty in all. We all have our own artistic talents and styles and that's what makes altered art such a fun form of art.

Will I follow through on my challenge; how could I not? Sometime in the near future, I will complete my artwork and share it with the world. :-)

Note: Kathleen, in the end, you helped to inspire me. :-)

Drawing With Children (and adults too!)

When I was a little girl, one of my most favorite pastimes was drawing. I LOVED art! It was one of my most favorite subjects in school. When I had my son and knew I would be homeschooling him, I was very excited about the prospect of instilling a love for art in him. Although my son does enjoy looking at artwork, unfortunately, he does not share my love for creating artwork.

In the latest issue of Altered Arts, Jeni Calkins wrote an article entitled, Teaching Mixed Media & Altered Art to Children. This brought back to light my desire to teach my son how fun creating art is and how it's one subject he doesn't have to worry about getting any wrong "answers" (since we all know that there is no "wrong" in art - it's all in the "eyes of the beholder").

I found a book entitled, Drawing with Children, by Mona Brookes. I haven't read the whole book yet, but in skimming through the pages it talks about how anyone, children and adults alike, can draw, you just have to know the five basic elements that can create shape. The examples in the book of artwork drawn by children as young as two are amazing!

When we create altered art we tend to use the artwork of others, whether it be rubber stamps, paper, etc., but why not do this instead? (Okay, can you tell a challenge is coming up?) Create a piece of artwork that only entails artwork created by your own hands. Let the words be in your writing; let the art be drawn by you; only use embellishments made by your own hands.

To help spark your creativity, I'm putting this challenge up to our design team members and asking them to post their artwork on their Altered Arts blogs. Let's see how creative we can all be. Oh, and Cyndi, let's see what you can create too! What about me??? Well, I suppose it would only be fair to have me do the same.

Deadline: November 3. (I work better with deadlines.) :-)

Let's create!

-Clara

The Packages Are In! Design Team Search

It's that time again - our new Design Team Search. This is always something worth looking forward to - to see the creativity of various artists. Although I have received packages, I have not opened one yet. In order to be surprised, I want to wait until the actual day of judging.