Blog

What a busy day...

little house cleaning, dropped off art for SPSCC Post Card Exhibit, checked my cards at Traditions and threw some paint on the exterior repairs from the dry rot removal!

reworked a couple of these mini collages for the 3rd Annual Post Card Exhibit @ SPSCC...
Then I thought I should seal them with a matt acrylic varnish and it changed them a wee bit so I tweaked them a little more.

forgot to photograph them before I put them in the sleeves

3rd Annual Fine Art Post Card Exhibit Theme: It's the Water Date: January 13 to February 21, 2014

Location: South Puget Sound Community College, The Art Gallery

I also signed up for this celebration - I do have a class scheduled for that day but I think I can get a friend to "table" sit for me that Saturday if the class runs.

Oshogatsu-Japanese New Year Celebration in Olympia 2104

Event Date: January 18th 2014 Sat.

Location: The Olympia Center in downtown Olympia

Time: 10am-4pm

My art arrived safely for this annual exhibit:

11th Annual Family Art Show Dates: Friday December 7th - Sunday December 8th, 2013

Each year Enso Center hosts an art show highlighting the work of our local Northwest Artists! A reception for all artists and their family and friends will be held Friday, December 7th from 7:00-9:30 pm.

Enso Center for International Arts,

8708 196th Ave NE Redmond, WA 98053 www.ensocenter.org

Gingerbread is made for gingerbread house making tomorrow... fridge is full of lots of veggies from Farmer's Market... Organic jello salad in made, time to roast the chesnuts and call it a day!

Happy Thanksgiving and Hanuakkah or other harvest celebrations...

e

I've been painting Sumi-e images for blank note cards - whimsical Fall subjects and holiday images too. Most have been posted on my Zazzle Nine Lives Studio [ http://www.zazzle.com/Nine_Lives_Studio* ] and on my Christmas Studio shop [http://www.zazzle.com/christmas_studio* ] as well as into my Fine Art America [http://ellen-miffitt.artistwebsites.com ] Sumi-e whimsical and Whimsical Holiday Cats galleries.

I will be shipping these cards to Shoreline Gallery and Bainbridge Arts & Crafts and dropping them off at Traditions in Olympia WA on Tuesday in time for holiday sales. Remember to buy local if possible and support the arts.

I have six different variations of this kitten playing with red Maple leaves.

What would spring, summer and fall in the Pacific Northwest be without slugs! Giant Black Slugs...

The squirrels use my fence as a highway... not sure why my cat, Lone Star, doesn't bother them. The Corgi, Sergeant Pepper, gets all riled up as they scamper on the fence.

Acorns are very bitter... I prefer a nice Blueberry Pie.

So that's just a few of the fifty new images that I've created lately and adhered to card stock..

Keeping Arting!

e

Today's Holiday card workshop at the Panorama Retirement Community was held in their remodeled art room. Wow, what a gorgeous room - the lighting is top notch, white walls, light colored floor to help reflect light. I was so busy for 3 hours helping people that I didn't think to take photos of the room and only a few quick snaps of cards folks were making. I was happy that the four who originally signed up turned into 8 participants.

I actually stenciled the stars for this participant. She didn't want her clothes spattered - trust me, I wore a very old shirt and apologized for it but I had no fear to ruin something nice when spattering. Yes, I could wear an apron but...

I found some holiday collage paper at Joann's and it was on Sale too. So everyone had a great paper selection to work with...

I also brought my stencils with holiday themes. A gentle tap-tap places the color in the blank spaces on the stencil.

Someone brought in allot of dried leaves. We used Elmer's Glue to coat both sides - usually I prefer to us an acrylic gel [mat or gloss] to coat an item like a leaf.

the leaves are still drying and for now look colorful... they may fade over time. A uv clear acrylic medium would be better to seal after adhering with a gel.

One of the participant brought in beautiful rubber stamps and stencils to share. [pardon the messy photo.]

After coming to the Lacey TRL workshop, this resident of Panorama made sketches of what she wanted to accomplish in today's workshop. The mini mittens are held on with brads which also hold the ribbon down. She finished this by adhering the gold ribbon.

So now tomorrow I get to play. When I teach I get so many ideas...

Tuesday I'll ship cards to Shoreline Gallery and Bainbridge Arts & Crafts as well as bring some down to Traditions in Olympia.

Keep arting...

e

A good time was had by all at the Lacey Timberland Library where I presented a Holiday Card Workshop on Monday.
I made a few samples to inspire the participants. There were about twenty five people who came for the workshop. The pieces below are spatter paint designs. I cut out the stencils for them to use.

notice how I messed up the star - a big blob of paint fell on it from the spatter brush as I was in a hurry to make the samples. I think I can still save it by cutting out a star out of some other paper and gluing it in place.
The "dove" below is cut out of card stock. Then I used a scribe to punch a pattern in the body/wings. The tree is made from ribbon cut into strips.

Here is a participant's project... luckily I remembered the camera and ran around to snap a few pictures of their pieces at the end of the workshop.

note use of pattern scissors

This person had lots of cat stickers and cut outs for her cards...



In the card design below - The background was too plain a green so a bit of dark green acrylic paint was spattered onto it to add a little texture. note the "Christmas tree lights " that were cut from a holiday scrapbook sheet of paper. When they were attached, they stuck up slightly from the background.

spatter onto the green paper

The "joy" was traced/cut out from a patterned paper, adhered and then spatter painted. The scribe is used to punch holes into the paper to use mini brads to hold the trim onto the page. NOTE: the old mouse pad and self healing mat beneath the card stock so no table was injured during this process.



Collage resembles a scavenger hunt to find the right colors of paper, ribbon, embellishments...

I love how people can start out with the same basic materials and end up with such novel results...

The card below has a great story... The woman saw just the right paper to make a birthday card for her friend. She was a little embarrassed but I thought it was marvelous that she was inspired by the materials to create a 4th of July birthday card.

paper punched stars, bits of silver ribbon with a starry background paper

This was good preparation as I am presenting this workshop at Panorama Retirement Community in Lacey on Saturday. All my materials are still packed and ready to load into the car. 

Keep arting folks,

e

Bit of a disappointment today at the POSSCA Holiday Sale - Of course there was that wicked storm with horizontal rain because of the high winds. Several times I peered out the gymnasium doors to watch the sideways pour pushed by those wind gusts. The power did shut off for a few minutes but came back on. The exhibit is usually at the Armory in downtown Olympia but theycancelled last minute . The organizers had to scramble to find a different venue. Most likely due to the storm and the change in venue, the attendance seemed to have suffered. I unfortunately didn't even sell a card.

Here's my set up:

Recently I bought two bi-fold louver doors from Second Use in Seattle and bungee corded them to the small table to stabilize them. Large paper clips were used to hang the minis.

I couldn't find the foam core tilt display that I made last year so unfortunately the jewelry doesn't show up against the autumn colored fabric. I will try to do something different to display it tomorrow. We are really crammed into the small elementary gym - the armory is so much bigger which has it's disadvantages as far as being chilly.[ I did block out the background in the photo].

When I came home I found out that I sold 30 cards from my Zazzle Christmas Studio. So there's my "booth fee" for the live exhibit! It was only $5.00 - thankful for that. Tomorrow the sale runs from noon to 4pm. Hopefully the storm will be long gone and attendance will improve!

I did make good use of my time: I sketched several pages of ideas for block prints and wrote a 4 page story. Wish I had something to type it on instead of handwriting - I think tomorrow, I'll borrow my son's iPad! I also chit chatted up a storm with allot of fellow artists. It's a great time to share ideas and see what everyone has been creating.

The mystery and risk of signing on for festivals/fairs/holiday shows... no matter, many of my fellow artists say they won't stop creating despite few or no sales. I agree that it would be more harmful to my soul to give up and stop producing art.

So keep arting folks - help your soul sing!
e

Annual Miniatures Show:

I have one mini collage [Green Leaf Mandala] accepted into the "Annual Miniatures Show" at the Cannon Beach Gallery in OR. The show will open as a part of Stormy Weather Arts Festival on Friday, November 1 and will run through Monday, December 2, 2013. The Artists' Reception is Saturday, November 2 between 5pm-7pm.

Visons of Verse:

Last "Zen Ink" class was last night... forgot the camera... I had more mandala templates. Just amazing how each person makes such a unique design starting with the same basic outline/form.
Here is my "Flower Garden Patchwork"

(C)10/29/2013 NLS
I started it the week before and finished it last night.

On Monday I volunteered at the STARS program and we used oil pastels to make pumpkins. Then I brushed the drawings with watered down ink.
Resists are fun.

coloring the traced pumpkin patterns I made for them.



and after adding the ink...


I'm putting off using the vacuum... let alone getting ready for the art sale this weekend.
e

Free Form Acrylics class happened today: Saturday October 26th 9:30am to 2am Here is the class description: This is not your formal painting class… come and experiment with acrylic paints. You’ll learn to use various acrylic extenders and gels to create flowing, dripping, separating and other unusual methods of applying paint to substrate.

We used Flow aide instead of water to thin standard acrylics, heavy modeling past, gloss gel and natural sand texturing gel. I also brought in samples of iridescent, interference and some other tube or jar acrylics.

Had 5 participants but I brought the camera and totally spaced on taking any pictures! I did a demo on a recycled canvass board. I wish I'd taken a photo before - wow, it was ugly. I used an awful Liqutex green to show them how to scrap with palette knife or other implements - it was a ghastly color. Once they started working on their own pieces, I would circle around and give them suggestions and go back to work on mine.

Itinerant (C)10/26/2013 Nine Lives Studio

I may adjust it a tiny bit but sometimes... sometimes its better to know when to stop!

I need a tiny nap - went to bed after midnight - was up at 7:30 and was on my feet from arrival [9am] to class was over 2:15pm....

keep arting
e

I have available for the students cardstock in earth tones. The dark brown paper works well with the white gel pen.

I started this cat design last week in class and finished it in Tuesday's class.

Starry Cat - Zen Ink (C) 10/2013

I also handed out a template of a pumpkin for the participants to work on.

I added a mouse to my design template.

My new goal is to make a commintment to one art project a day. I know that sounds like a given but often the day roars by and I've done lots of this & that but not specifically art. Since I write a poem a day I should be able to get steadier on my art producing along with my major bursts...

I've been painting lots of mini Sumi-e for cards. The POSSCA Holiday Sale is next weekend!

Find your Muse and keep arting!

e

I managed to remember to bring my camera to Bainbridge Island yesterday when I facilitated an art activity at the Wyatt House - a retirement community.

I have offered this activity at the STARS program at the Olympia Center as well as at the Madison House another retirement facility on Bainbridge Island.

It is fun to see the different designs that the participants create. I'm using bubble solution with acrylic ink added for color. Bubbles are blown onto the 140 weight watercolor paper. Lighter paper tends to get wrinkled and the bubble solution soaks through the paper.

Then I had my stencils for them to use to trace designs onto/over their bubble patterns. When I had class members do this in Zen Ink or Finger Painting on the Moon we did freehand drawing and/or created patterns when the paper was dry.

traced flower...

We all had a good time - making loads of colorful bubbles.

In the image below - the bubbles were blown onto the traced flowers. Love how the marker bleed when the bubble solution landed on it.

In progress using the sea life stencils

and finished