She's Baaaack!

Yep.
My muse is back and I'm feeling myself again.

It all started with art group. I'd fallen WAY behind on the round-robin projects so I had three of them to work on.  And the inspiration really kicked in while working on the top of Lynda's altered box.  She wanted words and sayings on her box so I wrote some of my favorite sayings all over the top.

About the same time, my daughter Dani asked me to make one of my Cut-Ups! for her (oh!  I just realized I hadn't told y'all about these other than the initial idea in a December post  - I'll tell you more later but in the meantime you can see them on my Facebook page) in the very color I was using on Lynda's box!  And when your daughter asks for something in a different color, well, you do it.  And I have to admit this little guy is adorable!

I was having so much fun that I pulled out a pink heart piece I've been working on for months.  Since I showed you the rough draft (in the same post mentioned above), I had scraped off all the natural wax and the speckled paper.  And then it just sat there.  From time to time when I had a minute to walk into the studio, I pulled it out and stared.  But mainly it just sat there.

Then last week I had an idea.  I wrote out some thoughts on tissue paper.  I stamped some scrollwork.  I pulled out the Pan Pastels and the "white" wax.  And of course, I torched and scraped and, voila! ALMOST OVER YOU is finished. 

AND I'm happy with it!!  Without the natural wax, the pinks are much more vibrantly pink!! And the three or four more layers added a lot of depth.  I was reminded however that fusing each new layer gives you yet another opportunity to mess up the earlier layers.  Which made me invent a new way of warming the piece/
Unfortunately, when my muse came back she brought along another source of inspiration.  Just not ART inspiration.  The kind of inspiration that says "you should do this" and "you should do that" about all sorts of little projects you really don't need.

No I'm not talking about cleaning - I killed off that little you-know-what years ago.
I'm talking about things like "you should move your computer out of the studio" or "you should make such-n-such for Christmas gifts" or "you'd use that supply more if you could see it".

You know.  The LITTLE ideas that become HUMONGOUS projects.

And I suckered to the first one. I realized that the internet was just too distracting whenever I hit an art block and that art was always too distracting whenever I was supposed to be doing accounting so I moved the computer & officey stuff to a guest room.  It's sooooo nice in here - I can even sit on the bed and watch YouTube art videos HUGE becuz I'm using a TV for my monitor!

And the best part? All my great shoes are on display.

  

The bad news is that this is what my studio looks like.

 

That's the problems with this little instigator ~ she doesn't always tell you about the consequences!

I'm also working on a 24x48 collage and trying to remember to take photos after every step.  It's surprising how much that slows things down!  But I want you to see a piece start to finish.  If I can, I'll try to give you my thought process as well.

Phew!
Think I tried to make up for my extended absence all in one big post.
It's good to be back.

Now to go work on that messy studio for a little while ;-p

What was I thinking?

I'm not sure what I was thinking when I decided to start another blog and start teaching beeswax workshops. I was constantly behind before that! And now that the extended tax deadline is a month away, I find myself unable to breathe!!! 

Apparently my life motto is
"to catch up on one thing you have to be willing to fall behind on another"

But no matter what I was thinking, I have discovered that I absolutely LOVE teaching.

I need to find somewhere to teach in Tulsa and Dallas becuz I can NOT get enough of it.  I love the interaction with other creative types as well as all the things I get to learn from them.  But mostly I love seeing someone's eyes light up as they discover that they're ARTISTS not "just" crafters, stampers, scrapbookers ("just" being an adjective they use about themselves).

Eventually, when I'm caught up, I'll have a workshop page on my website.  In the meantime, if you're interested in learning more about the classes, click here.

Well, writing this has caused me to fall behind on something else so I better get going. LOL

Repose

Some of you might remember that in a post titled Risqué or Okay? I stressed about posting art online that contained nudity - not a problem with nudity in art but with putting it online.  And how I got over it when I posted the piece Fire a few months ago. 

Also in that first post I had some close-up shots of a piece that I was calling Oklhoma Hills at the time.  I was never quite satisfied with that piece so it moved out of sight for awhile.  When I pulled it out again, I realized the hills/sky were just too juvenile and the body was underemphasized so I scraped and collaged and colored and beeswaxed, and here we are.

She is not nearly as subtle as Fire, is she?  I'd love to know your thoughts.

Repose is available on my website.

More beeswax workshops coming in September

I've added two classes to the schedule at My Heart's Fancy in September:
 
the first on 9/10 is a repeat of
  EXPERIMENTS IN BEESWAX COLLAGE
 
the second on 9/24 is a follow-up to the first
  MORE FUN WITH BEESWAX
  (if you'll click on the titles, you'll go to actual event pages).

class samples for More Fun with Beeswax workshop

made by Maura W. in Experiments in Beeswax Collage workshop

You can click here to check out some reviews.

Unfortunately, the retreat I was going to teach at in Texas has been cancelled due to health issues with one of the other teachers.  So, if you know of a place in DFW that would like to host a few workshops, please let me know.  I would love to go back to my old stomping grounds to meet up with friends, shop and share the wonders of Beeswax.

Blue Heart

I love the colors in this piece but I'm struggling with naming it - it's a blue heart but it's not sad in any way.  It's really very calming and maybe even cheerful.

I started with three different blue CitraSolv papers that were torn and adhered to  clayboard(the center one had been painted).  Next came some sanding, stamping and coloring.  Yes, coloring.  With metallic crayons.  Then I took the heat gun to everything ~ it's fun to watch the crayon melt, it looks a little like embossing powder.  (Oh!  Embossing powder ~ I wonder how that would work under beeswax.  I see experiments in my near future!)

The next step was an image transfer.  I used gel medium to adhere a striped heart ~ my goal was to have a very subtle image so at least half of the image was white.  After it dried and I rubbed & rubbed & rubbed, all of the paper backing still didn't come off. 

However, since I worked on this partly while I worked on the journal page I posted the other day, I knew that Twinkling H2Os would cover that up.  I used a purply-pink and pearl in the heart as well as kiwi green outside.  The watercolor didn't stick quite as well to the CitraSolv paper ~ I'm not sure if that's due to the CitraSolv or just cuz they're glossy magazine pages.

Next came a NEW beeswax!  The local stamp store where I've been holding workshops, My Heart's Fancy, got in some pebbles of clear beeswax so I decided to try it on here.  Since it's been a gazillion degrees outside, I didn't want to heat up the electric skillet so I just melted the wax with my iron directly onto the board.  The wax seems to be much thinner than usual but that could be because it's perfectly clear - no yellowish tint.

And I ended it all with the addition of color. I absolutely LOVE adding more color at the end.  I think it might be one of my favorite parts because I have only limited control.

ps ~ even after writing this and running errands, I haven't come up with a name for this blue heart ~ I'm open to suggestions ~ hint, hint.

More CitrSolv Experiments

Everything I've ever read about CitraSolv and art said you could only use National Geographics.  Since I don't believe everything I read, I tried a few others and got absolutely nothing (well, a color ad in the newspaper gave me a wierd floating text thing but it mainly looked dirty) so I played with National Geographics and made some lovely papers.  You can read about it in this post.

Then I saw this video

on the ARTWAX blog and decided it might be my technique, not the magazine itself, that caused it not to work.

You see, with National Geographics I used the spray-n-squish technique and the lovely inks moved on their own.  But with these fashion magazines, AJ first moved the CitraSolv, and therefore the ink, around with a brush. So I sorta gave it a try - except I used cotton balls cuz I didn't want to set up to do a lot of these. Here are the results with a black & white ad, sepia-toned ad and a color ad all from Vogue.

I think I need to do it exactly like she shows in the video - brush & cling wrap - since these still leave something to be desired.  However, I noticed that the back of the ad above looks like when you use NevrDull over a texture.  Hmmmm.  More experiments to try.

Then I tried the photo transfer technique I'd read about so much. Again the experts aren't always right - they say only photocopies not inkjet or laser prints but I did these two with my Brother laser printer.

(I love,love,love this Conde Nast ad - I have to find another one and try again).

Again, the problem with the first was my technique - too much rubbing with too much CitraSolv causing the inks to smear. The second with just pressure looks pretty good.

And now for the beeswax & encaustic part of this post.  Yes, all the CitraSolv papers work great in collage, with or without either type of wax.  But that's not the experiment I want to tell you about.

You see, I work on a glass desk and just scrape it down with a razor blade when it gets too messy.  Lately the wax build-up has really been clogging up my blade-holder-thingie.  So I poured a little CitraSolv on my desk and let it soak a few minutes.  And Voila! the wax came up so easily - as did the paint and glue.

Who knew?  You can actually use this stuff for it's original purpose - to clean!!  But don't tell Patrick I know that cuz then he might want me to try it in the rest of the house.  hehe

Turning Time

 

I'm sure by now y'all know how much I love beeswax collage - the texture, the subtle color, the scent.  I like it so much that sometimes I look at pieces I did earlier and think I should add some beeswax!  Sometimes I use beeswax as a final layer, sometimes all the layers are adhered using beeswax (which is what I teach in my workshop).  Glues work differently with various papers than the wax so each medium produces a different effect.  

This particular piece, TURNING TIME, was a mixture of regular collage and then beeswax collage.  I used several papers, glass bead gel medium, mica powders, colored pencil and some stamping.  Unfortunately, this photo doesn't really show the way the glass beads and mica powders glisten.  I'm very pleased with how it turned out and submitted it and SEEKER to the Small Works Art Show that starts this Friday.  This show is put on by the Oklahoma Art Guild so stop by to see a variety of works from local artists.

Guinea Pigs

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I'm going to be teaching some beeswax workshops. Since I haven't done this in any sort of official capacity, I invited the members of two local art groups to be my guinea pigs in a rehearsal class last night - I guess you could say that we experimented with Experiments in Beeswax Collage.


Lisa B, Katie, Kelley, Lisa W & Glynis with their class projects

I had a blast!!!  I've always said that being around other artsy-fartsy people is one of my favorite things to do - it feeds my creativity and energizes me.   And last night was no exception.  We tested how the wax works over & with various "stuff".  We played with texture and color.  Everyone came home with some tags & a canvas (or 3 in Katie's case!).  And while we all experimented, I learned some new things in that serendipitous way ideas are formed, exchanged & tested when a group gets together. 

But shhhhhh!  don't tell anyone that I'm learning too - I'm supposed to be the teacher.  hehe

After class my friend Lisa B. suggested a name for the piece I did last week and I loved it

- so here he is again -

SEEKER

And I have more exciting news!

I've been invited to teach at a retreat in Salado Texas next October!!

I'll let you know the details as soon as they're available.

Now I'm off to use some of the creative energy I soaked in last night ~ Sherry

Experiments in Beeswax Collage - NEW DATE

I'm holding my first workshop,

EXPERIMENTS IN BEESWAX COLLAGE

at My Heart's Fancy

the June 26th class is sold out
so now we've set up another class

July 17th 2-5

follow the link for more info
or contact me thru comments

Lonely Cages

Lonely the empty cage.

Happy the free bird.

(poem also by Sherry Ball Schoenfeldt)

This is the last of several projects I dabbled at off-n-on during tax season.  In early February I started several pieces at the same time that I did tons of journal backgrounds (you can see all the beginnings in Great Weekend - this piece is sideways on the right in pics 2 & 3)

I started this by gluing a pretty monochromatic floral paper to canvas.  Then, for ten minutes here and 15 minutes there, I would spray and glue on all of the projects at once until one by one they said "I'm done!"  Surprisingly, I never glued anything else to this canvas!  It's just layer upon layer of color - I wish the scans could show the depth. The second to last layer was a gel transfer that unfortunately removed some of the previous layers in a few spots.  I'd planned to use beeswax as a final layer so I added some metallic crayon to cover up the bright white areas.

In addition to the last piece to be posted, this was the last one to be completed - I just kept thinking it needed more.  Then as I stared at it the day before Easter, the little poem popped into my head and it felt complete.  (I waited to post it until today because it was a project for my art group that I didn't give away til last nite.)

I feel so free when I'm creating - even if it's for just a little while here and there.  So here's to more lonely cages and happy birds ~ Sherry

journal experiment

I was just a doing a little scribbling and doodling on a pre-painted journal page when I decided to melt some beeswax onto the page just becuz it was there on the desk.  After adding crayon, I wrote a little bit with a Sharpie Paint Pen.

But you could read that and the page was a little sticky so I took a scrap of white hand-made paper and lightly fused it to the page, resulting in a lovely, ethereal quality.

I just love experimenting in beeswax!! I'm really looking forward to teaching a class in it too. I can't imagine anyone walking away from it NOT hooked to the medium! If for no other reason than the way it smells.

he needs a name (since named SEEKER)

beeswax, scrapbook paper, CitraSolv paper, pattern tissue, crayon, pastel

Finally found the time, energy, inspiration and materials to do some art.  Spent Monday digging in the garage for my CitraSolv papers only to discover them in the paper slot marked, wait for it, CitraSolv Papers.  Yikes!  I was just too organized for myself!!!

I found two papers late Monday that I thought looked good together so I decided to use them together as I worked thru ideas for an upcoming beeswax workshop I'll be teaching at My Heart's Fancy in OKC later next month (I'll let you know the date when it's decided - test run is 5/25).  When I started playing with the papers  yesterday morning I discovered the ghostly, melty face of a man in the CitraSolv paper and decided to play up the eye with a bit more color and the melty effect with dripping beeswax.  Usually I do so many more layers than this but he just seems finished.

Except for the title.

In my last post I talked about having a title for a piece only to have the piece tell you later what its real name is.  I have nothing for this one.  Anyone have any suggestions?

Distant Bridges

Here's another one of my tax season art pieces. 
It began with a lovely water scene - see it next to the lips?

Next came some pattern tissue with a dart.

I dabbled at this 10 or 15 minutes at a time,

sometimes before work, sometimes late at night.

Actually, it became a tester board for another piece I was working on.

The problem with that is that lots of the stuff I tested didn't work!

So I'd layer on some gesso and test something new.

Then, near the end of March I wrote a journal page and blog post about a vision I had about how I wanted my life to be.  At the end I said I might write that on an art piece.  Well, I did.  I wrote it on here with charcoal pencil and immediately hated the way it looked.

So of course, I couldn't remove it which meant more gesso and spray colors and some modeling paste.  Then somewhere along the line, the image was turned upside down (I think with the writing) making it look more like a bridge than the dock it originally was.  And it all took on a yellow-green cast.  Here it is right before the final layer of beeswax and encaustic.

It's very similar to the final product but the beeswax added so much more dimension and texture.  And the encaustic helped balance the color at the bottom.

I have really been getting into beeswax more and more lately - I think every piece I've finished has had a topcoat of it.  Not only do I love the texture and dimensin it adds visually, I love the soft smooth feel of it.  I really like the look when I mix in colors from crayons or encaustics.

Speaking of encaustics, I'm taking an Encaustic Painting Workshop in June.  I'm so excited.  So far all I've done with encaustics is add color to collages - in this class I'll learn to use it as the primary medium in a piece.  I can't imagine using only one medium in a piece - let alone for always - but I cannot wait to have an expert teach me how to handle the wax.  Everyone I know who works with it can't get enough of it. I'm very excited about learning about it and about meeting other artists here.

Thanks for letting me share ~ Sherry

Beeswax & Encaustic Play Date

Today two of my friends came over so we could play with beeswax and encaustic. Lisa Bruno runs the stamp section at My Heart's Fancy and Roz Grage is a stamper and my BFF (yes, I'm in the 4th grade!!).

I usually collage the old-fashioned way, with lots of glue or gel medium, then add a layer of beeswax, sometimes with color, sometimes not.

This time NO GLUE.  Yikes!

We all started with a base coat of paint so we could dispel that blank-canvas-syndrome.  We followed this with some modeling paste applied thru stencils.

Then we ate lunch while the modeling paste dried.  I love this time of year with all the delicious fruit so lunch included a great fruit salad mainly made up of berries.  Lisa brought chocolate bundt cake with chocolate chips.  mmmmmmmmm.  (Later we discovered how delicious and how much more healthy it was to eat the cake with a pile of berries on top!!)

After lunch we applied a layer of beeswax with chip brushes and melted them in (and off in some cases) using our heat guns.

Next we added some sheer papers melted in with our irons.

Then the fun (and scary) part:  using only our irons, we added color with encaustics and crayons.

We had soooooooooo much fun.  Not much is better than friends talking, eating and making art together.

Here are the final products.
What do you think of our little experiments?
What do you suggest for names?

Thanks ~ Sherry

linked to the week 22 challenge at LOTS TO DO

Courage to Create

CREATIVITY TAKES COURAGE ~ Matisse

So with a little courage I'm declaring this "done" and showing it to you.

Though, quite frankly, I'm really still not sure it IS done. I just struggle with making art that has no images drawn or glued on. For some reason, in my head it's still just a background. Because this is how I do most of my backgrounds: layer, layer, layer.

I started out with a book page and two images from a fashion magazine altered with acetone. Then paints, tissues, modeling paste - not necessarily in that order.

Ink, more paint, more texture, the quote written in sharpie, a copper charm I made but never used. Oh. And apparently very different lighting!!!

Charcoal around the edges, a little more paint, a thin layer of beeswax and still different lighting.

Green crayon and gold encaustic.

What do you think? Is it really done?
Do you always include images in your work?
Thanks for the help ~ Sherry

linked to the week 24 challenge at Lots To Do and
the color green challenge at Thursday Challenge

Another OOPS!!

I found a beautiful image at The Sum of All Crafts (always very cool photos there) and, as I mentioned in my rambling post yesterday, decided I was going to try transfering it to beeswax.

Well, it didn't work (guess I could go pull out some of my art books and verify the instructions) but I ended up with this beautiful image. This is the back-side of the paper; after melting the wax, the picture printed on the other side came thru.

When I saw this beautiful, ethereal image I decided to do an art journal page, the first in a long time, about how in art and in life our mistakes lead to interesting discoveries, happiness and great achievements.

Using photographers' black-out tape and tiny staples, I attached her to the page. Then I painted around her with some metallic acrylic paint I was using in another project, added dots and words with Sharpies Poster Pens (they write on wax easily - actually they write on just about anything) and applied a little PanPastel to the edges. Finished off by writing OOPS! at the top with some of that glitter fabric paint that comes in a tiny squeeze bottle.

Here's to us all having great results whether they're the results we expect or not.
In our art.
In our lives.

linked to the beeswax challenge at LOTS TO DO

Hope

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune--without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I've heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

~ Emily Dickinson

I apparently can only come up with one word names for my art these days:

Hope, Rest, Peace.

I have another work in process that I almost named CREATE but decided to give it a longer name in order to break the habit. I'll show you that one in a few days.

Anyway, back to this piece, HOPE. Before I show you some of the various steps, I have to say I like this piece now - but at least twice in the process I messed something up and had to change direction entirely.

So, do you remember the boards I made in my Obscured Text Background How-To? Well this piece started with the music covered board in the upper left:


Then I added a CitraSolv page, gold paint and some lavender hand-made paper:


Next, some more paint:


Then I tried a photo transfer and it didn't work (at this point, I decided NOT to turn it in to the CitraSolv contest becuz I wouldn't finish in time & when I did, it wouldn't show any of the CitraSolv page):


More paint. Then I tried another image transfer - the bird and it worked. Next I added some spray paint (I did NOT get the look I was going for, probably becuz I'm too used to using spray paint on furniture, going for solid coverage):


I used colored pencil on the bird, added pattern tissue and wrote the first verse of the poem in pencil:


Then beeswax, pearl ex and melted crayon and here it is again completed:


It is so great to be creating again. Thank you for continuing to visit even tho I wasn't around much. I love blogland ~ Sherry

linked to the week 23 challenge at Lots To Do,
challenge #94 at Everybody Art-Challenge and
the June challenge at Alter It Monthly