Embossing Metal at Shake Rag Alley

It was so nice to teach a few small classes for a change, don't get me wrong, I enjoy the energy and excitement of large classes (25 students) at festival, but day after day on your feet circling the room on those carpet covered concrete convention floors can get tiring. 

At Shake Rag things were very relaxed by comparison, with eight students in the metal class and one of them was a 12 year old boy who stepped in to fill the spot of his grandmothers friend who was unable to make it. This is his work below, he did a lot more work than this, cutting up and manipulating the metal and experimenting with what it could do, but these were the pieces he wanted to show.

I enjoy having young students in class, as long as they have the attention span for a 6 hour class, because they are often more courageous with their art making and this in turn can be inspiring to the  adult students.

We use two different methods for coloring the metal; alcohol inks and art markers.

When embossed designs have a lot of dimension, it's a good idea to use a filling paste on the back to give more structural integrity to the big spaces so they don't get crushed.

I was thrilled to see so many lilacs in Wisconsin, I love them. I know they are in Chicago, but there aren't that many in my neighborhood and I will miss them when I move back to California.

Day 3 Heavy Metal Play Day

The saturday metal class was fantastic! Walnut Hollow recently changed the size of their metal squares from 4" x 4" to 5"x 5 3/4", and this larger size really opened up the creative potential for embossing. 

My students had so much fun, creating fantastic designs, check out all their beautiful work (click on the photos for big images)

The texture and depth that can be achieved with the copper is amazing.

One student found this great little embossed aluminum metal box in the Artistic Artifacts booth at lunch and colored it with alcohol inks.

 another beautiful bee

It was such a wonderful surprise to have my friend Holly Holloway and her mom in my class too.

For anyone wanting to take this class, I'll be teaching it in Houston at International Quilt Festival on Saturday November 3 and this weekend in Mineral Point, WI at Shake Rag Alley.

Fun Metal Workshop and a Rough Drive Home

On thursday, I drove 85 miles to Rockford, IL to give two lectures and teach Heavy Metal Play Day. I don't teach locally very often so it was really nice to drive instead of dealing with the hassles of flying. There was lots of fun experimenting with different embossing techniques on silver and colored aluminum, and heavier weight copper, as well as playing with various ways for adding color with alcohol inks and markers.

Great work, huh?

We wrapped the class up a little early since a storm was coming. What a shock to walk outside and see close to 4 inches of heavy wet snow already on my car and strong winds blowing huge fluffy snow flakes.

I was anxious to get back to Chicago to meet a friend who was back for a few days from England for dinner. The roads were AWFUL! The 6 miles to the freeway may have been the worst, being very slippery, neither plowed or salted and the wind caked the snow on my rear and side windows so thick I couldn't see well enough to change lanes. I had been hoping to get gas before leaving since it was 40 cents cheaper a gallon than in the city, but I didn't want to even try.

The freeway was treacherously slick, I passed 4 accidents within 5 miles, including this jack knived truck that was lucky enough to stop before hitting head on traffic across the divide. I called home a few times to check on the weather in Chicago, where it was still warm enough to have rain instead of snow. I was never so happy to make it to the rainy outskirts of Chicago's bumper to bumper evening traffic. It took almost 3 hours to go 85 stressful miles!