Tea & Ephemera, round 2: Sunday morning

Sunday morning I think all of us were tired and happy, glad that we had such a wonderful opportunity to spend this time together making art and friends. Knowing that these were our last few hours were a little bittersweet.

Preparing fabric for everyone to use before hand really helped the class be more relaxed and we got to more techniques before our short time together was over.

Thank you so much to all the staff at Interweave, Cloth, Paper Scissors, Pokey, my fellow, incredibly talented, instructors and especially the students who made it such a fantastic week. I can hardly wait until we get to do it again!

Student show and tell

Saturday night there was a student show and tell for people to display the projects they worked on during the week. This was a great opportunity for all of us to see the different things that were being made in the other classes.

I thnk we were all sharing a feeling of great success.

An Ornamental Fiesta

At Create I got to teach one of my favorite classes making Fiesta ornaments. I saw several mother daughter teams at Create, what a fabulous time they always seemed to have together.

You know why this woman has such a huge grin? She had never painted before, aren't her ornaments fantastic?

I love having teachers in my class! they are always the best students ;-)

Here's my teachers pet finishing up her stitching on one of the Bernina 440's we were so lucky to have in our room. What a great machine, I would love to have one in my studio!

Beautiful!

Create Artist Fair

The Artist Fair at Create was pretty amazing, much bigger than I thought it would be with artists selling there wares and lots of mixed media booths loaded with ephemera and bits and pieces of rusty things, game pieces, little bottles and fibers. It was so crowded in the beginning it was hard to see everything but as the crowds died down I managed to get in a few photos.

Leslie and Jamie with their table of hand dyed scarves and little art quilts.

Natalya and Jane were getting a little punchy after days of teaching and selling at their vendor tables.

Jane LaFazio

Tired and hungry at the end of the night.

Tea & Ephemera

In the evening I taught Tea & Ephemera, this was a new class for me, so there are always so many things I learn the first time through. I had originally proposed it as a 6 hour class but gave the option of a 3 hour class and that is what got picked.

Well, there is no way to cover everything I hoped to cover in 3 hours, when paint needs to dry and there are so many techniques I wanted to demo. One thing we hadn't counted on was blowing fuses from too many blow dryers, seems like 2 blow dryers are the limit. Or how much matte medium a class of 25 will go through, luckily Melly Testa had some in her room that she lent us when my supply ran out.

Normally I spend lots of time going around to visit people individually, but in 3 hours there was barely time for proper demos.

Last night I came home at 11:30 and painted enough fabric with a wash of color for everyone in Sunday's Tea & Ephemera class. That way they can skip the first step of the process and we'll have more time for demos and trying out the various products and techniques.

Create Teacher reception

Pokey and Jenn threw a lovely teacher reception for all the teachers at Create in the late afternoon.

Pokey, Beryl Taylor, Natalya Aikens

Jenn Mason, Leslie Jennisen, Julie Fei-Fan Balzer

Jeannie Moore, Jane Davila, Leighanna Light, Natalya 

Thanks Pokey and Jenn!

Create: Interweave's new retreat is a total success!

The turn out for classes has been great, from what I have heard it exceeded Interweave's expectations. I have heard they are definitely doing it again next year, time and location is yet to be determined. So if you didn't make it this year, get ready for next year, you won't want to miss it!

My first day of the retreat was spent taking a class, something I rarely do, and I am so glad I did. I took Alisa Burke's Living Large class which was painting on raw canvas or muslin in her graffiti mixed media style. I am so envious of people who paint loosely and with a lot of gesture and passion. My painting style tends to be very controlled and illustration like, so this was a great "get out of your box day" for me. Make sure to go to Alisa's blog to see lots of fabulous pictures of student work.

It was really fun seeing my friend Kelli Perkins in class too!

Kelli worked on 4 pieces!

The photo above is my canvas at the half way point, after getting the canvas covered with color and a few paper images added. It is all about adding layers of paint, stamps, stencils, writing, drawing with sharpies and more paint. By the end of class it looked like this.

I will keep adding to this peice, because I don't think it's quite done, it is about 3' x 6'. It was soooo much fun!

Tonight, I am teaching Tea and Ephemera, hopefully I will have more photos for you tomorrow.