Magical Metal Altars at Create

Thursday I taught Magical Metal Altars to a full class with 20 students. This is a new class, kind of a larger modified version of the popular Fiesta Ornaments. What fun this was! 

I gave the students a wide range of options to create their altar; from using a template with everything predesigned by me to simple templates with various door and window shapes and imagery that could be used for reference and inspiration, to completely open ended templates allowing for total creative expression of painted imagery and embossed metal work.

I was amazed by the number of incredibly beautiful pieces that were made in this class.

Fantastic work done by everyone!

I think Create is a perfect name for this retreat, there was a lot of incredible work being done in so many class rooms. How difficult it must have been for students to decide what class to take when there were so many great options.

I want to give an extra thank you to all my wonderful students who chose to spend the day in my class.

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Painting Fabric Class at the Create Retreat

The Create retreat got off to a wonderful start on Wednesday. My first class had 8 students, it's such a pleasure to have a class that small on occasion, teaching 25 (my usual number for festival) can be challenging, because I always like to give everyone individual attention along with the class demos.

These gals were focusing on making smooth gradations, looks like they are really getting the hang of it.

I think it is interesting how many students I have who tell me they have never painted before and then they do really great work. I like to think I have helped open new doors for them in their creative process and allowed them to recognize their potential is so much more than they realize.

This student brought photos of birds that she had taken at the Field museum in Chicago to paint.

My trusty assistant Nina came along to help and spend some time painting and drawing in class.

Karen Becker who painted the birds, just sent me this photo of her finished quilted painted birds, beautiful!


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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!