Sunday, April 5, 2009

Transparent Delights in San Clemente

TRANSPARENCY: Quality or state of being transparent.

TRANSPARENT: Having the property of transmitting rays of light, so that bodies can be seen through; pervious to light; diaphonous; pellucid. Poetic meaning: Luminous; bright.

{definitions courtesy of my mother's 1956 copy of Merriam-Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary}

Friday afternoon brought the much-anticipated adventure I may have mentioned in a prior post ... an evening workshop at SAN CLEMENTE ART SUPPLY {in a vintage white Spanish-style building, that looks smaller than it is - once inside, it positively sprawled in different directions - being what seems to have been an old house (?), it has ROOMS, and in each one, treasures are to be found}. You can visit them here: http://www.scartsupply.com/


workshop teacher LINDA BLINN wrote this book ...

As a birthday treat for my friend Cynthia, who has been my cohort on several other artistic journeys {Scrappin' at Dusty's, where CY made the most incredibly beautiful cards; a Watercolor Journal workshop with Jane LaFazio back in 2007; an Artist's Retreat held in January of this year at the California Center for Creative Renewal}, I signed us up for Linda Blinn's {third & last in a Series} FRIDAY NIGHT MIXED MEDIA SALON ... the subject for the evening: "TRANSPARENCY. "

I fixed these little bags for our supplies for class ...


We worked with antique optical lenses {the clever lens' that the doc uses to test your eye-sight, asking you "better?" / "worse?" with each change of a lens - you know the ones!} ... we worked with glass tags ... we worked with glass slides ... we worked with clear transparencies, both smooth-sided and rough-on-1-side ... and we played with FOIL. And ALCOHOL INK. And Sparkling H2O's. Bliss.

here's my sea-green glass tag, with old text behind ...

left is MY foray w/ Alcohol Inks; right is one that I rescued from the trash :-) ... look at the accidental "heart" image on it !!!

First we did an image transfer, taking an ink-jet printed IMAGE that was on a 1-side-rough 3M transparency sheet, and we 'moved' that image onto a piece of white cardstock, using Golden's GEL MEDIUM.

Left, the image transfer
Right, side by side with the colored transparency
Next, we 'colored' the back side of the used transparency with Alcohol Ink &/or the Sparkling H2O's - at our discretion. Linda encouraged the class to EXPERIMENT, to try new things, to take risks. Tonight was not so much about a "finished product" as it was about "exploration". So we did.

Linda provided us with some great old pages out of a book of poetry, so we could overlay our transparency images {or other things} on the text ... more fun.
I'm going to use this sepia-toned image of a woman walking down a tree-lined road over "Action", a poem that's quite lovely:


Some re-printed from their transparencies after they'd colored them -- wish I'd thought of that!

We played with Judikin's DIAMOND GLAZE, 'cause that's what one uses to adhere an acetate transparency to a piece of glass -- it dries clear, it's self-leveling, and it's very strong.

We used a product from Creative Imaginations that was designed by Christine Adolph, called "Sticky2" -- one uses the image like a rub-on, then a clear top layer also peels off, leaving behind the image in blue, and that's a STICKY surface. One then applies FOIL to the top, with the color side facing you {yes, it's counter-intuitive to do it like that, but trust me ... that's how it's done!}, you burnish the foil onto the sticky image, and VOILA - a gorgeous foil design. I loved this! A classmate gave me a page of color images he had photo-copied so I could play around ... I created this (below) using one of those images {an old postcard} and the Sticky2 image of a bird in a heart ...
Below, what's left of the foil

If you live in So Cal, or find yourself visiting here, do yourself a favor and stop in to shop at San Clemente Art Supply -- the people are lovely, and the store has cool things for artists of all kinds.

Coming up soon - Linda Blinn will be teaching her "Books within a Book" all-day workshop. Visit the SCAS website for details and to sign up. We saw the inspiration book for the project, and several of Linda's samples ... WOW. So many possibilities!


Have a beautiful day, and remember: Do Something Creative Every Day {the motto of Paper Source}.

-- Princess Magpie
More weblinks to places & products mentioned herein:
www.ScrappinAtDustys.com {scrapbooking retreats in La Quinta, California}
http://www.artretreats.com/ {California Center for Creative Renewal in Cardiff, CA}
http://www.judikins.com/ {Judikin's DIAMOND GLAZE}
http://www.creativeimaginations.us/store/20786.php {Sticky2 by Christine Adolph, from Creative Imaginations}
http://youratcstore.com/ {Your ATC Store - an online resource for many of the products I talk about on my blog ... including this post - Lisa at Your ATC Store is fabulous to work with}
http://www.stampington.com/html/foil_kits.html {The Shoppe at Somerset, a division of Stampington and Company, is where I found the FOIL KITS ... ordered mine today!}
HAPPY EXPERIMENTING and SHOPPING for ART SUPPLIES !!!

4 comments:

ann said...

WOW!!!!
and... can't wait for bsm

Davielle aka Princess Magpie said...

uh - oh ... what's "bsm" ?? :-)

Davielle aka Princess Magpie said...

never mind; I'm brain-dead. it's BEST SHOT MONDAY. sheesh, I'd already "lost" the thread ...

Square-Peg Karen said...

wow oh wow oh wow! followed you here from your brene brown comment coz i loved your writing style - andOH you have me inspired, i've been wanting to do transparency stuff...and i'm loving your art room (makes me want to declutter my office/play space!!)..ok, going back to reading more of your blog..this is cool!