No Mallard Ducks Here

This card sold right away from my shop, which makes me wonder if I should try my hand at a few more steampunk cards.  It really is a departure from what I have done, mostly because it is silver.  (For some reason, even though I only wear silver and white gold jewelry, I only work in warm metallic tones like gold and copper.)  I love the screw brads; they really were the only way to get that aluminum sheeting attached securely anyway.

This was the first time I embossed on metal sheets (like foil, but thicker).  I cut the edges with fancy scissors to make it look torn, and then distressed it a bit.  The checkerboard backing has several top-secret techniques applied to it, but if I told you, I would have to shoot you.  So let's just leave it at maybe I'll do more of this in the future.  It's a manly card without the mallard duck, and there are so few out there that do not include fowl of some kind.  Or a moose.

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March Kids M-Power Workshop!

Well, the rain drove us into the garage.  I had the honor of being the guest artist at this month's Kids M-Power workshop, but the pouring rain kept us from enjoying the outdoor garden at our beautiful venue of The Center for a Healthy Lifestyle in Solana Beach.  No matter, we still had a great time learning about mixed media and getting our fingers full of paint.  Our budding artists were junior high school level, and even their moms pushed up their sleeves.

We made art for use as greeting cards to sell for children's causes.  Mary Windisch, a high-schooler with the spirit of a true humanitarian, explained the two current causes.  One is an international program called Mary's Meals (no relation to our Mary!)  It is a global movement that sets up school feeding projects in some of the world’s poorest communities, where hunger and poverty prevent children from gaining an education.  The other program is local, called North County Solutions for Change, an outreach program committed to solving family homelessness in North County San Diego.

Kids reaching out to kids!

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Music to my Ears

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What do you get when you cross bad art with a pasta maker?  Apparently something that looks nice on the piano.  This piece started as a card gone wrong.  I had a pretty nice card painted Greek blue that just needed a little extra.  Of course, I couldn't leave well enough alone so I started messing with it.  I completely ruined the card, but I don't know how to throw art away so I just kept covering it over with sheet music, gold paper, and stringy paper--and loads of matte medium.  Then I had this soupy mess that was too thick to use for much of anything.  So always thinking, I put it between wax paper and squashed it through my pasta maker tool.  What came out was better than ravioli.  I loved the way it squished and moved the musical notes and pretty much tore it to shreds.  And I also love how you can still see a hint of the Greek blue.

I'm not always a "theme" person.  I love it when art has a theme, but I think that the bringing together of disparate objects into an aesthetically pleasing creation is enough.  But this time I went with the theme.  I added a gramophone rub-on, and another that happened to say gramophone (love it when that happens).  Then I took some jewelry head-pins and my old rusty round pliers and fashioned a treble clef and a bass clef.  (My musical daughter loves the bling on the bass clef.)  Then the notes just started coming from me like a songbird.  I started to fill the little bottle with musical notes.

"But Mom, you can't tell they are musical notes."

"I don't care; I know they are musical notes."

So I'm not sure if I am going to sell this one--it sure looks nice on the piano.

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