Bazaart is over and now it's time for summer

I have been preparing for Bazaart, http://www.mackenzieartgallery-bazaart.ca/  the huge outdoor Art show at the MacKenzie Art Gallery in Regina, Saskatchewan, since early January.

I am not new to Art and Craft shows, I have been selling my creations since the mid 80's and have tons of experience setting up and tearing down booths, displaying my work to it's best advantage and helping customers.  I love to talk to the other artists and to the people that are interested in learning more about my work. They all inspire me to keep creating art.

What I am new to is "Outdoor" art shows.  Outdoors in Regina, Saskatchewan means wind, wind and more wind. 

Last year at Bazaart the weather was so terrible that I could hear pottery and stained glass smashing to the ground in the booths around me.  It was awful and I was very glad that my acrylic paintings bounced and the mud could be wiped off with little or no lasting damage.  This year I was taking fewer acrylics and more watercolors so I made sure that every painting was sealed in a protective cover and I had super strong clips to attach them to my display boards.

The show was on Saturday.  The 3 days before the show it rained... they said Saturday was going to be sunny but then rain again on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday.  What were the chances that the weather man would actually get it right?  

Slim chances is what I though and I was not surprised when I woke up at extra early on Saturday morning  to rain.  I packed the truck in the rain, drove the hour to Regina in the rain and unloaded my tent and displays in the rain.  Then as I was setting up my tent the rain stopped, the clouds lifted and I had great hopes....until the wind started blowing.  

My darling daughter, Jen, came to help me for a few hours before she had to go to her real job and we had the tent up and were putting the displays together when the wind blew our tent right over.  It was upside down on the lawn beside our booth space.  Thank goodness we had no one on that side of us or we would have wiped out their entire display.  We got things back together, screwed everything to everything and weighed down all the corners.  Then when the art was all hung we assumed the position.  Jen holding down the 2 tent corners on the right and me holding down the 2 tent corners on the left.  

Let the show begin!

The crowds came, saw, enjoyed, bought and by 5 pm they were all gone. 

I now have fewer paintings but more money (to buy art supplies, of course). I talked to some interesting people and saw some strange ones, like the funky lady with grey hair, except where she dyed it purple and the guy in the skirt and the 5 ladies shopping together, all wearing sparkly, red boots.  It was a fantastic people watching day.  

I was packed up and had everything in the truck by 6, was home with a large, loaded pizza by 7:30 and in bed by 9:30.  

Five months of painting, one day of selling and it's all over for another year.  

Do I have time for another class?

Well I did it, I said I wasn't going to, but I did anyway.

I signed up for Joanne Sharpe's new on line class.  This one is called Color Love.  I have already finished her other two, Letter Love and Artful Alphabets.  I just couldn't resist this one, I mean really, it's about Color and I love Color!

I may not manage to get all the lessons done, 25 of them for $35.00.  They are posted, Monday, Wednesday, & Friday for 5 weeks, but they will be up and available forever, so if summer gets busy I will just save them for a rainy or quiet day or when I need a little art fix.

The first lesson was all about getting familiar with your stash of coloring supplies.  I made color swatches of my paints, pens and inks.  I also did charts that I can hang on the wall in front of my work space.  That gives me a great visual aid to go to when I'm looking for just the right color to add to my art.

A bonus from this lesson is my crafting area got organized and I found paints that I had forgotten I had, pulled them out, tried them again and now have some "new again" favorites. One of them is Spanish Orange!  That is a color from Prismacolor and I have Spanish Orange in a watercolor pencil and a pencil crayon.  It is such a vibrant yellow and I know it will go great in many of my new pieces, but honestly, before I did the color swatch I never used it.

I look forward to many more "Ah ha" moments during these classes, they have all been great fun and I have no doubts in my mind that this one will be just as wonderful.

I'm Certified!

For the past two days I have been immersed in Copic Markers.  Up to my elbows in VB000's, R25's, B12's and the other 341 colors.  I colored and shaded and learned how to air brush.  I can mix colors for the perfect skin tone, add the perfect highlights and shadows to a bouquet of flowers and mix the hard to work with reds to make a perfectly colored Santa Claus.  I learned everything you could possibly want to know about how Copic alcohol ink pens work and why they are so popular among papercrafters and illustrators.

I got to meet some very enthusiastic ladies, most of which were stampers or scrapbookers, something I know almost nothing about but they take very seriously.  After seeing samples of their finished pieces and how hard they work to put together their pages I understand that craft a whole lot more as well.

I now can put my new found knowledge to work on my own drawings and have another option for coloring in my lettering.  All that remains is for my order of pens to arrive.

Hurry up Mailman, before I forget everything I learned!

Always great to learn new things.

If you have been reading my blogs then you may have noticed my art moving from painting with acrylics to discovering the Zentangle drawing methods and that leading me to adding watercolor paint to images that I have added tangle patterns to. Then I took two classes from Joanne Sharpe and learned some very interesting lettering techniques.

I use Micron pens for my ink and watercolor paint or Tombow watercolor markers to add my color. The watercolor paper that I draw on really wears down the tips of the pens and they wear out before they run out.  Not good!  I needed to find something that would give me the color I was looking for but didn't need watercolor paper.  Strathmore makes a beautiful smooth Bristol paper that is so wonderful to draw on but the watercolor just makes a mess when I try to move it around with a paint brush.

Joanne Sharpe mentioned Copic Markers in her classes.  I had never heard about them but added a black one to my drawing pens.  The pen was expensive but refillable and I ended up going to Michaels and buying a few more colors.  Those 40% off coupons bring the price of one marker down to about what I would pay for one tube of paint.  There are over 300 marker colors!  Anyway, I tried them, and they worked beautifully, but it took me a while to figure out the blending and shading that just comes natural to me with my painting.  Again, learning new things.

I was really surprised to see the Copic company offering Certification classes right here in Regina.  I jumped at the chance to take the classes and signed up for both the Standard and Intermediate Certification Classes.  They say I am going to learn shading, color shadows, composition and design, all good things to review and relearn with a new medium.  When I'm done the classes they will add me to their list of Certified Copic Instructors and  I can add Copic markers to my list of classes I teach.

When I have some new Art work done with my Copic markers I will post them to show you and you can tell me what you think.

Hope your day is a great one, Lori

Creative Storage for your Creating Space

Storing all my pens has become a major endeavor.  First of all I want to be able to see them all and reach the one I want without having to fumble through a bin or drawer.  I know I'm not the only one that has this problem because I see other doodlers, zentanglers and alphabeteers asking each other how they store their tools of the trade so I thought I would show you what I ended up doing.


I need all my money for more pens so had to come up with something that didn't cost me any cash.  So recycle, right!
  
I had some left over wallpaper, the heavy kind that is actually paint-able, but any wall paper would work.  So would a magazine page, brown paper bag or your scraps of card stock but those all need to be glued and the wall paper comes with it's very own glue that actually sticks!  Next was a clean tin can.  Not the one from soup, they are to small, mine were from Hunt's spaghetti sauce actually, it is 5.75 inches tall and 3.25 inches wide.  As long as it is tall enough that your pens don't fall out while on it's side use what you have.  

Measure the paper a good 2.5 to 3 inches wider than the can is long.  In my case, 9 inches for my 6 inch can.  Cut that strip out of the wall paper.

Wrap the paper around the can and cut the length so there is an inch of overlap.  This really isn't rocket science and I know that you can figure this out on your own.

Now the really easy part.  Wet the wall paper and fold it over on it's self.  Sticky glue side to sticky glue side.  I'm not sure why, but when you wall paper your walls they always tell you to do this so I did it to wall paper my cans!  

Roll the can in the wet wall paper making sure that you push out all the air bubbles and wrap the can as tight as you can.  Leave paper over hanging both the top and bottom of the can equally.  Don't worry if you don't get it exactly in the center, as long as you have some on each end.

Tuck the wet wall paper inside the can.  This is going to help hold the paper around the can and it will also protect your pens and fingers from any of those sharp edges that some can openers leave behind.  

This is what it should look like once the top is all folded in.  




Make it nice and smooth.  

Now the bottom edge.  Take your scissors and cut from the end toward the can.  
Don't go past the can.  
Cut all around the edge.  These cuts look like they are about half to 3/4 of an inch apart.  

By making the cuts your paper will over lap nice and flat and since it is pre-pasted wall paper each section will stick to the one under it as well as the can.

This part isn't necessarily but if you don't mount your cans on the wall you may want to finish off the bottom.  Just trace the can and cut out the circle slightly inside your line.  Wet the circle and attach to the bottom of the can. 

Tidy Hey!

Since we are all so creative, we can't leave it just plain.  I took some ribbon and some adhesive.  I ran the sticky line of glue down on the back of enough ribbon to go around the can then wrapped the ribbon around the top edge of the can.  If you wanted you could color coordinate your cans.  Blue ribbon for your blue pens, red ribbon for your red pens.  Get creative!

Here is a picture of the tools I used.  Wall paper, a recycled can, scissors, a ruler, masking tape only if your paper doesn't stick right away and you want to hold it while it drys.  I got pretty good at making these and didn't use the tape for the last batch.  The ribbon and glue to stick it to the can. Washi tape would look great too.  At the time I did these I didn't have any so improvised.  

A  finished can of lovely Tombow markers!  

I took my DH's handy, dandy, power drill, added an extra long bit driver and a screw with a large head and screwed these papered cans to the wall by my work space.  If you look closely at the picture you can see the screw in the center of the can holding my glue.  If you don't have power tools, no worries, you can use a screw driver.  It just takes a little muscle to push the tip of the screw through the bottom of the tin can and hold it while you get it mounted on the wall but You can do it!  


Now go make your creative space tidy, yea right, well organized at least and let me know if you have any other ideas for organizing your work space.  


Thanks for visiting, bye for now.  

Make your Art a Habit.

Way back in February I signed up for Joanna Sharpe's Letter Love class and she posted a new lesson every night at midnight for the full month.  After 29 days of having to be creative every day, waking up every morning and starting the lesson even before getting dress and while the coffee was brewing, it became a habit.  A wonderful habit and I have not stopped since.  My computer desk has now become my art space.  As I glance around my lap top I have pencils, water paint, paper, my markers and I feel happy.

Is there balance?

February was a very busy, stressful month and I think that it drained a lot out of me.  I may be just recovering now but honestly I'm still not 100% to being back to myself.  B and I have been talking about heading back to Canada and spending some time at our cabin in the woods near Nipawin.  It is our place to recharge and remember what is important in our lives.  It's a simple place with next to nothing as far as luxuries go but we get to breath the fresh air and do some physical work up there and we could both use that.

I was immersed in learning this past month and that was so exciting.  I have mentioned that I was in Joanne Sharpe's Letter Love on-line class. http://joannezsharpe.blogspot.com/  I have admired her art with it's bold colour and fun doodles so when the chance to learn from her came up I took it.  Joanne's class was a new lesson every day for 29 days, that is a lot, and for me a huge time commitment. For the most part I did each lesson every day and now that it is over drawing and lettering has become a daily habit.

I wanted to find a way to mix "Zentangle" with my drawing and the fun and funny quotes that are all the rage on Facebook and Pinterest right now.  I needed to find a way to take all those elements and turn it into something new for Me.  I also want to come up with something sell-able.  If all goes well I will be at Bizaart, the outdoor art show put on by the Mackenzie Art Gallery in Regina   http://www.mackenzieartgallery.ca/engage  again this June and I want to have something new and bright and fun to sell.  The jury process is over on March 30th so I have a few days yet until I even know if I'm going to be in the show.

Is there a way to balance all the balls that we have to keep in the air and at the same time find room to grow?