My Sherwood Art Week 2013

Last year I did a little blog post of 'My Sherwood Art Week' and here's another one .............

First job of the week was installing artists in their shop venue.  'Art in Shops' is one of the most popular aspects of SAW, it is ever present during the week and is difficult to ignore if you are walking through Sherwood.  This year we had some shops taking part for the first time, one shared their shop with us for our HQ and information point for the week, others cleared their windows to make way for art, some fitted the art around the usual window display and after a terrible fire the week before, one of our regular shops cleared space and cleaned all the windows so the art allocated to them could still go up.

After helping to set up some stalls at the craft fair venue, it was time to organise a few artists, last minute, for a mini-exhibition in Doctor's Orders Micropub in Carrington.  The aim was to get a mix of different artists to showcase a little of what Sherwood Art Week was about and entice the drinkers up the road and into Sherwood.  In the end, we had different types of prints, photos, painting and papercuts for the exhibition.  Within minutes a piece being put up was sold and a number of pieces were sold throughout the week in this venue alone, along with some commissions.

Doctor's Orders Exhibition Space



While I was in the pub, the knitters and crocheters had been busy yarn bombing the streets of Sherwood with their creations adorning gates, trees, benches, bollards, signs and bus stops.  Even some of the local schools got involved, and seemed to be having great fun when I saw them earlier in the day.  I looked great when I got back to Sherwood for a little light refreshment at The Crimson Tree, where the diners also enjoyed some live music.

 

 

Saturday was the first day proper of Sherwood Art Week 2013.  I spent the morning manning the HQ, taking bookings for workshops, answering enquiries and gettting some samples ready for my workshops later in the week.  At 11am the biggest event of the week opened - The Secret Garden Craft Fair at URC in Sherwood.  This is always a great event with craft stalls, live music, cream teas, BBQ and a beer tent. 

Counting in the visitors, directing traffic and handing out SAW brochures kept most of the committee busy for most of the day, although I did get a free hour or so for a quick look around the stalls and to get myself a scone, jam and a nice cup of tea.  There was also time to buy art!  The intermittant rain didn't seem to put anyone off visiting, which was great, and, like last year we had approximately 2500 visitors.   The only thing left once everyone had gone was to get the damp stalls and gazebos down.

Craft Fair Music Tent

After the success of last year's ATC swap it was decided we should do another one this year.

We had a networking event at the Samuel Hall on the Wednesday of SAW, giving the artists the chance to look at all of the artist trading cards and take photographs.  With the swap, everyone's cards were sent off by post.  No-one had any idea which cards they were going to get so we all got a surprise a few days later through the letterbox.

One of my ATC set

The Samuel Hall sponsored the Poetry Pamphlet, which was something new to this year's Art Week.  When looking for a venue to hold an 'open mic' poetry event to compliment the booklet we decided it would be fitting to hold it at the pub, so the ATC event and the open mic session were on the same night. I even stayed to listen to a few poems.

I tutored two classes this year, towards the end of the week. One with another tutor 'Japanese Stab Stitched Books' and 'Clean Collage'. Virtually all of the classes filled up early and we could have filled the book class a few times over.  Both went really well and everyone seemed pleased with what they made.  All the venues for the classes during the week provided their space without charge, and the tutors provide their time for free too, so it helps us keep the taster class prices very low, just to cover materials costs.  The Stab Stitched Book class was held at the Crimson Tree so we were also able to get tea and cake!

Clean collage

Japanese Stab Stitch Book

A book made by one of the students from a crimson tree bag

I even managed to get on a class myself, knittng at the Textile Workshop.  I learn't how to read a simple knitting pattern and cast off, which I had never done before and making a knitted flower brooch.

The Art Marquee during the Sherwood Festival on Woodthorpe Park, I have re-named the Glitter Tent. Kids love glitter, both girls and boys and I think we must have got through a kilo of the stuff!  This year we had a general craft table, crafty hands and jelly fish plates, felting, mosaics (which will be permanently installed on Woodthorpe Park), fantasy houses, badges, crochet, fabric flowers and instant books. We were hectic all day and we had a great group of artists and volunteers who again, gave up their time for free.

Crafty hands hung around the Art Marquee

There was just enough time on the last Sunday to get around the Exhibitions.  The Place, Methodist Church and St. Johns's were the venues this year.  The Place holds art classes and some of the paintings there were from the students.  The Methodist Church had two spaces for exhibiting, one with a paper installation filling the entire room.  At St. Johns's in Carrington, I got a cup of tea to enjoy while looking at the art and I chose a piece to buy, a photograph of the sea by one of my fellow committee members.

St. John's

St. John's

A quick look in Doctor's Orders while some of the artists took down their work and I was back off into Sherwood where some of the work that had been purchased during the week was collected.

All in all a thoroughly enjoyable week once again, and mostly wonderful comments from people in Sherwood as we went about running the different events during the week.

ATC Tutorial - Hello Sunshine

Here's a tutorial for you with a few different techniques to create dimension and texture for all sorts of projects.

This was made for an ATC swap with the theme 'Here Comes Summer'.

I used 'Fields of Sky' stamp from Stamp Addicts (loads of different sized dots) and 'Rays' from Stampers Anonymous 'Bitty Grunge CMS089' set, along with yellow (Mustard Seed), orange (Spiced Marmalade) and red (Fired Brick) Distress Inks.

Starting with the yellow ink, stamp the Rays on a blank white ATC near the top of the card.  Repeat this, with yellow again.  Don't try and line it up with the first one.

Stamp the image again, this time with orange and red ink.  With these colours, randomly ink up the stamp so it doesn't stamp even.  Add further stamped images with the orange and red colours, until less of the white card is showing through.

Using a foam applicator, apply yellow to the edges of the card, followed by some orange.

Eventually you should have your background, without any harsh white areas.

To add a little more texture, stamp 'Fields of Sky' in red and orange ink around the edges of the card.

Once the stamped background is complete, place the card in Sizzix 'Rays' embossing folder and run through and embossing machine.

Highlight some of the edges of the embossed areas with a Quickie glue pen and wait for the blue glue to go clear.

Press foil into the areas where glue was applied and peel away.  Repeat until all the glued areas are foiled.  Alternatively you could use gilding flakes - rub them in and brush away any excess with a stiff brush.

Prepare the banner, running the Tim Holtz Alterations Tattered Banners die from Sizzix, through the Big Shot with an extender platform and cutting plates along with some white cardstock.  Apply yellow Distress Ink to the body of the banner with a foam applicator, followed by red ink around the edges of the die cut.  

Using the waste from the die I had a practice run at the spacing of the letters on the actual banner.  Fix to scrap paper with tape and stamp 'Hello Sunshine'.  Once you are happy with how to space the letters, stamp onto the actual banner, using the practice stamp layout as a guide.

Use a small alphabet set to stamp the words in red ink - this time I used Momento in Lady Bug as it isn't as wet as Distress Ink.  This set is from Studio G by Hampton Art.

Stamp the lettering randomly to avoid having to line everything up perfectly.

Trim the banner to the size of the ATC then edge the banner, along with the ATC with a gold Krylon leafing pen.

Fix a number of foam pads to the back of the banner and then stick to the bottom of the card, lining up the edges.

A final addition of some stickles gold glitter glue to some of the embossed areas and the card is finished.

From Gelli Plate to Card

The weekend was spent print making with the Gelli Plate.

After some so-so results using my crafter's acrylic paints on the Gelli Plate I bought some artist's paint which has a thicker consistency.  The first print off the plate when using the thinner crafter's acrylic, I'm often not  happy with, but it does give some amazing second or even third prints from the Gelli plate for a nice single print. 

The thicker artist's paint spreads over the plate much more evenly and uniform.  The first prints are more opaque than the crafter's acrylic and colours much more vivid, especially with black.  I found with these paints that the second prints were much fainter though - often too faint to see.

I played around with blues, black and white and used plastic masks with circles, sequin waste and paper die cuts.

Most of the prints made were four or five layers of printing.  I also used a coated cardstock, which, although not a typical for printmaking, kept its form really well and performed much better than other papers that I had previously tried.

One of the prints in particular, I thought would be perfect for a Father's Day Card.

The print was trimmed and the die cut that was used as a mask (which, by now painted black) was used to decorate the panel in the top left and bottom right corners.  This was matted onto black card and mounted onto white card stock.

A strip of black card was matted onto a black printed image and white die cut letters were added, before adding off-centre to the card with dimensional glue.

Looking at some of the creations by artists on a number of other blogs, there's still lots for me to learn with this technique, but I am having loads of fun having a go!

Buttons!

The ATC swap for May - Anything Goes But Must Contain a Button.

I have been playing around with making backgrounds with alcohol pens ProMarkers and thought the colours would go well with some old buttons I had.

Starting with the palest colour first, draw stripes along the card using the chisel tip, overlapping some of the shades.  I used a coated card by Clarity.  Actually, not my favourite card, but worked well for this technique - non bleeding and the colour sits on top of the card, rather than soaking in so the ink can be blended with each stroke of the pen.

Using a stamp from Stampin' Up and some Distress Markers I stamped some leaves on card cut to ATC size.  This card should work well with water based dye ink, but only if it isn't too wet.  The best approach is to ink up the stamp and then stamp lightly onto scrap paper before on the card.  I still had some problems with voiding and pooling, but actually made some interesting patterns.  The ink also took a while to dry.

Using the fine point on the Distress pens I added some little doodles on some of the leaves, once they were dry.

I stamped the flower heads on my regular stamping card in various co-ordinating colours and cut them out and inked around the edge with 'Old Paper' ink using foam.

The flower heads were mounted using foam pads and a button was added in the centre of each one, sticking with dimensional glue.

F is for........... Techniques

While photographing my ATCs this month, I realised how many different techniques I had used and thought it would be an ideal blog.

The theme this month was 'F is for.....'  Initially I decided to do some needle felting but after three attempts was not very happy with them.   I certainly wouldn't be sending them off for swaps, or posting them on here!  So I reverted to a medium I am much more happy with - Paper (and Stamps of course).

Distress Ink Techniques
All of the cards and 'F's had Distress ink applied, in various colours, mostly blended with a foam applicator.  Some of the applied ink has been spritzed with water, along with 'faux bleaching' in some of the flowers in the 'Fs'.  This is simply where ink is removed by painting the desired areas with a wet paint brush and soaking up the water and ink with kitchen paper.  All of the cards were distressed further, around the edges of the cards and the 'F's with a dark brown ink to create an aged look.

Heat Embossing
Making embellishments by heat embossing stamped images is a really easy way to get matching and co-ordinated elements for ATCs and cards.  For a vintage look, bronze or aged gold are the perfect colour embossing powders.  The 'F's were prepared with bronze powder.  The image is stamped with an embossing ink, the powder is sprinked over the image, tipping the excess away, before heating with a  heat tool to melt the powder.

Altered Papers

For the Koi and swirl of water around the fish I altered some papers.  Using some thin patterned paper in yellow tones, Distress Ink in yellows, oranges and reds, were applied, blending together with a foam applicator.  Once dry, on the paler piece of paper a thin wash of Twinkling H20 paint in a neutral colour was applied, creating a co-ordinated (and cheap) pearlised paper.

Bottom - original paper
Middle - altered with yellow and orange ink, beige pearlised paint
Top - altered with orange and red ink

Masking
Although a little time consuming you can get some pleasing results with masking techniques.

I favour using Eclipse tape which is paper on a roll with repositionable glue on it's reverse, but post-its work very well too.  I made two masks for the Flowery Fan ATC by stamping onto Eclipse tape and cutting them out (these can be saved on an acetate sheet for re-use). 

To create a trio of images, the first and prominent image was stamped on the card.  When dry, the mask was placed over the top and the next image stamped.  This was masked then the final image was stamped.  The  masks were peeled off to reveal the final collection of images.

Repeat Stamping
This is a brilliant technique for beginners as you can't really go wrong.  It is also one of my favourite techniques for creating my own papers.  I have used this on most of the cards for this swap, using ferns, fleur de lys, swirls, flowers and flourishes and involves stamping a single image around the card over and over again.  It often involves stamping over the top of previously stamped images changing the orientation of the image, which can end up creating dimension even on a one-dimensional project.

Stamping off/Second impression
By inking up your stamp and stamping onto scrap paper before your actually image you can create a lighter ink colour or more subtle image.  I used this on the Forest of Ferns ATC, I don't think any two ferns ended up the same colour.  This technique often gets used for flowers when a tone-on-tone effect is required - it's a lot easier than trying to match up loads of different colour inkpads.

Paper Piecing
Paper piecing is a good way to highlight areas of a stamped image or quickly decorate an image, rather than colouring it in.  The Koi image was stamped using grey and then red on the altered papers.

The fish and the large swirl at the forefront of the image was cut out then stuck over the original stamped image on the trading card.