Lesta and Lyn, spooky spots, and Friday Freebie winner

Posted on January 20, 2015 by lynbelisle

Lesta Frank and I did a repeat of our Surface Design on Paper half-day workshop this past Sunday at the Studio. It’s totally amazing to watch eight creative people take the same concept and make an astonishing assortment of gorgeous one-of-a-kind artisan papers. We used the enhanced paper to cover small Lotus Books, each one a work of art in themselves. Wanna see?

On Saturday, the day before our workshop, I did some video footage in the Olmos Dam Basin for an upcoming Artful Gathering online class – I can’t tell you much about the class yet, but it involves Spirits! That’s big hint.

You can read an interesting article about Olmos Basin, and about author Whitley Streiber, here in the archives of Texas Monthly – kinda spooky. The author said he made contact with strange beings here. But my online class will not be scary, honest (although it may deal with strange beings). Stay tuned for details, and visit Artful Gathering for info about Early Bird Registration for all of their cool classes.

Kantha Cloth Bag with Florentine Shard Face

Last, but definitely not least, congrats to lucky subscriber #86, Joanne Desmond, who won the Friday Freebie in the random number drawing – Joanne, contact me and I’ll get your freebie to you ASAP.

Have a good day, everyone – and watch out for strange beings.

It’s the Shish-ka-barbies – – run away!

Posted on December 28, 2014 by lynbelisle

What happens when I’m back home in the little studio on a cold, rainy day and I’m procrastinating about a jillion things, including making my New Year’s resolutions? I channel my inner Craft-Mama-Goddess and make Shish-ka-Barbie dolls instead!

And I can hear you out there, saying, “Oh, Lyn – how can *I* make a Shish-ka-barbie of my own?” Never fear – one of my goals for the next year is to make more free tutorials, even if they do have a slightly Goofy Factor like this one. So here ya go –

But wait, there’s more – I’ll be giving away these guys as the first Friday Freebie of 2015, so stay tuned. Bye for now – hope you’re looking forward to a very Happy New Year!

Lyn and Lesta and paper surface design (and a fine afternoon was had by all)

Posted on November 11, 2014 by lynbelisle

Lesta Frank and I have known each other since high school, and we finally got together to collaborate as teachers for a half-day workshop at the Studio on Sunday. I learned a lot from Lesta about paper surface designs – she’s pretty fearless with stencils and rollers! And I taught everyone how to do stamping on-the-cheap with a foam plate and black construction paper, and then how to showcase our designs on the cover of an origami Lotus book.

We know that once you see this video, you’ll wish you were there 🙂, so we’re gonna do a second session early in the new year. Check it out! And thanks, Lesta, for the inspiration!

Lesta and Lyn – a half-day workshop exploring mixed-media surface design

Posted on October 28, 2014 by lynbelisle

Finally! Lesta Frank, my much-revered artist pal, is coming to the Studio to pair up with me for a half-day workshop on Sunday, November 9th. It’s called Exploring Paper Surface Design, and it’s going to be amazing. We’ve been talking about doing this forever and now it’s really gonna happen.

Lesta and I go back a looo-ooong way (like, high school). She’s a popular teacher as well as a well-known watercolorist – funny and innovative, as those of you who’ve seen her at the Show and Tell Saturdays already know. Here’s a very short sneak preview from one of those sessions – I love the part when Lesta says, “If you don’t like it, just keep adding stuff”! There are four spots left for the workshop at the moment if you’d like to join us. Have a great day and thanks for following SHARDS!

Talk amongst yourselves (and Friday Freebie)

Posted on August 22, 2014 by lynbelisle

Hi, and happy Friday – I’m in the throes of class prep at Trinity, so I’ve found a little design video to inspire and amuse you while I’m off working in my spiffy new computer lab. It’s *hard* to switch an art brain for a tech brain – wahhh.

The finished Magnetic Shard Face pin

But I didn’t forget the Friday Freebie! A lucky SHARDS subscriber will receive a Face Shard Pin Kit complete with magnet, face shard, paper and beads (your choice of warm or cool colors) to create your own wearable art adornment that looks something like this – it’s easy and fun to put it together since everything in the kit is coordinated and cut to size.

So here’s the design project video by Pierre Lota of Lota Design – pretty cool stuff. Have a great weekend and I’ll be back soon from tech-land.

Workshop wowsers with household cleaner

Posted on July 21, 2014 by lynbelisle

That Citra-Solv stuff just keeps on giving – it cleans up cat barf (personal experience), it’s organic and smells good, and it goofs up old magazine pages and turns them into art paper. I learned about it when artists Bonnie Davis and Rosemary Uchniat demo’d it at the first Studio Show and Tell (the next one is this Saturday, 2-4, so be there). Two workshops later, we’re having a great time combining Citra-solved paper with impeccable composition and inspired vision and turning it into lovely small artwork. Here’s a short video from yesterday’s collage workshop – look what these guys did!

If the altered paper process intrigues you, here’s a great tutorial from good old Cheap Joe featuring Cathy Taylor, who really specializes in collage with Citra-solv papers. It’s a lot of fun to play around with.

Gilding the wax paper – or whatever

Posted on July 8, 2014 by lynbelisle

And now, for your mid-week creative pleasure, here’s a short tutorial about how to manage that pesky gold leaf. What you apply the stuff to is entirely your business 🙂

Feel free to share!

A wordle-y diversion

Posted on July 3, 2014 by lynbelisle

You’ve all probably seen word clouds, those designs that are made from a selection of words in a paragraph. There’s a free online program called Wordle that I use with my students on the first day of classes at Trinity as an introduction. I have them write a little bit about themselves, then transform it into a design. You just paste the words into the Wordle window, choose your colors and layout, click Create – and voila! Here’s one of my favorite Mary Oliver poems, Wild Geese, as a Wordle word cloud (the poem itself is underneath the design). Give it a try, and have fun Wordle-ing!

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain

are moving across the landscapes,

over the prairies and the deep trees,

the mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,

are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting

over and over announcing your place

in the family of things.

from Dream Work by Mary Oliver

Wax Paper Inkjet Transfer Tutorial

Posted on May 28, 2014 by lynbelisle

I didn’t have a chance to demo this technique at Show and Tell last Saturday, so here’s a quick how-to. I’m showing this technique on watercolor paper in this tutorial, but it works even better on dampened white cotton fabric. (Because the wax-paper transfer is just ink-jet ink, it will need to be sealed if it’s on fabric or it will wash out.) Here are the steps – click on the pictures below to enlarge, and feel free to share.

: Decide on the picture you want to transfer, locate it in your files, and open a MS Word blank document

: Insert the image into the Word document – you can change the size by dragging the corners

: You will need to flip the image since it will be reversed in the transfer

: When the image has been reversed, leave it up on your computer screen and prepare your work surface and the wax paper

: You’ll need a plain piece of printer paper to support teh wax paper and a surface to transfer it to – this (left) is watercolor paper

: Cut a sheet of wax paper to fit teh printer paper and lightly tape it to the top – you will run it through your inkjet print with the wax paper side down

: Just before you print your image, lightly dampen the watercolor paper – don’t use too much, or the image will smear

: Immediately after printing, make the transfer. The ink should not dry. Place the wax paper, printed side down, on the dampened watercolor paper

: Lightly rub with your fingers – this is a little tricky because if you move the paper, the ink will run and smear, but it’s easy to get the feel of it once you try it

: Here’s the transfer – you can see that the grain of the paper makes it a bit textured and distressed, which is rather nice

: And here is the transfer in a mixed media work – this method is so easy and cheap and fast – that’s a rare combination!

Fun and free photo editing tutorial for you

Posted on March 26, 2014 by lynbelisle

I’m teaching photo editing and web design right now in my Trinity class, and I thought I’d make a tutorial for you guys to show you how to use iPiccy, which is a free online editing tool. Click on the artsy-effect photo of me, below, which I just edited and fancied up in iPiccy in less than five minutes, and you can access the tutorial and see how to art yourself up too! Have fun 🙂

Colorado Springs, 2011

SHARDS: fragments and reflections

Lyn Belisle's online journal of artwork and teaching

Category Archives: easy project

Lesta and Lyn, spooky spots, and Friday Freebie winner

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It’s the Shish-ka-barbies – – run away!

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Lyn and Lesta and paper surface design (and a fine afternoon was had by all)

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Lesta and Lyn – a half-day workshop exploring mixed-media surface design

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Talk amongst yourselves (and Friday Freebie)

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Workshop wowsers with household cleaner

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Gilding the wax paper – or whatever

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A wordle-y diversion

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Wax Paper Inkjet Transfer Tutorial

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Fun and free photo editing tutorial for you

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