Collage Sisthars

Scarecrow Fest: Assemblage Opportunity

The Fine Line keeps asking if we will apply our amazing creativity and energy to a scarecrow to represent them. Usually, I remember this the day before the scarecrow is due. This year, thanks to Christy and Claire, I was reminded in plenty of time. Christy and I will be spearheading a scarecrow building session (or three).

We'd like a handful of Sisthars to join us with this life-sized assemblage creation. The scarecrow is due around October 1, so we'd like to get things underway well in advance of our September 27 meeting. We'll be meeting at the Fine Line on Tuesday and Thursday evenings, and we're estimating it will take 4-5 meetings to complete our creation. We'll have snacks (and wine!) to fuel our efforts.

Please give me a shout if you're interested in joining TEAM SCARECROW. We'll organize the work dates in a few days.

For more information on Scarecrow Fest, including past scarecrows, click here. The fest is in downtown St Charles on Oct 10-12.

Quick! Online Image Transfer class debuts tonight!

Ack! As always, I just seem to be posting these things as they are about to occur! If you have nothing better to do tonight, except watch the Democratic Convention, now that the Olympics are done, you might consider spending $25 and logging into the Craftcast site for a 90-minute online class on Image Tranfers. If you are interested, here's the link for the class. Alison of Craftcast is going to start hosting these fairly regularly starting this fall. I'll try to give a bit more notice than 7 hours next time.

A Note about Sisters/Sisthars

Jean sent me a note earlier this week about the upcoming call for entries for Somerset Studio, entitled "Sisterhood" (alas, I haven't even had a moment to crack open my new issue), saying wouldn't it be a wonderful idea to send in our skinny portrait book. Yes, it would be a fabulous idea, but I'm not going to submit it and here's why.

The Collage Sisthars has come a long, long way from our initial collage class of 8 people. If you've been to a meeting lately, you've probably noticed that we are stretching the seams of the Painting Studio. We are an amazing group of artists and friends... we support and inspire one another like no other group I know of. I'm naive/vain/proud enough to think that if Somerset gets a whiff of us, they'd like to run a story on us. Heaven knows, they should. We are an incredible group. I'd love to see Sisthars-type groups spring up all over the country. However, I am scared that the resultant attention would bring an influx of new Sisthars to us. Not that I want to turn anyone away, but I don't currently have a solution if we overfill the Fine Line space, nor am I inclined to want to ponder this. (If anyone does have an idea, please give me a shout). I don't want to become a collage-group bouncer, either, as that is the antithesis of our Sistharhood. Also, our email list is now at 70+ addresses. Frankly, I don't want to become a database manager in my part time - I'd rather make art.

As it is, I feel a little awkward having to write this. I am amazed that I even have to.. but its a testament to you guys - you are an AWESOME group of women and as much as I want to shout about it  from the rooftops, I'm afraid we need to keep this our little secret.

PLEASE NOTE: If you are a newbie to the Sisthars, please don't let any of this deter you from coming- you are more than welcome (just don't bring 10 of your friends), but you may want to come a little early to get a good seat. Heck, that's why I demo, so I know I'll always have a seat saved for me!

Fear not - I'm not going anywhere - I'm still quite happy to function as the gel medium of the group - I just wanted you all to know my thoughts on the subject. If anyone has any ideas/solutions or you want to talk about it, email me or leave a comment below.

Oh yeah, one last thing - go make a piece of art and submit it to Somerset yourself. Who knows, you just might get published - what have you got to lose?!

Don't Forget!

Hello, hello, back from a week's vacation, ending with a fabulous weekend at Valley Ridge with Misty Mawn, Leslie and Linda (more on this later this week)... trying to figure out where all the paper on my desk came from and how to read my calendar again. I wanted to remind everyone about the Women Of Influence Show Opening Reception on Saturday August 23, from 2-4 pm at the Northwest Cultural Council,  located at 500 N. Hicks Road, Ste 120 - Palatine, IL 60067. ph # 847-991-7966. The exhibition is August 19 - September 23. (There will be snacks, if you might need to bribe anyone to come along with you....)

Also, for encyclopedia swap-ees: The August Swap deadline is August 30, so be in touch with your swapping partner(s).

To tide you over...

Okay, sorry, didn't mean to torture you with the with the as yet unavailable Tim Holtz awesomeness. If, by chance, these are available, please let me know ASAP, because its killin' me, too.

Anyhow, I stumbled upon these at Small Studio Productions. Ginny has a bunch of very cool stencils, along with a bunch of other fabulousness. Check out the stencils here. And the rest of the fabulousness.

Ahh, nothing like spray painting when its 95° out!

Drool-worthy!

Was poking around on Tim Holtz's blog this morning and he was blogging about his new mask products: Genius! I can't wait to get my hands on these and play around with some spray paint! I think they debuted at CHA, which was last week, so they may not be available just yet. When I do find them, I'll update here so you can get some for yourself.

Self-indulgent cutsie-wootsie puppy photos

I once read somewhere that eventually, every internet discussion devolves into a discussion regarding cats. I don't have a cat, but I do have a new dog. Meet Sally. We adopted her a week and a half ago. She was listed as a white shepherd and while she definitely has a lot of shepherd in her, there's some other stuff too. She's 8 months old and was found as a stray in Indiana, very very skinny, so we are doing our best to fatten her up. Just thought I'd share.. I'm outta papery bits at the moment.

Gert, our other dog, is not all that amused at the new addition to the pack, but she'll eventually come around.

Have a great weekend!

Don't Forget: Encyclopedia Swap due Saturday 7/27 (and 8/30)

If you are swapping encyclopedias, please remember that the deadline to pass on your book is this coming Saturday, July 27 and mark your calendars to swap on August 30. Please contact your swapping partners to arrange swaps. The Sisthars, with in-session book swaps will resume September 27.

Notes about the Skinny Self Portraits

Okay, first a bit of unpleasantness. Imagine me standing with my hands on my hips, wagging my finger and rolling my eyes... if you didn't finish up your skinny self portraits in time for the June meeting and didn't even show your face, shame on you. Yes it was a big effort.. some of us even gave up sleep in time to meet the deadline... Because there was such a large number of no-shows/no-calls, everyone went home with their own pages, we didn't even have a swap.. We'll swap them in September, and I'll bring in my coil binding machine to bind them up, if you want... HOWEVER, if you didn't finish them that doesn't let you off the hook. We want to have a book of the self portraits done for the show. I have the ones from the June session - if you weren't (or should I say if your pages weren't) at the June session, send me 1 page and I will include it in the book. Email me and let me know its coming. I need the page by August 5, in order to get it bound. Okay?

Okay, sorry for that (IF you turned your pages in -if you DIDN'T, then I'm not sorry).

Anyhow. On to something less unpleasant.

Here is how I made the stencil for my spray-painted self portrait.

First, I read the self-portrait stencil tutorial found on the Blog, A Little Imagination and a Pile of Junk (man, I LOVE that title). Here are the highlights of what I did

Take your picture (or find one) and convert it to Black and White in your photo editing program:


This is a pretty good photo of me (if I do say so myself), but for the purposes of stenciling, it has some limitations, as you'll see below. Then you want to use your editing software to go black and white/solarized/high contrast. Clearly, I am not a photoshop expert. I just fiddled with the image until I had something resembling a stencil. The tutuorial is much clearer than my lame instruction. 

 

So you want to make "isthmuses" where the white portions of your stencil will be; that is, the white portions all need to be attached to something. If you notice, the shape of my hair doesn't allow my face to be attached, so I had to take a bit of creative license when cutting. I laid a printout of my high contrast photoshopped self down and placed a piece of acetate (transparency film, actually) on top and cut away the black parts with an xacto knife. When you are done, you get a stencil of yourself:

Et voila!

Recipe Card Swap: Due Sept 27; Signup by Aug 1 (yikes!)

It's time for the annual recipe card swap. If you haven't played with us before, you pick a papery technique (and just hush your mouth if you think you don't have a fancy enough idea to share), write up the instructions with samples (real live samples preferred) and make X copies on 8-1/2 x 11 cardstock. X -1 = the number of participants and the number of recipe cards you will get back, less one for the group book. Sorry for all that algebraic stuff, especially since its summer! Email me if you want to play along. If you've already signed up at the June session, no need to email me. The top recipe card was by Sharon K and the bottom one by Cindy O.