Fine art and craft show musings

Greetings friends, and thank you to all who stopped in at the Sizzlin Summer Sale where it sizzled at a warm and muggy 95 degrees at Mellwood art Center's courtyard.  This was the first showing where I was able to put out a good amount of colorful scrapboards, photographs and greeting cards. A client asked for some custom made high heeled shoe greeting cards with "fluff" (great idea!!) and another bought two fine art prints of colorful Burano, Italy. People remarked on the scrapboards' layering. I was able to talk confidentally about my work and share some stories about how the pieces came to be. As a studio artist working full time at a "regular job," I don't get out much to do shows. Much of all the social skills and showmanship is still new to me. Any thoughts on art fairs?  They are a lot of work, that's for sure!

Visit Scrapboarding at Sizzlin' Summer Sale, Mellwood Arts Center, Louisville, Ky.

The Art of Tea Staining Paper

The aged textured look and feel of parchment paper creates an impact in books, drawings or other paper goods. While creating a client's wedding guest book, I used a tea staining to age the papers upon which her guests will sign thier well wishes and place a photo. I used a 70 weight archival quality white paper.  I then prepared a bucket for eight cups of boiling water, 25 tea bags and then topped off the bucket with two gallons of tap water dipping papers into the bucket in small batches. Wall- ah! A regular Boston Tea party in my kitchen. The brew yielded more than 60 pages of yellowish tan lovely archival paper. The papers will now be bound and set into a book binding I assembled from scratch. How's your art doing?