Bluehaven Studio

Whimsical Wire Art

Today Bob and I both took one of the  new classes offered by  The North Carolina Arboretum this season, Whimsical Wire Art.  We both really enjoyed it.  

We have had a membership at the North Carolina Arboretum for almost as long as we have lived here. We enjoy going to the Arboretum in every season and often take our house guests there.  There are special events we look forward to each year like the Orchid Show  We have not taken classes there since the early years we belonged, but we signed up for several classes each this spring. 

Today we learned how to make some funky plant identification stakes, quirky fasteners, hooks and a small twig trellis.

I decided to use a couple of the wire flowers I made as plant identification stakes as embellishments for my trellis. 

                                           

I've always loved making things with my hands from bread making to needle arts to weaving my own wild grapevine wreaths.  I work more slowly than I used to because of arthritic hands, but I'm OK with that

In addition to ideas for the garden, today gave me some great ideas for embellishments for some of my other creative projects.

On the evaluations for Arboretum classes, they always ask a question about what you noticed at the Arboretum today.  What stood out to me on this rainy day was the beautiful texture of the lacebark elm trees that line the drive near the main building like the one in the first picture above.

Jane's Soldering Class

Last Friday afternoon, I took a soldering class from Jane Powell at RandomArts.  I've done a little soldering before, but have been wanting to gain confidence in working with soldering tools and techniques. 

In Jane's class, we each got to make two charms.  We started by making tiny collages.  For the first charm we used microscope slides to sandwich our collages. The second charm was made with a small collage between to pieces of square glass.

charm fronts

charm backs

Like many tools and  techniques, I know that practice is the key. Jane's class gave me the confidence to try it on my own.

Stamp Carving

Several "divas" did demos during our recent creative retreat weekend.  Jane brought enough Speedball tools and materials from RandomArts for each of us to be able to carve a stamp.  We started by drawing or tracing our design on vellum.  Then we burnished the pencil drawing onto the stamp carving material before cutting away to produce our designs.   Some of us did carvings on both sides of our stamp piece.

After we made our stamps, each of us stamped or image and signed our name  in each person's journal.  My favorite was the tiny detailed flowrers and leaves stamp done by my studio partner, Bob (also, my husband, for those who don't know).  GREAT FUN.  Try it, you'll like it.

Playing with Pastels

Since the first of the year, I've been playing with painted backgrounds for art journal pages.  This weekend at the retreat, on a whim, I decided to do some backgrounds with pastels which I had never used before. I really liked them.

One of the divas had brought some napkins for each of us. On the first background page,  I cut up the napkins and used matte medium to put them on top of the pastels.  Then, I added some more pastels, some gesso and walnut stain.  The, I stamped the entire page with a scroll stamp.

On the second page, I did not get any further than using the pastels, napkins and a little gesso.  I'm going to work on it some more.

I made these in a large 8 1/2 x 11 spiral journal. 

Diva Retreat Report

We gathered at Snail's Pace in Saluda on Friday afternoon. This retreat was the first time that all twelve of us were together for the entire retreat. I made sure to get a picture as we began on Friday.

Friday afternoon several members set up our creative space with a new layout which worked better than last year.  We all gathered at 5:30 p.m. for happy hour and sharing.  Our main agenda for the first evening was getting on board and sharing our exchanges. 

The creative exchanges were delightful.  You can see the creative variety. (picture to come)

We were all working on different projects this years, but had a number of demos that were fun and informative.  We learned how to draw our own hands to transfer to fabric.  We experimented with soot stamping on clayboard and we each carved a handmade stamp.  We stamped  a copy of each persons''s stamp design in our journals.

Saturday was a rainy day so we canceled the afternoon hike. The rain could not keep us from taking a trip to town to shop at RandomArts.  

We had a lot of discussion about next year's retreat. There was universal agreement about needing a longer time together. Next year, we're going to start on Thursday.  Our theme will be New Beginnings and we will each make a journal cover before we come.  We will put together a hand-made journal at the beginning of the retreat which we will use for the retreat journal exercises and notes on the demonstrations.  With the added day, each of us will do a demo next year.

The retreat ended earlier than we had anticipated when the snow fall began around 11 a.m. Sunday morning.  Instead of our closing journal exercise, I asked each person to share what they were thankful for from the weekend. Everyone from out of town then packed up quickly and got on the road while a few of us who did not have far to go helped clean up.

It is a joy to take time to focus on creativity and to share that time with friends. We all agreed that the value of friendships combined with art is a blessing in our lives.