Sketchbook Challenge Blog Hop

Hello, welcome to The Sketchbook Challenge Blog Hop.  If you make a comment on this blog you will be in the drawing for 2 different prizes.  Winners will be drawn by me on Friday the 29th.  Don't forget you have to make a comment for me to add your name to the qualifiers.

The prizes:

A one year membership to KathyAnne Art worth $35.00.   You will be able to access a new workshop every month as a member and all the monthly workshops that are already on the site.  Also the royalty free images are free to members.  You can visit my Inside KathyAnne Art blog to see workshop descriptions for the member free workshops -

Another prize is the book "Making Handmade Books: 100+Bindings, Structures & Forms by Alisa Golden given away by Art Plantae Today  a $19.95 value.

Now this one if for everyone.  I am giving a coupon for a workshop on my KathyAnne Art site-
Studio Journals Mini Workshop a $15.00 value.  All you have to do is hop on over to Digital Alternative Journaling site to my new post Building Journal Pages on my iPad to get the coupon code.  All the information on how to retrieve the code is in that blog post along with the word to put in the coupon code box in the cart on KathyAnne Art.  Simple as that.

Enjoy some pictures of my project from the book.

It was wonderful to be asked to participate in The Sketchbook Challenge book.  Since my work starts with digital images, all the textures and elements in my Forest Book 2 piece featured in the book are digitals on some type of alternative surfaces.  Elements is the chapter that my work is in.

In this image you can see a composition using digitally printed watercolor paper and encaustic on the right.  On the left the page is comprised of digital prints on recycled beverage cans strung on thin hemp and crocheted together before attaching it to the page.

The page on the right is digitally needlepoint canvas with digital prints on lutradur heat distressed and attached to the canvas.  The lutradur has been torn and layered with wire and beads and a border of beads runs around the lutradur composition.  On the left is a mixture of textured elements and a digital print on tyvek.  The tyvek is cut into small pieces and then melted to stack with wire and twigs.

 This part of the sketchbook contains the images and information from my photoshop files.  This is about the watercolor paper prints that were torn and assembled with encaustic in the first picture of my Forest Book 2.

This part of my sketchbook has some pieces of test prints that didn't get into the final project.  It also has pictures of my digitally printers plates that are on one page of Forest Book 2.

The Sketchbook Challenge

Well it's almost here "The Sketchbook Challenge" a book by Sue Bleiweiss.  My piece Forest Book 2 is included in this wonderful book as well as the studio journal mapping the creation of my project.  I will be excited to see the book and will probably only have to wait a few more days for my copy. 

There is some exciting news since there will be a blog hop among the artists (this includes me) who have work in Sue's book. The blog hop celebration starts June 25th and ends July 10th.  There are $1200 worth of prizes that will be given away from the artists participating.  Winners will be drawn randomly from comments on the posts during the blog hop.  Each artist will chose people from their comments for the prizes they will give away.  For more information see Sue's blog post today.

My piece is of course composed of many digital prints and then assembled on 6 pages 10" x 12" to complete the Forest Book.  Each page is a separate creation containing digital prints on surfaces such as lutradur, metal printers plates, watercolor paper, beverage cans and more.  Encaustic and crochet  is used as well as other techniques in the assemblages of the pages.    More to come as we gear up for the blog hop.

Oh and before I forget I will be giving away a  years membership to KathyAnne Art, my member website.  The value of this is $35.00, but the beauty of it is the over 700 royalty free images and the monthly workshops that currently total over 40 with new ones every month.  Remember to visit here on June 27th and comment on my post to get your chance to win.  The winner will be drawn from the comments on the blog post from the blog hop.

Also I will have a free coupon code for the workshop on my KathyAnne Art site that was created based on my studio journal seen in the Sketchbook Challenge book.  Anyone who reads my blog that day will be able to find that coupon code from a url I will post and then download and enjoy their free workshop.  You can access the workshop description for "Studio Journals Mini Workshop" on my Inside KathyAnne Art Blog.

I also have another give away- Making Handmade Books: 100+ Bindings, Structures & Forms by Alisa Golden Total retail value $19.95!  

Be sure to join all of us as we celebrate the release of Sue's book!

Forest Book 2  Front and Back Cover

Detail shots below

Bits and Pieces in Construction

Still thinking about this piece.  I know what I want to plug in the layers, but there is a ton of work left.  Since I am leaving for Texas to teach at the Texas Federation of Fiber Artists Conference I will have to let it sit till I get back.  The layers consist of a digital print on wire mesh, digital print on beverage cans and there will be slivers of beverage cans that have digital prints in between.  It will be very crushed up. As you can see the layers fall off of each other right now.  I may be able to get a few pieces done just to see what it looks like, but there is tons to do before I leave and my keynote to finish today.  Those pesky images need to be in place and work:)

Spontaneous Creating

This morning I was on the way to my studio just wanting to create something. (Okay so it is only at the bottom of a set of stairs, but I knew something had to happen since I was feeling so inspired to go forward with an idea.)  Right now I am in the midst of many amazing projects, writing an ebook, doing workshop prep, a keynote to polish, an enews to write and a workshop of the month to finish for KathyAnne Art members.  Plus I am in the process of working on 2 art pieces simultaneously one for our 8 that create group and one for a refuse show.  

So what am I doing today?  Creating without regard to what deadlines are looming.  That is one of the things I love the best.  This is also a refuse piece that is calling me, so I can’t stop myself.  Have to go with the flow on this one and what a great morning it was with most of the elements ready to construct this piece.  

Here is the start of the set up and then I will have to see what other parts will be needed to assemble the piece.  Only a few more elements to get this to go together.  

My first inspiration was to go for the bottle caps.  Then I went for a rectangular box shape that is 6" x 6" x 10". 

This rectangular hardware cloth piece was put together a few months ago and not used.

Next I knew I wanted to fill the bottle caps with layers of something and the total layer thing wasn't clear yet, so I started with beverage can prints.

I tested some beverage cans to stamp into circles and found the size I wanted.  I then proceeded to cut enough circles with a smaller size circle to layer over the large one.   

I know what's next- this print will be torn small to fold over the edges of the bottle tops with 2 layers of beverage can circles and maybe beads.  I will try a study of a few caps later today or tomorrow.

Crochet with Bottle Caps

Since my post last week I have been working on the piece shown here and another one that also uses ice resin.  You can see my other ice resin piece with digitally printed papers on kathyannewhite.blogspot.com.  Both pieces have one thing in common in that I haven't worked this way before.  For the piece here I am still working out the layers in my mind and will be working other layers above and below as I work the solutions out.  For now I am appreciating some interesting textures and a path of creation that has tons of possibilities for future pieces.

Something Old Something New

After catching up on most of my deadlines - new ones approach.  Working on some ideas with digital prints and ice resin today.  This one entails recycled bottle caps that I filled with the resin and floated waxed linen, digital prints on beverage cans, beads, wire and some pieces of digitally printed printers plates.  At the present moment I am crocheting one of the layer bases with 22 gauge bronze wire (from Art Mechanique).  I have no real idea of where this is going, but I have been thinking about it all week and just need to dive in.  This represents what might be 2 layers of a multi textural piece in the works!

For the something old, I have the completed journal quilts as samples for a workshop I will be teaching at the Fuller Craft Museum September 2012.  Contact me for the date  a description.

Beverage Cans and Crochet

Tomorrow I will be leaving for Colorado on a trip that combines business and pleasure.  Why is it that whenever I leave my studio for a bit I think I have to set up all sorts of work on the road?   Then even as I drag the work in progress with me, I could never possibly finish much of it when I am out of town.  Case in point today while trying to clean my studio a bit and get a little further on some of the projects for deadline, I get involved in setting up the pieces to continue work on my 4 foot tall Forest Book.  This page involves beverage cans and crocheted hemp.  So even when I should be packing, I am cutting cans and punching holes in them to string them on hemp to crochet while I am out of town.   At least I had the cans printed from a few weeks ago, so I wasn't varnishing them in a hurry to get them ready to string. 

Looks like this right now as I work through the pile to punch holes:) to add to the crochet section.

Forest Book Metal Mesh

Metals and metal mesh in various forms are the basis for this page in my giant Forest Book.  This page measures 4 feet heigh and 2 feet wide.  It starts with a piece of plywood, sanded, varnished and used for a base for riveting all the metals.  Tracy Moore taught me this technique at a workshop in his studio on forged metal journals.

As the page begins, I start to cut up some of the metal to start riveting pieces to the pages.  These are digital prints on recycled printers plates.

Digitally printed metals include: beverage cans, recycled printer plates, fine copper mesh, aluminum and copper screen. Most of the metals are riveted, some of the pieces are attached with waxed polyester thread.  Cord of waxed polyester thread are cut and attached to use with 3D collage.

All the surfaces have been digitally printed, most using a Clear Matte Precoat from inkAID.  Some of the mesh and metals have been cut and strung together with beads.

This detail shows recycled printers plates attached in strands and also riveted right to the page.  For more detail pictures of this page see my Kathyanne White Texture Blog.

Assembling Digital Prints on Beverage Cans

Finished printing 100 more cans to add to this piece.  Still haven't decided if I will wire them all across, or keep them in rows the way they are.  Regardless, I am assembling the pieces that are ready to go.  The print for this piece is from the Mariposa Grove in Yosemite National Park.

Here also is one of the carrier sheets with the bottom half of the entire print.  Since I only print 8 cans at a time, I divide the print before printing.

Once the cans are ready, I will assemble them to fit with the other pieces.  When starting a piece, printing 100 cans to start will get me on the track of figuring out the way the piece will be assembled and what it will look like.  With this piece, the way I thought it would be is nothing near the way it worked out.  The original idea about constructing the cans came from the installation for Mack Web Solutions.  (Click on the link to see the blog post)

When I arrived to install the piece, all the cans were in one piece and they evolved into being cut, stacked and wired together with glass beads separating the layers.  For this Mariposa Grove piece, I cut the top layer of each square in 4 pieces.  The bottom layer is a duplicate of the top layer, but in one piece.  I crocheted 28 gauge stainless wire to put between the 2 layers.  Then copper wire was used to wire the layers together and add it to the piece.