Paper Arts Bulletin

I'm still looking for jobs and trying to do some freelance work, so new posts are likely to be few and far between for the coming weeks.   I spent this morning making bread and will be scoring and cutting card stock and making leaf prints this afternoon.   I took some time to not exactly scour the Internet to get information on upcoming workshops. Hurry, Hurry! Sign up for these while you can.  They start very soon.  Alisa Burke is holding her Larger than Life one-day class at her Oregon studio on Saturday, October 13, 2012.  Because the class involves working with lots of paint on large canvas substrates, class size is limited to six people.  As of last week, there were two spots open.  Since this class is small and is coming up so, soon, I suggest you contact Alisa immediately to see if you can still get in. Michelle Ward's Synchronicity workshop will be held at Valley Ridge Art Studi...

While this blog is rather low on photos and tutorials, I thought I would include a picture of some tags I made with Dylusions spray inks and black paint.  I've added some distressed dots to the middle tag since the picture was taken.  I had sprayed the tags with Vibrant turquoise Dylusions spray and had used the ghost stenciling and printing technique on them.  Ghost stenciling involves spraying water through a stencil onto a surface that already has some water-reactive ink—such as Dylusions—on it.  After ten seconds or so, you blot up the water, which leaves behind a stenciled image that is lighter than the surrounding inked surface.  You can then take the wet stencil, turn it over onto a surface that also has been covered with some water-reactive ink and use the wet stencil to make a ghost "print."  Just press with your hands or a brayer to make sure the stencil makes good contact with your surface. Blot up excess water with a so...

Hi All: I received notice this morning that registration for Archiver's ScrapFest workshops has been postponed.  Due to server issues, registration will begin on Friday, August 3, 2012 at 7:00 a.m. CDT. Edited to Add:  Archiver's has shut the registration site down until Friday, August 3rd.  Othewise, I would provide a direct link to registration.  You can access the main ScrapFest page here .   ScrapFest is scheduled for September 14-16, 2012 at the Mall of America in Minnesota.

Just a quick post about upcoming workshops: The San Francisco Studio School will hold a weekend mixed media workshop, "The Art of Collage," July 28-29, 2012.  Go here for details. The 10th anniversary of ScrapFest from Archiver's  is scheduled for the weekend of September 14-16, 2012 at the Mall of America in Minnesota.  Sign up for crops begins on July 25th.  Registration for workshops begins August 1st.  Create-It workshops will be from October Afternoon, Jillibean Soup, Fancy Pants Designs, and other well-know scrapbooking companies.  Like the mall itself, this event will be huge.  Over 50 popular scrapbooking and stamping companies will be represented at ScrapFest, including Hampton Art, Basic Grey, and 7 Gypsies.  Go here for details.  Fiber artist Wen Redmond will offer three workshops for the York Art Association in York, Maine.  The workshops are scheduled for August 20-22, 2012. Register online here .  The workshop...

From Peter Brook at Wired.com  comes a story about artist Monica Haller and the Veterans Book Project.  Ms. Haller holds bookmaking workshops where veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars create books—and thus, share their stories—from their photographs.   She plans to have 50 completed books in the Veterans Book Project library by the fall of 2013.  According to the story, Ms. Haller will take the collection to "galleries, reading rooms and community spaces all over the world."  The Nomas Foundation in Rome has already held an exhibition.  This is not the sort of scrapbooking project I usually write about, but the communicative and healing power of creativity cannot be underestimated.  For more information, please go to the website for the project.    

Maybe I should change the name of this blog, since I haven't posted anything in almost a month's time.  It's not much of a bulletin right now. I do have a valid reason for not posting--other than the usual laziness, forgetting to post, and such.  I'm looking for jobs right now, so I haven't had much time to blog.  I need a job with regular and preferably massive pay pronto.  I'd take even semi-massive pay at this point. I was going to do a couple of brief tutorials on making your own decorative tape and reusing old file folders, but even those had to be set aside.  I still have the photos, so a tutorial or two may appear in the future.  In the meantime, here are a couple of blogs to consider.  One has pretty cards.  The other has some useful and timely information on design teams. Jen Adcock blogs at Only Love Is Real Papercrafts .  Very shabby chic and very pretty.  I like shabby chic cards, but haven't really made ...

Registration for the Creating Keepsakes Convention (CKC) Nashville is open now through August 13, 2012.  CKC Nashville will take place August 24025, 2012.  Register here .   Class descriptions are here . The CKC events are held by Creating Keepsakes magazine, the emphasis is on scrapbooking, but there will be classes on making flowers, using alcohol pens, and making cards, among other things.  If this event were in Nashville, Indiana, I'd try to go, even if it were only for the chance to attend the vendor fair or to get my hands on one of those cool SMASH books from EK Success.   CREATE New Jersey is set for July 18--22, 2012  at the DoubleTree by Hilton hotel in Somerset, NJ. Register here . Workshop details are here .  The workshops at CREATE are expensive, but the list of workshops and instructors alone suggests that attending would be worth every penny.  Seth Apter , Jane Davies , and Joanne Sharpe are among the instructors.  ...

Michelle Ward, who writes a column for Somerset Studio , among many other things, has decided to cease doing her monthly crusades at the GPP Street Team blog. Ward coordinated her crusades and encouraged artists to participate and link to their work that they did for each crusade.  There will be no new crusades as Ward takes a self-imposed sabbatical, but the archives  are still available. Michelle obviously put a lot of thought into the crusades.  Each one had a clever name, such as It's a Wrap (about documenting wrapping scraps and tags) or Grid Lock (the many ways grids can be made in an art journal).  I never actually participated in the crusades, but I did learn from them. The crusades were not about showing off so much as about learning by doing. Testing. Thinking about and trying different ways to interpret the prompt. I still make backgrounds using old gift cards after reading about the I...

. . . Carriker, that is. In case you don't know, Pam Carriker is an artist who has been taking the mixed media world by storm the last few years.  According to her blog, Art at the Speed of Life , Pam has a lot going on right now and into the near future. To get a taste of her style, go to the Stampington & Co. Blog called Somerset Place  to look at Pam's tutorial on making a portrait with Shiva paint sticks.  It's amazing how little dots of color can blend together to form a striking portrait with subtle shading.  Scroll down to see the tutorial.  For some reason, the blog posts do not start at the top of the page. Carriker also announced that Stampington's  The Shoppe at Somerset  will soon carry a new line of stamps based upon her portrait linocuts featured in the latest issue of Somerset Studio .  Carriker is also the featured artist in ...

Register for Upcoming Create Workshops Interweave's popular Create Mixed Media Retreats are taking registration now. Three retreats in three locations are coming soon.  Links to the registration and workshop information are below: Create Orange County takes place in Irvine, California from May 30th through June 3rd.  Register here .  Workshop information is here . Create New Jersey will take place in Somerset, New Jersey from July 18-22, 2012. Register here .  Workshop information is here . Create Chicago is planned for August 22-26, 2012 in--where else?--Chicago.  The registration page is here .  Workshop information is here . I would love to attend the Chicago retreat, since it is closest to where I live. Unless I win the lottery or a sweepstakes in the next couple of months, that will have to remain a dream. I would encourage anyone who can attend the Create retreats to register.  I have heard nothing b...

Doodles Unleashed Online Book Tour Comes to a Big Finish Traci Bautista's online tour for her new book, Doodles Unleashed is coming to a close. Ms. Bautista has put together a huge array of art goodies for a lucky winner.  There are four different ways to enter for a chance to win the big box of supplies. You have until Saturday, March 31, 2012 12:00 noon PDT to enter. Go here for details.  Good luck! CKC Louisville This Weekend The Creating Keepsakes Louisville scrapbooking event is set to take place March 30-31, 2012 at the Kentucky Exposition Center in Louisville, KY--of course!  Go here for more information and be sure to check out the FAQs .

Hi! As you can see, I have changed the name of this blog.  I made the change primarily for two reasons: I did not want to create any confusion between the very unknown me and the very well-known Crafty Chica , Kathy Cano-Murillo.  Not that anyone would confuse us or our blogs, but I wanted to avoid whatever confusion could have resulted, you know, maybe in 10 years or something. This blog is not about me or my greeting cards and fumbling attempts at art journal pages.  The purpose of this blog is less about how-to and look-at-this and more about directing you (all 3 of you as the case may be at this moment) to interesting stuff in the world of paper arts. That interesting stuff could include books (new and old), blogs, new products, classes, etc.  To that end, my plan is to update this blog regularly and add a Twitter feed and other social media tools.  There may be some ads coming, too, but I hope to keep ...

Natalie Malik of Awkward & Beautiful and of Emily Dismukes from Divine Chaos offer their "Journal in Your Pocket" online class beginning Monday, March 19, 2012. As the title suggests, this class is all about making small journals, just big enough to fit into a pocket. For $25.00 you will get journal prompts, tutorials, live chats with the two instructors, and more.  Registration ends March 20th.  Go here , if you are interested. Go to Traci Bautista's blog to participate in the online book tour for her new book, Doodles Unleashed . She has teamed up with several of her artist friends and art/craft companies for the tour. The book tour features giveaways, tutorials, and other fun stuff. Some of the giveaways are over, but the older posts are still worth reading.  The book looks like a keeper, by the way. 

. . . but I hope to post here more and get this blog a little notice.  I just had an experience with an online blogging service that was interesting, to say the least.  I will not name the company, because they were as nice as could be expected, given the situation.  The blogging service pays $5.00 per weekly post on various topics.  The contract with freelance writers does not require that pictures be posted. That became a bone of contention when I sometimes did and sometimes did not post pictures.  Call me snooty, maybe even stupid, but I'm not going to snap photos and/or troll the Internet for copyright free photos for $5.00 per post. The topics I was writing on did not exactly lend themselves to graphics.  Supreme Court cases on church-state issues and covering the Republican primaries.  Yes, I could have looked for a copyright-free picture of the Supreme Court building or an electoral map, but for $5.00.  No. As it was, I did provided pictu...