Paper Arts Bulletin

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...