Q is for Question

Well, now, the first question I want to ask myself is why did I forget to publish Tuesday's post?? I bumped it to "draft" when my computer hiccuped and meant to come back to it - but I forgot!! Now I am not eligible for the Nablopomo prize. Phooey. Well, I will finish out the alphabet. So we are at Q.

I really like how this ATC worked out. The colors, everything. Well, listen: I am off to work on the book. I will see you tomorrow with an "R" ATC.

Oh yay.

P is for Paper

Paper: background paper! In my new book, The Great Library ATC Swap, due out in just a couple of weeks (want instant notification? Join us at: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Robinsunne and you will get notices for the books, the swaps and all the fun in the SunneSpot world)

Anyway, back to today's topic: Paper. In the book I talk about how much I love to make a big piece of background paper to cut up later for Artist Trading Card backgrounds. I like it so much that at the end of the How-To chapter I have included a few of my favorite techniques. Today's card comes from one of the big papers.

To begin with I took a piece of cardstock and painted it all over with gel medium. Then I lay a piece of crinkled colored tissue paper over the top and pressed it flat with just my hand. The next morning I stamped it with some of my handmade rubber stamps and Voila! lots of backers, ready to go! Here is today's ATC:I had some gold! tissue paper in my stash - cool, eh? I found, however that the shiny-ness of the paper didn't let it take the rubber stamping as well. I could try one of those stamping pads that are for metal and glass and that might work. The regular tissue tho prints just fine. I love all the crinkles. And that is a chocolate coin wrapper there. And publishing is on my mind these days...

So tell me: will you try this technique?

O is for Once upon a time...

Isn't that a beautiful way to begin a story? A woman I know used to begin stories like that. I have begun some with those words too. Once upon a time, when was it? When was it not? There was a little girl who loved to cut paper into the tiny, necessary items for the folk of her doll houses. They had pots and pans made of black construction paper made shiny with a layer of white glue, miniature newspapers to read, and even a bureau in the bedroom to hold their tiny handkercheifs.

Just kinda gets you in the mood to make a story, doesn't it?

So, yesterday I made 8 ATCs for my book (which I am working to get into your hands by about May Day) and this morning I am looking at them and realizing that I LOVE to make the cards in a series. All the same background, or all the same theme, or, in this case, all the same construction technique. All of yesterday's cards are to illustrate the project that we will have at the library in August: Favorite Places. In August I figure that we might have some visitors from away come to join us at the Swap and that taking pictures of various Rockport locales will be on their agenda anyway, so I thought that we'd use those photos to make 3-D ATCs.

Want a peek?

Here you go: This is Andre the seal. He lived with a family here in Rockport back in the 60's. One of his human sisters wrote his story and you can find it at your library if you would like to read a very sweet story about a dad who was interested in all the folks in his harbor. Andre lives on in his granite likeness in the Rockport Harbor Park, and he loves to have visitors drop in for a group shot.

Will you come visit us Rockportians this summer? We will be at the library on June 14th and 25th, July 12th and 30th, and August 9th and 27th. We will show you how to make ATCs of your stories, Once upon a time. When was it? When was it not?

N is for Numbers

So today I am going to talk about numbers a little bit. I am not a good enough mathematician to hope to make a living that way, but I have a delight for numbers, the clarity of addition (so neat and crisp) the intrigue of multiplication (hidden in the sentence are stacks and stacks of numbers). It is all rather ... big. A person could have a lot of respect for the concept of counting everything.

So I have made you an ATC of counting, perhaps counting one's friends, counting kindnesses, counting on support.

I am working like a dog ... um, a literary dog?? ... on the rewrite of The Great Library ATC Swap. I am pleased with how it is going. I can hardly wait to get it out to you. (I know that I am counting Iris for her fabulous proofing skills.)

Keep tuned. Lovely Monday to you.

M is for memorabilia

Good Morning. Well, yesterday we had a Swap at the library - our first Saturday swap. About 30 people came again! Yay! It was a two hour swap this time and artists came and went within those two hours, which was nice I think, for everyone to be able to adapt the event to their day.

Iris the craftingmamalibrarian.blogspot.com, was there in her Librarian Hat, but was really my ATC co-facilitator. Saturdays in general are busier than Wednesdays and we were thinking that two are better than one. Also our child-to-adult ratio was reversed with twice as many children as adults, and two leaders were helpful in that respect as well. So next month I will be her co-facilitator. We'll be switching back and forth.

Anyway, lots of fun was had, lots of art was made, quite a few cards got swapped, friendships were enhanced. Everyone left full and happy.


This morning I am thinking about my book again (I have to get back to the corrections and rewrite today) and so I have used one of my cards from yesterday to illustrate todays letter: M, which uses two of the lessons that are included in my book.

M stands for memorabilia.

This is a card that I made yesterday. I made a papercut (the March lesson) from regular scrapbook paper. The lesson in the book is easy and gives georgous results, but this one was tough because scrapbook paper is very thick and difficult to fold, but I like how it came out despite all that. I glued it to some mulberry paper that I had and then down on cardstock for strength. I cut a definition from my cut-able thesaurus, which I like because ATCs often take us back to times in our past and help us with our memories. I added a hand-made envelope (a lesson from the keep going section of my book) and filled it with some notes that I received yesterday that I want to save.

I wish you good times today which will stick sweetly in your memories. - R

L is for love

What else could L stand for?

Maybe a zillion things, but today, for me, L is for Love.

And the best love I have ever had is the stuff that runs my heart around my children and around my studio. I love being my children's mom and I love being an artist.

In saying goodnight to my children last night (saying goodnight to children is always a process, not an event) I was thinking: I am happy. This is a really good life. I am the priveleged parent of two, fabulous people. They are talented, and loud, and creative, and nag me, and demand, in their astonishing wonderfulness way more of me than I ever, ever imagined I had. I am a way better human being now than I was before they came into my life. They are my angels. They, in their need to be exquisite have elicited in me: love. My love means something here.

And my love means something in my studio. Oh, I have visions of grandeur, and a vast millions - I like those visions. I also have such profound experiences in my studio. I know God here. I have always wanted to share this with other people, and this week I am beginning to see that I do. Now I don't talk about the Divine when I teach people how to cut and paste little ATC art beauties at the library, but it is there. I can see it in the children's eager body language as they share glue and swap cards, and I can see it in the delight the adults have as we share bits of color and thought with each other. This thing that I know to be true: how good I feel when I do this work, seems to be helping other people to feel good too.

Thank You. This is a really good life.

K is for kindhearted

There are people in my world who are kindhearted. I feel seen by these people. I feel that I have been given a gift simply by being in their presence. I want to be more like them.

I was thinking about how some religions teach that human beings are a part of the great, whole, spinning circle that is our world, and that some religions teach that we humans are special, and separate from the rest of that which is the earth. Having been raised in a family and culture that practiced the latter, I began to wonder about what it would have been like to grow up practicing at-one-ment.

I think kindheartedness would be more natural to me. As it is I must learn this anew. And I want to: because it feels so good to get. Thank you my kindhearted friends.

J is for Junk!

HA! J is for a lot of things, and even for one of my favorite people, but for my daily blog here, today, J is for JUNQUE. That is my spelling for stuff that has artistic merit, not just garbage.

So: this card is made out of odds and ends, which a person might toss, but for that person being so wierded out by how much of what we buy that will never decompose. I don't feel half so badly about throwing away the bananas that didn't get eaten in time, as I do about the plastic stuff.

O.K., so here we have bottle caps and tear-off can seals - half made of plastic, a woven bead angel that I accidentally ran over with the wheel on my chair, (ouch!), and hearts cut from metal-tape-over-craft-foam.

See how pretty all that can be?
Lots more details about how to make cards like this are in my forthcoming book: The Great Library ATC Swap. Want to get the notice for the book as soon as it is published? Join my art group at Yahoo! http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Robinsunne There are photos, a calendar of my teaching schedule, and notices of shows, sales and book publishings! It would be great to see you there!

I am for information, aren't you?

Good Morning. The ninth day, the ninth letter. (What am I going to do when the month runs out of letters?)

Well this morning I got out my cut-up-able thesaurus and looked around for inspiration. I found inspiration in information, as I am sure you do too.

I was lucky enough to be in a study group that read about Mr. Franklin. Now there was a guy filled with information. What he had to know to write Poor Richard's Almanac was astounding, but he was also an international diplomat for decades, a businessman, and an inventor. How nice to have the freedom to keep saying "What if?" and "I wonder?" and how amazing to have the courage to go find answers all of one's life. Very cool.

And from another intellect, this adjunction: Read a book.

H is for HOME, Haleluia!

O.K., so yesterday I was in mom-mode, doing the waiting thing, and I started drawing on this lovely Paper For Pens: kinda shiny, ink just zooms along on the page. I was doodling to figure out what today's ATC would be about.

After going through some of the more absurd ones, (hellion, hen, Heimlich), I moved on to some others:

This morning I did a little cut and paste and there we are:

I am just recently coming into that set of thinkings that are all about loving ourselves where we are, loving the chaos as well as the glory. My home is full, really full, of glory. It is, we are, I am really full of chaos too. Which is what makes the glory all that more miraculous.

A long time ago I was talking to my Harvard Divinity School friend, Rudy, about angels and perfection vs. humanity and the lush world of feelings. It isn't always pretty, but it is here, it is what we have got, and I believe in a God/dess who is curious and interested, as well as loving, and wouldn't have made all of these lush feelings if we weren't supposed to feel them.

I believe in a Universe that makes a world to be experienced and learned from. If we were all supposed to be perfect, why waste time making us human? Just to send us to Hell? That is a very kinky God in my opinion. (This is my blog, I can be opinionated here.)

So, to be full of feelings, (as Bitsa would say, "gifts from God"), and mistakes, and chaos, and to bear witness to the breakthrough into Glory in all her Earthly beauty is, well, good.

So here we all are: in a neighborhood of mistakes, and loving, and chaos, and glory. Pleased to meet you, neighbor.

G is for good

Good things - an incomplete list:the growing ATC community in Rockport

the freedom of a certain moose with some effort by my household

Traci Bautista's how-to video from www.ccpvideos.com

my camera to computer link

my camera

my computer

the various blues of ocean water around the world

history books

music

and, of course, art supplies.

Today's ATC was made from tissue paper glued to a kind of parchment paper, which was then rubber stamped with a 4" x 4" stamp that I carved for a class with Susan Sorrell, (who is teaching at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts in May, and who I highly recommend, and would be attending it myself if not for my job), and then the "good" was handwritten. Now that I have been playing with acrylic gel medium, I want to try the tissue to parchment thing with gel meduim.

See ya tomorrow. Good day to you.

R

April 6th in the Land of Nablopomo - F is for Festival

Just in case you didn't know, I am posting once a day in the month of April in a contest with http://nablopomo.ning.com/ I decided to make an ATC a day for my posts. Yesterday I was busy: I made 4.

F is for Festival.

We celebrated Cambodian New Year with some friends. I made a dancer:

Surrounded some praying monks with yellow cut paper designs:
Watched some elephants on parade: And a happy new year was had indeed.

Good morning. Saturday. Busy Day. We are off to celebrate the Cambodian New Year with some friends. I have been looking on the internet for some images - because guess why? We are going to make Cambodian ATC's this afternoon!
Yippee!
Now we have all the EQUIPMENT - including images - to make our New Year ATC's.
See ya later.
R

the letter to D

C - Controversy

Good Morning. Today I am thinking of controversy. The landscape is a bit dull, and in this photo even a bit darker than the actual ATC. This is metal tape again on foam craft sheet. I am in agony, and my head is pounding. See ya tomorrow.

B is for Buddha

Good Morning.

Today I bring you a Buddha. Good for me to meditate on the possibilities there...

I have been thinking about anger. (Mine.) They say that anger is energy. (To get out and do what needs to be done: lift cars off of children, instigate revolutions, and such.) I think that the Buddha would tell me to notice it. Not have it, not let it have me, not act it necessairily, especially not at the moment, when I am not sure what needs to be done. So, much though throwing chairs and screaming is entertaining in those mind movies of mine, I am getting the little bird of thought that there might be something more potent for all this energy making itself available to me. I open myself to the Universe on this.

Audacious Aunties

Hi!

Here is my first letter ATC:

The letter A. I am working on a Hawaiian mini quilt design to day to maybe, maybe teach this fall if I am not too late. Maybe I will have it far enough along tomorrow to show to you. See you then - R

ATC 1 Compassion has no limit

Here is your link for the day: http://nablopomo.com/ It is short for NAtional BLOg POst MOnth. Actually, they are having a YEAR!!! But I'm taking it gently. They also have monthly themes and April's theme is Letters. This includes both letters as in notes one writes on paper, and the letters of the alphabet. The deal is to sign up with them and then blog every day for a month, (or a year), and somebody wins a prize at the end.

I thought that I would give this a try. I could make an ATC each day with a letter on it, (either kind), and that would be in keeping with my theme of writing this book about ATC's.

The book is going REALLY well. It is in the proofreading stage just now and when it gets all polished I will publish and send notification out to you! Yay! It really is a splendid book: so full of ideas. I can hardly wait until you see it!

So I owe you a photo of those ATC's from my last post. Here you are:

This is an ATC from the first lesson in the book. It is a magazine photo collage, which is what we did at our first Library Swap meeting in February, but this one has a bit of a twist in that I was just looking for blues to make my background. I liked the words on the teatag, which I added later and they fit well with the globe that I had found and the "YOUR NAME HERE" that I cut from one of those fake credit cards one gets in her junk mail.

If you would like notification about the book, or the Library Swaps, or any of the goings on in my studio, to come directly to your email inbox please go sign up at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Robinsunne It is REALLY easy: click this link here, and then click JOIN on that page. Give them your whereabouts and you're in. Never miss a workshop, or an opening!

See you tomorrow, here or there - R

Radio Fun!

Hey! The radio was fun yesterday! I was just absurdly nervous beforehand, but once I got there, in the studio with Cathy, (Melio, WERU-FM, http://www.weru.org, Off The Cuff show on Wednesday afternoons), I calmed down. Cathy is so warm and lovely. We chatted about ATC's at the library: http://www.rockport.lib.me.us/ArtistTradingCardsProject.php and about my new book, due out soon, which gives tips and lessons in Library ATC Swapping, info forthcoming at http://robinsunne.com and about my first book "Nannee" at http://robinsunne.etsy.com and I was delighted by the ohh's and ahh's that Cathy gave to my ATC's when she saw them. Now Cathy is an artist in her own right, one whose work I love, and so her ooh's mean something! Thank you Cathy for a great time!

And then I came home and dinner had been prepared for me and my kids by a friend! Thank you Sue! I am enchanted. still.

I thought that I would give you a peek at what I have been working on for the book: "The Great Library ATC Swap"... Eeps! Wrong picture - too many pixels. I will retake that and load it later today. Have a lovely morning. Back again in a bit.

ATC Book!

First: here's a link for something fun for your ATC's, for your Easter cards, even for your Equinox greetings: http://countdown. tentwostudios. com It's all just FREE!

AAAND, if you haven't seen this, prepare to be amazed: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOqxSaW05p4 It is a Swan Lake dance. Oh, My!

And the rest of what I have to tell you is that I am busy, very busy, writing a book about ATC's. (Yes!!!) It has a good deal of "how-to", which is taking all my love of detail. :) I hope to be publishing through lulu.com, and I will keep you posted. It is taking up all of my work time: I am in my studio rediculously early and keep staying too long... but it is so much fun, and I am enjoying the process.

I am making lots, and lots, and lots of ATC's. You'll see them all in the book.
I'm off! - R

a couple of ATC's

Hi there, Nothing particularly new to share today other than that I had a lovely


ATC date with Iris and friends at the Library yesterday. I loved it. Making art with other art friends nearby. Lovely.


These were don a week or two ago:
This one is a base card layer, then purple tissue painted on with gel medium, then a dictionary definition of "haven" then yellow mulberry paper, again painted on with the gel medium - notice how it makes it quite transparent? Cool. Lastly I wrote: "art is a haven."
This is one of my "fake zetti" cards: stripes, painted cheeks ...I put her on an origami background with a multi-layered word dticker: dreams.

See you soon.

R

I'm going to be on the radio!!!!!

This is so exciting! I am going to be on the radio at WERU ( http://weru.org/, for those of you in reach of their webstream ... well, all of you!) Check it out: Wednesday, March 19th, on Cathy Melio's show: Off The Cuff, from 2:00 - 4:00 PM, I think that I will be on a little later in the program.

Cathy, in her day job, is the Education Director at the Center for Maine Contemporary Crafts, a gallery in Rockport just down the street from the Library. We saw each other at the Library a while back when I was there setting up the ATC Swap. Cathy and I have been artist acquaintences for a long time. Cathy was instrumental in bringing the Altered Book art show to the community last fall.

Anywhooo, Cathy invited me to speak on her radio show and we have just confirmed the date of the 19th. I will be telling the story of The ATC Swap at the Library, explaining a bit about how to make ATC's, and, in general, enthusing with Cathy about how art makes the world go round.

Well, let's give you some visual treats for your day:

Here is an ATC called: Come In, Sit Down

An interesting note about this one - which is made on metal tape, more info on that on the ATC page at http://robinsunne.com - is that the chairs are leftovers from one of the altered books that I made for the Rockport Library's altered book art show, the one that Cathy Melio helped to stage, y'know... These chairs were on the rolled paper beads, that made the necklace, that resides in the encylopedia/jewelry box, that is available for loan now at the Library.

And here is another ATC: "My Lady"

Another metal tape ATC.

Have a great day. I hope that you have lots of art in it! (I don't think that I have ever been on the radio before. Oh! My! Goodness!!!! I hope that you will listen in!)

ATC Success

Last night at the library swap was great! Lots and Lots of folks showed up, and we had to get out more tables, and we stayed late, and a children's table developed that was cozy and inspiring for them, and people came from miles away, and, and ... Next month we will have more tables, a longer work time, and a really fun technique that looks so beautiful and is a total secret! Only Molly, the Librarian, and I know. You'll have to come and see!
You know, it would be fabulous if libraries all over hosted ATC Swaps - it wasn't hard to do - YOU could do this too!
1. I talked to the head librarian and showed her some samples, and some of my collage art and ATC books. She was thrilled at the idea of having dozens of people coming to the library, (they get money according to how many people use the library every year). And we will actually be using the library each month: especially for Poetry in April, and Maine history in July, I think, and so on. I agreed to teach a little bit each month, but its mostly just choosing one technique to demonstrate and then letting folks get on about their art.
2. We made a webpage and a schedule for the year meeting one evening a month. You can see ours at http://www.rockport.lib.me.us/ArtistTradingCardsProject.php Feel free to copy some of our words and ideas! The library sent out a couple of press releases to local newspapers, and I know someone who has a community radio show who has invited me to speak next month.
3. You'll see that I am keeping the technique teaching every month pretty simple - a lot of cut and glue. The library has carpet everywhere and I don't want to be responsible for the spills or the expenses that paint and special products often entail. Last night all we did was magazine collage and everyone had a great time and could have stayed for hours!

Wouldn't it be great if wherever you travelled you could find libraries with ATC Swaps? It could give summer vacation a whole new twist!
I am off to bead.

ATC Swap Day!!!

Well, up here on our edge of NE USA we are having wet snow and so it will take a bit of imagination to let me wish you all a good day ... WHICH IS EASY BECAUSE TODAY IS ATC SWAP DAY AT THE LIBRARY!!! I am so excited. Yesterday I passed out lots of ATC's, and heard that many people are planning to come to the swap. The good part was that so many people had never heard of ATC's and I may have gotten a few more converts with my 50 ATC's.

Those ATC's above were made with cutouts from a catalog of garden statues, the backer is from the padded envelope that held my first international internet swap cards, and some other cutouts here and there.

The ATC's below are the "wooden" ones that Iris and I swapped this week. I put the directions for how to make this wooden paper on my website - the ATC page http://robinsunne.com That is gold ink marker drawings on top.

So. I am off to begin my day job, and pack for tonight. I hope to see you at the library. :)

ATC's - check these out!

Here are some of the ATC's that I will start passing out today. I love these little dollies. I got the idea from artgirlz.com They sell these wonderful kits to make 3-D dolls, and in the kits are pewter arms and legs that go with the felted bodies. Too thick for ATC's, so I made my own out of cardstock. It felt odd not to gel or glaze them, but they wouldn't have moved if I had.

Here is a close-up of one of them:

And lastly for today is an ATC with a hand drawn face, a version of a "zetti" face, (you can google that if you are curious), a postage stamp with a clock because "The moment you love, you are unlimited.", the teatag saying, and some lucky numbers because lucky numbers are pretty unlimited too.

This photo is low resolution, and so you don't get, quite, that I covered it with that glass bead acrylic gel medium that I talked about yesterday: dickblick.com The backing is torn strips of very pretty origami paper, all glued down in its raggedy edged glory.

And so that is my story for today. Have a lovely, artful day. And DO ask me for an ATC if you see me today!

ATC Mass Production

Well, I gave myself a treat this past week: ATC mass production. Here is a horrible photo - but you get the idea:I have about three of these boards full of ATC's!

Now there is a big yell-y, nag-y voice in my head that is using words like" glutton" and "shame" ... >sigh< (I clearly have some work to do here.) But I want to tell you that, nevermind the very old and outdated tapes in my brain, (who is stripping those reel-to-reels as we speak), I am finding this to be a great way to make ATC's!

This is what I did: I made big background papers - remember that brown paper bag paper that I was making? I talked about it here a month or two ago - here's a picture of where I stopped sewing and adding stuff to the big paper:

Well, I glued 2 1/2" x 3 1/2" cardstock to the back of the paper and cut them out - about 9 of them. Then I cut out some phrases and images from a scrapbooking collection that I had, and found some great quotes in an old farmer's almanac. I glued everything down with some netting strips, using, our favorite: acrylic gel medium. Here are some from that bunch:I did that with a couple of different background methods: tearing strips of pastel printed origami papers and gluing those down, raggedy edges and all, then drawing little zetti women and gluing those with some messages from teatags I have collected; painting a kleenex onto a piece of cardstock with ochre paint - letting it get all wrinkly - and then experimenting with a red drybrush technique over the top of that, cutouts glued on top of that and gold pen borders, (which look awesome next to the red).

The result of making many cards at once, all of the same background, is that the specialness goes out of it and I felt free-er to experiment - - - resulting in some really delightful cards. And those which were less successful I was fine with regluing or changing. I let go of the pressure to make REALLY PRETTY CARDS and just had fun ... which I think comes through in mostly every card.

I wanted to make so many because I want to pass them out to advertise the swap at the Rockport Library on Wednesday. I will be carrying them with me on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday - ask for one if you see me!

And speaking of the swap, I just want to advertise what a cool library this is, with a very wonderful Librarian - Molly - and a bunch of other fabulous librarians too - Iris, Jane. I mean, imagine: letting a bunch of artist loose in your library every month, actually inviting us in! Imagine being a librarian and spending your downtime at the desk making little scissors-paper-glue confections to advertise the fact that you are inviting a bunch of artists into your midst. Molly has even bought some new, ATC related books for the stacks, (and in April we are celebrating National Poetry Month by ransacking - gently - the stacks for poems for our ATC's!). For a whole year we have been invited to make art and make friends at the Library!

How fab is that? Very. Thank you Molly.

I am off to go paint something with glass bead gel medium. I'm not kidding: try dickblick.com It looks a-maz-ing when it dries.

New Website page

Well, since beginning to work with the library I have been working on ATC's a lot. Paper collage mostly. I decided that my website needed an ATC dedicated page, so check it out: http://robinsunne.com/atcs_-_artist_trading_cards I put in some examples, and some techniques.
Oh! The masking tape technique on that page comes from a book by Nancy Welch called "Paper Craft". I think that it is out of print because I had to order it from the extended Amazon community. I reccomend it. The photos are well done, the writing is clear, and so far, the techniques are a lot of fun.
So listen, if you are in the area, or coming to Maine in the summer, please stop by the Rockport on the last Wednesday of the month to swap ATC's. I keep hearing from all over that folks will be by. Like that mom of a 7 year old said: this stuff is, (with all due respect to those of us in our communities who are recovering from chemical addictions), addicting. (Sort-of: but in a good way.) Sorry, that doesn't sound respectful at all. I think that this mom is having trouble getting her girl to go to bed at night, or do chores or something, (I so relate), because she is too busy making art. This comes close to "not a problem at all" in my thinking. Certainly not anything like the honorable and very difficult work that people do to heal from chemical dependency. Sweet F. is a good girl and I am sure finds time to have a life in between ATC's, and her mom was laughing when she told me about her art inspired daughter.
I didn't tell you, I started to do some beading again. I found myself breathing once more. I forgot that I feel like that. The word 'bead' comes from the root word for 'prayer'. I felt like I was remembering how to pray. >happy sigh<
And the last news for the day is that I have some artwork out and about:
The office of Dr. Aimee Davis at the Breakwater Building in Rockland, ME, has 5 pieces - and I bet that they wouldn't mind if you stopped by just to look. Two of them are in the Prayers Series. Lots of reconfigured trash. Very wonderful pieces. The headers on my website are sections of Prayers I. http://robinsunne.com
Waterfall Arts in Belfast, ME, has "October Bird" - a beaded and trash embellished piece that I have been chatting about here on this blog since, um, October.
Next up is a piece that I will submit for jurying down in Portland, ME, and then I had better slow down on all of my volunteer art projects for a while as my studio is nearly empty of finished works! (YAY!!!!)
Have a lovely day.

My ATC Brown Paper Background

Well good day all. Here's my Brown Paper Background so far:

You can see there, just above 6:00 and at 8:00, two coins - Pondsong's idea from the comments on February 1st - but these are paper copies of coins, the brown paper was too thick to take a rubbing which was my first alternative idea to her idea of putting real coins on the paper. Here is the sheet of coins that I copied, I have got Chinese yuan, Greek drachma, Italian lira, Canadian dollars, I think that those are UK 5pence, and some US half dollars. I adore holding coins - even more than paper money ... silly me ... (well, I'd rather just invest those) ...anyway, those heavy round clunks that they make together. Big beads.

These are paper ones.

I would like to show you some of the ATC's that I have made to date:

The one on the right has an image from an old book of postal stamps that I enlarged a lot. It is shiny with acrylic gloss medium on it as both glue and finish. The one on the left is drawn with markers on watercolor paper.This one also has acrylic medium on it, with stickers - the houses - and sticky letters. I get outraged at the CEO's of corporations who spill their pollution everywhere. Though here I am using plastic gel meduim and plastic coated stickers... sigh ...These two are from a series on trauma. I was thinking that when people are first coming out of a traumatic event - international terrorism, natural catastrophies, domestic violence, any of it, that it is tough to gather the brain power to even ask for help. So I got to thinking about what we all can do to help each other. These cards were one background at first, painted/drawn with Portfolio brand oil pastels - think watercolor pencils, only lusher! I worked on pretty heavy weight watercolor paper, and when the painting was done it looked like a storm at sea. Good background for trauma recovery theme. I cut the painting into regulation ATC sizes and added words. The big letters are stick on, and the handwriting was done in permanent marker.

I went to the funeral, yesterday, of a woman who was a remarkable teacher on the subject of trauma recovery. For years she taught, well, life skills to people who had not managed to learn them elsewhere, things as basic as how to hold a conversation and make it true. Bitsa taught us how to see the child of "God" in everyone, even ourselves. She just pointed a whole lot of us in the correct general direction. May I just say, here, Goddess Bless Bitsa Hoag Turner and her family in this time of transition. My love to you all.

And here are the Guardians, corporeal images of the ones which make it possible for us each to find what we need. Thank you.

(Here's a fun link as a treat for your inner - or outer - child: http://countdown.tentwostudios.com )

What's an ATC??

Eeeps! Sorry to Pondsong and any others who might not be clear what I am proposing here.
An ATC is a small, baseball card sized piece of art to trade. Like baseball cards only ... different. So: 2 1/2" x 3 1/2" big, you can paint or draw or collage endlessly. Google "artist trading cards" and you will get lots on the history and techniques for how to make them. The Swiss artist who thought this up back in 1997 had the idea that we would set up "swaps", times and places to trade them. I have gotten most of my information about ATC's on the internet, and there are many internet groups who trade with others internationally. But I don't live near any that I know, nor did I have friends who made ATC's, and I wanted to trade in person as well as on the internet. They seem soooo wonderful don't they? Little pieces of art to just bring beauty and wit and deep thought into the world. Eventually a series of events got me to ask my town librarian if we could swap at the library once a month and she said yes!
Anyway. Especially with collage methods, one can make large background papers, combining painting, and drawing, and all kinds of gluing down just about anything, to have a foundation, a starting place for some cards. We then cut this background paper inti 2 1/2" x 3 1/2" pieces and then make a tiny collage on just that small card. (You can then add words, dried flowers, photos, bits of ribbon, wood, metal, anything!)
Because I am going to be teaching this workshop at the library, (Rockport, Maine, Public Library), I am trying to make some cards to be a step or two ahead of all who come for inspiration, and to have some cards to swap when the time comes. I thought yesterday that it would be fun to have a bunch of us making a background paper at the same time. We are all bound to do it differently and we could learn from each other in that way.
Get it? So go get a brown paper bag and start your own background paper. I like the idea of a penny on the final ATC, and, and! How about this: put the penny, or any coin, under the paper and rub over the top with a crayon or colored pencil! Do lots of rubbings! Oh My! I gotta go try that! Thanks, P! Bye!

ATC's and Brown Paper Backgrounds

PHEW!!! Family art project there. Kinda took me away from all of this. I'm here now though, and what news I have for you!

Last fall the Rockport Public Library put on a show called "Out Of Bounds". I talked about it in earlier blogs: it was all about altered books. Let me tell you that it was soooo wierd to have the librarians telling us to cut up and paint on the books. Wow.

Anyway, those art techniques are often the same ones used for making Artist Trading Cards, and my longing for a local place to swap - because trading cards are for trading, yes? - came screaming up to the forefront. So I asked Molly Larson, the head librarian, if we could set up one at the library. And she said Yes! Actually, she said way more than yes: she said that many folks might not know what an ATC is, or how to get one, and would I like to sort-of teach a workshop. Along with the monthly ATC Swap. And of course I said yes. Too. I said yes, Molly said yes: we were having a little yes party. What a good time. :)

So then I wrote a guest column for their Newsletter, http://www.rockport.lib.me.us/_pdf/newsletter/newsletter200802.pdf and now I am thinking about how to make ATC's all the time, and this morning I came up with a great idea. To make background paper for future ATC's. Well actually I had started this paper a couple of days ago, but as I was working on it I thought that I would really be having fun if I was working on it with some friends. I choose you!

Here's the idea:

I will start us out coloring, and variously transforming the background paper and you can follow my directions. Then you can, by adding comments here on the blog, give the rest of us directions to another layer of transformation and we will follow you.

Brown Paper Backgrounds Sewn Up With String...

1. Take a regular brown paper bag and cut it open.

2. Crumple it up very tightly - try not to rip it though. Flatten it out. I actually repeated this step a couple of times to make the wrinkles pretty small.

3. Color the paper lightly with the side of a colored pencil. (Hmmm.. you can hardly see the color in this photo - it was red.) (O.K., light red.)

4. Get out some rubber stamps and stamp all over the paper. What color ink will you use? What theme of stamps will you use?

5. Hand sew your paper. I have started out with just a running stitch, but you could use a cross stitch, or a chain stitch, or anything.

O.K.,now, I have given you a couple of ideas. Your turn! What shall we do next?