Artistic Muse ....

... Hi again!  Another quick class review today.  I've just spent a wonderful crafting weekend with my daughter, Kat.  I've been trying to get her interested for the last few years with very little success. However, I recently introduced Kat to Dylusions sprays and suddenly she was hooked!  Yea!!  Last month I took Kat to the regular meeting of our Art Journal club and she loved, so now we're booked to go each month.

This weekend, we've been lucky enough to have two craft events.  The first, on Saturday, was run by Valerie Brincheck at my local craft shop, Stampeddler.  It was called Artistic Muse.  We were a small class of six, some with experience and some, like Kat, complete beginners.  The aim was to create our own artistic muse, to help us find inspiration and push past the mojo blocks!  We started by selecting polymer clay faces and some wings to personalise as our muse, and then built a collage with found objects. We built up layers, painted with black gesso, added more layers and more black gesso and finished off by adding some colour with metallic paints.  It was fantastic.

Here's my finished Artistic Muse and not in my go to cool colours either!!

This is a 6" × 6" wooden block decorated with lots of wonderful found objects (kindly provided by Valerie).  We got gloriously messy.  And here's a photo of Kat's Artistic Muse:

Once again, it's a 6" × 6" wooden block that Kat decorated.  I love the colours she used to finish the piece - blues, violet and purple - lovely!

Here are photos of the ones that Valerie made, two are 6" × 6" and the other two are 8" × 8".  They are all stunning:

This one is 6" × 6" and was the example that Valerie put on display in Stampeddler.  When Kat saw it she just loved it, so I asked if she wanted to have a go at making one herself.  And we had the most marvellous time.  These are the colours I normally tend to use!

Another 6" × 6" example.  This glows in the light and I just love the steampunk theme.  Check out those cute little googles on the face!

An 8" × 8" example.  I would love to make one this size.  There are so many lovely details in here. Check out the pen nibs in the headdress.

And I think this i my favourite of them all.  Another 8" × 8".  Valerie made this for a friend of her.  I would love to get a gift like this!  And this one includes all my favourite colours.

If you live in the Northville area, keep an eye on the class schedule to see if Valerie runs this class again - it is so worth going.  Thanks to Valerie for the inspiration, to our classmates and to Margene for the use of the class in her shop - Stampeddler!

On Sunday we went to the Art Journal club.  Kat spent the whole session working on a spread in her journal.  I don't have a photo as she's not finished it yet, but I'll share it as soon as she's done!  That's all for now.