Life's been a bit busy here at House of Geller. I'm still trying to finish up a couple things from Art and Soul and am gearing up to work on the swaps I'm participating in for Silver Bella. But alas, whenever I think I'm gonna get to work on something, it all gets trumped if Miss Miranda comes by. I gotsta get in as much girlie time as possible because she leaves for Kihei on Monday. I had planned on last night gettin' some stuff done but she said she needed to be with us. :-) We had some dinner and then had a family fun shopping trip at Target.
I have lots to share with with you from Art and Soul classes. Sigh. I had such great classes this year. I saw on Catherine's blog she said she'd take the same classes all over again. I completely agree. Art and Soul has such high quality classes!
Thursday was Lisa Call's PMC Charms and Bracelet. Lisa is this gorgeous woman and when she starts teaching, you quickly realize she's also one smart cookie! She's knowledgeable, talented, and one of those generous people that will share with you everything she knows. This is my second class with Lisa and so far she's two for two with sending me home with a completed project or VERY nearly completed project. Yay! Another fun thing about this class was that Elise was in this class and we got to hang and have lunch together!
Here are the charms I made in class as well as all the bracelet bits. This is a work in progress but all I need to Liver of Sulphur this stuff up and assemble. First free evening I get, I'm gonna wrap this baby up!
Thursday night was Juliana Coles' Art of Repetition Visual Journaling class. (I'm not sure if that's actually the title.) Another great class and that Ms. Coles is such a different teacher than I've experienced. In a word, I call her style "blunt." Very engaging, very caring, and without a doubt, supremely talented but whew...she showed up to teach and in turn, expected that we showed up to learn! Awesome blossom! I took her class Thursday night and I really should left Art and Soul exhaused but after Juliana's class, I was just buzzing!!!
Here are two of the three pages I made. I'm not sharing the third because it is very black and just didn't photograph well. You're not missing much. :-)
The brownish looking blobs are actually tissue paper I added. Ugh. This was one of those "don't try this again" experiences. I did like the "graffiti" style writing and using different washes.
Friday's class was with the fab Traci Bautista. WHAT an adorable girl! She is SO friggin' cute and so crazy sweet and talented! And SO photogenic! :-) And of course, Traci is very generous in sharing all of her tricks and techniques. I learned some awesome things that I can't wait to incorporate into my repetoire!
Oh and a side note, this was the only day I actually took any pictures at Art and Soul. That's kind of unusual for me but guess I was just busy experiencing the event and living in the moment. :-) I don't regret not taking any pictures at Art and Soul but I do regret that I didn't get any pictures of my pal Lilli and I when we were on our day of shopping!
Another fun thing about this class was that my friend Melissa was in this class so we got to hang all day and have lunch together.
Here's a picture of the completed journals from the class. Yep, we all pretty much finished our journals. Totally cool!
Here's my journal...one of the fun techniques that Traci shared is that she doesn't make a "front" and "back." She creates her journals so that either cover could be the front and/or back. Very cool.
Here's one side...
The flowers are made from my beloved white fabric paint. I can't get enough of that stuff!!! Here's the other side...
These next two pictures of are the inside pages. We made lots of painted paper and then bound them into our collaged covers. So how cool is it that Traci guided us to creating these wildly colorful pages and then shared with us some of her drawings in black and white? Any black and white you see in these pages and on the covers are copies Traci's drawings. Don't they just help PUNCH up the color? I am so lovin' this visual play!
Whew! I'm almost caught up with taking pictures of my projects so in a day or so, I'll share my pieces from Sally Jean's class and also all the goodies I've picked up here and there INCLUDING the gorgeous tote that I ordered from dear Lilli.
I just gotta get this all squeezed in between visiting with my baby girl!!! Only five more days until we're an ocean apart!
TeeHeee! I got a photo of you and Glen at McMenamin's! You guys look so cute. But generally, we were quite remiss about taking pix.
So, you must be up to your eyeballs in Inspiration after all your fabulous classes!
:)
Posted by: Lilli | October 17, 2007 at 11:01 PM
WOW! You got a lot done! And you took so many classes. The charms and bracelet are very nice! I loved Juliana's classes! I took two. Those are the ones I would do again. I think every time you take them the results would be different because you the person would be in a different mood with different ideas swirling around your head.
And I love how your colorful journal turned out. Ah, it is nice to finish something...
Posted by: Catherine Witherell | October 18, 2007 at 08:17 AM
Wow- everything looks so fantastic! Is that a jj bird on your charm bracelet? Looks oddly familiar...
Posted by: Julie | October 18, 2007 at 08:54 AM
Wow, wow, what a color filled post! Your bracelet looks so cool---the pages & journal are amazing! What fun! Enjoy these last few days w/your baby---reminds me of the week before Miss E left for college last month... "oh, you want me to help you pack? Sure I'll drop what I'm doing. Oh, you want to go shopping? I'm there! Oh, you're going to be here for dinner? Let's have something you love!...." *sigh...
Posted by: Jana | October 18, 2007 at 05:27 PM
WOWEEE!! You have been a busy, busy, busy artist!! Your stuff looks amazing!
Posted by: Karin (creativechaos) | October 20, 2007 at 09:09 PM
Michelle...you are so sweet. Glad you are almost done with that bracelet and so happy you liked the class. xoxo Lisa
Posted by: Lisa | November 04, 2007 at 02:47 PM