Wednesday, July 29, 2009

This week in My Life

I belong to a great group of women artists - the Art Diva's.
It's an online group of like minded creative souls.
Full of awesome artists...my (new) buddy Joanne has organized and hosted an art banner swap that I jumped at the chance to be a part of. I met Joanne and a lot of the Diva's in Birmingham when I took DJ & Deryn's classes this summer. They had done a banner swap before the classes and when I saw them I really wish I had of participated...so, here was my chance to get in on the goodies.
I designed my banner around two of my favorite things - rust media and painted faces.
It's titled "She Was An Art Diva" but I told the ladies that I should have named it "How To Make an Art Banner The Hard Way" since that is exactly what I did- make it the hard way. I didn't have the final design in mind and was just piddling along, working in an intuitive manner..which is fine if you're not in a time crunch.
Was I in a time crunch?
Hahahahahahahah hahahhha (cough, sputter)
(clear throat) hahahahahhahahahaha...
A little bit of one - they are due to be in Michigan day after tomorrow...I started on them day before yesterday.
Needless to say I'm either sending them to each individual person or over nighting them to Joanne....we'll see what it cost to do both. I'll send them the cheapest way - unless the most expensive is only a small bit more (since placing 18 banners in one envelope is a LOT easier than placing 18 banners in 18 envelopes...and then writing the addresses...
you get the picture.
I suppose this is where Mr. Wonderful would say "round and round she goes, where she stops nobody knows..."

Here are a couple of pictures that I took along the way.Piles of yummy rust media to pick from...want some?
Go here and shop to your heart's content!

Sewing the strips onto a long roll of canvas with the banner shape drawn on the back side.
No color ink in my printer...I had to print the faces out in black & white onto fabric, then paint them individually...yes- 20 tiny faces by hand...

I printed the verbiage and then painted that also. I ironed Misty Fuse on the backs of everything to make adhering it all quicker and easier. I added a couple of layers of matt medium over it all to seal it.
All the girls - waiting for their first coat of matt medium to dry...

And here is "The Hard Way", um, I mean "She Was An Art Diva" banner.

Like McDonald's -

I'm lovin' it!

I may have a couple of extras - if I do email me and we can do a teeny tiny little private banner swap...or I might put them in my Etsy shop.

I'd rather swap!

5 comments:

Martha Lever said...

FABULOUS!!! Love these banners and oh my gosh---all by hand!!

Joanne Huffman said...

They arrived today (in one of my most favorite envelopes ever) and are even more incredible in real life. It may not have been you intention to hand paint each one, but the results are wonderful.

Joanne

Anonymous said...

Carol, what was the hard way about that? Very clever to make the background for all and cut the pieces and fuse the forground. Thanks for the idea of using black and white and painting the fabric too. You are an Art Diva. Stay cool. Judy in South Dakota

christy grant said...

I love my banner!

dejavucreations said...

I also felt like I did mine "the hard way". The background of your banner has a very cool feel to it. I didn't realize that you had painted the image so am glad I checked out your blog. Thanks for participating in this swap.

art diva jan