Dawn Sellers

New Discovery

 
Photo of Tavi from her blog, taken by her dad.

I discovered this new blog today and I look forward to reading more and following along.  Tavi Gevinson is just adorable, has a great fashion style and I love that she loves vintage styles.  I think this girl has a bright future ahead of her.  The one thing that really sticks out about her (to me at least) is that she started her blog and her parents had no idea what exactly it was she was doing until she asked them for permission to appear in an issue of New York Times magazine.

Getting out of Dodge

Or at least out of Typepad. For various reasons I have moved my blog over to Wordpress. The new address is www.dawnsellers.wordpress.com If you read my blog through a feed please update the address, I would hate to lose you.

Change in plans.  I'm staying here.  Sorry for the confusion but it just didn't work out over there.  I guess I'm a routine kind of girl.

I've got a busy weekend ahead

This weekend is Art and Soul here in Portland.  Although I'm not taking any classes I always love going to the vendor faire and meeting up with other artists. 

Tonight I'm going to a jewelry trunk show hosted by the very talented polymer clay jewelry artist from L.A., Laurel Steven.  Go, take a look at her work. 

Her blog: http://laurelsteven.blogspot.com/

Her Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/laureleee/  

Go ahead now, I'll wait.

(I borrowed this pic from her flickr page - hope she doesn't mind) 

Isn't her work beautiful?  I can't wait to see it in person tonight.

Saturday is my usual working at the store.  I'm still sorting through vintage Barbie and trying to get things together for the doll show next weekend.

Saturday evening is a dinner meet up with some of the members of the Charmsters group that is in town for Art & Soul, then the vendor faire.  Not much money to spend but I still like to look!

Sunday we are selling at an antique event in Polk County at the fairgrounds.  So not sure when we are loading the truck for that, hmmm . . . .

I don't think I'm going to have many spare moments to eat or sleep this weekend.  I'm exhausted just thinking about it. 

Pink Artist Block Party 2009

Monica is at it again.  Remember last year?  The Pink Artist Project and the beautiful doll that was created?

This year Monica has put out the call for pieces of art to be donated for a raffle that will raise funds, 100% of which are donated to The Cure. 

Not sure what I'll be making yet, ideas are swirling around, will certainly be PINK.  I've also signed up my Oh So Charming group for a collaborative charm project that will be donated.  Stay tuned for more details on the items as they are created.  There's still plenty of time for you to participate too, either by making a piece of art to donate, donate $ and be entered to win one of the fabulous pieces of art, or both.  Click on the Pink Artist Block Party button above to check it out.

Painting Journal Backgrounds

The memory of my painting day remains today on my paint stained fingernails.  I really need a fresh manicure.  I am feeling much better after a nice weekend.  My bug bite seems to have healed so no worries there.

I spent most of the day Sunday between projects, one of which was painting backgrounds in my art journals.  It was fun to layer paints, papers, stamp and then scrub, dab on more paint, and just play.  These are some of the backgrounds that resulted. 

 

 

My trusty little brayer got a good workout as I played with different color combinations.  I worked on a few other painting projects in between while pages dried.  Will share those in another post.

These pages are all ready now.  I like having backgrounds all done and then as I flip through magazines or gather scraps, I can glue them down in my journal.  My book is filled with pages in progress and I really don't journal in sequence at all.  I'll jump around here and there, jotting down notes and thoughts randomly.  It doesn't need to make sense to anyone but me and I kind of like that it doesn't. 

 

I signed up for Mary Ann Moss' Stencilry class.  I think I'm way behind the times here as I've been seeing all of these great stenciled pages everywhere but she's offering the class again (starts in a couple of weeks) and pre-registration opened today.  I'm excited to learn some tips and tricks for cutting my own stencils.  I don't have much patience for that type of thing so I'm hoping she'll share some magic.

Disintegration Collaboration - The results of phase one

May 1st is finally here!  I've been so anxious to unwrap this bundle and find out how much disintegration could actually happen in just a few months time.  As I alluded to yesterday, a little surprise disintegration happened after I brought my packet inside to dry out.

Well, I placed it in the kitchen on top of the dog crate, where I thought it would be safe to dry out for a few hours.  Then, I'm sitting in the family room and I hear lots of rustling around and playing in the kitchen.  When I finally go in to see what the noise is all about, I find that Pinto has ripped into the packet, torn out the flowers and is chewing on a piece of the paper.  I was not amused and unfortunately didn't think to grap the camera so you could see him with one of the flowers hanging out of his mouth.  He is so adorable I couldn't get too upset with him.  Doug thinks he was just trying to help the disintegration process along.

So here are my results:

 Some great fading on all the papers because believe it or not we actually had some sun this spring here in the Pacific Northwest.  There is a little rust on the outside from the wire attched on the inside.

I love how this page came out, the rust from the wire and the gasket really aged this page nicely.  I thought the wire screen would rust also but it must be coated or is stainless, it is a piece of scrap that I have no idea where it came from originally.  (I have no idea why this is all underlined and I cannot remove it!!)

 

 

The tissue paper bled nicely as I expected and disintegrated a bit.  Love how the little coin envelope disintegrated too.

 

 

The holes were created by a slug who had eaten his way through from the outside.  I did set him free before bringing the packet inside.

 

I am looking forward to what the next phase of this project will be, for now I've placed the contents in a plastic bag and they will await Seth's instructions.

 

Yes, tomorrow is the unveiling . . . .

It is finally here - well, tomorrow it will be here!  The unveiling of the Disintegration Project, pop over to Seth's blog and check out all of the participants.   The list is long.

I actually brought my packet in already to let it dry out a bit before taking it apart and photographing it - which I will do tonight.  After I brought it in there was a little bit of surprise distintegration help, I'll leave it at that for today.  You'll have to check back in tomorrow to see the results and see what actually happened.

You can see the beginning of my project here and then an update here. 

Disintegration Update

No, not me, my project.  Although I feel like a disintegration project myself today.  Way too much stress at work.  Happy it is Friday, happy that I have 5 days before I will be resting, relaxing and recreating in Hawaii.  Not to mention all the eating and drinking of fruity concoctions.

The other day when the sun was out I took the opportunity to take some updated photos of my disintegration project.  I cannot wait to unwrap this on May 1 and see what kinds of decay and disintegration have been happening.  This is a project that many artists are participating in, led by Seth over at The Altered Page. 

 

When I flipped the package over there's dirt and even a bug that is investigating.  I hope he doesn't try to make this his new home!

 I tried to peek inside and did see some rust happening (yay!)

Library Card Project

One of my art friends Jeanne has been coming up with some fun collaborative projects.  First there were the Guerilla Valentines, which I missed out on.  When Jeanne posted her idea for the Library Card Project I didn't have to think too much about it.  I wanted to be a part of this one.

Jeanne is a wonderful writer and she has written a short story called The Cat Man.  She split up the story into several parts and put each part of the story along with a library card into a card pocket.  The pockets were distributed among the various players and our task was to read our part of the story, decorate the pocket and send a photo to Jeanne.  She is posting each pocket on her Rendezvous blog, created specifically for her collaborative projects and when all are completed she will post the entire story for all to read.  How exciting!  I received the first part of the story and the first time I read it I immediately jotted down some notes about my thoughts and feelings.  The first part of the story seems very dark and a little mysterious, it talks a little about time travel which I found hard to incorporate into my pocket.

So, here is what I came up with for my pocket.  I dug through my collage materials and found an image of a man floating - aha!  that says time travel to me.  Then of course I had to add the cat and the paw prints just because of the title of the story.  There was mention of a "wild eyed guy" and I found the closest thing I could.  I inked up the images so they would look a little dark and mysterious and then trimmed the pocket in silver foil tape.

Be sure to check out the other card pockets and follow Jeanne's Rendezvous blog to read the whole story.

  

Twelve Secrets: Secret #8 Selecting Empowering Partnerships and Alliances

 

No matter how hard I try not to be, I am a competitive person by nature.   The word empowerment is not one that I use frequently.  To me, strength and power come from within myself.  No one else can provide that for me and I have no expectation that anyone will.  I want to be the best, strongest, smartest, quickest.  This is what motivates me in my art work.

 

If I think that I will not be successful I will just not try.  If I have started something and it isn’t going the way I think it should, I will quit and move on to something else.  This explains my pile of unfinished projects. 

 

I know these things hold me back from my real goal of being successful.  I do enjoy working on my art with others, hearing their feedback and ideas.  I get some of my best ideas from watching others work, seeing their process or reading about it.  It typically takes me in a direction that I would have not otherwise traveled.

 

I think I do a good job of selecting my art partners.  I have tried out various ones, but because my time is so very limited, I will not spend my time with partners that I have not selected.  I have mentioned my two local art groups before.  While they are vastly different from one another, each provides me with an enriching experience whenever I am with them.  I only wish I could spend more time with them.  I am working on making that happen.  As my schedule frees up some time I am trying to fill it in with my art friends.

 

I feel that I provide them the encouragement, support, and if they need it, the empowerment.  I also enjoy participating in collaborative projects.  These are with my online art partners.  Again, I have talked about this before but it is such an important part of my artwork I cannot stress it enough.  Through the online groups I have met people from all over the world that I would have never met otherwise.   

 

I feel like between the two local groups and my online groups I have my dream team.  They provide me with consultation, encouragement, support, belief, trust, inspiration, and a connection that cannot be matched.  I hope that I provide my share of those things to them.  I do not want to leave out the fact that they are all amazing artists.