geraldine newfry

christmas goodies

finally, now that folks have opened their gifts, i can show you what i've been working on.

i knit a crow for my friend debb.  i got the pattern from natty knits.  here's her ravelry link.  i think it came out really cute.

 

for her husband, greg, i painted a small canvas using gear masks.  he likes gears.

i'm not sure why i took this picture sideways.  the clock goes on the right, not the bottom.  i was kind of rushing around making sure i had everything wrapped.

i painted the canvas with black gesso, placed the masks/stencils, went over it with white gesso and then painted with quinacridone magenta and deep purple.  i can't wait until it's warm again and i can use my spray paints.

happy boxing day!

nanojoumo pages

for me, the nanojoumo commitment has been a big fail.  i find i just have to think longer than one day to finish a spread.  plus there's time waiting for paint to dry, etc.  i'm still working on the prompts, but haven't finished a page a day.  still, i've gotten back into the habit of journaling, and that's great.  here's some recent pages i've finished.

it was so nice yesterday, i got to spray paint.  and i learned that my favorite pens don't write over spray paint very well.  especially when you apply too much paint, which i tend to do.

i also took a picture of my journal, almost full.

i love the way it's bursting at the seams.  it doesn't stay closed anymore.  but the binding is holding up well.

it's a beautiful day again today, in chicago.  i've done some more journaling and am getting ready to knit some more christmas presents.  i hope you enjoy your day too.

stencil proofs

here are some proofs from the stencils i've been cutting.  it's a lot harder to make the complicated stencils than i thought.  i'm making a stencil book for publication.  i'm trying to put a different focal image on each page.  i think i'm using about 16 pages, four images per page.  that's a lot of stencils!

this buddha one is giving me fits.  i just can't get the face right.  one of them looks like a ninja buddha to me!  it's a little hard to do because you have to move the burner rapidly enough so that it doesn't burn a big circle in the mylar.  but i would like to spend more time to get it right.  hopefully next time.

i'm happy with the rib cage and milagro heart.  those little blobs at the bottom of the right page are supposed to be ninjas.  not buddha ninjas.  but it's hard to tell what they are.

i think the girl with her head in her hands is my favorite.  i do really like that hisbiscus on the right too.  i think i may have spray painted it upside down in my actual book.  whoops!

here's my setup for cutting.

there's mylar, computer printed image, pane of glass and a stencil burner.  also coffee.

more stencilry

i'm still on lesson two of pure experimentation stencilry offered by mary ann moss of dispatch from LA.

basically i've been trying out all my stencils and trying to find my own style.  i still have a bunch of stencils to cut to go along with this lesson.  i'm also supposed to go back in and work some areas with acrylic, but i kind of like them as they are.  the upcoming lessons look great though, so i should try to push past this stage.  i've just been having so much fun.

 

 

 

for these pieces i painted watercolor paper with acrylics before going to the spray paint.  i like the warm colors of the background.  my favorite found stencil thus far is a sink mat my friend found at the dollar store.  see all those little squares?  that's it.

once i find my style, the eventual goal is to make book covers.  i have the background painted on book board already.  i've been enjoying so many other things, but i realize now how long it's been since i bound a book.  time to clean off that desk and get to work.

beginning stencilry

i'm a bit behind in stencil class.  but i have some to show you!  these are my initial experiments.  i only got through the first half of the tutorial videos when i made these.  the second half deals with adding acrylics and making journal pages.  i have several backgrounds to work on now.

at first i just took my thrift store finds to see what patterns they would make.  this first one is my favorite.  it was just an overall lace dust ruffle.

here's an eyelet dust ruffle.  i really like the tiny dots above the big eyelet pattern.

the lace and eyelet together.  you can tell i was really grooving on that orange paint.

next i started putting them together with commercial stencils that i had.  we had to make a portfolio to hold our loose pages.  i cut open a box (not very neatly) and used the sides for the portfolio.  this is the front in progress.

this is the inside of the front.

here's the back:

and the inside of the back.  i've bound it now and will have to get a picture of it all together.

then i just played around with commercial and found stencils on watercolor paper.

this was a ton of fun!  and then i went back and watched the rest of the videos and realized how much *more* fun it could be.  all i can think about is stencils!  i would highly recommend this class from mary ann moss of dispatch from la.

that was a link.  i realize my links aren't standing out well from the text, and i'll have to figure out how to fix it.  but mary ann's site is a link.  just so you know.