Important Stuff!

Prairie Girl

Yesterday was my birthday. THANK YOU to everyone who called, emailed or otherwise sent birthday greetings. I'm feelin' the love.

It was for the most part a quiet day, seeing as it fell on a Thursday, but my guys did take me out for dinner last night and then my son bought a big Black Forest cake for dessert. The celebration will continue over the weekend. I'm doing something fun, but that's a whole other post. 

This whole week, I've been the feature artist on Create Mixed Media for The Week As Art project. I had an email from Tonya Davenport saying that she's still looking for artists to visualize a week in 2012, so if you're interested, please get in touch with her. The project specifics and her contact info are here.

Wednesday night, a bunch of the Pulse of Mixed Media artist joined Seth Apter and a bunch of his fans in Tweet Chat for the Twitter Launch Party for his book. It was crazy fun-the chatter was non-stop and everyone had a really good time. The hour just flew by! If you missed out, check Seth's blog and see if his book tour is coming to a city near you. (And if so, save the date!) The info will be on the sidebar.

Also, Seth has been posting daily about the 31 spotlight artists in the book, so it's your chance to learn a little more about each of them. If you comment on any of these posts, he's putting your name into a draw to win a signed copy of his book, so definitely check it out!

And...as if all that's not enough, Seth has also issued an open call for artwork which once submitted will travel with him on his book tour. If you want the details about that, click here.

WHEW! I think that's all the important stuff I had to share. Meanwhile, I'm busy working on a zillion things at once. I've been doing alot of writing and HTML stuff for Papergirl Vancouver. (I'm working on the 2012 organizing committee.) I'll have details soon, including an open call, which I hope YOU will consider answering! 

The Week As Art

Copyright Lelainia Lloyd/Tattered Edge 2012

In late fall, Create Mixed Media's Tonia Davenport put out a call for artists to submit ideas for her The Week As Art project. I submitted a sample of my work for consideration and was chosen to create art for the week of March 18th-24th. 

Since today is the 18th, my week is now posted. If you hop on over to Create Mixed Media's website , you can see the entire week. The 22nd has some special artwork, because that's my birthday! Like Tonia, I have a love of numbers in art, so it was alot of fun coming up with seven day's worth of images for this project. 

Current Projects

 I've spent yesterday puttering in the studio. I bought this old dictionary some time ago with the idea of gutting it and rebinding it into a journal. Yesterday seemed like the perfect day to do this.

I love vintage Canadiana, which can be hard to come by here on the west coast. Every now and again, I come across something like this dictionary and I snap it up. The only thing that would have made me happier was if the cover was red, instead of green, but it'll do.

After I carefully removed the original signatures inside, I recovered the entire interior of the cover with a heavy weight scrapbooking paper that matched nicely. This helped reinforce the spine and honestly, it just looks nicer.

 The book measures 6 1/4 inches tall x 4 1/4 inches wide, so I cut a wide variety of papers this size or smaller. Some of the papers I wanted to use were smaller to start with and I didn't want them all the same size anyway-it's more interesting when there's a variety.

Some of the pages were made with pages torn from old art magazines. When you pay $18 CDN per issue, you don't just toss the old ones in the recycler! I use the ones I'm not interested in keeping in this way or make envelopes to send art mail in until the whole issue is all used up. Waste not, want not!

I took an initial pass through the journal, gluing bits and pieces that amused me onto some of the pages. This was done quick and dirty-I'll be writing and gluing things in till it's all filled up, so there's no rush. I added some colour copies of some of my favourite photographs to a few of the pages.

More bits from magazines combined with scrapbooking papers. I am a bit of a paper junkie, truth be told.

I also discovered that travel guides and brochures have interesting images of where I live, so some pages were made with bits and pieces from those. Most travel bureaus have websites where you can order free info by mail from just about anywhere you'd like to visit. Free journal fodder is a good thing!

I added a library pocket in the back as a place to stash paper bits for later, if need be. My plan is to use this journal as a catch all. I'm going to keep it in my bag and the idea is to not have it be too precious to use. I'll jot and glue things into it when the spirits move me and not worry to much that anyone's going to see it. (And what I mean about not worrying about anyone else seeing it is that I don't tend to handwrite much anymore. Having lost all the feeling in my hands because of the damage MS has done to my spinal cord, writing is difficult and it just takes too much energy.)

Anyway, that was yesterday's project. Today I am working on completing some digital artwork for The Week As Art project being hosted by Tonia Davenport of Northlight Books on the Create Mixed Media website. The week I was assigned just happens to be March 18-24, which is my birthday week!

Just before I sign off, I wanted to take a moment to say a very heartfelt THANK YOU to everyone who commented, emailed and called to offer congratulations, encouragement and kind words about my name being put forward for the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal. I deeply appreciate all the love and support. xox