Artscape 2015: Baltimore Pride Edition

Howdy, Readers,

Today I give my photographic review of  my personal experience at Artscape 2015. Traditionally, Artscape is my favorite event weekend of the year--this year being no exception. Friday night was the most temperate night of Artscape I have ever experienced while Saturday was the normal above 90 degree sweltering. You'll see I took some photos of the same items after dark on Friday and again on Saturday.

Favorite Vendor Booths

As with recent years, there were more booths returning to actual art and crafts and, in my opinion, an increase in woodworking.

Moongirl Paper Works (paper art)

Renata Mastroti Pottery (pottery)

Drawn Metal Studios (wire metal sculpture)

Andrus Stoneware (pottery)

Fernworks (jewelry)

Printemps Pottery (pottery)

Gamescape

Moved to the University of Baltimore this year, Gamescape did not disappoint. From Nintendo and Sega nostalgia to video game bands to the Oculus Rift, it was quite a treat.

Virtually reality from designer Cole Pritchard and artist/programmer Karen M. Chang was amazing. My partner in crime for the evening had a wonderful time.

Street Art and Music

As always, there were a lot of amazing works on the street, in the grass, and on the bridge by Penn Station.

The Loading Dock:

Favorite Art Car of the Year:

Storm Drain Mural at Charles and Lafayette:

Misty Mountain Royals:

Admittedly, I managed not to attend that many of the great music events happening this weekend, but I did catch some of the amazing video game magic that took place on the LED billboard by the Charles Street Bridge.

I also did catch a bit of Rob Fearless of Save Your Soul on the Station North stage on Friday night. 

BROcean City, MD, featuring the Rock Opera 6-Pack

For you out-of-towners, BROS stands for the Baltimore Rock Opera Society. They took up an entire parking lot this year with amazing nods to the Boardwalk at Ocean City, MD, as well as side stages with bands and other shows (see the awesome puppet show below!), as well as a large tent featuring the rock operas from their spring show 6-Pack. 

Thanks, Artscape for a wonderful weekend. As always I saw a lot of amazing things, but missed a lot of performances and other art. There's just that much to see and to do! But, I felt the Baltimore pride every moment. Here's to art in all its forms! Until next July, my love!

--LJE

Wedding Shaker Card

Dear Readers,

Well, I just can't stop with the cute cupcakes from the Lawn Fawn Baked with Love stamp set or with Papertrey Ink's 6x6 Guide Lines. They might be part of a larger addiction.

I used sticky notes to create masks so that I could stamp the two cupcakes on top of the cake stand.

I also used washi tape to mask out part of the frosting on the "bride" cupcake which took many many stampings to be acceptable. I fear my bride has a bit too much mascara--I'll have to talk to her make up artist. ;-)

--LJE

Finding the Courage to Put Brush to Paper...

Howdy, Readers, 

In my last post I mentioned that I tried out water coloring a stamped image. It didn't go quite as well as I'd hoped, and I had to scrap a bunch of the images I was working on. However, watching so many paper crafting videos where water coloring is so popular, I began to feel that maybe I could try to water color again--maybe it wouldn't be so hard. I used to love water color, but I hadn't had the courage for 13 years. 

Here, I used cheap water color pencils, and drew several images from three photographs I'd taken in the last few years. You may or may not know that I take photographs of trees, mostly damaged trees. I have included here the original photos and my water colors. 

I don't think these are the greatest paintings--I should have used tape to hold down the paper and way less water. For the sunset painting I actually used cotton balls instead of a brush. I show the before water version here, as well. 

But for my first time out in so long, I am just so happy I tried. I know I sound like a broken record, but this journey of the last 6 or so months has been amazing. How wonderful it was to come home and instead of feeling dread, I felt excited and relaxed to paint. I've been so inspired, and I've learned so much. 

When I quit my comic in February, I noted that I dreaded drawing. I never thought I'd want to do anything even close again, and now, here I am happily and calmly picking up pencils and a brush. I feel free and alive and creative and inspired. And best of all? Those of you who have seen my free hand drawings will see that these still have a hint of my style. Paper crafting is giving me so much, including confidence to try new things--the confidence to not be too afraid to try or to not beat myself up when I lift that brush. 

As always, thanks for coming along down this path with me and listening to my story through art,
LJE

Tree Note Cards

Howdy, Readers,

I saw the amazing Into the Woods background stamp from Winnie and Walter in a video and was super excited when it arrived. I made small blank note cards with rounded edges with my new corner punch and experimented with stamping the trees in different colors of ink on the green background card stock. At first I was bothered that I couldn't get a solid impression all across the image, but eventually decided that I liked that quality. 

After watching a lot of craft videos with water coloring, I also decided to try water coloring the tree images with water color pencils I'd bought that week. I show a before and an after of the one that turned out well, as well as the rest of the set.

--LJE

Let's Play Checkers!

Dear Readers,

Today something a bit different--I made a mini set of checkers for a friend's daughters and accompanying mini cards. I came up with the idea for this and really wanted to give it a whirl. This one was fun but also a bit tedious. It was also my first (of many) projects to use my newly beloved Lawn Fawn Baked with Love stamp set. 

I stamped 96 cupcakes in total because each checker is double sided. I used two different patterned papers for the cups of the purple cupcakes and of the pink cupcakes. I paper pieced each cupcake before punching out circles and laminating, inspired by this video by Sparkly CanadianCraftyGirl. The video really inspired me to make a greater effort to cut out intricate items by hand. 

The patterned papers I used come from Papertrey Ink's 6x6 Guide Lines.

I made the board in Open Office's Spreadsheet (their version of Excel). I looked for printable templates online but ultimately decided I wanted to customize the board just so, and using a spreadsheet was, surprisingly, very easy to do, and the board came out exactly how I intended. The squares all measure one inch. 

--LJE

Get Well Card and Gift Note Cards

Howdy, Readers,

I made a get well card and two note cards for my grandmother's best friend who has not been well lately. 

The patterned papers I used come from Pebbles' 6x6 Front Porch and Papertrey Ink's 6x6 Guide Lines. 

This was a another card that made me really lament not having a die cut machine yet, especially since I actually have a die that would cut out that stamped frame. 

--LJE