Wednesday, July 17, 2013

I have finished Lilla’s class.

When I last left you I had just finished Week 3 of Lilla’s Make Art That Sells class. The next week the topic was Wall Art. I have had some stabs at wall art, even some interest from IKEA but was never able to get anything going. That is until last winter. Sheila sent my work to Oopsy Daisy www.oopsydaisy.com..the kids wall art company and they picked 5 of my images to produce as wall art. And as a bonus..we were so excited...they also plan to produce the same images in 11 other areas including wall decals, jewelry, clocks. place mats, growth charts, nightlights and holiday ornaments. And the best part..they picked the note card images of the birds and owls I did for Papyrus. I am thrilled about this!


























So when it was Wall Art week in class I thought great...I can easily knock this one out of the park. So I got up on Monday and read the assignment...and went ugh! Lilla wanted us to do an abstract piece of wall art using paint and textures. So not up my alley. I knew I should give it a try and for a day I played with the idea of it. But mostly I could not wrap my head around it. Then I talked to my rep and my husband and I realized that I have been working as an artist for a long time. I have put in my 10,000 hours. I have painted, made all kinds of different work, experimented with different kinds of media and after lots and lots of artwork finally settled on a style that was me, it looked the way I thought and liked to make images. So I needed to do this project by incorporating the parts of the project that would work with how I made images. In the assignment we needed to make a collage...duh I could so do that, the collage needed to have floral elements in it...so okay with that and it needed to have a quote in it...not really me but I could do it. So I got out my paper and scissors along with the boxes of ephemera I have in the basement (knew I was saving it for something) and made some collages. I made the first two using floral motifs and the last one is my favorite because I did it with a bird. Here they are. I am very happy with them and plan to sell them on my Etsy site.




























We then went to Week 5..Gift Products. For the first two days of the week we were to photographs our collections and post them on facebook for all the other artists in the class to see. Gee...do I have any collections? I had so much to post I could not stop. Met lots of other artists who also have big collections so I did not feel so bad about all I had. The assignment came on Wednesday and we were to take something from our collections and make a hyperlush zipper pouch with them. Now what is 
hyperlush you are thinking....here are some examples.




























All of these examples are from Blue Q http://www.blueq.com Blue Q is a fabulous site for all kinds of products that are so well designed and illustrated. The artist who did the Peacock Pouch is Catalina Estrada and artist who did the pencil case is from Marcela Restrepo.

I must admit that this project did not excite me. I had had minor knee surgery on Tuesday of that week and I realized I just was not up for doing this project. It was the Fourth of July weekend and I needed a break. So I passed on doing the assignment an instead sat at my desk and worked on a quilt I am making for Gary.
I had a great time meeting all sorts of wonderful artists that were also taking the class. I also learned a bunch of new stuff from the course I plan to share with my students. It was a good experience and in October I will do the second part of the ecourse in which we do editorial art, kids apparel, party paper, paper products and scrapbooking. If you want to join in Part B go to Lilla Rogers School.http://lillarogers.com/make-art-that-sells