Gloria J Zucaro's " Long Gone"

I have been away at a CREATE workshop in Lisle,IL, and have been busy sorting, organizing, giving away, and selling my household items.  I am getting my house ready to sell.  I will be downsizing into a ranch hopefully by the end of this year.  I also may have to have shoulder replacement surgery, so am trying to do as much as I can now.  Hence, my absence from the daily art endeavors.  I have still done some more in my series, and enjoyed my four days a the CREATE convention.  I took 4 classes with Roann Mathias, about journal making/book binding and vintage alphabets.  I also took a wonderful class with Mary Beth Shaw doing abstract paintings in acrylic.  I actually met Carolyn Dube of "A Colorful Journey" fame!  She was so friendly and fun, what a treat!  This will be posted to Paint Party Friday, Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest.

Except for an occasional addition to my series, I won't be posting very often for awhile.

Number 16 in my Series

First Day Create  We painted our own large papers with ink and watercolor, cut them into page sizes and bound them into a journal with twine and beads.  I had some problems with the binding!  We also did woven fronts with paper pieces or ribbons.  We didn't have time to embellish the inside, but I show some of my painted pages.

Evening Class on Vintage Alphabets

We learned about identifying the characteristics of different alphabets, traced some, then did some freehand.

Second Day Create.  We worked on a 12" x 9" store bought journal.  We were to gesso the front cover and several inside pages and the back cover.  However, the gesso took forever to dry, so we didn't get very far for a 6 hour class.  Front and Back Covers and the start of one inside page.

                      

Front Cover,painted with acrylic,stamps                                          Back Cover

First Inside Page, paint, cut-outs,tape,transfer

Third Day Create.  We did two mini journals.  One accordion pleated, and one bound.  I had trouble with that again because I made the bound journal too tight and it can't close with the embellishments in it!

First is the Front Cover, then some embellished pages using my own stash, then a page shown before embellishment.  The little book is only 2 inches square when closed(if you can get it closed)! All pictures on this post may be clicked on to enlarge.

    

A page without embellishment.

Create Day 4.  My abstract painting class in acrylics with Mary Beth Shaw.  Four Paintings.

Finally, the END!  Thank you for looking!

Gloria J Zucaro's "Journal Page 5, All of Them Make me Laugh!"

The latest ideas flowing in from "Fall Fearless and Fly" are about people who you admire, colors you love and people or things that make you laugh.  I copied the prompts below from Artists in Blogland site.  Hosted by the team of Jessica Sporn & Carolyn Dube

Headline Prompt:  Lifelong Fan:  What or who have you consistently valued or looked up to in your life?  What lessons have you learned from people you admire?

Color Prompt:  Your favorite color now or from childhood or both!

Quote Prompt: "Among those whom I like or admire, I can find no common denominator; but among those whom I love, I can:  all of them make me laugh."  W.H.Auden

This weeks guest host is Marcia Beckett who did a wonderful journal page to share with us.

Well, it is hard to look up to  young children and small animals when they are smaller than you are!  But they are the ones I love the best.  They are pure, and in awe of all the wonderful things in the world, they are closer to their "real" selves, not "tamed' yet.  They show all their emotions easily, and love fully.  All of them make me laugh or bring a smile to my face.  I love all the birds, squirrels, rabbits, and chipmunks and smile when  I see them cavorting outside my windows.

This is the full page view.  I used Silks Acrylic Glaze paints, patterned tissue paper, Elmer's Glue, Twinkling H20's, glitter glue, cutouts from catalogues, a bird stamp, white gel marker, black Sakura ink pen.  Below I show the dimensional views with sparkly glitter from the right and left sides.

 

 From the right

From the left

Gloria J Zucaro's Collage Class

This past weekend I took part in a collage workshop at The Mainstreet Art Centre in Lake Zurich, IL.  It was taught by Laura Lein-Svencner.  What a fun but intense workshop!  I never realized how labor intensive collage can be!  

We spent the whole first day preparing our papers with staining, stenciling,crinkling, removing color with a metal polishing compound,gessoing, and polymer, polymer, polymer!  All our twenty papers or so had to be polymered on both sides, and transfers had 3 layers of polymer on one side only. So all day it was a constant stream of artists brushing on the polymer or gesso, and carefully carrying their papers one at a time to the back room to let them dry on newspapers that were stacked everywhere on tables and on the floor!

The second day Laura did a complete demo for about an hour and a half.  Then she gave us some small squares of watercolor paper and some of her sample papers(three very small pieces, about 2" x 3", and a couple of transfers.  We were to do practice runs with these three and tear or cut the papers, arrange them and tack them down with a special little heating iron.  Then more polymer, then shading around areas on our pieces to make them more dimensional, adding some pastel if we wished, spray with fixative, polymer, add transfers, tack, moisten the back of the transfer to remove the paper, quickly polymer to avoid a bloom, add beads or what-not....I am exhausted!  And most of you will say "what in the world is she talking about!"

ANYWAY...below are my first efforts with collage.  The first 3 are our practice squares, about 4" square, the fourth and fifth are using our own papers and "Found" objects.  I my, case the flowers and the sunbather that are mixed in with my papers.  These collages are larger.  One is 6" square, the other is 6" x 4".