November 18-20, 2011, $385 Fri & Sat, $150 Sun

The Visual Storytellers Journal:
explorations in imagery, color and mark-making

Karen Michel & Traci Bautista

Create and capture the magic of everyday adventures and discoveries through the visual artform of the art journal. Explore the realm of the visual story teller, using imagery, collage, paints and colors as your vocabulary. Telling your stories through images and minimal words creates a personal language that is uniquely yours, and in this workshop we will conjure our stories within our journals which we will build & fill with wonder & soul...

Thursday- Art Journaling party/open house 6:00 – 9:00pm – Open Art journaling & Art sale with Traci & Karen

Friday – November 18, 9:00am – 5:00pm – Building the journals inside: painting, printmaking and collage

Explore spontaneous painting & mark-making with Traci Drizzle...drip..spray...splash...finger paint...PLAY! We’ll start our workshop making marks with found and handmade tools on a variety of surfaces to prepare pages for our journals. We’ll explore a mix of simple printmaking, painting and collage techniques to build mixed media layers.

We will then move on to creating our journal covers with Karen, creating them from fused recycled plastic bags! Who knew recycling & collaging with plastic bags could be so beautiful? We will be fusing the plastic bags at a low heat, so there is NO offgassing or stinky fumes... Simple embroidery stiches will be explored for further embellishing our covers.

Saturday – November 19, 9:00am – 5:00pm – Building the book: book binding, altered photos & the hunt for inspiration.

The day starts off with twisted & torn adornments journal binding with Traci. We’ll gather all of our artistic creations from Day one and bind them into a visual journal with simple hand stitching and create a fabric wrapped embellished spine. Photography has become more accessible than ever and in the afternoon we will move on to integrating our personal photography within our book pages through the process of Photo Altering with Karen. We’ll discuss and experiment ways of altering our images by hand as well as digitally using both photo processing printed photos .

Sunday – November 20, 10am–5:00pm Working on the inside..journaling techniques

Paint & Potion making with Karen Ever wanted to make your own paints that aren't filled with nasty preservatives and chemicals? In this workshop we will explore both ancient & modern paint recipes by making our own paints from plants, minerals, essential oils and more.... we’ll document our paint making potions in our journal pages... Doodles Revealed with Traci Storytelling with lines, colors and marks...we’ll work through creative jumpstarts for crafting a personal graffiti. Explore drawing stylized faces, scribbles and letters to create colorful art journal pages. We’ll finish up the day with some journal play..open time to explore all the techniques, some more Q&A’s & chat about the possibilities of combining digital arts with art journaling? NOTE: if you are only signing up for this day, you need to bring your own journal.

PRICE: To sign up for workshop students can choose from all three days, 2-day {Friday/Saturday} or Sunday. Signs up for all three by August 15 & save $25! $385 for Friday & Saturday $150 for Sunday

Supply List:

• 15 sheets misc. papers up to 12"x18" (examples: heavy drawing paper, copy paper, newsprint, black/white Xerox copies, watercolor, graph paper, maps, manila folders, cardboard, ledger paper, brown grocery bags, painted papers, newspaper… things you have collected/recycled...try not to buy any new paper)
• 10 - 20 Plastic Bags (shopping bags, bread bags, frozen food bags, etc...)
• 10 - 20 color or b&w photos (any size) consider bold compositions. Please note that these prints need to be processed on behind the counter photo developing machines. Beware of photo kiosks as some use photo paper that you cannot alter, particularly Walmart & Cosco. I have had great results with kodakgallery.com, snapfish.com, walgreens.com and cvs.com.
• between 3-5 photos printed on your home computer on photo paper matte or glossy
• Awl
• Paper needle
• Metal ruler
• Acrylic paint: primary colors, black & white fluid acrylics
• 2- one inch foam brushes
• A few small paint brushes
• a medium & large paint brush
• plastic paint spreader {old hotel room key}
• soft rubber brayer
• a small quart size ziploc with embellishments {beads, trinkets, fibers, fabric remnants, jewelry findings, misc papers}
• embroidery floss - 3 different colors
• jewelry needle nose pliers {optional}
• sewing needle
• water container
• painting smock
• scissors