Creating Art at Anderson Ranch Art Center: Making a Modern Ivory Type

While at Anderson Ranch, a few of us made Ivory Types, using slightly more modern methods. It is always fun to learn new techniques.

You begin with a hot, clean griddle and a sheet of glass, if you are attaching it to glass and putting it in a frame. If you are not framing it, you can simply heat up a clean griddle.

Now you brush on a small bit of melted encaustic wax and lay down a black and white image that has been printed on Japanese Rice paper, though I think parchment would work as well. Make sure the right side of the image is facing the griddle. Then smooth it out so as to get rid of any air bubbles. I used a scrap piece of matt board to do this. You could use an old gift card as well. Next, bush on more of the encaustic wax, making sure to go onto the glass. If you are not mounting it on glass, put a thin coat of wax on the back of the image and then remove it from the griddle, holding the corner. I used tweezers for this part.

Once that is cooled, match up the waxed image with the garishly colored background image. (It was really pretty silly and fun to make this part of the image.)

At this point the finished image can be framed. If you are doing it without glass, you can attach the two layers together on one side, such as the top, to keep the pieces lined up.

Here is Hannah's Ivory Type:

I've got more art to share with you, but I also have a meeting to prepare for, so it will have to wait until later. Thus, I leave you with a little fun -
Here are a few videos for your enjoyment:

December Daily - Holiday Music

And so begins December Daily, originally a scrapbooking event, that has become a tradition for many women.

Each year I buy myself new holiday music. Last year I bought "If on a Winter's Night" by Sting.

Some years I have purchased the CDs that organizations sell to benefit a cause. So far I have not found an album that I want to buy, so I picked out a few songs that I like from the Pandora (online radio) playlists that I like. I love what I purchased, but in the process of finding the videos for this post, I notice that they are all rather somber and quiet. I think I will have to find a few more songs that are higher energy and fun. Here's what I have so far. If you have suggestions, I'd love to hear them. Just leave me a note in the comment section of this post. I hope you enjoy it, too.:

A Little Fun Music

Here are a few videos that I have been enjoying. I thought you might like them, too.

A Little Distractions - Video Fun, Inspiration and The Like

Work is filling my days and causing stress this week. So, I have neglected my blog. I must go back to what needs to get done. So, I leave a few fun videos for inspiration:
Ikon Film, "Sound of Silence."


Night Bikes


This one might elicit an emotional response if you are a Harry Potter fan:


A bit of fun out and about:


For the book lovers:


The Sweetness of a Personal Gift:


How about this?


This is out of my realm of creation, but so cool. It makes me thinks about something differently. He certainly makes me think about second hand stores differently:


Absolute Inspiration:

Okay - is that enough? Perhaps, perhaps not... but I really should get back to work. I can be so distracted (and it all makes me want to do art. There an irony about finding artistic inspiration online and then not having the time to create anything yourself.)

What inspiration can you share?

Techno Gremlins - Not My Best Day

It started out just like any other day, but quickly took a turn in the road. It began simply enough with a desire to check my email only to find that my computer was corrupt. It stared me down with an ugly dark blue screen, void of any twinkle of life. On the way to school I found that my speedometer was no longer registering my speed. That was easy enough to deal with by simply pacing myself to the others around me. In the parking lot at school I came to notice that I left some of my water at home and that I was wearing not only my dirty apron, but also my slippers. (Thankfully I had another pair of shoes with me in the car.) Things are looking up, I thought. But oh no, come period 3, my school computer, which housed my lessons and digital material for the day, crashed, too. This was announced by the many error messages boxes proclaiming a doomed hard drive. I had worried how the afternoon might go as I was scheduled to run a webinar that begins a new Web 2.0 class that I started today. Thankfully, my little netbook computer was a champ and saved the day.

After a day like that I decided that I needed the stress relief that a little knitting and movie would provide. So I pulled out my mittens, the ones I started the night I watched a movie with my boy. Laying in bed that night I realized that I had made an error and that I needed to frog it. So, I pulled it out, started the movie and started the knitting again. I found "Marily Hotchkiss Ballroom Dancing and Charm School" while browsing Netflix. It was just the ticket I needed for such a failure of the day.


I don't happen to recall the movie when it was released in 2006, but I did enjoy it. It features an unlikely hero and a wonderful cast of actors.

On a brighter note, Ethan has his first welding class at the local community college this evening. he is excited. I hope that it goes well. I imagine that it is both exciting and scary to step outside of the small world of our school into the bigger community.

Interesting Videos Ethan Found

My kids enjoy the Wimp.com website. It is a great time waster, but a lot of fun, too. Here are a few that we thought were interesting:


Ethan has a funny bit of narration that he adds to this one. Watching him watch the video is as much fun as watching the video itself. We love that little kitten.

http://www.youtube.com/user/crazycatmigou#p/u/1/JhlfT-x6Ys0
This is another fun cat video.


We are both impressed with this young man's dancing skills.

And finally, a really weird one that is worth watching to the end...

What I Can Do with Some String and Tooth Pick (okay, not quite tooth picks, but very close...)

As most people who do some form of art know, the joy is largely in the creation. One thing I love to do is knit, but there are only so many knitted things my family of four realistically wants. That is why it was joy when I found out that Ellie's dance instructor, Marodi, wished that she had a nice pair of fingerless gloves to keep herself warm. That set me on a quest and this is what I became inspired by:


"Transition Gloves" by ShiBui. I liked them much better than just about everything else that I looked at on Ravelry.

Marodi said that she would love them done in gray and black. So, the hunt was on, and it was much harder than I expected. Oh, don't get me wrong, there were many a lovely skein of soft sock yarn in those colors, but most of them were too expensive. My favorites were $16.95 and $18.95 per skein. I just could not go there. Then I found what I thought was fine. The colors were perfect and they were oh-so-soft Alpaca yarn. I happily purchased them only to discover at home that in my glee I had overlooked the fact that they were lace yarns, not sock yarns. I remedied this by winding it so that the ply was doubled. Then I had to figure out the right needle size to get the right gage. In the end I purchased needles in size "0" and "1.5".

I did the ribbing with the "0" needles and felt like I was knitting with toothpicks. The saleswoman cautioned me that they are easy to break - no kidding. Interestingly, I found that I knit more loosely using them for fear of breakage. That might be a good thing. I switched over to the size "1.5" for the regular part of the knitting. That felt better, for now. I will have to return to the land of toothpick knitting once I am on row 36.

I am happy with how they are coming out so far. They are lovely and soft.

On an entirely different note, Ethan opened my eyes to some pretty interesting videos that he found through wimp.com. Here's one of the most interesting ones. The videos are about Theo Jansen and his "creatures" or "animals" that he is creating. He hopes they will "live" in herds on the beach one day, adapting to their environment. It's worth your time to watch them - Enjoy!

Fun Videos on a Friday

Today I am a bit distracted at work. We are on the verge of summer, with just a three day weekend and two day work week to go before break. I found some fun stuff on Amnesia Blog: For all things digital. I hope you find them fun, too.

Here's a really fun Nike commercial:


I liked this one, too:


I'm not sure what the product is in this ad, but it is really touching:


Here's one that starts our sort of slow, but is worth sticking with.


Finally, here's a great way to round out Fridays: