This year, in both CREATE California and CREATE New Jersey, I am teaching six workshops!  I do hope you will take the opportunity of a vacation with us in Irvine, California or in Somerset, New Jersey to play, create and join this band of friends.  Join us!

Here is a little rundown of the six workshops I will be teaching at both retreats.  There’s a little something for everyone.   Hope to meet you there!

Paper Quilting
Class Length: 3-Hour
Skill Level: All Levels
Description: When working in collage, we are always looking for ways to add depth and interest to our surface. One way to build layers, depth and surface interest is to quilt your papers, or adhere embellishments with stitches or wire. In this workshop, you will have the opportunity to experiment with quilting techniques on paper and board using threads, ribbon and wire.

Magnificent Marbling
Class Length: 6-Hour
Skill Level: All Levels
Description: Don’t let the intricacy and beauty of a marbled paper fool you. Those ripples of color may look hand-painted or machine-stamped, but they’re actually created by liquid paint. Marbleizing, which involves using absorbent papers to pick up ink or paint from a water bath, dates to the twelfth century, when it was practiced in Japan and possibly China. Join Dea Fischer to make your own rich and vibrant designs by marbleizing paper to use in your mixed media projects.

Instant Travel Journals
Class Length: 6-Hour
Skill Level: All Levels
Description: You are in your hotel room. Sights, sounds and smells are teeming outside your window. You look in your suitcase and find . . . nothing. Once again, there was no room in the suitcase for journalling materials, but there are so many impressions to capture! Fear not, good journalling materials are to hand. In minutes, with few or no tools at all, you can have a great travel journal to write, draw, paint or collage into. Make folded journals, a flag book journal and a pamphlet stitch journal in this fun workshop.

These Little Wonders: Miniature Books
Class Length: 3-Hour
Skill Level: Intermediate
Description: What is more delightful to the eye and the hand than a small and perfectly formed miniature book? Join book artist Dea Fischer to create a deliciously tiny mixed media treasure less than 2″ high to wear as a pendant or hang from your Christmas tree.

And co-teaching with my dear friend :

Creating the Vision: Photography for Mixed Media
Class Length: 6-Hour
Skill Level: All Levels
Description: Creating your own photographic images for your mixed media work doesn’t have to be complicated, expensive, or require a lot of fancy equipment. Join mixed media artists Tiffany Teske and Dea Fischer to learn how to use low technology methods to create your own images.  You will receive instructions and materials to build and use your own pinhole camera, and also experience other low tech camera equipment hands-on.  Tiffany and Dea will take you on a walking field trip around the area to experiment with Polaroid cameras and Fuji instant films, Holga plastic cameras, and cyanotype (‘sun’) printing with objects. You will leave the workshop with up to 20 finished images to use in your future mixed media work, some exposed films to process and your pinhole camera to further your experiments at home.

Creating the Vision: Printing and Transferring Your Images
Class Length:  6-Hour
Skill Level: All Levels
Description:  You’ve mastered the photography, you’ve created images you love.  Deepen your layers of creative engagement by learning to incorporate images of your own creation into your mixed media artwork.  Join Tiffany Teske and Dea Fischer to explore fascinating image printing and transfer techniques that can be tricky to master effectively. You will create cyanotype or ‘sun’ prints from negatives, and practice making gel medium skins and transfers, blender pen transfers, encaustic and heat transfers.  You will produce several pieces during this workshop that you can take away to use in your work.

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Art Camp for Women has published a lovely interview with me this month, which you can read here.  I really enjoyed the interview and I hope you enjoy reading it!

star
book news

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Exhibition News

Did you miss the chance to see my 'Chinese Zodiac' starbook in the "Pulp Paper Pages" show at the Alberta Craft Council Gallery in Edmonton?  There will be another opportunity to see "Pulp Paper Pages" this summer at the Leighton Centre in Calgary.  After the Leighton Centre, the exhibition will travel to the Hanji Paper Festival in Wonju, South Korea.  I'll update on details closer to the time. 

In another piece of happy news, I am delighted to advise that 'River Worn' has now found a permanent new home in the special collection of the Fischer Rare Books Library at the University of Toronto.  The book is a concertina that extends to a full 6 feet when fully opened, and is based on the lyrics of the old camp song "Peace I Ask of Thee, O River".

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"The Voice of Silence", recently returned from the LOCAL(e) exhibition at Elevation Gallery in Canmore, and destined for the CBBAG Art of the Book 2013 exhibition.

The Press Room
Check out this lovely interview I did with mixed media artist Sara Naumann.

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Here is a nice article from Cate Prato at Cloth Paper Scissors from an interview Barb Delaney did with me about mark-making.

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Take a look at this great interview with Cloth Paper Scissors Editor Jenn Mason on my CPS Workshops DVD "Handmade Book Essentials".

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And here is a great blog post from Cate Prato at Cloth Paper Scissors, in which she interviews Seth Apter and myself on the use of image transfer in art journalling.