Memorial Day Weekend, My Book Signing in Allentown, PA!
Hello All,
I am sorry for the delay in blogging and visiting your fabulous sites, but this past month has been really busy, but that's good, LOL!
I wanted to share some photos and my experience at the Book Signing and Demo I did at the Grand Opening of ACMoore in Allentown, PA, a huge thank you to Catherine and Candy at Quarry Books, and Indee and (Here is a photo of Robin and Me)Robin from ACMoore who all put this event together, each of them did a tremendous job, Robin Beam is the director of Education for ACMoore and made my experience at the event that much more enjoyable as did the entire staff, if in Allentown, you have to visit this ACMoore its the biggest I've ever been in, LOL, lots of fabulous stuff to buy!Here are a few photos of me signing!In this picture I can be seen demonstrating one of the projects in the book with a new twist, I was making jar fairies, but this version was more vintage in tones, using gold corse glitter, vintage doll images and distressed papers, while creating opera style scenes inside the jar and out!This is Robin's JarThis is Sarah's and Robin's Jar:
Tiffany's Jar:Here is Tiffany, her mom and her Jar!Tiffany, Elizabeth and Emily:Miss Samantha and her jar:Samantha is my step niece, isn't she just the cutest, she's my little buddy!Here is Josh, Elizabeth, Little Josh, Emily and Me!Sara, her jar and her book! Sara was amazing, she was so much fun to hang out with will I was at the event, she added to the joy!Glenny, Sandra and Glenny's Dad!And here I am with Crayola Crayon in person, a perfect ending to a perfect day. I hope you all enjoyed my adventure and signing, Thank you for your continued support!
Magic and Joy!
Lisa!

Turn Illustrations Into Mixed Media Projects!
Mixed Media Painting is the trendiest form of art right now, everyone, everywhere wants to learn how to illustrate and create mixed media masterpieces, honestly its really very easy to do, and a way for self expression, but mixed media painting/illustration isn't limited to just paper, paint, and canvas, try clay painting or turning your illustrations into 3-D projects such as an embellishment on an atc, create a mixed media crown, doll or book.

In this following image I drew a crown shape on a large piece of water color paper, added scrapbook paper, and started to paint onto it using acrylics and crackle mediums, then on separate pieces of watercolor paper I painted candy and a sweet fairytale face and bunny ears, cut out and glued to my crown, followed by cut-outs, paper punched flowers, crepe paper, lettering and glitter. This crown was my swap crown with Susie Scott!In the picture above, is a set of atc's I made for the mermaid atc swap I was hosting on the faerie zine, I photocopied my illustration and placed on a piece of chipboard atc size, and embellished.In this picture I turned an un-finished shadow box from AC Moore into an Illustrative Assemblage filled with mostly hand-drawn and painted pieces cut out and attached. The fiji mermaid face is from one of my watercolor pieces which I photocopied and cut out to use as the new face on this mermaid for the assemblage. In May I'm teaching The Illustrative Assemblage at the Summit Visual Arts Center! Hope to see you there.
Here is a primitive and sweet piece I made called: The Primitive Sugar Pop Crown, with a posterboard base, cover entirely with my love: Model Magic, which I used plenty of times in my art book: Altered Art Circus, Just love Crayola, don't you? The tinsel is from Tinsel Trading, The crepe paper is vintage and the rest is paint, glitter and more.Here is yet another crown I made from recycled bits, pieces, flocked velvet paper, and hand sculpted bird doll, and hand painted/glittered candy lollipops, along with satin ribbon and the new faux rhinestone embellishments in my etsy store.Here is the handcolored atc I made a few years back called wicked: Using an old faded pictured, prismacolor pencils and paint thinner, along with glitter and distressed inks from Ranger Ink. Today I'd recommend Ranger blending solution, for less smell, a tip from Patti and Debbi at Ranger.These Royal Queens are from an art card pocket I made awhile back and were published in Artitude Zine. They were painted in using acrylic paints and gel pens.Here is the cover of that pocket which I called: The Queen of Hearts Chronicles, here I made a peapod using acrylic paints, liquid starch and glue, to sculpt the watercolor paper. I love stretching and sculpting water color paper, so many possibilities, you will learn that in The Illustrative Assemblage too!

Here are just a few illustrative examples, I hope you start branching from mixed media paintings into mixed media painted projects soon and I hope these inspired you today!

Have a magical filled day!
Lisa!

Mixed Media Clay Painting: LuLu's Carnival!
I've always loved illustration and experimenting with different art supplies to create an illustration, in my children's book:"Star and the Milky Way Cafe" I choose to use prismacolor pencils and markers, since it was for children, I wanted children to relate to it, as if they were coloring the images in.

As I started switching back and forth from illustration, writing, publishing and collage, I found myself combining a variety of materials to finish pieces, finding I had a love affair with Altered Art and Mixed Media Illustration, yet I found myself doing other things, creating artful projects, with less attention to what I started out to do: Illustration.

I've been experimenting with various clay recipes that I have been making from a variety of materials, until I finally found one that can work as a bisque paper clay, mixed with paints, air drying and watered down to form a paste which can be adhered to canvas, 3-D sculpted and turned into what I call Clay Paint!This is the first 10 stages in my new mixed media clay painting called: LuLu's CarnivalIn these first 2 photo's you can see the beginning stages of the piece, where I layered old book print onto canvas with my fave Modge Podge, then drew a Charlotte/Carnival Doll image onto it with a Crayola Pencil ( I am a Crayola Supply Addict, love their products and use in many of my works, including items in my new book: Altered Art Circus). Filling in the background and image with acrylic paints, mixed with Claudine's Paints (Ranger Ink). Then certain parts are layered with my clay paint mixture and a charlotte doll head from my doll parts line.Here in this 3rd picture is an upclose detail of LuLu's Clay skirt.Now I draw in the extra illustrative details of LuLu's Face which you can see here in the 4th photo!In this 5th photo I have outlined LuLu with a deep pink glitter gel pen and began painting in the face and and her clay dress.In these 3 photo's above show the different painting details! Here is the fully painted LuLu, but she is missing a Carnival hat, balloon and carnival tent curtains, which I have drawn in and painted in which you can see in these next 2 photos!There are a few more details which have to be added to this painting in order to bring it really to life such as more gel pen outlining, dimension to the background through extra textures, I love Crayola Texture Paint, its great priced and can last a while. When mixed with paints or other mediums, you can get interesting results. I will also be adding petal porcelain to coat my piece, again this is another fave medium of mine, followed by glitter and beeswax, which I melt in my beloved Melting Pot (Suze Weinberg-Ranger), followed by a crayon and beeswax mix. These photos of the finished piece will be up tommorrow. I have a full journal of these images in them which I will get photographed as well.

Learn Mixed Media Clay Painting in my workshop of the same name where you leave with a medium to large sized canvas art piece and a new way of painting!
Here is an image of my hand molded/ hand made doll heads. I molded one for this piece for LuLu's hair barrett.