Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Citra-Solv Transfer Technic






These are some pages I made at my local book arts group meeting last Saturday.  Pretty cool eh?  Well I at least I think so.  We played around with this technic, which is new to me.  One of our members had tried it, and we loved the results she got, so she offered to teach it to the rest of us.  Regarding the technic itself, I don't know who first developed it or I'd give them credit.  Nor do I know how long this technic has been out there on the net, or in art books.  And of course, I'm not the first person who has put it on their blog.  I googled this technic, and found some others bloggers who've posted about it.  And chances are, other people have modified this technic in various ways, which often happens since artists are innately very creative people.

That being said, I'm thrilled with the results I got.  Here is what we did at our meeting.  We used National Geographic magazines, published within the past 10 years.  Not sure why that matters, but apparently it does.  We used large sponge brushes to spread the Citra-Solve over various pages in our NG mags.  The best pages to use are those with color pictures, and you have to spread the CS over both sides of the page.  Then we let the saturated mags sit for approximately 30 minutes.  The CS needs time to work its magic, but if left too long, the pages stick together.  After 30 minutes, we disassembled the mags to let each page dry.  Some people had to use a craft knife to cut their pages out, but all my pages pulled out very easily.  I don't know why that worked for me, perhaps I used more CS on my pages and it dissolved the glue holding the pages together.  

At our meeting, we did this technic outdoor on a table, because the smell of the CS is quite strong.  It has a powerful orange smell.  I had to leave the meeting early, so I brought my mag home intact and disassembled it on my picnic table on the patio.  I'm also lucky enough to have a clothesline in my yard, so I hung the pages up to dry, which took around 10 minutes.  Also, there are a number of Citra-Solv products, which are natural cleaning agents.  For this technic, you need to use the concentrated CS, which can be bought at natural food markets.  Apparently it's not available at regular grocery stores.  I'm not sure how much it costs, they have different size bottles.  I did go to the company website, and if you register, you can print a coupon for $1.00 off the product.

I don't know much about this technic, except for what we did at our meeting.  I think googling this might give you more information from different blogs.  Who knows, there might even be some youtube videos about it.  As for me, all I did was spread the CS on the color pages of my NG mag, wait a while, and then disassemble the mag, then hang the pages up to dry.  Obviously not a complicated technic, although rather messy with the disassembling part.

My take on this technic is that it's totally unpredictable and rather hit or miss, regarding how your pages will come out.  Some came out great, others were not great at all.  But hey, it's kind of cool regarding the serendipity of this technic.  Beyond that, it's not difficult or too time intensive or too expensive.  A bottle of CS should go a long way.

I'm wondering if any other product would work, or work in a different way???  Such as WD-40 perhaps, which I recently learned is non-toxic and made from -- get this -- fish oil!  As in, who knew?  Or perhaps Amor-All protectant?  I'm always game to try industrial products in my art, products purposed for a totally different purpose.  Hopefully when I have time, I can experiment with these other products.

So anyway, is anyone game in trying this technic?  Or modifying it or "altering" it, or whatever?

Saturday, July 18, 2009

Solitary Leaf (another caulk-art piece)

As many of you may already know, I LOVE using caulk in my art.  And I must be on a caulk binge right now, which suits me just fine.  This is a special piece to me, one I'm very fond of, because I made it as a gift for a very special artist, person, and online friend,  Corinne Stubson, whom I admire a lot.  And I'm very happy with how this piece turned out.  The theme is a circle theme, one of my favorite themes for art, and one I keep going back to.

Normally, I explain how I make my art and the technics I use, and I so enjoy doing that.  However, I just spent 45 minutes typing up this post, then previewed it, then lost it.  It just disappeared.  Which made me want to tear my hair out.  So, I'm not going to redo all that again.  I've done other caulk circle pieces that I've explained, so if you're interested in this technic, you can find caulk and circles in my labels on the right side of my blog.  Those will pretty much explain my caulk technics.

Also, the leaf in this piece is a real leaf from a tree in my yard.  The dimensions of this piece are 5x7 inches, so it didn't take that long to make.  Enjoy.

Addendum:  I just remembered I explained how I made this piece on one of my yahoo groups,  the Collagecats group.  Here's the link to that group.  http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Collagecats/  The number of the post that explains this piece is #56932, so if you're a member of that group you can read it there.  If you're not a member, you might want to join because it's a great altered art group.  There, now I feel better, having explained how I made this piece but just not on my blog.

Thursday, July 9, 2009

A Karma blog award

awarded to me by none other than the sweet person and great artist, Michi.  Here is her wonderful and artistic blog -- http://michirhymeswithpeachy.blogspot.com/.  Please take a look, you'll be so glad you did.  She has also been published in a number of magazines  -- a dream for most of us.  Thank you so much for this award Michi.  I am honored and grateful.

The wording for this award is as follows . . .

The Karma Award: These blogs are exceedingly charming. These kind of bloggers aim to find and be friends. They are not interested in self-aggrandizement. Our hope is that when the ribbons of these prizes are cut, even more friendships are propagated. Please give more attention to these writers. Deliver this award to eight bloggers who must choose eight more and include this cleverly-written text into the body of their award.

Well, as I've been known to do at times, when time is at a premium, I'm changing the rules here.  Instead of passing on this award to eight artist bloggers, I choose to pass it on to three.  For those three, you can decide for yourselves how many to pass it on to.  Sorry, I hope no one is offended that I've changed or modified the rules.  I truly am grateful to receive this blog award.

And now I pass it on to these three artist bloggers, whom I think deserve it.  Please visit their blogs and see what they are up to, and view their singular art.

Betty Miller at http://bloubell-alteredexpressions.blogspot.com/

Christy at http://averageamericangirl.com/blog/

http://falltheflowers.blogspot.com/