Altered Photo Ornaments Wine & Cheese Craft Party

What better way to get into the holiday spirit than a Altered Photo Ornament Wine & Cheese Craft Party?!! Anne Quinlan showed us how to turn our photographs into altered art!
First, Anne showed us various techniques to distress photos and add pigment. We used dental tools and sandpaper! Laurel did a great job on her photo! I loved the colors she used and the white marker details for embellishment!
The next step was creating the cardboard structure for our photos and adding the holes for the ribbon to hang our ornament

Here are some of the finished ornaments! I love how they all turned out! Laura used a wonderful illustration that she brought in...

Sue used one of her amazing flower photographs. She often has great pictures to choose from that she takes herself!

I went with a picture that Anne had brought. As did Jennifer. They both turned out great!

Open House

To show our thanks for the great response that our classes have been getting, we held a Wine & Cheese Craft Party Open House this past Wednesday! Despite the heavy rain and crappy weather, we had a great turnout and lots of fun!This free event was also a fundraiser for Eliana Maria Stapp. Eliana is an 11 month old little girl who was born with Tetrology of Falot a group of 4 heart defects complicated with 2 other heart defects. Her talented mother, Astrid, played the harp for our event. She showed us her strength and wonderful spirit as she told us about her amazing daughter.The theme of the evening was "wine charms". We had three of our popular instructors teach their own techniques to create a wine charm. Anne Quinlan showed collage techniques using chipboard, papers, and markers. Chrissy Gemmill taught a metal stamping technique and incorporated beads.
Shrink art was used to create the wine charms that Courtney Prahl showed us how to make.

In between our crafting there was lots of eating, drinking and socializing! Here is Courtney with Margaret and Astrid.

Even I got a chance to take a break from my picture taking to have a fun time with Christina!

Here are some of the finished wine charms! We had a great time and thank you to everyone who came out and for your support that you showed Astrid and her daughter Eliana!

Folk Art Bird Brooch Wine & Cheese Craft Party

Wednesday we had our latest Wine & Cheese Craft Party! Margaret Hluch taught a Folk Art Bird Brooch. The samples were so popular at the Muse that she is now selling them in the store. But twelve lucky people got to take the class and learn how to make it themselves!!!

We learned how to make the bird form and how to embellish the felt with needle felting.

After our bird was needle felted we got to choose from the beautiful threads that Margaret provided for us. Many of the threads were hand dyed by Margaret! Narrowing down the choices is often the hardest part of a project!

After the embroidery, we put the bird together and finished it off with a pin back. As you can see, they all turned out beautiful and unique!

Mini Collage/ATC Mimosa Make & Take

Sunday we had Courtney Prahl back to teach the Mini Collage/Artist Trading Card Momosa Make & Take. Her work is so beautiful that she could teach this class over and over again and I will never get tired of it! This time, she showed everyone how to add transfers to their collage.

The transfer method she taught was using contact paper. This method was quick and easy and very versatile. All you need is contact paper- what an easy technique!

Everyone was anxious to get started after they picked out their chosen image.

After we learned the transfer technique we moved onto the collage! One fun thing about Courtney's collage classes are the interesting papers she brings with her for us to choose from! It's sometimes hard to not use them all. She's very big into phone book pages!

After selecting materials we got to work, layering, stamping and embellishing. You can tell by this messy table that we had lots of fun!

One of the criteria to this class is that you must make two mini collages and at the end of the class we draw numbers. You get to take home another persons collage as well as your own! Here are some of the finished collages up for trade...

Here is what I got to take home with me- a collage that I created as well as Marlene's mini collage. I love the happy colors she used and the butterfly transfer. Thanks Marlene!

Sunday Mimosa Make & Take "Encaustic Wax Workshop"

Sunday we had a great time during the encaustic wax workshop! Students brought in their own pictures as well as used some that were on hand. "Encaustic" means with wax. A collage is created using pictures, papers, tissue, fibers, mica, bark, and other ephemera that is collaged with hot wax.Carol Leadbetter began the class with a background on the steps, materials, and safety of this craft. Then we got busy preparing our surface to collage.

It was fun to use the heat guns! Don't we look tough with our power tools?!!! Using the right amount of wax was a learning experience. Debbie and I won the contest for the best overuse of wax! Our work spaces had a little wax lake after we were done. Carol helped us all use the torch to melt off some of the excess wax.

The finished products turned out great! And I think this class should be offered again because it was a lot of fun! Here is my encaustic collage and the finished collages of the class...