Lesley Riley Sale!

Bring your family and your art together with Lesley Riley's "Exploring Fabric Collage." In this DVD workshop you will discover the wonders of creating a fabric altered book. Combine easy to find materials with your favorite family photos to make great gifts for Mom and Grandma. Lesley shows you the entire process, from selecting your fabrics to transferring images. This project is great with kids, and you will be able to finally use that scrap cloth you've been holding onto for ages.

Keeping Up with Lesley Riley

Mixed media artist Lesley Riley has a lot going on these days. She did an interview with ZNE BlogTalk Radio and recently announced that she will have a piece in Cate Prato's book, "Mixed-Media Self-Portraits: Inspiration & Techniques."

Keep up to date with all things Lesley by bookmarking her blog. (Of course you can also check back here as well :)

Lesley Riley's, "Exploring Fabric Collage"

Check out the trailer to Lesley Riley's, "Exploring Fabric Collage."

Congratulations to Lesley Riley!

Check out the latest "Craft, Paper, Scissors" magazine and you'll find Lesley Riley is the cover girl! I'm a little late in saying, but Congratulations Lesley!

Art and Soul Recap

It's been a week now since we've gotten back from Art and Soul Retreat in Portland, OR. What a blast! I remember being impressed last year and this year was no different. It still blows my mind (in a great way) that there are places where people can come together from all over the country and just be creative together. Talk art together. Do art together. Meet people who share the same passions. Such talent and spirit in one place. I kept looking at all these women-both instructors and students- and being really inspired by them. Such incredible people.

We filmed three artists: Ann Baldwin, Anne Bagby and Robert Dancik. We filmed Ann Baldwin a few years ago in a live workshop. It was great to work with her in studio. She is a hilarious woman. I always learn so much from her both when I'm filming and then again when editing. She somehow makes Golden products a little less terrifying.

Anne Bagby does the type of art that I long to do. She stamps her own paper and then uses it in these spectacular collages. Both her and Ann Baldwin can wield Golden Fluid Acrylics like no other. Anne Bagby also employs Golden Glazes. I came home and ordered a few myself and am getting obsessive about checking my order's status.

We filmed Robert Dancik on our last day and what an amazing instructor! He works with a product that he helped create called Faux Bone. (Go to Robert's site to learn more.) Robert kept saying how easy Faux Bone was to work with and I kept thinking, "Yeah, yeah, sure." He proved my skepticism wrong. It *is* really easy to work with. It's sort of magical actually!

Spending the day with each of these artists was amazing. They all did a wonderful job on camera and their DVDs will be real assets to those of us wanting to learn how to become better artists.

Finally, we took part again this year in Vendor Night. Holy Moly! I LOVE vendor night. It is one of the few times I as an employee of CCP get to interact with the people who buy what I help make. It's so rewarding! I am very lucky in the fact that I'm really proud of what I do and the company I work for. I'm normally pretty shy when it comes to talking to new people. I freeze and mumble and will probably trip. But I love talking about what kind of art people are making. I love meeting the people who have CCP workshops and hear that it's really helped them. Plus, it's just seriously neat to be around that much creativity in one place!

Is it too early to countdown to Art and Soul 2008? Definitely not!

(Pictures from Vendor Night: our booth, Claudine Hellmuth, Lesley Riley, Traci Bautista. Not pictured are Sherri Haab whose booth I kept going back to for fantastic resin molds and Robert Dancik's booth.)

Weekend Work

I'm spending the weekend making up hours I've missed or will miss here at Creative Catalyst Productions. Something about being in the offices on the weekend is nice. It's just me and the cat and my podcasts.

As soon as I finish Jacqueline Sullivan draft one to hand off to Zach, I'm going to work on the Try This at Home Challenge. I've been watching Lesley's video and am both excited and nervous. It's so fun to watch. It's much harder to *do*. I understand this is just part of learning curve.

However, a quick trip to the craft store yesterday made me realize I hadn't listened well enough to some parts of the DVD and I need to make better notes! (It also made me notice yet again that I succumb WAY TOO EASILY to bright shiny objects in craft stores.)

I've got some general themes though and I'm excited to get down to business later today!