Beatrice Wood in Ojai

Just home from Ojai, California. I have a special place in my heart for landscapes like these. Green rolling hills and oak trees.

These are the views from Beatrice Wood's home and Studio.

why look! My favorite Matilija poppies, right ouside her window!



Her studio.

She was a potter, and well known for her amazing luminous, metallic glazes. These are her actual glazes, and the formulas still a secret to everyone.

Did I mention she lived to be 105, working and living creatively, in this home,  right up to her death.

Zen Eucalyptus

Zen Eucalyptus (40x60 inches)  by Jane LaFazio 

My piece "Zen Eucalyptus" was juried into the 51st International Exhibition at the San Diego Art Institute/Museum of the Living Artist, in Balboa Park, San Diego. The exhibition will be up until May 29, 2011. My piece, made from hand-made felt, was on of 85 works selected from 675 entries from around the world.

Matilija Poppies

Matilija poppies near Blue Sky Reserve. So beautiful.
(pronounced ma-TIL-i-ha or ma-til-EE-ha)
I'm traveling for a few days, see you next week.......

Paper Houses

Just for fun. Cloth Paper Scissors has a reader challenge, using this house pattern, and I couldn't resist making some just for the heck of it. These are made with atlas pages, a stencil and my fave, spray gesso.
And Cloth Paper Scissors did a lovely promo on my new DVD, read it here and another one here.

Sketchbook pages

The Sketchbook Challenge theme this month is Can't Resist. So being the literal kind of gal I am, I used a resist on my pages. I prepared the pages at home by using a stencil and spray gesso. I also tried using masking fluid, and dabbing it on through a stencil, but the images didn't come out very clear, just chunky.

Here's how my page looked before I painted it.
 

new stuff in my Etsy shop

No one could accuse me of not enjoying a little color and a bit of texture in my work! These are all detail shots of items I just added to my online JaneVille Etsy shop. I'm teaching  at CREATE in Southern California (May 18, 19, & 21st) and preparing my wares to sell at the ARTIST FAIRE held at the Hilton Orange County/Costa Mesa on Friday, May 20, from 6:00-9:00pm. In the meantime, they'll be up on ETSY, and then the shop will close for a week while I'm at CREATE.

Beets & Pomegranates

First let me say, this is NOT a tutorial. Merely an experiment that my professional cloth dyeing friends would cringe at. I read somewhere that if you boil fresh beets in pomegranate juice it would make a lovely shade of pinky red. So, I had to try it. (Of course, I did no prepartion to any of the fabric. I used some fine muslin, cheesecloth, cotton batting and silk organza and just stuck it in there with the hot juice and cut up beets!)

I let it dry naturally, then stuck it in the dryer to further heat set it. Came out gorgeous, didn't it?

Above is the cotton batting.

Someone on Facebook asked me if it was washable and lightfast...So I washed some strips of my dyed fabric with synthrapol. See photo above. (I haven't tested the light fastness yet.)

And since the pot of beets and pom juice are still in the garage, I dipped a piece of watercolor paper in it, in prepartion for the Sketchbook Challenge  theme of 'resist' this month. (I used spray gesso and a stencil to get that flower pattern, THEN dipped half in the beet/pom juice)
Note: I'm telling you all this, in case, in the future, you purchase one of my art quilts and you detect a slight smell of pomegranates and beets...you'll know why!!

Tiny Tutorial: Cloth Covered Journal

 detail of handmade journal by Jane LaFazio

I created this journal with unprimed artists canvas, spray gesso, Luminarte twinkling H2Os, hand carved stamps, grommets and my sewing machine. The interior pages are watercolor paper.

I used purchased stencils and spray gessoed them on the canvas. 
      
After the gesso was dry, I used a variety of Luminarte Twinks to color the canvas.
     
The color is bold when wet, and dries lighter.


I put it outside to dry thoroughly.


 
And sprayed it again with spray gesso and a stencil or two. I love the heavily layered look.
  
Back in the studio, I stamped directly with the bottle and my hand carved stamps over the surface.

hand carved stamps by Jane LaFazio

 


I stamped on commerical fabric too. I added batting to the back of my canvas cover, and  cut out the flower and free motion stitched it to the canvas.





I stitched around some of the stamped shapes too.



Above is the cover, then a layer of batting and at the bottom, a piece of fabric for the interior of the bookcover. I stitched them all together, down the center binding.

in progress~ detail of handmade journal by Jane LaFazio

  
I stitched around the edge of the cover, then zig-zaged stitched a few times around the edges.
  

 detail of handmade journal by Jane LaFazio

This elephant is another journal cover in progress.

 detail of handmade journal by Jane LaFazio

handmade journal by Jane LaFazio

I added grommets in the center spine and the edge of the book cover, and cut watercolor paper to fit, and attached it to the spine with ribbon.

handmade journal by Jane LaFazio

handmade journal by Jane LaFazio

handmade journal by Jane LaFazio

Check out my teaching schedule here.