Balzer Designs

From the Studio: My Moveable Walls

In the new house, my studio is in the attic.  It's a wonderful space with one big problem: low angled ceilings.  Beyond the fact that this eliminates the ability to hang shelves for storage (a problem I am currently working through as I unpack), it means that I don't have a painting wall or a place to put a quilt design wall.  I talked to my contractor about it and he built me two huge wooden walls on wheels!

This means that I now that 4 flat walls (2 sides on each of these wooden "boxes") to work with!  Yay!

However.

Isn't there always a however?

Plywood is not ideal for behind a painting wall or a quilt design wall -- because I want to be able to put pins in the wall. So, what's a girl to do? 

Steve and I headed to the home improvement store and bought several sheets of homasote. 

"Homasote is a brand name associated with the product generically known as cellulose based fiber wall board, which is similar in composition to papier-mâché, made from recycled paper that is compressed under high temperature and pressure and held together with an adhesive. It is ¹⁄₂ inch thick and comes in sheets 4 by 8 feet." 

A pregnant woman and a guy with bad knees carrying heavy homasote boards up to the third floor was a comedic/tragic experience, but we did it!  And managed to laugh at ourselves during the experience.

Next hurdle: we needed to cut the homasote.  We tried a couple of different box cutters and finally discovered that a rotary cutter was the way to go!  Yes, the homasote trashed the blade, but it cut like butter.  Here's the homasote mounted on the walls:

You can see that I put some duct tape across the seam between the boards.

Homasote is a little bit like cardboard.  It's absorbent and likely to disintegrate after continued exposure to water.  So, I needed to seal it.  I bought some primer and went to town.

I ended up doing two coats of primer on each wall.  The first layer of primer absorbed into the homasote so quickly that after I painted the first coat on the second wall, the first wall was dry and ready for a second coat.  The second coat took much longer to dry, which made me feel that the first layer had done its job.

I stapled some batting to one of the homasote walls in order to transform it into a quilt design wall.  So now I have a painting wall and a quilt design wall and two plywood walls (the reverse sides) that I will likely paint and use as decorative backdrops.

I am so thrilled with my new set up!  I look forward to many happy years of making things in this space!

Thanks for stopping by!

Two ScanNCut Cards

I haven't bought a card to give someone in years.  I like to make the cards.  It's a mini gift to the recipient!

A few months ago I was invited to a family member's baby shower.  I immediately knew that I wanted to make the card and so I went looking for inspiration!  I was poking through some of the premium ScanNCut cut files and I found one called "SVG Cutting Files Baby, Steampunk and Skulls Pattern Collection."

I immediately loved the elephant card (I have long had a thing for elephants):

I decided to make it with a few extra embellishments!  Here's my version:

I added some bling:

I frosted the stars with glitter glue and I added some black rhinestones.

I also personalized the card with some text:

The "Baby" is a built-in design in my ScanNCut and the "Balzer" was created with one of the built-in fonts.  You may also notice that I used colored ink pads to ink the edges of most of the pieces of paper.  I think inking adds a lot of dimension to paper crafts.

I also added actual dimension:

I looooove foam adhesive.  If you wander down the card aisle at any drug store, you'll notice that an enormous number of the cards now feature raised elements.  It's more visually exciting!

So there you have it!  An adorable baby card suitable for giving away or simply popping into a frame and displaying in the baby's nursery!

This next card was something I hid in Steve's car as a surprise!  You may or may not know that he is back in college at the moment (very exciting).  He had a big exam and I wanted to go a little bit beyond a post-it note of encouragement.  Once again, I turned to the premium ScanNCut cut files -- this time to the "School Grad & Beach Pattern Collection."  I found two different designs that I liked:

Both are box files, but I figured that I could transform them into card embellishments!  I frankensteined the two designs together and came up with this card:

To give the card visual dimension, I used a lot of my favorite card techniques, like inking and foam adhesive.

You can see in the photo above that I inked the edges of the polka dot paper.  And, it's subtle, but did you notice that there's foam adhesive under the top of the notebook paper but not the bottom?  It makes the paper really appear to be tucked behind the apple.

To add hyper dimension to the heart, I stacked two pieces of foam adhesive together.  Even the leaf on the apple got some dimension, with a bit of folding!

Once again, one of the things I love about my ScanNCut is the ability to constantly customize.  I love that I was able to grab two "recipes" and mash them together into something uniquely my own!

Thanks for stopping by!

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P.S. I am a paid spokesperson for the Brother ScanNCut.  It is a machine that I love and use.  All projects and opinions are my own.

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Art Journal Every Day: A New Journal for January 2019

If you're new to Art Journal Every Day, there is a short introduction here.  All of the previous posts can be found archived here.  Remember, it's just ten minutes of nourishing your creative self every day!  No need to finish anything or even like it. If you've done some art journaling this week, use the hashtag #artjournaleveryday so that we can all take a peek.  Even if you're not on social media, you can see everything (from twitter, pinterest, instagram, and facebook) that uses that hashtag here. 

I started a new art journal in January of 2019.  These days my journals are always junque journals -- hand bound journals made from the leftover art junque in my studio -- tags, painted papers, clean up sheets, doodles, etc.  I make them ahead of time and then grab a new one when it's time.  Truth be told, I need to stop making journals, because I literally have an entire shelf full of virgin junque journals that need filling!  What can I say?  It's an addiction!

Here's the newest journal:

I was going to leave it alone as a pretty pattern, but I couldn't stop myself from painting a face on there.  

All of my journals have "end papers."  These end papers are made from deli paper stamped with a favorite hand carved stamp (the first stamp I used this year for #printinktober!):

Normally I loathe the first spread in my art journals, but I actually loooooove this one:

I love this bird silhouette so much I may have to run to my art journal and do it again.  For the record, copying yourself is always a good idea.  It allows you to take an old idea and reformat/reframe/refine it.

I think that part of the reason I love the bird so much is that I love the papers in the bird:

And proof that lettering doesn't have to be fancy or perfect to be wonderful:

That little drop shadow makes a big difference in the impact of the word "January."

I hope you have a great weekend and get to make some art!  Thanks for stopping by!

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween everyone!  Hope you have a spooktacular day!  We have done zero decorating for Halloween this year because we're still unpacking, but here are some pumpkins Steve and I painted back in 2016:

I'm usually 100% against anything fake, but I've been thinking that I might buy some *gasp* fake pumpkins and paint them.  That way I'd have them year after year instead of having to re-do it every year...is that sacrilege?  I'm going to have to think about that.  We will see if the after-Halloween sales offer any great deals on fake pumpkins!

In the meantime, I've got a big bowl of candy and I'm ready for the trick or treaters!  And if they don't come, I've still got a big bowl of candy.  So, win-win!!

Thanks for stopping by!

MFA Murals: Jackson Pollock & Katharina Grosse

On Monday night I had the opportunity to see the new exhibit Mural: Jackson Pollock & Katharina Grosse at the MFA (Museum of Fine Arts) in Boston.

Grosse was commissioned to create an artwork...

...in response to Pollock's painting (his largest ever at 2o feet long):

It's an interesting pairing.

In many ways they are vastly different pieces.  The Pollock piece is full of brush strokes, where the Grosse piece has the hard lines of the stencils she uses.

Both pieces have tons of color and movement, but Pollock use of black and white makes the colors feel more subdued.

The Grosse piece can be viewed from the front and the back...

It's a different piece from the back (above) because the paint hasn't gone through the fabric everywhere and so there's more white on the back and the shapes are less defined in some areas.

There's still white on the front (below), but it's different.

I really like both pieces and feel the need to go back and study them some more!  The exhibit is open until February 23, 2020, so there is plenty of time!

Thanks for stopping by!