Bountiful Blocks

I've got to share a bit of history about my Bountiful Blocks. I first had the idea to do collage on blocks while Howard and I were in Italy last October. I was thinking how cool it would be to use different shapes of wooden blocks, add text as a background, and then add colorful images and embellishments. I sketched out a little drawing of what I had in mind and tucked the piece of paper into my purse. The idea gurgled around in my mind, I even shared the concept with Sven, my Artist's Way check-in buddy in Portland, but I never did any type of prototype and the idea stayed tucked safely in my purse.

Then, about a month ago, an art group I belong to, In This House and Garden, facilitated by Angela Cartwright and Sarah Fishburn, had a member of the group post about a swap she was organizing. That someone was Susie LaFond and her swap is entitled Around the Block. It involves, you guessed it, arting up blocks. I immediately thought back to my idea to do collage on blocks and thought that joining this swap would be the jump start I needed. The Around the Block swap involves being in a group of five, buying a block, being creative on one side, then sending it around to the other four ladies in the group. However, there was an outcry by some of the participants who said: Hey, I don't want to do just one block, I want to do three. I was one of those rebels and I'm in a select group of five that are doing three blocks and sending them on to the other four participants (are you still with me? there's more). So I started playing around with my three blocks (they can't be bigger than 4x4 inches), going with a Mother Mary theme. I've got a bit more to do with the embellishments on my round robin blocks, but here's the beginning:


As I was working/playing with my three blocks, I kept thinking about my original idea from almost ten months ago and I found myself gluing text onto a whole batch of various sized blocks. Then I started to add collage images. Then I started to glue on bits. Then I thought: This is an idea for a new class. And thus, Bountiful Blocks was born. Here are some images of my initial blocks and, finally, the prototype for my new class:












Aren't they fun?

I plan to offer my new class in Salem and hopefully in Portland (I've submitted a proposal to the DIY Lounge to teach Bountiful Blocks there). As soon as I get my fall schedule fine tuned, I'll be posting class registration information here and on my website.