Blocked No More

Seven creative women gathered last Saturday for my Bountiful Blocks class. The class was held at the always fabulous Stampin' Cat Studio in Salem. The ladies were so excited to get going that they were selecting goodies and getting started even before the class officially began!




Multiple blocks, multiple sides! So much artistic goodness!

















Our three hours just flew by and one of the repeated comments on the evaluation form was MORE TIME TO PLAY! I'll have to consider extending the length of the class next time around.

Bountiful Blocks: A Opportunity to Play

Class will be held at Stampin' Cat Studio in Salem, Oregon. To register, call 503-390-2553. I have a feeling this one's gonna be popular!

Bountiful Blocks: A Trial Run

Saturday I taught the first round of Bountiful Blocks, the newest class in my arsenal of creative offerings. Only two people signed up, but since they were both friends, I decided I would go ahead with the class and use it as a trial run (and with only two, it meant I would be able to play along with them). Kathleen and Laura have both taken classes from me before (in fact, Kathleen has taken every since class I have ever offered!), so it was comfortable and fun.

Three hours later . . . two beautiful creations.

Since this was a new class, here is what Kathleen and Laura had to say about the class:

I love, love, love the new space! The colors, the feel, the friendliness, the variety of things to use, to see, to share. The entire experience feels like it was just what I needed and the timing could not be more perfect. I feel like I have honored my brother while at the same time been good to me and my dream of driving my race car. Laura

Loved all the choices of stuff - the helpful ideas and all the time we were given to explore and create! Wow! this was more fun than I imagined. Thanks so much for another fun playful, class. Kathleen

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.