Wednesday, September 26, 2007

I Love Soap!

I love soap. Not just any ordinary soap that you can purchase at your local supermarket or discount store, but, home-made, hand-crafted-with-love soap! Rebecca's Soap Delicatessen is my soap boutique of choice... and if you've ever tried Rebecca's soaps, you'd know why!


I recently purchased a bar of her Lettuce Gardener's Soap because let's face it, those of us who play in gel medium and paint... get goopy hands. The description of the Lettuce Gardener's Soap reads thus:



...lettuce gardener's soap smells like a blend of Sweet Floral, water, and
ozone. It contains poppy seeds, fine ground pumice and apricot kernel meal to
help remove grit and garden dirt from your hands. It's thick, creamy lather
helps remove soil as well, while the addition of shea and cocoa butters keep
hands soft and hydrated. Also works great as a mechanic's soap.





Those last two lines sold me on this soap. I remember my grandfather used to use Lava soap after working on the car, and it reminded me a lot of sandpaper. After working on my art, I need a soap that works like sandpaper, but doesn't leave my hands feeling like they've just been sanded!

Rebecca's Lettuce Gardener's Soap does exactly as it promises, it sloughs away the glues, goops, paints and glop off of my hands, and yet, my hands don't feel dry and brittle after I use the soap. And the fragrance is quite pleasant indeed!


You can see all the texture -- the poppy seeds, the pumice, and the apricot kernel -- to this soap... that texture is what helps slough away all that stuff that gets built up on my hands after a typical night of art-ing! So, for all you artists and crafters out there, I highly recommend trying this soap.


And... yes, after washing my hands as many times as I do (gotta wash 'em in between each layer of goop!) I do feel like I need some lotion... and I just love Rebecca's Blackberry Sage Honey and Goatmilk Lotion. I am going to order some of this the next time I place an order with Rebecca. In my last order, she sent me a sample of it, and I am really blown away at how nice it is! The fragrance I was already familiar with, as I've used her Blackberry Sage soap in the past, but, I hadn't yet tried any of her lotions. But after trying her small sample... I'm hooked! It not only smells nice, but feels so silky smooth!


~Anne

Thursday, September 20, 2007

Mad Tea Party

Yesterday, I sent off my Mad Tea Party fatbook pages to the hostess.


The scan doesn't quite do the colors of this page justice... the yellows seems to have washed out the green colors, making them appear more yellow-y too. Some of the greens are more teal. But, I'm quite happy with the way the pages turned out, even if some of the layers turned out to be a bit more subtle than I would have liked.

The quote on the page: "Take some more tea the March Hare said to Alice very earnestly" comes from the Mad Tea Party chapter from Alice in Wonderland. And of course, the "drink me" concept also comes from the book. I didn't want to use images from the book (or from the disney adaptation) because it all seemed a bit too expected.

I am finishing up a teensy-tiny 'zine that I've created for one of my yahoo groups, I need to get that in the mail too. I am quite relieved, however, that I'm not yet late with it! (I'm so much like the white rabbit from the aforementioned tale... always always late!)

Thanks for reading along!

~Anne

Sunday, September 2, 2007

Graffiti Fat Book

I am so way behind on posting this... haha! The story of my life, right?
I have really enjoyed doing fatbooks lately. One of the more recent fatbook pages I've created was for a Traci Bautista-inspired Graffiti book.
First off... let me explain how I create fatbooks... I start with a "canvas" (I usually use a cut to size piece of cereal box that I've primed with gesso) that's 8 x 4. By measuring out my base to 8 x 4, it allows me to create a backside on my page as well as the front. There are some fatbook artists that do not work the back of the page at all, and the stark white back stands out in the book -- and not in a good way! So, I try to keep a sort of continuity with both sides of the page.
Here's my 8 x 4 page

This scan doesn't show the full effect of my page, because I finished each page with some soft gel medium for texture, and then a sprinkling of ultrafine glitter for some much needed sparkle.

Then, I added some random stitching with some handspun, handpainted wool yarn that I purchased from Crystal, and then I added some fun furry fiber.

I really loved the finished texture of this page. And the finished product... the book I got back... ohhhhh... it was fabulous! I was so thrilled with it!

~Anne