Claudine Hellmuth

Ms. Hellmuth, collage artist extraordinaire, has discovered a new way to do image transfers. Check out her blog! I guess I'll have to buy some of her sticky-back canvas. I'm almost out of her matte multi-medium (love it!), so I could make it a twofer. :)

Another Version

Here is another version of Stéphane Lambiel's Otoño Porteño program.

While there are a couple of mistakes, I like this performance. The audience here is much more subdued than in the Festa on Ice video. Even with the mistakes, this performance is precise and dramatic, whereas Stéphane's Festa version is skated with abandon. I like both versions, but I hope that his Olympic performance is much more like Festa on ice--near perfection with the audience (and judges) in thrall to his every move.

Art Journaling

Made my first attempt at an art journal this evening. I've been ruminating about doing one for a long time, but didn't want to use up my stash of watercolor paper or go out and buy an expensive journal. For the last few days, I've been thinking about using my stash of National Brand Eye-Ease notebooks as journals. This was just a thought floating around with no impetus toward action.

Yesterday, while waiting to renew my car registration at the BMV, I wished I'd thought to bring a magazine, which of course made me think about buying a magazine or two before heading back to the office. A quick stop in Hastings, and I was armed with two Stampington titles, Take Ten and Art Journaling. I'd barely looked at either before purchasing.

Imagine my surprise last night upon picking up Art Journaling and finding that the first article was about using inexpensive composition books as journals! This evening, after pulling dead tomatoes and zinnias from the garden, I found one of my unused Eye-Ease notebooks went to work . So far, no art, just set up. I used Studio Multi-Medium (from Claudine Hellmuth's line of Ranger products) to adhere "signature" sets of five pages together. I figure that the signatures will be thick enough to stand up to paints and embellishments, but thin enough to punch through if needed. I've glued only two sets of pages and have used baby binder clips to hold them together while the medium dries. I'll do another two sets and so on until all are adhered.

Have to say that I'm not really sure where the art journal is going. I'd like to use it to try out card, tag, and ATC designs; work on techniques such as image transfers, silhouettes, and backgrounds, and just plain write. Meanwhile, I'm going to immerse myself in all that there is to learn from Art Journaling magazine.

Why I Love Stéphane Lambiel

This program captures all of Stéphane Lambiel's wonderful qualities--easy musicality, fluid and dancerlike, expressive and dramatic without being cheesy, inventive, and the cherry on the sundae--he's absolutely gorgeous!

Enjoy the program below. Otoño Porteño is translated as Autumn in Buenos Aires. The composer is Astor Piazzolla, whose most familiar work is probably the melancholy tango, Oblivion.




The video is from the Korean ice show, Festa on Ice, and was originally posted on Youtube by good2beblue.

In case you don't know "Steve" about Stéphane Lambiel, he is a two-time World Champion of figureskating and the 2006 Olympic silver medalist. He retired from the Olympic-eligible ranks last year and now skates in shows all over the world--but not Indiana, alas. Stéphane is from the French-speaking part of Switzerland. In addition to French, he speaks English, German--apparently not Swiss German, however--and Italian. He recently added a journal to his official website.