Picnic Portland!

I had an awesome time showing at Picnic Portland in Lincoln Park this past Saturday. I shared my tent with my long time artist friend Allison Villani, who makes recycled paper jewelry. The weather forcast was pretty sketchy, but then it cleared up and became beautiful. My 6 year old daughter was dropped off an hour into the show and stayed for 6 hours. I was completely floored that she was able to handle it that long, but she made a bunch of new friends and ran around the whole time throwing stuffed animals into air.

Here's our shared space in my tent. We had so much fun hanging out. I remembered that Allison and I had met in this park 13 years ago while walking our dogs. We both lived in the Old Port at the time.

This was the booth next to us. The guy who makes these large fabulous birdhouses actually made this set-up out of recycled cardboard tubes that had rolls of fabric on them. It took him and a few friends close to 2 hours to rig this up, all the while we were biting our nails watching. It took them 5 minutes to take down. I was happy for him because the birdhouses were priced at about $150, and he sold two. Phew!

Check out Wordy Smith!

MaryAnn from Backwoods Creations, a fellow Etsy Maine Team member, came up with a great cross promotional idea a few weeks ago and I am just now trying it. She has encouraged all team members to blog about each other. I love this idea! I have chosen by good buddy Kellie, from Wordy Smith!

Kellie has so much fun making her amazing decoupage work. I have some of her bamboo tiles that she thoughtfully crafted just for me. She found many vintage pictures of potters and clay pots and decoupaged them onto the tiles. I later glued magnets on the back and get to see them everyday on my fridge!

I been to a few etsy Maine Team meetings with Kellie and I love hearing her talk about her process. She enjoys finding the right phrases and passages and words in her vintage finds to create her pieces. I know that anyone who purchases one of her goods, will have something very special, not to mention funny as well! Kellie is a hoot, a great team member, and an awesome friend! Check out her shop!

Making Encaustic Medium

Well, I FINALLY took the time a few weeks ago to make my very first batch of encaustic medium. This is the method I learned from Kim Bernard, my encaustic guru. What is encaustic medium you ask? Well, it's kind of like what gesso is to oil painters, encaustic medium is to encaustic artists. The medium acts as a base for the paint, among many other purposes. Since I intent to do a lot of scraping in the wax, I need a thick surface on which to work on.

I felt like I couldn't really start anything in my studio until I had accomplished this task. It was a very impulsive evening in August. The weather was nice and the kids were happy playing outside and I thought, "now is the perfect time!" It was 4:45 and by 5:00 I had the hot plate plugged in and everything set to go.

Here's all the equiptment: hot plate, stainless steel pot, stainless steel bowl, colander and ladle, silk screen, clothes pins and stirfry spoon.

To make encaustic medium you need 5 parts beeswax to one part damar resin, which comes from a certain family of deciduous tree that grows in the East Indies. They have to be melted together slowly over low heat. The white stuff is the refined beeswax and the golden chunks are the damar resin.

Okay now the damar is really melting now. Here is a gooey chunck stuck to the stirfry spoon.

All done! Now it's time to pour it through the filter.

Ooooh nasty! That junk was all in the damar crystals. It's bark and maybe some elephant hair.

The wax is now poured into silicone muffin tins and tuna fish cans. I ordered the wrong size muffin tins. They said on-line that they were the standard size. Maybe for kids cupcakes....they were a lot smaller than I expected so I have to scrounge and find every tuna can laying around. Thank goodnes my daughter loves tuna sandwiches!

Aren't they purdy? Aren't they just lovely? I'm so proud of myself. I gave myself soooo many hours to do this, thinking that I'd begin at 5:00 and slowly start the melting process. By the time 6:00 came I was already filtering 1/2 the batch and pouring the rest of the beeswax in. By the time 7:15 came, I was pouring the wax into the tins! I thought it would take much longer. Well, I must have done it right because nothing got set on fire in the process.