Map Wallpaper in Garage

Today was crafting on a larger scale than usual!  My neighbor Susan had wanted to do something to freshen up her garage walls.  What she inherited from previous owners had 40 years of dingy written all over them, and it wasn't the nicest place to pull her car in to when coming home.

But, the garage wasn't top priority for big budget remodeling.  I told her about a garage I had seen in the neighborhood, where the original owner (who worked for a travel agency - now an almost obsolete profession) had covered her garage walls, floor to ceiling with large travel posters.  None of the subsequent owners ever changed it, and when you were out walking the dog you might catch a glimpse of a bullfight in Spain, windmills in Holland or the Roman coliseum.  It was a very fun, bright garage.

Not knowing where to get travel posters, after some brainstorming we decided on maps.  Did you know that AAA will give you their outdated roadmaps?  Anyway Susan amassed a huge collection over the past few years.

Today, we tackled the project.  Susan had already pre-painted the trim black, and pulled down a lot of wood trim pieces (think Tudor) from the era of the 70's bachelor owner.  Today we used ModPodge, rollers, wallpaper tools, and lots of woman power to get it done!  Craft skills of lining up edges and trying to avoid wrinkles were important.  It was a big job and I think we are all sore.  But I think it turned out great!

This first photo is the best "before" shot.  I wish I had taken a true before picture.  But, you can see what rough shape the walls were in.

Here's all the ladies hard at work -- Susan, Donna, Odette, and Jenny.

 

And here's a great after photo of the back wall.

We still have to put on a sealer coat and touch up some trim.  But the hard part is done and it looks great!  Plus, I now have a lifetime supply of leftover maps to use in collage and mixed media.

Catching up -- Art Midterm

This is just to catch up on posting my art midterm from my Drawing 1 class last semester.  I had posted the Final project in December, but I guess I never uploaded the Midterm.

The midterm was a pencil drawing, it took me over 20 hours to do.  By the end I had to wear a wrist brace for 3 weeks as all the tight gripping of the pencil aggravated my carpal tunnel.  But it was well received and it was chosen for display in the student hallways.

It is large (18x24").  Criteria were that we had to incorporate the following:  use of perspective, image(s) from our trip to the Garfield Park Conservatory, creative use of masking tape and vellum for texture.

The perspective are the two sets of sliding glass doors that are drawn from my LR/DR.  I threw in Mom's silver teapot from Germany and many of the cool plants from the conservatory.  The vellum is used on the curtains, and the masking tape is used on the stepping stones on the lower right, and the ledge outside the doors.

My "Zine"

This week in my 2D Design Foundations art class at COD, our assignment was to make a "zine".  I didn't even know what a zine was, LOL!  Well it seems it is a little insta-book on one sheet of paper, folded and photocopied.  Some artists trade and collect zines because they are very economical to produce and easy to mail.  They are almost always done in black and white.

To me, this sounded a whole lot like a mini scrapbook, just in a cheaper, photocopied format.  So all my years of crafting have not gone to waste :-) .  Actually, I have found that to be true on almost all assignments -- all the stamping, cardmaking, scrapbooking, and general crafting has given me some very applicable skills.  Not the least of which is, 'neatness counts'.

The content of the zine could be anything that we wanted, but we were told to be sure to consider visual texture.  Because the instructor was emphasizing visual texture, I chose textiles/fabrics as my subject.

Here is my zine, laid out on 8.5x11" paper, ready for photocopying and then folding.

And now, the pages in sequence:

The hardest part about this assignment was hauling tote bags of quilts, scarves, and all the rest to the library and trying to fit it on the copy machines.  I made several trips because I found I needed to adjust scale and shrink the copy sizes down.  I like my zine!