For the past I've been mulling over the idea of building my own printing press.  I've collected pictures of home-made presses on pinterest and spent hours reading of peoples successes and failures on the internet.  The last time I was this obsessed with something, I ended up with a Bernese Mountain Dog.

Well,l he turned out to be great in every possible way.  So now I'll try building the press.  I know from past experience that I have no talent for carpentry.  I always seem to measure things wrong and saw things crookedly.  I don't expect this to be a thing of beauty, but I'm really hoping it works.  I'm using Charles Morgan's instructions which you can download here.
So far, photos  cut pieces of lumber in my laundry room are truly boring to look at, but look at this!

I would love to have this in my laundry room!!!  This was built by Christopher Clark. (Click the picture to see his Flickr). The wood is so nicely cut and it's stained.  I'm envious! Hopefully mine will look a little like that.  I have great plans to be making wonderful collagraphs soon!

In the mean time, here's my latest linocut, now available in my Etsy store.  It is done on tracing paper and laid over a story book page.

I'll be back soon with more news on my press!

I finally got my Christmas cards done!  I don't actually send them, but I make them for people who are about as behind with Christmas prepartations as I am.  Printmaking is definitely the way to go for handmade cards.  You can make a large quantity that are still handmade without having the process take over your entire life. 
This year I decided to try making a collograph.  It's easy, inexpensive and I think they turned out quite well.  To make the prints, I first made a plate.  I used an old piece of mat board, you could use any cardboard.  I used heavy gesso and a stencil to create the raised letters.  Remember to put your stencil backwards because when you print, your lettters will be reversed.  Then I used mat gel medium to attach a small cedar twig to the card.  You can really blob it on because you want it to stick well and the medium shrinks when it dries.  When everything is dry, cover your plate front and back with a couple of coats varnish.  This will keep it dry when you're printing.  I do the back of the plate too so that it won't warp.  When the varnish is dry, you're ready to print.  I rolled white speedball printers ink onto the plate with a brayer, put the paper on top and rubbed it well with the back of a spoon.  From time to time I had to wipe off the plate to get off the excess ink.  Experiment with different colours of ink and different papers!  I used red and green pineapple paper and brown craft paper.   Then I cut out some little stars because you have to decorate your tree!
Click on the pictures below to enlarge them : )

How bright can I make this picture?  That was the one thing I had in mind when I put together this mixed media piece.  I'm crazy about bright colours, but you wouldn't know it if you saw me on the street.  I wear mostly black and neutrals, but when it come to art I just can't get enough colour!  While I was concentrating on how to put as much zing into this as I could without being garish I inadvertantly solved another delema of mine which is how to combine my printmaking and mixed media.  Sometimes you have to stop thinking about something to find the answer.  I also put together this blue one because blue is one of the most mezmerizing colours I find.

These are my answer to the dark November days we've been having.  I also managed to get another little lino done.  It's been a productive week!

Tomorrow is December 1st and I'm going to totally give up resisting the wave of Christmas frenzy that is everywhere and get swept away!!!

I've decided to add some affordable little linoprints to my Etsy shop.  This is the first and hopefully I'll add more soon, but Christmas is coming!  After a certain date I find I forget about everything and get swept up in the Christmas rush.  It's still November so I'm holding off, but it's difficult.  Neighbors are putting up their lights and I hear Sufjan Stevens has a new set of Christmas CD's!  I can feel my resolve crumbling! But this little lino was so much fun to do.  I going to try and do another!

In an effort to get over my block, I've tried something new.  This technique isn't new for some, but it is for me.  It involves printing a photo on tissue paper and then gluing it down with mat medium.  You need to give it a light spray of fixative it you are using an inkjet printer so that it won't run when you paint on top.   I quite like the effect and this new technique has given my ideas!  What about altering the photo in GIMP.  The possibilities are endless!
Here's another little, and I mean little, piece.  My A is for Antelope is only 4 by 4 inches.  I could do the rest of the alphabet and that would keep me busy for a while!

I haven't posted anything for a while because I've been suffering from a kind of artist block.  I'd always assumed that an artist block meant that your creativity had temporarily dried up and you couldn't think of what to do.  But that's not really a blockage, that's running dry.  I have too many ideas and they are blocking up my brain.  I make lists of thinks I want to do, but then I can't seem to get to them.  I've painted my fireplace, invested in a mixmaster and made cookies and raked bags and bags of leaves.  Then I wonder where the week went and why I haven't created any art.  I'm blaming pinterest for this new type of blockage.  Never before have I been able to see so much inspiring art...my inspiration boards are bulging! It's a feast for creativity, but I think I need to go on a diet.  There's only so many ideas one can digest at once.  I've decided to turn off pinterest...just for a short while until the art starts flowing again.  I did manage to finish this linocut which I had started some time ago and I had to chuckle because I think I've got a few to many ideas in the garden of my mind!

I'm so glad Etsy had made their listing process easier.  However, five new listings is still a lot of typing!  These new art cards are a combination of printmaking and mixed media, or, in other words carving, printing cutting and gluing.  It's a happy process for me.  Much more so than typing! It's time to get up and stretch!

Here are two more additions to my CranberryCloud store.  I had a lot of fun with both of them.  I seem to have a pent up desire to paint and what better to do in this cold rainy weather.  Luckily we're not experiencing any flooding or power outages.   I hope all my friends in the south are not suffering from the storm.
There's another painting on my work table thats calling me back!

Now that the Imprints show has been wrapped up, I'm enjoying getting back to my acrylic paints.  I've got four new ones, but I've just taken time to photograph and list two of them.  They don't photograph and list themselves unfortunetely.  If only they did!  The painting above is called, "Block City", after the poem by Robert Louis Stevenson.  It's done on wood panel and has childrens book pages under the paint.  Not much shows through, as you can see, because I got quite caught up with painting.
Below,  "Carrot Nose"  has many many layers of acrylic so it has lots of texture. 
They're both in my Etsy shop now.  Stay tuned for more paintings shortly : )

Last week was quite a week.  The Imprints Print Show and Sale was an unqualified success.  It was wonderful to work with Lisa and Sarka.  Three heads are definetely better than one!  Sarka brought her extensive  experience with putting on these shows and Lisa, whose background is in graphic design, handled all of the posters, invitations and signs.  The McKay Art Centre is a beautiful venue.  It was built between 1845 and 1851, and was home to Fred H Varley of the Group of Seven for the last 12 years of his life. 

We had a reception with wine and hors d'oeurves, a tea with artists, demontrations and printmaking for children.   No wonder I'm a little tired!  The real highlight of the week for me was when my all time favorite illustrator Vladyana Krykorka visited the show with her daughter.  I must have read "A Promise is a Promise" a million times to my kids and her watercolours inspired me to start painting in watercolor.  Of course I've since turned to other media, but her playful style has always been an inspiration.  She turned out to be just as charming in person as you would imagine her to be from her beautiful and whimsical illustrations.
Here's a few highlights from the Imprints show!