GETTIN' GELLI WITH KELLEY

Miss Kelley

On our first day of classes at Lucky Star, I spent the entire day in class with Kelly Walker, who happened to be my roomie the first year this camp opened. That year she was just a student like me, but she brought a carload of her crafty creations to sell on market night, and I nabbed a wonderful little box of three small journals that she had fashioned from monoprint papers created on a Gelli plate. The next year she decided to do a demo and sell kits at market night, and her table had such a mob around it the whole evening, I couldn't get near it! So this year she decided she might as well teach some classes, and I'm ever so glad she did, for this was the result! 

I don't want to give away too many of her details and secrets, because you really need to take one of her classes to get the full benefit. Suffice it to say, she has a gift for coming up with unique projects, figuring out ingenious ways to bring them to life, and explaining all the steps in a way that's easy to understand. If you can't make it one of her workshops, she now offers online classes on her website, One January Day.

We began the day with each of us creating our own "stash" of beautiful monoprint papers using a Gelli plate, heavy bodied acrylic paints, and the huge pile of stencils and texture tools that Kelley has amassed over time. If you've never done this before, you really need to try it.  It's one of the quickest, easiest ways I know to put yourself into a delightful "art trance" without having to give it much thought, and ending up with a whole lot to show for it! Once we had our stash, we cut them up into different shapes and sizes and used them to cover our little binder.

Kelley suggested ahead of time that we come up with a theme for our little "Heartsongs Folio", then gather up any bits and pieces of ephemera from our own stash at home that might fit in with this theme. Seeing as how I may be a little obsessed right now with the news that I am going to be a grandma, I chose this for my theme...

and decided this folio would be the perfect place to collect ideas of things I might like to do with my grandkids, as well as memories of time spent with my own grandparents.

Mimi always had a button jar for us to play with!

We used the remainder of our stash to make pages and fun little pockets, folders and envelopes for our folios.

As you can see SIL Priscilla, those security envelopes you saved up for me are still coming in handy!

Now all I have to do is a bit of research and idea collecting, starting with this wonderful book by Sharon Lovejoy, whose first chapter is entitled "Preparing Camp Granny"!

Also, I'd like to give a special shout out to my artist friend Shelley Massey of A Wee Bit Warped, who used to send me these great little "Zines", from which several bits and pieces found their way into my folio. You rock Shelley!