WHAT WE MADE

On our first day at Lucky Star I took two half-day classes, and Alexis spent the whole day in a screen-printing class with the amazing Becky Dawson of One Lane Road -- the same class I took a couple of years ago, when I made these.

I loaded Lex up with my leftover supplies, and she took my robot screens along as well, just in case she ran out of things to do. That never happened, since she was busy making these...

as well as a tote bag and some onesies with funny sayings on them.  However, since friend Jen showed up with a big pack of onesies, plus a new little niece and a friend's triplets to make gifts for, and no clear idea what design to use, she was pretty tickled when Lex offered her the use of the robot screens. But not nearly as tickled as I am, at the thought of my sweet little robots making their way out into the world!

My morning class was Ashley Henry's wired jewelry class, where I made this...

using an old perfume/poison-holding pendant I found in some of my mom's stuff. I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out, it being the very first time I'd ever picked up a set of jewelry-making tools. Just wish someone had told me to switch the direction of my leaf beads midpoint.

My afternoon was spent having the time of my life in Kelley Walker's marvelous marbling class. She had a bit of a struggle making us leave when our time was up.

The top row was done on paper, but the next two pieces were marbled on white denim.

My plan was to add a lot of beautiful marbled papers to my boxes of hand-painted collage papers, but it's gonna be a lot harder than I thought to tear these beauties into little bits and pieces!

The next morning Lex and I actually got to take a class together, with Austin watercolor artist Heidi Miller Lowell. It was called Let Go, And Find Your Flow. What better way to do that than by painting mandalas with watercolors?

Mine

Lexi's, not quite finished.

I love the one Lex did so, so much! You'd never know she hasn't picked up a paint brush since high school. I'm pretty sure this gave her the itch to remedy that situation, as she couldn't wait to get back to the room and keep working on it.

That afternoon Lex took a leather earring class...

while I took Jennifer Mercede's Beloved Florals and Creatures class. Remember Lulu, the tutu-wearing bulldog that we ran into at Hays City Store not long ago?

Still working on that one.

On our last morning of classes, Lex went off to take Kelley Walker's felt flower wreath-making class...

while I took another of Becky Dawson's classes -- illustration and cartooning. Basically, I just wanted to learn to loosen up in my sketching, and give up the need for perfection and realism. Becky had the perfect cure for that.

She passed around these sheets of paper that were divided into 16 sections, and we had to quickly jot down a couple of professions or styles of people before passing it on to the next person. When we ran out of the usual suspects, we got a bit loopy, and started writing down things like "jokers, tokers, and midnight smokers", and it went downhill from there. When full, she started passing them around again, and we each had to illustrate the next available square, in about 30 seconds! I came seriously close to having an accident before it was over with, we were laughing that hard.

So much fun, friendship, connection, knowledge, and inspiration to be shared and absorbed, in so very little time.