Marjie Kemper's Classes

On Februaty 23rd, Andrea & I headed to NYC to take a couple classes with the very talented Marjie Kemper.  They were through The Ink Pad (an amazing little store), and held at Westbeth Community Center.  The morning session was "Melt Art Madness" where we learned about a dozen techniques using Ranger's Melt Pot and UTEE (ultra thick embossing enamel).  We didn't make a specific project, we just played and played.

 

This is Marjie's pic from the class advertisement.

The was my favorite piece I made all morning.  I added colors to the melted UTEE, and when finished, you're supposed to dump out the excess UTEE before cleaning out the pot.  I swirled the UTEE on my craft sheet, and ended up with this (holding against my apron so you could see the fine swirl details--so much better in person):

The afternoon session was called " Demystifying Distress Stains & Dylusions Ink Sprays".  Andrea & I have lots of experience playing with Distress Inks, but we wanted to learn more about the Dylusions Sprays.  What fun!  Marjie gave each student an entire package of Ranger's manilla ATCs (artist trading cards ... it's basically the size that makes them ATCs), and taught us lots of cool techniques.  She brought tons of stamps, stencils, Wendy Vecchi Embossing Pastes, Perfect Pearls Powders, Archival Ink Pads, Distress Stains & Ink pads, and of course, Dylusions Spray Inks.  Everything we needed to get inky.  And, if that wasn't enough, she whipped out this HUGE bag of manilla tags and told us to sop of the excess ink on our craft sheets with those!  So generous!  And, so freeing!  Everyone had a blast playing with colors and getting creative!  If you haven't taken a class with Marjie before, what are you waiting for??!

This accordian-style folded, black textured cardstock, was originally meant as a place to keep all the techniques we learned.  It could be folded up and tied with a ribbon or cord.  This first ATC was meant as a cover, but after finishing all the ATCs, I opted to display the whole thing on the wall in my craft room for inspiration. 

This one has black embossing paste with the harlequin stencil, and I stamped the numbers.

This was a very cool technique using Ranger's Ink Refresher and Perfect Pearls Powders.  I also stamped an image on it with Ranger's Black Archival Ink.  Since the surface was powder, the stamp actually lifted off some of the powder and just left a shadow image of ink.  Love it!

Another with black embossing paste using Tim's Splatters stencil.  I also stamped with Black Archival ink.  Can you see the paintbrush near the bottom?  Oh, and I also added the bricks with a stencil and Tim's Picket Fence marker.

19 is my birthdate!  I wanted something big and bold, and Tim's Numeric stamp set was perfect!  I used Ranger's Detail Black embossing powder.

I have black embossing paste on the side of this one with the stripes.  When I was looking at it to decide how to finish it, the colors made me think "mellow", and I used some of Tim's plastic letters along with his Label Letters.

The colors of this one reminded me of the class I took last summer with Jodi Ohl at Create NJ called "Graffiti Magnets." That's where I learned the cool doodling around the heart (white embossing paste), and the white gel pen 'stitching' around the edges.  I never would have thought to use both black & white, and I love the look.

Sidenote:  Marjie showed us that the Dylusions Spray Inks are so concentrated, that when you use white embossing paste on top, the paste soaks up some color.  Very cool.

This was the one and only ATC I finished in class.  It was just plain fun making, but I had to resist finishing the others in class because there were items I had at home that I wanted to use.

This was another with the Perfect Pearls powder technique, and some black embossing paste through a stencil on the left side.  I didn't get the details from this stenciling, but I thought it was cool anyway.  I added some Idea-ology, and Tissue Tape.

This final ATC was stenciled with Distress Stains, and then I used the Eye Chart stencil from Tim with some more black embossing paste.  Below are more pics:

 

 

Our very happy class, and below is Marjie's pic from her class description advertisement (she's a master!):