Just finished this week's piece of Found Art! It is a lucky charm, I've had an idea of making charms for a while but I couldn't think of something interesting to make, until I found this small mint tin box lying around and then the "aha!" moment came.

I took off the lid and made a small collage with different papers, letter rub-ons and a little drawing with black india ink. I also used a date stamp of May 20 2008 (this last Tuesday's date). I added a ribbon and a tag with the Found Art Tuesday flick group address (just in case someone tries to find out more about it) and that little cameo thing is a button.

I sealed the collage with epoxy resin and since it looked so shiny and I wanted a more aged look, I tried to "age it" by scratching and poking it with a wire when it was just about set, then I added brown acrylic paint.

I have to say that the thing I like the most about it is the picture above. I used a "cinemascope" effect I found at an online photo editor called Picnik, (thanks to sk8ordiehard for the link!) that effcts makes anything look cool.

Here are a few more not so cool pictures. I am leaving this today at Starbucks! 

Anyway, for the banner I used the superhero bird I did for, you guessed it, Andrea @ Superherodesings. I've also added a print of this painting to my etsy store, just because I JUST ABSOLUTELY LOVED IT, and this message of superheroness just needs to be shared!

Today we made cupcakes! with a chocolate frosting my mom used to make when I was my daughter's same age, oh my God, the kitchen smells like 20 yrs ago, in a good kind of way.

Have a great weekend!

I'm thinking of making a good luck Charm! HA HA! And then get two birds with one stone, and do this week AND last week's topic too! (remember it was "luck"?) I can do this because I am the one who comes up with the themes, but hey, if you have a suggestion I am ALL EARS! Come to the Found Art Tuesday Flickr group and let your voice be heard. And in case you missed it, Robayre (who was just featured in decor8, don't know if you heard) just declared complete anarchy! It doesn't matter if you are not done by Tuesday! yay! You can also reinterpret the topic anyway you like, the idea is to make something!

Have a great weekend! 

Some galleries will argue that if you are “one of those artists” who make prints of your work, then you will not be offering your clients unique pieces, and therefore you should not get your work reproduced, so that when someone buys the original, it will be the only image of that painting that there is. To these galleries, I stick out my tongue, and say: TBBBBTH!

And after that I will follow with this: I say that an original painting cannot ever be reproduced, an original is exactly that, an ORIGINAL. To reproduce it you would have to paint it again. With paint! And whatever else you used to produce it, and even if you try, it will never be the same, it will be unique, therefore, NOT a reproduction. So there.

But what of all the people who cannot get the original? I think a print is a good solution. It helps also to have affordable art to appeal to a wider audience.
And remember, we as artists keep the rights to the image we created, regardless of who bought it.

I am a self taught artist and a lot of the things that I do have been learned on the go. I am doing the best I can with whatever instruments I have at hand. And since sometimes I don’t have 75 dlls an hour to have one painting professionally scanned (which can take several hours) I had to figure out a way to do it myself, so after a lot of trial and error, the following is the best I think you can do at home.

So here we go.

How to make prints of your artwork

1. Finish the art work (This is a very important step! and it means NO borrowing someone else’s art to reproduce, keep in mind that snatching images from the internet is very frowned upon by the artist community)

2. Do not try to make prints from a digital picture. Get a scanner. I use a CanoScan D660U which is an ancient scanner, but I liked it because you can scan negatives too, it's so cool.

There are a ton of scanners out there, some of them come with a fax and a printer, plus they are not as expensive as you may think.

3. Scan the painting at 300 dpi or more. If it does not all fit on the scanner bed, don’t worry, scan it in parts and save each one in different files, you can piece them back together in an image editor software later.

4. Save all your files in jpeg, this is a tricky one, there are several ways you can save your files, for example .pdf, .wmf, .psd, etc.  But I have learned that jpegs are compatible with many image editing software and are the easiest to convert, I’ve heard that these are “heavier”, meaning that they take up more space in your hard drive and can take some time to load, depending on the size of the image, but jpegs are the files that I’ve had less trouble with, please don’t send me hate mail about this one, I am only sharing what has worked best for me.

5. Once all your painting parts are scanned, open an image editor software, like Photoshop. (very expensive) I use a one called Pixelmator. (It was $59 dlls!!) It works almost exactly as Photoshop but was designed specifically for Macintosh and it’s really easy to use.

6. Open all the files you scanned and start piecing them together in one single file. Start by making the canvas size the same of your original painting, then copy and paste all the files of the painting on the first file you created, and be really careful with all the unions, zoom in as much as you can and try to get them to match perfectly, because if they don’t you will notice right away when you print.

7. Once all the pieces are in the same file, crop all the edges and save your file as a .jpeg, remember to save it at 300 dpi.

8. Now on to printing! You can print it at home with a color printer, but I recommend that you find a place to professionally print your file to the original size of the painting (I go to a place where they have big pro printers to make signs and posters).

You can take the files to them on a CD or send them the file by email, call them ahead of time and ask them if it's ok. These printing businesses should have a choice of gloss or matte as well as a choice of the thickness of the paper, I always try to get the thickest matte paper available. Some places can even print on canvas and staple the print on a stretcher frame so it looks like the real thing! Some places even give you a free massage with your order, but these are really difficult to come by.

9. Number, date and sign all your prints with a pencil. Also, do a small run of prints and if you decide, for example, to only make 30 prints of one painting, number each one like this 1/30, 2/30, etc, so you can keep track of them and of how many you have sold. It is a good idea to make a small run of prints, 50 the absolute maximum.

10. Keep each print in a separate plastic sleeve to protect them from sticking together. (very important because the humidity and the weather can affect the inks).

And that's it! There are also other methods of doing this, like glicee prints which is basically the same thing but way more expensive. (Because of the professional scanning, color correction and more expensive printing with those fancy inks and all)

I hope these steps help you make your own prints and if you see something I've missed or have more comments, please let me know, thanks! 

I have been so busy around here, doing, doing, doing. No time to stop and paint just yet. Yesterday the battery of my car died. How fun. And the kids were here all day dying to get out! I called the insurance company and they sent someone to jumpstart the car! and for free!! I love my insurance company, it turned out that one of the doors didn't close all the way, all the inside lights were all on ALL NIGHT LONG! No wonder my battery died.

On other, more interesting news...

Here's an iimage of a litle bird I did (more birds!) It's made on a journal cover, I sent this to one blogger I admire. I wanted to share something with her because I always find so much inspiration on this blog. Can you tell who I sent it to?

UPDATE: She got it, and she loved it! I am so thrilled!

PS. I am DONE with the blue bird, DONE DONE DONE

You know how some people are very lucky and they always get things going for them. I sometimes wonder if we are making our own luck. Maybe it's the attitude and the way we approach things and people.

I know this must be true, they also call it KARMA, I like that word, although I don't really understand the full extent of what it means.

I like to see people having good luck, it's always nice to find a 50 dlls bill on the street, or winning something, but there are other kinds of luck. The good luck of being ALIVE for example. Of having the opportunity of stepping outside to stand in the sunlight, to have food on our table, to be healthy, to have family closeby. We sometimes forget about all the good things we have, of how lucky we are... I know it sounds so much like a cliché, but it is important to remember this once in a while.

 And how lucky the person who finds a little found art next Tuesday! how lucky they will feel to have a chance to participate in this!

These are a few new (to me) artists I've discovered at Etsy and oh, how I LOVE what they do....

You can use anything for a collage, paper, textile, thread, 3d objects, etc...

First, for collages with PAPER, here are a few of the things I almost always use:

Vintage (I hate that word!, I prefer OLD, they are, after all, OLD!) Tarot cards and playing cards. 

A checkbook from Mexico, circa 1950's (courtesy of my husband's grandfather) 

Postal stamps. I try to find rare stamps, I will only use one, max two for a painting and I try to find one that complements the story and color scheme of the painting 

Old legal documents from 1865. The paper is hadwritten with brown india ink! 

Banknotes from all over. Mostly old ones from Mexico, and no, I am NOT rich, Sadly, these are worth almost nothing if you take them to a bank.

How do you make it all stick together??

LIQUITEX Acrylic Medium. I use the matte medium because I like the finish. Do not, I repeat, DO NOT use a brush to apply it, you will ruin your brush! Just use your finger to spread it on the surface you want to collage and rub it in.Rub and rub and rub, and make sure it's all soaked. Make sure to use a good amount of it on top as well, this will seal the paper and make it impossible to unglue itself with time.

I do not like to use GOLDEN brand because it's just very thick and cannot be spread as easily. Although there are a lot of collage artist who will not use anything else. (Claudine Hellmuth is one of them) It just rubs me the wrong way (wait... did I just said that?... I didn't mean Claudine rubs me the wrong way, I meant the golden medium)

I've been recently interviewed for the blog by the very talented Emma Alegre. The questions were really good and I enjoyed thinking about my creation process, the hard part was trying to explain it, AND in Spanish! It's been a long time since I've had to talk about art in Spanish. Must do it more often! Found Art Tuesday is also mentioned! yay!

If you really prefer English, you can read it translated, courtesy of Google Translate. Although there's a lot that is lost in translation, not to mention that it all sounds really funny. Now that I think of it, it'll be more interesting to read it with the translation!