I love Carve December! It is an Instagram challenge started and hosted by Julie Fei-Fan Balzer of Balzer Designs. She provides prompts for each day of the month and people carve stamps (blocks) inspired by those prompts, or whatever. I have generally been one of the “whatever” carvers but this year I am following the prompts and having a lot of fun with it. I am curious if you can guess what the prompts might be based on what I carved. I would love it if you would leave a comment with your ideas.
I have made another paper bag art journal to capture all of the printed goodness.
I used a paper bag art journal to capture the essence of October. It was a jam packed month! I posted a video (reel) on Instagram that you can see here. I wanted to share some still photos as well with more information about the content of the photos.
The paper bags come from a meal subscription service I use called Isthmus Eats and I get 1-2 meals in them most weeks. All the ingredients come with a recipe and they are very tasty but sometimes challenging to make. It has been great to increase the variety in my regular meal rotation. In any case, I have a growing stack of these paper bags and I knew how I wanted to use them. You can see I decided to make a paper bag book with pockets! It got really chunky!
This first page layout includes a Zendala with the first Inktobertangle (Inktober Zentangles) patterns of festune, toodles, seedways and melvina by Zentangle, Inc (first 2), Carla Jooren and Nadine Roller, respectively. Click on the pattern name to go to the instructions on how to draw that Zentangle pattern. The orange print with the eyes is from the resource I made for my Block Printing Fest handout. The background is papers that I have gelli printed in October and that were laying on my work table.
The list of Inktober Tangles prompts is on the next page with a tan phi tile with some of the patterns. The tan tile includes Star Rite by Nina Dreher-Goddertz, Oyvia by Shie Naritomi, and Adriadna by Tomas Padros. When you flip that pocket over you can see the ogee variations I played with. On the right are 2 ogee blocks I printed during my Repeat Pattern Design Deep Dive class with Ali (@3DottedPenguins). I used the ogee shaped spaces to draw in the pattern Lilife by Barbara Steyer. I liked this pattern so much that I carved a little ogee stamp of it and played with it some more. This is layered over some woven gelli prints.
I continued to play with that little ogee stamp on a blue phi tile shaped piece of paper and a little scrap of the blue paper. The tile is on a background of “quilted” gelli printed papers and book pages. It includes the Inktober tangles cochombros by Tania Ferriol Joyer and Ole Ole by Reyes Galindo. The Zendala on the right side is one of my favorite Zentangle patterns, zenith by Zentangle, Inc. It has some similarities with delwhy, another favorite and one that I have carved a bunch of stamps of and I included 3 of the stamps on the Zendala. You can see the Block Printing Fest label and in this pocket I had some of the prints I used in my Block Printing Fest presentation. I put a copy of the handout from my presentation into another pocket. Here is a photo of the stuff from all of the pockets in the book. It includes some Artist Trading Cards I got from Mel Beach.
The page under that pocket includes a Zentangle tile with the patterns Mrth and Tripoli from Zentangle Inc, and Puffle by Sandy Hunter. I carved 2 little tripoli stamps (the triangles) and added some tangled triangles. The triangular Zentangle tile includes the patterns Ing from Zentangle Inc, letterish by Jody Genovese, and they both also include some other patterns that I use frequently.
The next page layout includes 2 ATCs left over from a batch that I created to trade with Mel Beach for the lovely chicken and lady liberty (seen above). Behind that pocket is a print in yellow green and blue inspired by the Block Printing Fest session with Sarah Matthews. There’s also a few of my stamps included here on more gelli prints.
I love how these Zentangled papers turned out! The big grey one includes Middleton by YuRu Chen, Kangular by Tomas Padros, and butria by Ute Andresen. The one on the right on blue paper includes owlpeek by Susan Yeo, Yeed by Midori Furuhashi, quandry by Zentangle Inc, and bownus by Angie Gittles. The page under the pocket is some block printing I did for my presentation for Block Printing Fest and from some block play that Ali Baedecker did during one of the zoom sessions.
As you can see, there was a lot of inspiration and art making in October! I want to thank Stephanie Jennifer for again organizing the collection of patterns for the month. She provides the links to the step outs for all the patterns and it makes it very fun and easy to participate.
This coming Saturday I will be teaching an art journaling class at the Art Hub in Cambridge, WI. We will start out altering a book to serve as our art journals and then we will do some gelli printing. After that we will use a stencil and black or white paint to create a line from stenciled images along the edge of one of the pages. Then we will cut along that line to make an interesting edge. A gelli print will go on the next page that will show off the cut edge. Coordinating papers will be collaged on the main page to create a cohesive layout with pen work to tie it all together.
The class will run from 1-4 pm and the cost is $65. All supplies are included and you will leave with a new altered book art journal for you to continue your art journaling practice in. The Art Hub is located at 145 W Main St. in Cambridge. There’s still time to register if you are quick! Register here.
I currently have art on exhibit at UW Hospital on 600 Highland Drive in Madison, WI in the surgical waiting area. It will be up until October 4. Hopefully you won’t have a reason to see it in person at the hospital so here are photos of the pieces that I will have in the show.
I had one piece, Dane County Garden, juried into the Art by the Foot exhibit at the Center for the Visual Arts in Wausau, WI. This show will run from October 3 through December 20. Here is their description of the show “So much creativity in such little space! Art by the Foot features a variety of artwork that is 12 in or smaller in size. A great show for collectors to visit.” There will be a reception on November 14, from 5-7pm.
Wishing you good health, safety, plenty and peace.
A collection of mixed media index cards created for ICAD (Index Card a Day) 2025.
I used a compass to draw some circles to expand my usual torus mandala to create spaces in between the patterned block prints. Then I added some Zentangle patterns that would unify the piece. After that I cut off an index card sized piece each day or so and worked on it as it’s own discrete entity. Here are some examples of the cards. My last two posts (June and July) also have more examples.
I am so happy to have explored all these possibilities! It demonstrates the value of diversity and inclusion and will hopefully improve the next piece I plan to create. It will be a version of this with my favorite components of these. Which one do you like best? Great news, you don’t have to choose just one.
I am beyond excited to announce that my pattern designs have been published in the 6th Surface Pattern Design Guide published by UPPERCASE Magazine.
UPPERCASE Magazine is “for the creative and curious since 2009.” It is published by Janine Vangool in Canada. I encountered Janine in a class during the Sketchbook Revival Workshop last year and immediately subscribed to this gorgeous magazine. I was very excited to see how supportive she is of new and emerging artists. She has a variety of calls for art and I submitted some pictures for her newsletter, The Pattern Journal. I was very excited to have them published in her newsletter and it gave me the confidence to submit photos for the Surface Pattern Design Guide.
“For this edition of the Surface Pattern Design Guide, 790 artist submitted their work for consideration. …The intent of my curation is to present a representative variety of the styles and stories that were shared by designers of all levels.” Janine Vangool
I feel so honored to be selected but also excited by the possibilities that are offered through this guide. One of the artists, Sarah Matthews, was awarded the honor of her design on the cover of this issue of the magazine. There were people who won fabric design offers and classes and the cover of the design guide itself was created by Lisa Deighan. This design guide is used in the surface design industry by companies looking for artist to work with and as such may open unexpected doors in the future.
I got a great start to Carve December. It is a stamp carving challenge on Instagram hosted by Julie Fei-Fan Balzer that I have participated in for years. I completed a set of blocks to make different arrangements of a golden spiral and some mandalas that can be made of some of the pieces.
I have also completed some squares, leaves and flowers from my usual body of work and a few more golden geometry pieces. However, I had surgery on my neck and it is preventing me from carving or doing much art at the moment. I have one more block that I hope to carve before the end of the month, but healing is taking precedence. Meanwhile, enjoy the prints of what I have done so far.
I finished the 100 day project again this year and felt it was my most successful one ever. This amazing set of torus mandala and seed of life mandala blocks and some coordinating center blocks will entertain me for years to come. Would you be interested in playing with one of the different sized sets? What size? Which combinations do you like best?
Here are the prints I made using these blocks and a page of sampler prints of my medium sized torus mandala. To see the development and samplers for the small and large torus mandalas and the seed of life mandalas see my previous post.
Still life pieces made by mixing and matching gelli printed papers and book pages snuck into all the mandala printing. I carved leaf and flower blocks and a block print template to make the different components. I plan to teach this as a class that can be easily modified for differing ability levels. I’m also thinking about putting these samples up for sale in a local gallery for $25 each. (details to follow)
I love to make cards with my blocks and here are some quick thank you cards I made. One of my goals was to print on fabric by the end of the 100 day project and I was successful in that I did make an attempt. It was a good learning experience and shows that I have plenty more to explore with block printing!
Let me know if you have a favorite piece or want prints of something from my Fine Art America product on demand shop. I don’t have everything uploaded so just let me know what you’re interested in and I will get it there for you.
Here is a selection of prints from the first 57 days of my 100 day project this year. I am exploring different mandalas. I started this exploration before the 100 day project started but I am really getting into it. I am having so much fun playing with block variations and enhancements.
I am specifically playing with torus mandalas and seed of life mandalas that are the basis for a lot of sacred geometry. The vesica piscis shape (the central overlapping portion of 2 circles – think ven diagram) that is created by the intersection of 2 seed of life mandalas provided an interesting design challenge. I also merged 2 seed of life mandalas without creating this shape in the blue print in the upper left corner.
You can see that I could not avoid my studio assistant. Apparently she really likes these prints. Her name is Soho. The upper left and middle photos have some prints that are only the vesica piscis portions of the seed of life overlapping block sets.
I’m going to create another set of blocks that are in between the big mandalas (4 inch radius of central circle) and small mandalas (2 inch radius of the central circle). And I hope to start printing on fabric.
I am continuing my exploration of block printing for my 100 day project. I have been so excited about exploring torus mandalas and now I’m playing with the seed of life mandala.
Jeanette Clawson Art 