New Series!

Typography.1
7"h x 5.25"w
cotton cloth, papers, acrylic paint, dye, ink
$40

I have finally started making some artwork in a series that has been percolating in my mind for years. I love different fonts and the graphic nature of black & white prints. This is a series that combines those two loves. Click here to see the first four pieces in the series!

Inspiration --- Texture

More photos from the woodpile. I love the peeling bark on these logs!

Client Appreciation / FFAC Fundraiser Sale
February 1-15, 2008

Fragments #7
13" x 13"
$175

Two weeks only ---- On any artwork purchase over $50 from my website (http://www.KarenStiehlOsborn.com), the price will be discounted 10% as a "Client Appreciation" sale. Additionally, another 25% of the original price will be donated to the American Cancer Society through Fiberart For A Cause.

If you would like to donate the 25% directly to the American Cancer Society, please contact me to verify that the artwork is still available and the amount of the donation, then go here to make your donation.

Save money on a new art acquisition and help support a worthwhile cause!

Inspiration --- Lines

Here are two photos that I took of our woodpile. I loved the lines of the split wood and thought it would make great thermofax screens (and possibly an interesting woodcut print).

Photo #1

Photo #1 in black & white for the screen

Photo #2

Photo #2 in black & white for the screen

Collage Mania II

"Love"
7"h x 5"w
cotton cloth, papers, acrylic paint, pigment dye, ink
mounted on 10"h x 8"w Bristol board.

This is one of the collages that I've created especially for Collage Mania II, a fundraiser for the American Cancer Society. Click here to see all 4 collages in the "Virtues" series.

Collages will be available during Collage Mania II (May 5-6, 2008). For more information about Collage Mania II, click here, and mark your calendars for two days of fun and fundraising!

Knitted Baby Hats

This is another round of knitted hats for the babies in the NICU at a local hospital. It's a good evening project to sit in a comfy chair and knit these little hats, and the nurses in the NICU are so appreciative, not to mention the parents of the babies. One Sunday in the New Baby section of the local newspaper, there was a hospital photo of a baby boy wearing one of my hats. Somehow that made it seem even more important to continue with this project.

*NICU - Neonatal Intensive Care Unit

Blanket of Snow

Overnight we got another 4" or so of snow, and this morning everything looks white and fresh. It's a good day to work in the studio and enjoy the view out the window.

Tin Foil Again

This was made by using a square of mat board for the background. Then I added various cutouts of scrap mat board to the surface and covered the entire surface with crumpled tin foil using gel medium to adhere it to the mat board. The final layers are various colors of Lumiere paints. I can see unlimited possibilities with this technique!

Tin Foil Treasure

I've been reading online about other artists working with crumpled tin foil and crumpled brown paper bags. Since I don't have any brown paper bags on hand, I decided to try the technique with tin foil. First you scrunch the tin foil, and there are degrees of scrunch to this technique. It works best to barely scrunch it, not totally crumple it into a ball of foil. Then you flatten it back out --- I used a wooden rolling pin for this step. Above is what the foil looked like after I flattened it and glued it to a piece of mat board.

This photo shows the same foil-covered mat board with some preliminary layers of paint added. I used Lumiere paints for this step. I can see using this technique to get a look similar to raku pottery --- which I love. The colors are much more brilliant than the photo shows, due to the glare of the flash.

The Snowballing Project

As most of you know, at least you do if you own a house, home improvement projects have a way of snowballing into gigantic, time-consuming projects. So it has been around here. For years I have hated the woodwork in this house. It is cheap maple, and it was scuffed and scratched by the previous owners' dogs and kids. So, in a moment of weakness, I decided that it was time to redo all of the woodwork in the house (upstairs and downstairs). As I went along, with pristine white woodwork appearing room-by-room, the walls started to look boring. No problem --- I'll just paint them as I go along. Then the ceilings started to look dingy, and the light fixtures were definitely too outdated for this new look, and the accessories in each room needed a new splash of color. Maybe we should get new furniture and window treatments now, too. OMG, it is never-ending! And all of this is going on while a crew of contractors, plumbers and electricians are adding a new bathroom to the downstairs. (I'm sure most of you are now laughing as you relate to this saga.) The good news is that the bathroom is now completed. The bad news is that the rest of the house is not.

(new placemat, pieced and ready for quilting)