Ginny's Small Studio

WORKSHOP SERIES 2012

The following workshops are sold out:

Teesha's Paint and Paper

Tracy's Hand Forged Journals

Tracy's Full Throttle Journaling

All of our other workshops have openings, but some are close to being sold out. Sign up as soon as possible. Tonight I had to write three people and disappoint them. I so dislike doing that.

Do you have Peeps left over from Easter? Here is a great idea for up-cycling them.

We just received some more puppets. We used to sell them at shows and several customers asked if we had anymore. Well, here they are.

Ever since I started to blog I have neglected my journals. Either I am too busy or I feel that all the big news and daily happenings have been recorded here. The other day I got out some of my old, big, bursting journals and reread some of them, reliving the events all over again. It was so satisfying that I started to journal again. Now I feel as thigh I am really back among you. You do journal, don't you?

Frustration/Jubilation

We have been having such trouble at the store with our internet conncections, wifi and other related issues. John and I do our best, but we lack the basic understanding needed to make it all work.  We need to adopt a 15 year old to fill the lack of computer knowledge. Fortuneately we have a good friend, Chris Pritchard who came to our rescue. 

Chris has spent hours figuring out and fixing our problems and today we had a victory. Everything works just the way it should. Hurray!  Thank you, Chris.  You are the best.

It was a fun day at the store for me. So many interesting people came in and shopped and visited.

It was a letters and numbers kind of day.  Our customers were spelling out words and names or putting together numbers for projects. One lady had just installed a screen door in the doorway of her pantry and found her address among the number plaques above. She is going to place it on the pantry door.

Another customer found her birth year, her husband's birth year and their kids' birth years to place on picture frames using our small black and white small number circles (not the ones shown above).

It is so much fun to hear about projects from my customers.  I am so happy to be back in this environment.

Lucky me. Thank you all.

Tracy Moore's Full Throttle Journaling workshop is sold out.  There is room still in all other workshops, some more than others.

 

Let's Talk Workshops

Registrations are coming into the shop on a regular basis for the Small Studio Workshop Series. They are arriving from Michigan, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Arizona, New York, Texas and other far away places. They are not coming in the same numbers from Cleveland, lakewood, Rocky River or Westlake.  This was a common occurance when I hosted Art Continuum too.  I don't understand why. I am happy that people want to travel here to take classes from all these wonderful instructors, but local people who do not have to go to the expense of travel and lodging seem to take the opportunity lightly.  Any comments?

Here is the line-up. Registration is open and simple. Links to their blogs/websites are on the left of this post.

May 4-6th, Leighanna Light

June 1-3rd, Michael DeMeng and Andrea Matus

July 28-29th, Carol Owen

Aug 24-26th, Teesha and Tracy Moore

Sept 21-23rd, Pam Sussman

Oct 5-7th, Keith Lobue

All workshops have openings although some are getting close to being full.

I have been working on store classes too and I am excited to offer you in the coming months classes beginning in April by Barbe Saint John who will be a regular Small Studio instructor.

And Ingrid Dijkers is coming in April, who I also hope to entice to be a regular visiting instructor at Small Studio.  Info for both instructors will be online in the next day or two.

My local customers are so lucky to have all this talent available so close by.

Small Studio

You guys are pretty funny.  Tracey:  John is not laying new flooring although looking back at the photo from yesterday, one could think that.  No, John is measuring and measuring and measuring.  

Because....

We signed a lease today on a new store!  Small Studio will be a brick and mortar store. I am over the top excited and so is John. We have not stopped talking about what we will do with the new space.

We will have a classroom in about half of the space.  We already have Keith Lobue, Michael DeMeng, Andrea Matus, Pam Sussman, Teesha and Tracy Moore lined up for the summer. John has strong opinions on how the classroom should be designed since he taught high school art for many, many years.

We will sell paper goods and artsy goods and vintage goods and gifty goods. You know, all the stuff we like and want.  

Stay tuned for updates.  It will take us awhile to change what appears to be some sort of carpeted race track into a viable fun and creative store space.

We can't wait for you to come visit.

More of the Moores

Teesha and Tracy that is....

I received a few more pages from students of Teesha's workshop:

 
 

 
  

I apologize for not knowing who did all these pages, but the class was large and the books were all layed out on a few tables for show and tell, except we didn't tell names.  All of the books were colorful and fun.  Thanks you again to all the students and to Teesha and Tracy.

Tracy has a wonderful group of photos (with names and pictures of the artists) of the art books created  in his workshop.  You can see them on his blog.

Books Tracy Moore Style

Shaun sent me photos from the Tracy workshop, of her two projects she completed.  The first is her metal covered book and the second is her book ring. Great work, Shaun!

Hmmm...I don't know why Shaun's book is sideways when it was oriented correctly when I loaded it.

Here is Mike with his "Spy" book.  He inserted a camera lens into his cover.   

Coming up at Small Studio Productions Workshop is Ingrid Dijkers, Keith Lo Bue and Lynne Perrella.

Journals: Teesha Moore Style, Part 2

After we played with our covers in Day one of the Teesha workshop, we worked on our pages.  My camera died half way through the picture taking, so enjoy what I have.

These pages today were all done by students using magazines and lots of pen work. 

 

The pictures were taken right after lunch on the last day, so more work was done on the pages later that afternoon.

I didn't get photos of Tracy's student work.  If you were in his workshop and took some photos, send them to me so I can share them.  In the meantime here is John's in-progress book from Tracy's class:

Next workshop: Ingrid Dijkers 

  

Ready, Set...GO!

Today the students will start arriving for this month's workshop.  If you didn't sign up, you really are missing something special.  Teesha Moore and Tracy Moore will be here.  They do not often teach outside of their home state, Washington.  They haven't been here in five years!

In Teesha's workshop we will be making these:

Which close-up look like this:

My supplies are all packed.  I find it so much fun and also stressful to pack supplies for a workshop.  I hover between being excited to imagine what I will accomplish with the supplies and worrying about having just the right thing.  

Tracy will be teaching this:

and this:

John has packed up his whole art studio for this workshop.  Even though we will be able to come home each night and pick up anything extra for the workshops, he wants to have every possibility at hand.

The workshops are full, so you have definitely missed out for this weekend, but we have coming up Ingrid Dijkers, Keith Lobue  and Lynne Perrella.  There are spaces in all of them still.  Don't miss out on these excellent instructors.  You can see the schedule and descriptions here on our website.

The Circus

Clown theater available in our Small Studio Emporium

Life is sometimes just a circus. 

This is one of those times.

We laugh.

We are amazed.

We go in circles.

Yes, life is just sometimes a circus.

And we are the clowns.

I pride myself on being pretty organized and in charge of making sure the chaos is held to a minimum. Somehow it has all piled up on me.  It has piled up all at once.  

Memorial weekend was filled with family BBQs, kids baseball and a run to the airport to pick up John's daughter, Kate, who has just left after visiting for a few days.  It was a great weekend and has been a really nice visit with Kate.  Kate just completed her second masters program.  We are all very proud of her.

Tomorrow I leave for a few days in Indiana while John holds down the fort here.  Coffee break Design is having their annual warehouse sale Saturday morning (1227 Indy Way, Indianapolis).  It is always a great bargain hunt.  Come and join in.

Michael deMeng arrives mid-week for his workshops here.  We can add a few more if you want to come be inspired and play with us.

Right after Michael leaves John and I begin our new endeavor. We have rented a small room in an antique mall.  We will be moving in the third week of June.  More details and photos then.  I am really excited about this.  

July Teesha and Tracy Moore will be here for their workshops and then in August we welcome Ingrid Dijkers and we will also have a booth at Stampaway in Cincinnati.  And on it goes.

This is all going to be great fun and a lot of work and a lot of excitement.  We hope all of our friends will join us at these different events and venues.  That means you, of course.

Check This Out

I was just doing a little blog hopping among those on my own blogroll and was really loving Michael deMeng's recent post called "Artistic Timeline".  Michael gives his views on how ideas grow and evolve in the artistic community.  It is refreshing and thought provoking.

As you know Michael is soon coming to Avon Lake OH to teach. He will  be here June 11-13th.  There are still openings in his workshops.  Come join us.

The other blog entries that I have been following are Tracy Moore's.  He has an ongoing "Self-Portrait" series he has been doing with a number of his artist friends. There are a ton of photos of artful self-portraits done by artists who have been at the forefront in Mixed Media.  

Tracy will be here in Avon Lake OH July 16-18 teaching Handforged Books and Jewelry.

Sign up for Tracy's workshops now, too.  Don't be intimidated by these instructors, or any instructor for that matter.  They are both easy-going, fun, patient and excellent instructors. There will be others in the workshop who may also be new to doing these techniques and projects.  I know this because I am one of those students!  It will be fun, inspiring and productive. These instructors have not taught in Ohio for years and may not again soon.  Please join us.  By the way, Avon Lake is about 15 miles West of Downtown Cleveland.

Click here for Michael's blog.

Click here for Tracy's blog.   

Small Studio Workshop Series

SMALL STUDIO WORKSHOP SERIES: I have a friend who celebrates her birthday all month.  I love that idea and being one who likes to go one step further I decided to celebrate my birthday all year this year. It happens to be not only one of those landmark birthdays for me but also marks our 5 year wedding anniversary. What do I want for my birthday, you ask? What do we want to do to celebrate our anniversary?  We talked it over and decided that we want to learn stuff.  We started with learning how to solder (Kathy Herda, thank you again) this month. Then we decided we want to take classes from as many of my favorite instructors as possible: Pam Sussman, Michael deMeng, Teesha and Tracy Moore, Ingrid Dijkers, Linda and Opie O'Brien, Keith Lobue and Lynne Perrella.  So I invited them over to play. Good News!  They all said yes! Better News! You get to come too!  Each month from May to November we will be hosting one of the instructors, or two as in the case of Teesha and Tracy.  For three days each month we can learn and play from one of these greats.  Come join us.  Read through the workshop descriptions. Pick the ones you want. Fill out the registration form and mail it.  Then sit back and gather your supplies and anticipate the fun. We are really looking forward to not only taking the workshops but also sitting next to you in class.

Here is the link to get to the workshops.

Links to instructors websites are on the left column of this blog.

Logo designed by David Simon. David is a Cleveland Graphic artist who has illustrated a number of books, book jackets and numerous ad campaigns for large companies.  He taught at Creative Block and Art Continuum. David designed over 150 Stampers Anonymous stamps when I owned that company. He is an all around talented and great guy and I am proud to call him a friend.

Workshop Update Update!

This just in!  Teesha Moore and Tracy Moore will be teaching in July!  We have two rooms, so Tracy will be teaching in one and Teesha in the other.  What fun.  They do not teach as often as most instructors so this is a rare opportunity.

Linda and Opie O'Brien have added their names to our 2010 workshop series.  They will be teaching in September. John and I are looking forward to playing with tin with them.  We hope you join us.

Here are the dates of our complete roster of incredible instructors.  I am so excited!  I hope you are too.

May 14-16     Pam Sussman

June 11-13    Michael deMeng

July 16-18    Teesha Moore

July 16-18     Tracy Moore

Aug 27-29     Ingrid Dijkers

Sept 10-12    Linda & Opie O'Brien

Oct 18-18     Keith Lobue

Nov 5-7        Lynne Perrella

Full details and sign up info in January here and on our Small Studio website.