Luna's Memories

An Artistic Alternative to the Pumpkin Festival Crowds

The Half Moon Bay Art & Pumpkin Festival is this weekend.  It's a terrific fundraiser for community groups and brings thousands of people to our beautiful area.  For those of you who do not want to participate in Saturday's festival downtown, Luna's is offering a wonderful alternative.  We've asked Connie and Maria to teach two classes, back-to-back on Saturday, for those folks who want to enjoy a fun, relaxing day of art at Luna's, away from the traffic and crowds.

From 11am-2pm, Connnie will be showing us how to make faux sugar skulls with diamond glaze, glitter & stickles.  From 3 pm-6pm, Maria will be reviewing a variety of Tim Holtz and other techniques to make Halloween Slide Boxes/Dias de los Muertos Shrines.  Full descriptions (and some samples) of the classes are found in the blos post below  Here's a different sample of some of the Halloween Slide Boxes.

Call 650-726-1444 or email info@lunasmemories.com to register.  Space is limited.  Hope to see you on Saturday!

The Luna's Gang

October, 2008 Classes

Architectural Shrines
Sally: Saturday October 4
11:00 am - 4:00 pm
Using foamcore, rice paper, glue and paint, we will work from Carol Owen's book, "Crafting Personal Shrines", to create shrines of varying shape and complexity. We will make a simple shrine, but will see how to create roofs, hinged doors, shelves, and drawers -- so that you can create as complex a cathedral as you like, by means of which to commemorate the objects/memorabilia most important to you. Bring gesso, paints, and matte gel medium if you have them.   Cost: $ 50.00

Dia de Los Muertos Shrines
Maria: Thursday, October 9 6:00 pm - 9:00 pm
Saturday, October 18  3:00 pm - 6:00 pm
Artistic Development #9: Combining Techniques:  Come  and create art to honor your ancestors and celebrate the Day of the Dead! Using small slide boxes, you can create a slide shrine and/or a halloween slide box. Everyone will need scissors and their favorite wet adhesive (i.e. gel medium, glue). If you would like to make a shrine honoring a loved one who has passed away, bring a small picture (about 1x2 inches) and memorabilia that reflects their interests. Also, please bring black and white acrylic paint (daubers work great), a heat tool and a nonstick craft mat, if you own them. This class reviews and combines a variety of techniques presented in the artistic development series, but beginners are also welcome. We will be working with shrink plastic, colored pencils, alcohol ink, crackle paint, stayzon ink, the sigma white pen, clear embossing powder and distress inks, so bring those if you own them. Also, please bring halloween and dias de los muertos stamps and any stamps with images of skeletons, butterflys, flowers, swirls or saints (or feel free to share mine). Cost: $30

Soldered Halloween Ornaments
Julee: Saturday, October 11
12:00 pm - 3:00 pm
Soldered pendants dressed up for Halloween.  Bring your favorite bits of words and tiny images and a nice pair of scissors and join me for a day of ornament making.  I'll teach you the art of soldering and show you how to Capture that Celebration in a way that causes your friends and family to ooooooh and ahhhhh.   Cost: $60             Check out Julee's  blog: www.heartcollective.blogspot.com

Pre-Crop Class
Maria:  Saturday, October 11
5:00 pm - 6:00 pm
Back by popular demand! Come an hour before the crop and assemble the bases for four double-page layouts. For the class, you will need to bring a 12" paper cutter, a good ruler and adhesive (repositionable adhesive is best). If you are going to provide your own paper, see the Luna's blog for the Pre-Crop Prep list. Don't forget your photos, etc.  for the regular crop to follow. Cost: $15 without paper, $25 with paper

Crop Craze
Maureen:  Saturday, October 11
6:00 pm - midnight
Bring your crafts projects and spend six hours creating, learning from others, and getting out of the house.  Sign up with a friend and get 1/2 price for both participants!  Cost: $12

Halloween Reliquaries
Julee: Sunday, October 12
11:00 am - 4:00 pm
Tiny boxes filled with creepy scenes, soldered closed with mica on the front for viewing.   Please bring scissors, glue, bone folder, craft surface, and small embellishments.  Any small items from nature are also encouraged *  tiny wings are cool, bits of lichen look neat.  Bring soldering equipment IF you have it.  These creations come out SO COOL!  This is a rewarding class because you get to make a few cool reliquaries AND you get to learn the skill of soldering.  Cost:  $70

Halloween & Harvest Cards 
Katie: Monday, October 13
      6:00 pm - 9:00 pm
Come and make 6 festive cards with Katie. The emphasis will be on the fall holidays including Halloween and Thanksgiving. Don't forget to bring your adhesive and straight edge cutter.    Cost: $25.00

Altered Book Club 
Maureen: Wednesday, October 15
      6:00 pm - 9:00 pm
Can't get enough of the fun at Luna's? Bring your art projects to Altered Book Club. Join the fun!     Cost: $10

Faux Sugar Skulls
Connie: Thursday, October 16, 6pm -9pm
Saturday, October 18, 11 am - 2pm
Using Diamond Glaze, glitter and stickles we will transform miniature plastic skulls into beautiful, sparkling skulls traditional to Dias de Los Muertos.  Please bring any extra charms, small pictures or embellishments you would like to add to your skull. Cost: $35

Designs in Gesso
Connie: Thursday, October 23, 6pm -9pm
Further exploring the Gesso Technique we will create a small canvas with Gesso and Collage.  Will you choose to color your Gesso or leave it white?  Come and play!  Please bring any small embellishments you might like to embed in the Gesso. Cost: $35

Textural Effects - Gesso
Connie: Saturday, October 25, 11am - 4:30 pm
This class is a combination of Mystic Gesso and Designs in Gesso for those of you who missed them.  Cost: $55

Halloween Monsters
Connie: Tuesday, October 28, 6pm -9pm
In this variation of my popular Nest Fairies class we will combine a miniature pumpkin, Vintage Photographs, paper and glue to create Halloween Monsters!  You may choose to make a Harvest Fairy instead. Please bring small embellishments you would like to add to your project. Cost: $35

It's October at Luna's

The bad news is that the website is down, so I'm posting some basic Luna's information here:

Luna's Memories is located at 455 Avenue Alhambra, El Granada. Contact us by phone at 650-726-1444 or by email at info@lunasmemories.com

The good news is that we have a full slate of classes and crops this month - 14 in total!!!  Check out some of the following:

Oct. 4 - Architectural Shrines with Sally

Oct. 9 - Dias de los Muertos Slide Shrines and Halloween Slide Boxes with Maria

Oct. 11 - Soldered Halloween Ornaments with Julee; Pre-Crop Prep with Maria; Crop with Maureen

Oct. 12 - Haloween Reliquaries with Julee

Oct. 13 - Halloween & Harvest Cards with Katie

Oct. 15 - Altered Book Club with Maureen

Oct. 16 - Faux Sugar Skulls with Connie

Oct. 18 - Avoid the Pumpkin Festival and come spend time with Connie and/or Maria as we reprise the Faux Sugar Skulls Class (in the morning) and Dia de los Muertos Slide Shrines class (in the afterernoon).

Connie is offering gesso classes, Halloween monster and harvest fairy classes in the last half of the month, too.  If you did not receive the email with class details, pick one up the calendar at the shop or call/email to request one.

And now for the eye candy!  Here's the samples for my Dias de los Muertos Slide Shrine Class:

These were designed to pay tribute to my cousin, "Little" Felix, my husband's dear grandmother and the general spirit of Dia de los Muertos.  We'll use lots of fun products to make these, including shrink plastic, alcohol ink, rubber stamps, crackle paint, white sigma doodling pens and distress ink.

If this looks like fun, but you're not sure about the whole "Day of the Dead" celebration or if you don't feel ready to pay tribute to a loved one who has passed away, you will also have the option to make a very cool Halloween Slide Box instead. Check these out:

Whatever you choose to do, I know you'll have a blast!

I look forward to seeing you on either Thursday evening, Oct. 9 or Sat., Oct. 18.

Happy October!

Maria

An Amazing Class!

My 10 year old daughter and I took an amazing class with Connie Andrews today!  It was an intermediate collage class called extreme layering, and here's what we made:

Clara's creation "Story Time" tells the story of this baby's life.  My creation, "Wings" tells of the transformative potential of art.  It certainly felt like a transformative day!

From Blank to Beautiful!

Sign ups are now OPEN for the pre-crop prep class for the October Crop.  This sold out last time, so call Luna's or stop by to sign up soon. Here's one of the blank layouts side-by-side with a decorated one.  At the PreCrop Prep class, we prepare 8 blank pages (four two-page layouts) which you can then finish with your pictures and embellishments during the crop.  One new mom at the last crop took the blank layouts home because she figured they were things she could actually finish, even with two little ones under foot!  For the PreCrop Prep class, you can either bring your own paper (scroll back to prior blog entries to find this month's gather list), or you can use the papers that I have selected for the class.  Whatever you choose, you will have a wonderful time, and complete the class ready to complete four stunning layouts! 

See you in October!

Maria

Four new precrop prep layouts

Here's the four yummy layouts I've put together for the October Pre-Crop Prep class.  Hope to see you there.

Maria

Gather List for October PreCrop Prep

If you want to bring your own paper to the PreCrop Prep, please bring the following.

For Layout 1 (Surfboard): One 12x12 piece of patterned paper. Three pieces of 12x12 solid cardstock in two different colors (two of one color and one of a different color). The solid colors should coordinate with the patterned paper. (4 pieces of paper total - 1 patterned and 3 solid in two different colors).

For Layout 2 (Pumpkins):  One 12x12 piece of patterned paper. Two pieces of 12x12 solid color cardstock in the same color. One piece 12x12 solid color cardstock in a different color. The solid colors should coordinate with the patterned paper (4 pieces of paper total - 1 patterned and 3 solid in two different colors).

For Layout 3 (Fall):  Two pieces 12x12 patterned paper. Two pieces of 8.5x11 solid color cardstock in two different colors (4 pieces of paper total - 2 patterned and 2 8.5x11 solid in two different colors).

For Layout 4 (Floral):  Two pieces 12x12 solid colored cardstock in the same color. Two pieces 8.5x11 solid color cardstock in the same color, but different than the 12x12 solids. Two pieces of 12x12 patterned paper in two different, but coordinating patterns. (6 pieces of paper total - two 12x12 solids in one color, two 8.5x11 solids in one color, two patterned in two different patterns).

Dominoe Mania!!!

Dominoes were one of the first art medias in which I dabbled, and I still love working with them.  On Wednesday, I started a big batch of them, while playing with Connie Andrews.  Here's what I came up with:

Love them?  You can make your own by buying dominoes (in a bucket at Luna's) and coloring with either alcohol inks, stayz-on ink or chalk in (heat set with your heat tool) and then stamping with a good quality dye ink.  Two of these contain images from flea market collage sheets. I protected them all with a layer of glossy accents or crackle accents.

Love them but don't have time to make them yourselves?  These and other treasures (like the collage sheets) will be available at the Luna's Memories Flea Market on November 8th.

Maria

Things that make me happy at Luna's

This makes me happy . . .

It's the cool stuff I bought at the Flea Market last weekend.  Some of Connie's dynamite collage sheets; also, keys, fish eye lenses and a great big spoon from Tom the wacky post office guy.  We're having another flea market on November 8, so mark your calendar.  Here's something else that makes me happy . . .

They're completed pages made during the Pre-Crop Prep class and completed during the crop. We had a great time. It really opened up several people to the possibility of completing pages. Look for another pre crop prep class before the October class.  Here's a sneak peek of the paper for one of the layouts:

and the final thing that makes me happy . . .

This cool, very organized box of embellishments for the Dias de los Muertos Slide Shrines and Halloween Box class that I'm teaching in October.  Hope to see you there.

Maria

Variety in PreCrop Prep Layouts

So, are you intrigued by the PreCrop Prep idea but worried it won't work for you?  Check this out.

Here's one of the layouts I'm planning to teach:

I think it would be cute for back to school pictures.  It accomdates 5x7 photos or 4x6.  Not your style?  Change the paper, and you can make this layout:

Don't think you have the right pictures to fit this format?  You might be surprised by how easy it is to crop things.  In addition, most of the time, there is paper left over to make additional mats, and you can change things around.  Here's a totally different layout with the same format:

I turned the left page 90 degrees, added mats and placed several pictures on some of he mats. Used journaling and embellishments, instead of pictures on some of the little squares and used four of the little squares as one big mat for a picture! The possibilities really are endless.  By the way, can you guess the subject matter of the third layout?  It's a "goulash party" in Budapest - how cool is that???

Give the precrop prep a chance.  I think you'll love it.  Come and complete some pages.  Rediscover the joy of scrapping.

Maria