Saturday, June 2, 2007

Hello from Southern Maryland



I decided I should finally say hello to everyone. My name is Angela Plager (Angie) and I currently live in Southern Maryland. We moved here in January. I almost didn't sign up for this because I knew with my husband getting ready to leave for a 7 month deployment to Iraq around the middle of the month that it could be a bit challenging to get this started. Then my inner child spoke up and said that something like this would be fun and would be a welcome distraction over all of those months alone. My inner child won.

I decided on going slightly larger than most with a size of 8 inches x 10 inches. I am going to play with doing mixed media collage with beaded embellishments. I love to take photos and take lots of detail (close-up) photos so my theme is going to be details and I am going to use at least 1 4x6 or larger photo in the piece somehow. This will allow me to play with different photo transfer and printing techniques. I have been wanting to incorporate beading into my collage type art and this will be a wonderful opportunity to try out new techniques and ideas.

I will be including a section of my website to the journal with regular updates on how it is going as well as mentioning it in my blog (also on my website) I should have the BJP part up and running in the next couple of days. My website is http://web.mac.com/wayneplager It is full of lots of pictures of my bead work and a few of my other pieces of art work.

Good luck to everyone on your year long creative journey, Angie

8 comments:

Ellen said...

I love your beaded Bearded Iris & I'm pleased your inner child won ;9
Wow, I just took a tour of your website, you have some stunning pieces!!

Mary Timme said...

That iris is to live for! What a great piece. I'm going to come and visit your web site one of these days.

Robin said...

OMG, this iris is so very lovey... every shade and subtle nuance is there, just as in the real flower. I love it!

I also spent time on your website and the new pages devoted to the BJP... You are one fantastic inspiration!!!!

Please tell me, what is the font used for the journaling text?

Teresa said...

Hi Angie,
I'm glad you joined the BJP. I want to add mixed media concepts to my journal as well. When does your husband leave? My thoughts will be with him in his travels and work. Nice to meet you!
Teresa S.

Katie B said...

Your iris is breathtaking.
I just want to reach out and touch it.

Cyn ~ The Wingedneedle said...

the iris is absolutely wonderful! the colors and texture drool-worthly!
Bead Happy ~ Cyn :O)

Vicki said...

Hi Angie,
I looked at your website. I love that fabulous dragonfly purse. Yummy!

I hope the beadjournal will be a good focus while your husband is in Iraq.

I wondered what program you use to assemble your photographs? Is it photoshop, or photoshop elements? I'd really like to play around with something like that.

Thanks for sharing! Vicki

Angela said...

Oh my! You all are going to make my head swell, really thanks a lot for all of the wonderful comments for my Iris. I absolutely love them and have lots and lots of photos of them now. I used 50 colors of 15/0 seed beads on the purse. If you want to see more photos of the purse check out my website ( http://web.mac.com/wayneplager ) it is under the purses. There are buds and a Dragonfly with crystal sequin wings on the other side.

Robin, the journalling for the BJP pages is Handwriting-Dakota. I have a Mac but I think I remember that one from the PC.

Vicki, So far all I use for my photo editing is what I can do with i-Photo which came with my i-Mac when we got it. It is very user friendly and so far has met my needs. Eventually I may need to get something better but I even managed to get my photos good enough so that I could get an electronic entry and get a piece into this years Bead Dreams.

Teresa, I figured using mixed media with my bead work would push me to try some new things and since I love to learn new things it should be quite an exciting process. If you haven't already you might want to check out "Quilting Arts" and "Cloth, Paper, Scissors" Both wonderful magazines with some great ideas that would definately work for the mixed media part. Thanks for the thoughts for Wayne, he leaves in about 2 weeks. We don't have an exact date yet, things keep changing. At least my inner child will have plenty to do to keep her occupied.

Thanks all of you, Angie