Tag Archives: Art Classes

Wedding DIY: Party Favour Prints

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Finished custom party favour!

For our wedding, I really wanted to make something unique for our party favours, but I didn’t know exactly what that would be at first. It wasn’t until I attended an evening printmaking class at the Art Gallery of Alberta that I became inspired. I had such a blast carving out a big stamp that I decided, then and there, to incorporate that creative technique into the gifts for our guests.

The full array of printmaking supplies.
A set of two lino cutting handles with a variety of knife tips.
A jar of Speedball printmaking ink.
Quality art paper is the foundation of a good print.

One of my friends who attended the drop-in class with me didn’t quite finish her piece that night, so she opted to buy her own tools in order to complete her carving at home. She found everything she needed at Delta Art & Drafting Supplies (11116 120 Street) during a sale, and I followed suit by picking up all of the required materials to put my plan into action. I think, all in, I spent about $130 on a few sheets of easy cut lino, an assorted lino cutter set, rollers, a paint knife, a jar of ink, and a metal leaf adhesive pen (that didn’t get used). I collected some quality art paper that I already had at home, which saved me a bit of money, too.

It took a while, but I was really happy with our design.

The hard part was coming up with a design to represent both me and Kirk as well as what our family and friends mean to us. When I finally put everything together, the rest of the project was a breeze.

It’s good to know how to write backwards!

It took me about a full day to trace and carve the piece out onto the lino. Since you’re creating a stamp, you have to remember that, when it’s printed, it’ll put a mirror image onto the paper. I had to be careful to make sure that the picture would be the right way around, especially with any wording. For designs that are more generic, it’s not much of an issue, but in my case, a map of Canada and all of the hand-carved text needed to be done correctly. Thankfully, I didn’t make any mistakes!

My work station with paper, rollers, and an ink palette.

With aching hands, I proceeded to print about 60 copies of my design the following day. I made sure to fully coat the lino stamp with ink, but avoided applying the paint too thickly. If there’s excess, the ink will bleed into the crevices where you want the lines to show, so it’s better to be a little light-handed with the paint. A dry roller used to apply pressure to the backside of the stamp will get the ink to stick to the paper for that perfect one of a kind transfer.

Hand painting gold hearts with metallic acrylic.

For our favours, the finishing touch was some gold hearts. I mentioned previously that I had purchased an adhesive pen, which I had intended to use to apply rose gold metal leaf to each piece. Unfortunately, I found the nib of the pen to be too wide, preventing me from drawing more refined hearts. The glue also never seemed to get sticky enough and the foil wasn’t defined at all. Ultimately, I tossed that idea aside and I ended up hand painting hearts onto the maps using metallic gold acrylic once the base layer of ink had fully dried.

Hand folded envelopes using scrapbooking paper.

The final prints were about 11″ x 7″ in size. Rather than sealing them up in plain manila, my mom found some 12″ x 12″ scrapbooking paper that we had held onto. She was like some origami queen; she folded these beautiful envelopes and then stuffed every one with a print. We sealed them with some pretty stickers that we found at Dollar Tree and then I hand wrote the guests’ names on them.

Signed and sealed!

It definitely was a wedding party favour that required thought and time, a real labour of love. I’m so glad that I opted to do this because it was something creative for me to work on, but it was also different and heartfelt. Our guests really appreciated the effort we put into it and they knew that what we said in our print was what we truly meant.

DIY isn’t necessarily for everyone who’s getting hitched. Nevertheless, I hope this encourages some of you to give DIY a try. At home projects can make things a bit easier on the wallet and, if you give yourself the time, it can be so gratifying to create things. In fact, I enjoyed this so much that I worked on a side printmaking project for a special letter given to my husband for our first look. It made our wedding day that much more special with those small details.

Edmonton Things To Do: Art Gallery of Alberta Adult Drop-In Studio

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Tons of Ideas by Vera Gartley

Earlier this summer, I was making plans with a friend of mine. Due to scheduling conflicts, it was somewhat difficult to find a time that worked for both of us to get together. Futhermore, I didn’t want to do our typical thing of just going for dinner or doing a Paint Nite event. So, I started to scour the internet for ideas of what else we could do in Edmonton.

Honestly, I don’t even know how I eventually ended up on the Art Gallery of Alberta (AGA) website, but I did. What I found is that they actually offer a weekly Adult Drop-In Studio every Wednesday night. While that particular day of the week didn’t work for her, I was intrigued and I wanted to check out a few of those sessions for myself. I gathered other friends of mine and I made it to three different classes over the span of September.

The first one I went to, I phoned ahead to reserve spaces for me and my friends because I wasn’t sure what kind of attendance to expect (there is a maximum of 20 spaces). You are able to hold spots the day of the drop-in, but you do have to provide payment info at that time. You can phone it in and pick up the tickets at guest services upon arrival at the gallery, or you can walk-in and pay in person.

Tickets are $18 plus tax per person and that includes all of the materials that you’ll be using. The price point is stellar for a two hour activity, especially when compared to the majority of other creative events running throughout the city.

Carving our designs out of lino.
Inking the roller to make our prints.
The table is covered with printmaking materials.
My finished prints from my lino carving.

As it turns out, reservations weren’t really necessary. Only half a dozen people showed up for printmaking the first night. Initially, there didn’t seem to be a whole lot of direction. The website had indicated that we would be doing lino carving with a theme of cityscapes. Yet, it pretty much turned into a freestyle situation in that we weren’t at all limited. Everyone was allowed to design whatever they wanted, and guidance only came into play once we started doing more of the printmaking itself.

In fact, I loved printmaking so much that I made my way to Delta Art & Drafting Supply that weekend in order to pick up all of the materials needed to do the same thing at home (I have a couple of special projects planned). Thankfully, there was a sale going on.

Samantha Walrod’s Vanitas exhibition was inspiration for our Floral Studies session.
One of the finished pieces from Samantha Walrod.
The beginning of the floral clock in Samantha Walrod’s room.

The following week, my colleague and I ventured out into the cold to make it to the AGA for their Floral Studies drop-in. We arrived a little bit late, but, once we paid, we managed to catch the group of about ten people as they were heading up to the galleries. The instructor for the night wanted us to take inspiration from an exhibit called Vanitas by artist Samantha Walrod. She turned the RBC Work Room (a studio-like residence space) from an empty gallery into several pieces of finished art that explored the idea of life and loss using floral imagery and the passing of time. Her work utilizes layering through multiple mediums like collage, ink and paint.

Acrylic paint and chalk pastels formed the basis of our Floral Studies work.
Learning how to apply colour and texture to paper using different techniques.
I love how the blue flowers turned out.
My finished piece…just wish I didn’t get fingerprints everywhere.

I was kind of hoping that we would be doing something similar to what we’d seen. Instead, the focus was more on learning to work with chalk pastels and acrylic paints together. Not quite what I expected. Still, I managed to learn some new ways of applying colour and paint to paper, as well as creating my own colours using pigments from the chalk pastels and mixing it with the acrylics.

Finished Japanese stab bounded books.

The final session that I made it to was about book binding. I failed to take photos during this one, but I do have a picture of the finished products. We were taught how to put our own travel journals together using just paper, a couple of binder clips, a push pin, a needle and some thread. We used a simple Japanese stab process, which is easily searchable on Google or YouTube. After we each completed two books, we took them up to the James Wilson Morris gallery where we practiced our sketching techniques (i.e. shading, blind contour, gesture, etc.).

All of these turned out to be fun in their own unique ways. I’ve got my eye on a silk screening class in early-November, but in the meantime, they have a variety of other drop-ins like plaster casting or slow stitch through October. Additionally, if you show up to the gallery early, you can take advantage of the All Access Evenings. Those happen every Tuesday and Wednesday from 5pm to 8pm and it grants all patrons entrance to the exhibits for free.

The design of the AGA building is always fun to explore.
Manning Hall, accessible as you enter the AGA, always has interesting art. This one is from photographer M.N. Hutchinson.

The Art Gallery of Alberta is definitely making an effort to increase the accessibility and affordability of art and art-related activities. Don’t miss out. Sure, not every workshop is going to call to you, but in the scope of a year, there’s bound to be something that will get your creative juices flowing. Keep an eye on the AGA calendar and carve out some time at this local gem of an institution.