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Introducing... Kirsten Varga!

February 24, 2016 1 Comment

My name is Kirsten (pronounce it "Curse 10") Varga and I am doing a happy dance over here about being part of Artistcellar's Design Team. I have been creating for as long as I can remember. I earned a Bachelors in Fine Art from the University of Arizona many moons ago and I worked as a graphic designer after graduation. I also worked for a local scrapbook store (LSS, if you will) and I enjoyed smelling all the gorgeous papers and teaching design classes to lovely ladies. It was one of the best jobs. I have also worked in custom invitations and that was super fun and challenging too. When my sweet children started appearing I stayed home with them and tried to keep the creativity alive by puttering around in my creative cave (as my husband calls it).

Now that my daughters are 10, 8, 6 and 4 I am dipping my toe back into the workforce. Currently I am working part-time as the art teacher at an elementary charter school and I am enjoying it so so much. Just the other day I blew some Kindergardener's minds by mixing yellow and blue together. Pure magic people. If I was paid by hugs from my students I would be a millionaire.

Messing around with art supplies is super fun and I look forward to sharing my shenanigans with you. Paper is my very favorite medium followed by acrylics and pen & ink. I like making books and working on canvas or wood panels. Mixing mediums is my jam and texture makes my heart sing.

I made some notebooks awhile back for a different project and had some leftovers from when I trimmed them down. The scraps were the perfect size for pocket size jotter type notebook. Despite knowing what I wanted them to become they sat on my desk waiting to inspiration to strike. How would I decorate them? When I saw Artistcellar's pocket stencils I knew I had to use them on my mini jotters! The inspirational words are the best size for little masterpieces.

I started by adding Dina Wakley's acrylic paint with a brayer onto the cover. After that dried I used white paint for the word stencil and applied it with my finger. Weeeee! After that dried I grabbed the Sacred Heart series and used them to add "sunshine" type lines radiating from the words. I needed to reapply the white paint onto the words so it would pop more. Finally I grabbed some colorful embroidery floss and did a simple three hole pamphlet stitch to hold the book together.

Woohoo! Beautiful notebooks I would be proud to give as gifts (or keep for myself, hee hee!).