Year: 2013

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I won, I won, I won!!!!

I never win anything.  OK, That’s not entirely true; when I was in the sixth grade, I won a monster drawing contest.  The prize was a box of colored pencils.  That was actually the highlight of my young school days. 

Fast forward…mumble mumble…years, and I now I’ve won a prize that’s also super exciting.  I entered my name in a contest on the Alabama Chanin blog and my comment was randomly drawn from a hat – I assume it was a virtual, random number generator hat – but I digress.  

I won a three month subscription to Creative Bug online craft classes.  Wooohoooo!!!!  Could not have picked an awesomer gift for me.  I’m so excited!  I’ve been diving into the world of online art and craft classes and I, have to say, the water is fine.  I really enjoy learning that way.  

Creative Bug has lots of short projects and a wide variety of subjects, from basket making to screen printing and lots of other classes.  And yes, I just started my new membership and have already taken four classes and have many more bookmarked.  So woohoo again! 

I told my husband that I had to go out and buy MOAAARR craft supplies and he just sort of grunted a non committal kind of grunt, which is really out of character for him.  I found out why later.  He got me a big gift card to a local art supply store for Christmas and didn’t want to ruin the surprise.

I went right out the day after Christmas to get the kind of supplies I never would have picked before winning my awesome prize.  Expect the unexpected here, people.  I’m branching out!

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stick a fork in me

I had a crazy productive day today.  I took this completely beautiful and fabulous cat print that I picked up at the Madison Print and Resist Zinefest in the fall,

Made by an artist at justseeds.org

Took some fancy goo

And put it on a canvas.  I used tissue paper and a doily to make a frame around it.  It’s on a stack of freshly ironed, indigo dyed dishtowels.  Christmas is coming right up, ya know.

But gooing and ironing wasn’t enough for me.  Inspired by a friend’s project, I also used some of this horrible, cheap, plastic yarn and experimented with basket making.

I’m actually really thrilled with the result.

How cool is that?  I used the horrible cheap yarn because I happened to have it on hand and we just had a big snow storm so I didn’t want to go shopping.  

I really wish I had used nice, natural cotton rope.  I think cotton will make a nicer shape, too.  Oh, yeah, there are more of these in my future.  

BUT WAIT!  

There’s more!  

I took a bunch of close up pictures of my dishtowels. Yep, that’s sounds pretty obsessive, I hear it.  But it turned out cool.

I

I added a favorite quote to the photo.  Fun.  I wonder if that would work as a print.  

But I won’t be finding out today.  

You can stick a fork in me, I’m done.  

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It Must Be All The Pink.

Just a quick post to let you know that the Mail Art head has arrived!  Really in good shape.  I thought she would have gotten beaten up a bit more.  I’m so glad to be wrong!

Yes, I realized that I called a Styrofoam head a she, what of it!  She’s totally a she; it must be all the pink.

Thanks to feelGR8, who is part of my Mail Art Guild via Ravelry, for sending me pictures and letting me use them here.  

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Learned a Thing

 

I learned a thing!  I’ve been doing more painty stuff than sewy stuff.  I’ve never played with paint before.

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I learned that gesso is a liquid.  Just kidding, sort of.  It is messy and drippy stuff and that doesn’t work well for my purposes because, as you may have guessed, I didn’t notice right away.

 

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Luckily, wax paper is awesome-ly useful stuff.  I knew about the wax paper for patterning altering but not for painting.  I have a new respect for it.

Here’s something I’m still trying to figure out.  Maybe you can help. 


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I found these cool bingo cards at a thrift shop and thought they would make an awesome book.  

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But they are really bowed.  You can’t really see it here.

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But you totally can here.

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So, I clipped them together in the hopes that they would straighten out but they haven’t and it’s been weeks.  Any ideas?  Right now, they are in my bathroom.   I was hoping the steam our showers would help.  Seems a little desperate, even to me.

I love learning new stuff, I try to learn something every chance I get.  I’ve signed up for  LifeBook 2014 Class online and hope to learn a ton there.  Though, I doubt she teaches how to bend cardboard bingo cards to my will.  One never knows. 

 PS – No, I’m NOT done decluttering.  The upstairs looks awesome and one table downstairs is almost clear.  It’s a marathon.  🙂

 

 

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Now!

I woke up this morning thinking “I cannot make a single thing more until I clean up my mess!”  These pictures are just from my little nesting spots around the living room.  

                               Mess      Mess

                               Mess        Mess

Downstairs, where I’m supposed to be storing all my supplies, is a total disaster.  Then I sat down at the computer and now it’s well into afternoon I have barely touched a thing.  I did make some goofy signs just an an experiment, though.   

This is my daughter’s favorite saying…sigh…
This one is probably a bad influence for me today…since I’m doing nothing.

I don’t like my font choices on the program (that’s as big as they get) so Imma play around...after I clean.  Lucky for me, the weather outside is frightful.  Sooooooo…here I go.  

 

Now.  

 

OK….NOW!

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Mail Art For You

A little Mail Art for you.  

Here’s what I started with.

I made sure to leave spaces for the address and postage.

And then went to town with the Sharpies.

I limited the colors and really had to fight the urge to add green in at the end.

I don’t know where she’s going yet but I hope whoever gets her sends pictures of how well she took to travel.  Sorry, it probably won’t be anyone who reads the blog…so I guess it isn’t really for you.  

If I get pictures of her after her travels, I’ll share them here.

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Learning Binge

I’ve joined a weekly art journal challenge thingy.  Our first task: Make shapes and color them in.  I can totally handle that.

I made the shapes in one of my found paper journals.  It’s on a shiny catalog page.  The paper didn’t really take the paint well but I like it anyway.

Here it is after I colored the shapes in.  I like using my found paper journals because they are a mess already so I can’t screw them up.  I only used a few paints but I mixed them up together and changed the colors.  I felt like a kid playing in the mud only with brushes instead of hands.  

I’m having what feels like a learning binge.  I’ve signed up for some online classes and am in serious play mode…like always, I guess but this time I’ve got a purpose…sort of.  Anyway, I’m having so much fun.  

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Process

You may have noticed I’ve been a bit quiet lately.  It because my interests are changing…in a good way.  I LOVE sharing process posts on the things I make.  Knowing that I have a place to share all my mistakes and discoveries is actually a huge inspiration for me.  

It’s easy with quilts because, even though I make them up as I go along, I know I’ll be ending up with a quilt.

But lately, I’ve been fiddling around with a bunch of different mediums. I’ve been making all kinds of stuff and I don’t know, when I start, what I’m going to end up with.  That makes sharing the process part scarier.

But I’ve decided, like I usually do, that “What the Hell” is the road forward for me.  So, with that in mind:

 

Check it out…I’ve been painting cereal boxes…because…they might be journal pages or prints or part of a sign or mail art…something.  

And, I’ve been gesso-ing board books to make…something, probably.  

Playing with goo and paper is really fun.  I do actually have some ideas in mind.  I have some stories I want to tell that I’ll use the board books for.  But that’s something I’ve never really done before and will surely be a messy process.  Hope you’re up for the trip with me.  

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Stinks like WHOA!

I’ve had better ideas…but I’ve also had waaaay worse ones.*   My big idea: Dye with indigo in my house.  I’ll just say this part again: In my house.  If you’ve never dyed with indigo, you may not know that it stinks like WHOA!  

Way back in the day, dyers used yeast and fermented urine to get the dye to affix to the fabric.  I don’t, by the way.  But I do use chemicals that smell like ammonia (the secret sauce in the fermented urine of old).  

Dyeing outside it not really an option right now.  Indigo likes to be warm.  It doesn’t require boiling like most natural dyes but It does not like to be cold.  Neither do I.  Wisconsin in November:  Cold.  So is December, January, February, most, if not all, of March and much of April.  That gives me a veeeerrrrrry long wait before I get to play with indigo outdoors again. So, I decided to brave the mess and stench.  

To conquer the mess I bought two kiddie pools.  Finding kiddie pools in Wisconsin was an adventure of it’s own.  There was nothing available locally (Wisconsin in November, need I say more?) The first ones I found online were about $10 plus $80 shipping.  If I’m being honest, this whack-a-doodle pricing was a big motivator for me and may well be the reason I went past the “just wondering” phase of this idea.  $90 for two kiddie pools? Ahahahahahahahahaha! I can do better! 

This required much googling, which I love doing.  I did finally find some reasonably priced options.  Thank you Toys R Us and the fact that you ship everything everywhere everyday anyway.  Buying those pools meant I was committed; see how the falling down the rabbit hole works?

Also to tame the mess, a tarp.  The tarp doesn’t really have a good back story…it’s just a tarp.  Eventually, I added a couple of towels around the edges to wipe my shoes on before leaving tarp-landia. 

Totally worked.   The indigo was very happy in the house.  The vats woke up easily and dyed the fabric really nicely.  

But the stink…I had a fan blowing and the door to the outside opened but THE STINK!!!

Because of the stink, t’s not something I would do again real soon but I’m pretty sure I’ll change my mind before April.  Spring is soooooooooo far away.

 * I am thankful everyday that there was no Facebook when I was in my early 20’s.

 

 

 

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Play With Kitchen Implements

Sometimes I find it hard to make time to make art.  Since I work part time and I do get quiet time to myself in the mornings, I realize it isn’t really my schedule that is getting in my way.  It’s totally that repelling magnet thing between the chair and my ass that happens when I try to sit down and work.

So I decided to go google the question.  You can always google a question.  I had plans to find a bunch of good advice in different places and, sharing links to the original articles, post the ones that spoke to me the most here.  

HOWEVER, I stumbled on this article by Rice Freeman-Zachery:

Notes From the Voodoo Cafe

and I’m just going to stop searching right now and shut this time sucking machine away and go play with my kitchen implements.