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Monster Monday – Week One!

First Monster Monday Exercise! I got the idea for this (and some of the other ones I’ll post down the road) from Carla Sonheim. She is awesome and playful. I’m taking her Year of the Fairy Tale class online this year and am really enjoying it. 

This week’s supplies: Index card, acrylic paint and a black pen. When I sat down to work on this, I realized that I don’t have any index cards, so I used these index card sized alphabetical cards that I found at a thrift shop. Any cheap, smallish paper will do. 

Optional supplies: A small paint brush, water, a paper plate to use as a palate, a rag to clean up with. 


Paint a blob (finger paint or with a paint brush) on an index card. Repeat at least 4 times on other cards, 8 is a lot, 10 is maybe excessive but don’t let that stop you if you are inspired. 

Try not to have any preconceived ideas about what these shapes might end up as. Walk away. Let them dry for a couple of hours. 

After they dry, it will be time to find your monsters.  Turn the cards around and around, looking at them from different angles. Take your time if needed but don’t think it through too much. Allow your intuitive, non-logical mind help you find them, they don’t have to make sense. 

Maybe a running dog thing…
Nope, I don’t see anything here.
Maybe…I’m just going to check one more angle…
Aha!  I see it now…
When you see a creature in your shape, draw it in with a pen. You can extend the shape out or limit yourself to the interior of the blob only. If you just see part of a creature – for instance – only an eye, you can start with that and see if anything appears.
Don’t aim for perfection. You’ll never reach it.  The goal here is to play and have fun.
Please email your Monster Monday pictures to me and I will share them here.
Jennifer@jenniferFalkowski.com. Have fun!
Here are the other monsters I found:
 
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Monster Mondays!

Ok.  I keep having ideas of projects I want to share. They seem like they would really be fun to do online.  But, I know I also have this tendency to jump into things without much thought.  So, pretending to be a grown up on the inside (my outer grownup shows more), I’ve been choosing to wait, give the idea a few days of thought to see if there are any holes.  Inevitably, I find hole or two or three and think:  Whew, I’ll just keep that to myself, looks like I dodged a bullet there…I suppose.  Or maybe I didn’t trust myself and the idea lost its steam.  It’s hard to tell the difference sometimes.

So, I’ve had another idea and this time, I’m jumping in.  I’ve started it already on my Facebook page but I want to share it here too.  You can play along in either or both places.

I’m calling it:  Monster Monday.  

Monster Monday is a fun way to introduce some creativity into your life.  I’ll send out one monster related, creativity art type thing to do every Monday until I stop.  At this moment, I have 13 ideas to share.  The exercises are fun, non competitive, meant to be freeing and, did I mention, fun.  More information is coming – you guessed it – next Monday.  🙂

Please, share this with your friends, your acquaintances and, maybe, that artsy looking woman you just passed on the street.

I ask that you share pictures of stuff you made on my Facebook page.  It’s a public page, so you don’t have to be a Facebook member to access it.  You can also email them to me and I’ll share them for you.  Here and on Facebook so you won’t miss anything. 

Why monsters?  Because monsters don’t have to follow rules like real animals.  They don’t have to have two arms and two legs.  They can have as many or as few as you like.  You make up the rules that help us recognize them as beings.  At least one eye?  A mouth or eyebrows?  If you are inspired, feel free to change your own rules.  If some conditions are met, maybe you can change others.  If the mouth is saying MONSTER, maybe you can leave off the eyes.  Play around and see.  Monsters can have animal like attributes like wings or fins but they don’t have to.  They may have leaves or wheels.  

If you aren’t happy with what you’ve made, put it aside and start over…or don’t.  But please don’t throw them away.  Not yet, anyway.  Tuck them away for a week or two.  Then take them out and peek at them, can you see some attributes you can change to make them more monster-y?  Maybe you just want to cut them up and remake them into other monsters.  Or, maybe you just truly don’t like them.  You don’t have to.  At his point, if you want to, just give them the heave-ho.  This is supposed to be fun and not stressy.  

I’ll keep the supplies you need simple and cheap.  It’s probably stuff you have around the house. I recommend you make your monsters on index cards because they rock.  They are both easy to find and cheap.  

Supply list (keeping in mind that I may come up with some more ideas that need different supplies later):  Index cards, paper, a black pen, a color marker or two or three, acrylic paint, maybe a paint brush but you can paint with your fingers too, a glue stick, tape (washi, electrical and/or masking, as long as the tape you choose isn’t transparent), a magazine and/or pretty paper that you can cut up, which means scissors, and finally, some music to listen to.  

I hope you decide to play along, next week:  Same monster time, same monster channel.

 

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Blue or Green

I saw this when I was out and about today:

I thought I would share it in case you need a smile.

Check out this difference.  The green stuff is the dry fabric that soaked in the black bean water for 24 hours.  

The blue stuff is still wet.  I just pulled it out of the dye bath after a 48 hour soak.  

I wonder if it will stay blue or if it will dry green?  I’ll probably never find out.  I did one of those things I probably shouldn’t.  But it’s inevitable, so I did it.  I threw everything in the wash.  

I know I shouldn’t, naturally dyed fabric deserves a gentler treatment than that.  However, not only am I sure to throw them in the wash without really thinking at some point anyway, they are also napkins and dishtowels, they really should be able to handle the wash.  I hope they stay blue, I don’t really care for the green.  I suspect that green may actually come from the mordant.  

They are in the dryer as I type away.  When I pulled them out of the wash, they were pretty pale.  Living and learning, that’s just how I do.  

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..hint hint..

I took this picture last night, when the jars weren’t back lit by the window.

I think it’s kind of funny that they are covered with an indigo dyed dish towel.  It’s indigo’s fault they there, because I can’t dye with indigo in this weather.  

Anyway, I sucked it up and put my dirty dishes in the dishwasher before getting started this time…You’re welcome.

They all looked pretty much the same in the jars but there is a fair amount of variation between them.

That pink piece is a silk scarf that I dyed with avocado skins and pits but didn’t like, so I threw it in with the cotton.  I still don’t like it.  But I like everything else.  Cotton napkins, dish towels and doilies.  I didn’t rinse them, I just hung them up.  

This doily was up near the top of a jar.  Where it was exposed the the air, it is greener, the submerged part has much more blue.  So, I took it and a couple of dishtowels and stuck ’em back in for another day.

I think they’ll stay submerged this time, that jar in there is full of water.  I’ll post again tomorrow when the pieces that are hanging are dry and the 48 hours pieces are done.  I’m curious to see of the extra time will matter.  

I really want to try again using a different mordant.  I’m only interested in non-toxic mordants and am open to suggestions..hint hint.

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A Blue Miracle

Spoiler:  That stinky ass mordant that threw everything cock eyed.

I found an online source that recommended that fabric soak in mordant over night (instead of three days) so I pulled everything out today (please, follow my example and ignore all the dirty dishes on my counter).  I won’t lie to you, pouring various stinky liquids form jar to jar and mixing them all up is fun as hell.  I felt very evil scientist-y.

Backing up, check out these fermenting bean bubbles.

Next time (oh yes, this will happen again), I will try and time it better.  I am sorry to horrify all you frugal bean eaters out there, but I threw the beans away.  I don’t even have room in my frozen compost pile for them.

I think it looks pretty brown here.

Maybe a but purple.  But, when I threw in the mordant soaked fabric,

GREEN!  Muddy green, at that.  It looks greener in real life than in the picture.  I’m pretty disappointed/stoked to play with mordants in the future.  That’s why I will have a next time and I’m not even done with my this time.  Right now, they are lined up on my windowsill, wedged between the proof that I shouldn’t be allowed to have indoor plants.

More tomorrow; I’ll check them in 24 hours, hoping for a blue miracle.

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STINK!

Why must everything that dyes something else STINK SO BAD?  For black beans, it’s the mordant.  It’s a mix of alum and washing soda in hot water.  

I followed  the advice I learned from A Honeymooners Guide to Living for amounts…sort of.  

I should probably say I started to follow it; I measured my fabric, pulled out my calculator and figured out how much alum and washing soda to use.  Then I realized that I don’t have a measuring spoon to dedicate to dyeing so I eyeballed it.  I just threw some of each in.  I just gotta be me. 

Now I wait…

……I’m not very good at waiting so expect me to dye before I should.  The fabric is supposed to soak in the mordant for three days but the beans are starting to bubble and smell like,,,science.  

The mordant still outstinks the beans.  I think I need a glass of wine to wash it all away.  

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Full of Beans

I totally blame Pinterest for this.  I don’t know if you’ve noticed, **understatement alert** but I’ve become somewhat obsessed with indigo.  

Dyeing with it is stinky, though so I am waiting for warm weather to dye some more.  But I’m impatient…as a rule.  

When I saw on Pinterest that people are dyeing fabric blue with BLACK BEANS!!!  I lost it.  I LOST it!  I went straight out to my organic co-op to buy some black beans but they didn’t have any.  NOOOOooooooooOOOOOO!

So, I called my husband (he goes to the big, non-organic grocery store) and he bought me a four pound bag of black beans!  Oh yeah, baby.  I’m in business.  

All you need to do is soak the beans.  I can soak the beans.  

You stir them a couple of times while they soak.  I can do that too.

The first time I stirred it, it was a really pretty purple.  


Now I need to figure out what to dye and get it soaking in a mordant.  That has been the hardest part of this whole process so far.   

Pretty!!!!!

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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.