Archive for January, 2009 Page 2 of 4

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lost and nablopomo

Published
by
robayre
on January 21, 2009
in General Update and life
. 1 Comment

My eyes are tired, I’m tired.

Tonight was the Lost party. We had 14 lost fans and bajillions of pounds of food. Everyone brought their favorite appetizers. It was scary how much food was there. If we had been a group of 14 people stranded on an island with all that food, we could have lived long enough to figure out why the island keeps moving, and shifting time, as well as get our own Sawyer nickname. Mine would be “crafty”, or if you ask matt, “stubborn” or “talky”.

Enough. Sorry for the sad post, but I’m still hanging on to the commitment for  NaBloPoMo, but just barely. They can’t all be winners people, in fact, 50% would be a miricle. I am proud to say I have accomplished 21 days in a row. I’m patting myself on the back right now.

Good night.

It’s in the mail!

Published
by
robayre
on January 20, 2009
in General Update and Mail Art
. 1 Comment

Today I sent off this postcard to Finland, using postcrossing. Do you know postcrossing? Postcrossing’s website says: “send a postcard and receive a postcard back from a random person somewhere in the world!” People mostly send commercially produced cards about where they live, but I like to shake things up a bit and send my own original artwork.

It was because of postcrossing that I really got into mailart and have sent lots of handmade postcards all over world. It has been a long time since I’ve used postcrossing, so I hope that the person that receives my card is delighted to get it. I always had a great response from my recipients but there is always that fear each time I send a piece out that it could get lost, stolen, or not appreciated by it’s new owner. I see it in a very similar way as I see Found Art, you let go of a piece of artwork and hope that by the mysteries of this world, the right piece will make it into the right hands.

If you enjoy sending and receiving real mail you might want to try a few of these websites.
postcrossing
sendsomething
swap-bot
postcardx doesn’t look like this one is up anymore
nervousness
postsecret

This particular postcard was another piece at my show. I love how the detailed linework in the checkers came out, it’s part of the magic of my rapidoliner pens. The grass was achieved by gluing down fake grass used for miniatures and models. My friend tom does miniatures and I’m so impressed by the tiny paintwork he does. I love everything tiny and often it’s all I can do to keep myself from going crazy and buying everything in the miniatures isles at hobby stores.

edit: oh yes, I just realized I have to add in my “everyday create” friend’s store The Flying Housewife. In one of those brilliant “Why hadn’t I thought of that!” ideas, Joon has an etsy shop where she lovingly will compose a letter and send it to you. This is what the description says: This listing is for one handwritten letter, from the heart, from me to you*.

ideas are like stars

Published
by
robayre
on January 19, 2009
in General Update, My Artwork and shop update
. 2 Comments

I have listed another grass quote painting to my etsy shop today. This particular painting has the quote “ideas are like stars” which comes from a song by the same name by Mary Chapin Carpenter. The song is about the artist Joseph Cornell who is a favorite artist of mine.

Weekend adventure

Published
by
robayre
on January 18, 2009
in General Update and life
. 1 Comment

Hello friends, how has your weekend been?

Yesterday we went car shopping, as matt and I have two dilapidated cars that put together probably don’t really even equal one fully functioning car. He has no heat in the winter, mine has no air in the summer and in chicagoland weather these things are very important. Last week we had temperatures of a high below zero degrees Fahrenheit, I think the high was -7! It was no problem for him though because his car was dead in the garage all week. We looked at a couple places locally and then a couple places in the city.

One car lot we went to was only a few miles away from Resurrection Cemetery. If you haven’t heard of it before, it is one of the country’s, and definitely chicago’s, most haunted story locations. It is a catholic cemetery located right outside chicago and the home of “Resurrection Mary“, a girl who was supposedly killed in a car accident driving home from a dance, and who now appears in white gown walking alongside the roads near the cemetery and the location of the ballroom. Some have even claimed to pick up a hitch-hiking young woman and when they go to drop her off, she has vanished from the backseat. The story and location has always been a topic of conversation amongst my friends when we talk about ghosts and hauntings, but none of us had ever actually seen it. While searching for the location of the car lot I saw the cemetery was nearby and as it turns out, Matt’s grandma, great-grandparents and great-great grandparents are buried there, so we drove through. It was actually really cool because, unlike most modern cemeteries, they still allow upright headstones and statues, and since it is a catholic cemetery in chicago, all the headstones have very Polish names on them. We did not see any apparitions, which was fine with me.

Afterward we did more car shopping, went to a bohemian restaurant and then headed home. We saw a few potential cars and hopefully Matt will be the new owner of one of them by the end of the week. There is one car leading the race, but we are waiting to hear back from one salesman to see if he can find us a better deal by midweek.

Here is one last image I wanted to share. Saturday night we went over to a friends house and played balderdash while listening to records. Records, people! I have a very small record collection, but haven’t actually listened to a record probably since I was a little kid. I’ve wanted to get a player before, but it’s just not a necessity is it? I can understand the novelty, but I just can’t understand when people say that an album sounds better on vinyl. It sounds better fuzzy, and with blips and pops as well as the potential for skips, etc.? Maybe someone can explain it to me.

Bishop in box

Published
by
robayre
on January 17, 2009
in General Update
. 3 Comments

He’s not the sharpest crayon in the box. This was right after I was sick and we had empty boxes of tissues everywhere around the house. I looked over from my seat at the computer to see him with the box already stuck on his head. I didn’t stick it on his head, but I didn’t take it off for him either, instead filmed it, so yeah, I’m a bad cat mommy. The sad thing to me though is how much time I missed taping. He was like that for a good 30 seconds or more before I was able to grab the camera, turn it on and start recording.


wrapping paper inspiration

Published
by
robayre
on January 16, 2009
in General Update and shop update
. 1 Comment

A while ago I mentioned some vintage wrapping paper I found in a bag in my parents basement. This was one of those papers that had been folded up after the present inside had been opened (probably somewhere between 1978-82, and tucked away and saved for later use. It’s very old and brittle, but still vibrant in color. I love the painterly quality the illustrations have and when cut up into small pieces the textures and colors are absolutely gorgeous and work so well in my mixed media work.

You can see bits of it here and here and now here in some button sets I just finished. Here you can see a close up of what the artwork looked like before making them into buttons.

shop update

Published
by
robayre
on January 15, 2009
in General Update, My Artwork and shop update
. 0 Comments

Here is a new piece to share that was added to the shop yesterday. It’s an original mixed media piece on canvas that was part of my show last month. This piece contains lots of tiny detail and textures. It incorporates some of my handspun yarn and continues with my love of stripes in zebra and handrawn form. The zebras are actually cut from reams of hammermill copy paper that we use at work. It’s hard to see, but the hand drawn stripes contain a bit of gold shimmer paint and the background has textures inspired by this piece I did a long time ago.

This piece is part of an ongoing series of circles on canvas. And was inspired by my other ongoing series of concentric circles.

Homemade Ecosphere

Published
by
robayre
on January 14, 2009
in Cool Links
. 1 Comment

Today’s inspiration came to me from a gift guide I saw before Christmas. It featured an ecosphere from brookstones and I’ve been thinking how I want to get one. In high school my siblings and I bought one for my dad (a science enthusiast) from Natural Wonders (remember those stores they used to have at all the malls?). Anyway, today I was just thinking again about how I want one of those biospheres again and then the idea occurred to me just to make one. After a bit of research I found these cool sites and videos on making your own.

Here is a cool video by the awesome Bre Pettis (love the guy) from make and etsy.

And a couple articles that have more images and videos on making your own ecosphere here and here.

Only problem now is the foot of snow on the ground. I won’t be finding any brine shrimp, snails or algae anytime soon. I’ll have to add it to my list of things to do in 2009.

mailart in the shop

Published
by
robayre
on January 13, 2009
in General Update, Mail Art, My Artwork and shop update
. 1 Comment

I’ve updated my shop with this new postcard. It’s another piece from my show and I really love it.

It’s another piece using the prized vintage wrapping paper. I really debated for a long time on leaving that circle empty. I finally decided that by putting an image or text in it would detract from the rest of the piece, so I’m glad that I left it open. This piece also contains another favorite element, a gradient scale, this one with small circles going from light to dark.

Oh yeah, and we didn’t get any of that supposed “blizzard” that was to hit us last night. How predictable.

Shome shtuff to share

Published
by
robayre
on January 12, 2009
in Coverage, General Update and life
. 2 Comments

I’m excited to announce that today is the beginning of the Poppytalk Handmade Love Transforms showcase. I added a banner over to the right, so please check it out.

I’m also happy to share that my friends Tom and Nikki won the essay contest about whose love rocks. I’d like to thank everyone who followed the link here and cast their vote to make that possible.

One more announcement: Sweetcheese is having a contest/giveaway on her blog. You could go over there and check out the awesome stuff she will send you, or um, I mean me, when I win. Um, I really want to win :)

One last thing. When I was napping yesterday I had this dream and when I woke up I wanted to remember to mention it for my blog entry about sleeping and dreaming, but then of course I forgot. It wasn’t until I went back to sleep that I remembered it. It wasn’t anything all that special, but I just thought it was awesome while I was dreaming it and funny when I woke up. I dreamt that I lived in a different house and we had a HUGE fish tank in our living room. Imagine a standard 10 gallon tank but only hundreds of times bigger, probably about 10 feet tall. Funny enough, even though it was so big, it didn’t take up too much room. I got the idea to climb in or maybe I fell in and as I was climbing back out I grabbed the edge and decided to kick my legs and splash. Then I realized how cool it would be to swim around in the tank. I couldn’t wait to tell matt and have him join me so we could swim around in the tank and explore it. Before I had a chance to track him down the buffalos (yes, there were buffalos in the house) came to the edge of the aquarium to drink (and yes, they were just regular sized buffalo, but they could drink over the edge of a 10 foot tall aquarium) and like a cheap plastic kids pool, if you bend the edges they fold in or out and all the water in this HUGE aquarium came spilling out into our home. Once again, how a rigid flat glass tanks edges could bend is beyond me, but it happened. I started freaking out that all the water was in the house, but even though I was worried about the flood, I was still excited about the possiblity of swimming in an aquarium in my home. Hmmm, I wonder what a dream interpretation would say about this.

Okay, I know I said that was the last thing, but just one more quickie. IT’S SNOWING! Snowing like crazy. Since last Friday we’ve probably had about 12 inches or so and it’s supposed to continue snowing (blizzard warning or watch) style till early tomorrow afternoon. Matt told me how he heard so many people at his work already saying they weren’t going to be able to make it into work tomorrow. I think that is the most hilarious thing, when people start talking about “THE SNOW!” “THE SNOW!” and then even if we only get 1 or 2 inches, no one will show up to work the next day because they already made up their mind the day before that they would have a snow day the next day. I’m not one of those people at all, but it’s still fun for me because when you go into work on those days, it still feels like a special snow day because no one else is there.

Okay, I’m done.

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