I found a set of Sunbonnet Sue dish towels at my parents house, that had belonged to my grandma. My grandma was born in 1910, and I’m not sure if they were hers originally or maybe even were originally handed down to her from someone earlier.
Each towel is the day of the week with a different chore and I thought I’d post one each day.
Today is laundry day. Sorting, washing and drying aren’t such a chore in our house, as is folding, hanging and putting away the clothes.
Archive for April, 2012
So, I’ve been working on more framed yoyos lately and there’s a reason. I was accepted into the Nada Farm Barn Sale, a curated and juried sale. This is will be my biggest show I have done. I went to the fall sale last year. Little did I know then that I would be attending this spring, not as a guest, but as a vendor. It’s seems surreal.
This event has been named by Flea Market Magazine as one of the best flea markets coast to coast, and while there will be plenty of vintage finds, there are also plenty of new and handmade items offered by all the vendors. Here is a complete list of vendors. If you live in the Northern Illinois area, I’d love to invite you to this unique event. Please read my experience from last fall for an idea of what you could expect to see at the Nada Farm Barn Sale and check out Anne Marie’s blog.
I will be there with my yoyos of course, as well as jewelry, paper products and of course other things that can be found in my etsy shop… oh yeah, and my coin machine will be there too!
Earlier this year I was approached by a clothing company out of Los Angeles to make my framed yoyo pieces (made from their own fabric) for store displays in their 9 retail locations around the country. It was really exciting and kind of terrifying at the same time. It is something I would definitely love to do, but I also work a full time job and I was worried about being able to complete it on schedule. They purchased 2 pieces as samples and sent me fabric. The fabric was absolutely the most soft and comfortable fabric ever, but it was jersey (think t-shirt material) as opposed to my normal quilting fabric which is stiff and firm. The yoyos came out beautifully, but took a little bit more time than usual. The sample pieces I constructed were used for walk-through concepts for a seasonal store display. When the “higher-ups” saw my pieces with their own fabric they LOVED them.
They actually loved them so much that they wanted to make the yoyos an even more important part of the whole look, not just in the small frames. Unfortunately, what they had in mind was entire yoyo quilts as a wall covering. This is unfortunate because I had already been worried about being able to finish the smaller framed pieces. As much as I crunched the numbers and had friends and family offer to help, there was no way I’d be able to get that many yoyos done within a month. I had to turn down the offer and walk away. Although I didn’t get to complete the project I was still very excited that I got to be part of the project at all. I was really honored that they contacted me, purchased from me and we got to work together on the project for a while together. I’ve had a couple other offers in the past from larger companies (snowboarding company wanting to use my artwork on their snowboards, and another company interested in buying 600 of my grass journals) but neither of them had gone as far as this project. After all of these experiences, I’m confident that someday I will have an offer for a big project that will fit perfectly for me.
The pictures above are not the fabric supplied by the company, but for a yoyo sets like the one pictured here.
Buying - vintage pillow cases from Salvation Army and Goodwill
Creating - laundry detergent with Dacia
Eating - rainbow cupcakes from easter. (My mom made these using box cake batter mixed with different flavors of jello and they taste AhhhMazing!)
Listening - to PRX on XM radio, it’s a talk radio show filled with podcasts and shows like the Moth and Story Corps.
Loving - this spring, riding my bike to work, flowers blooming everywhere
Reading - the Hunger Games Trilogy
Seeing - our cat lying on a pillow like it’s his personal throne (this is very unusual because he usually only lays next to things and never on top of them.
Watching - Game of Thrones season two aaaand My Cat From Hell, lol
Wanting - a loooong vacation from work where I could garden and soak in the sun, lay in bed and read and work in my studio around the clock.
Here is a portion of the instagram pictures I’ve taken over the last few months. Still going strong on 365. There might be a day or two (like this morning) when I realized I forgot to post my instagram picture from yesterday, but I did take one yesterday and I posted it immediately.
This week instagram finally went live for android users. Now there are a whole new slew of people sharing pictures. If you are new to instagram (you can use on iphone, ipod touch or android) and/or want to check out the rest of my pictures, I’m robayre on there. Look me up.
It’s been a long, long, long time since I’ve had a mailart haul to share. For the iHanna Mailart Swap I created little books like I’ve done in the past. I picture them as a collaborative project. I create the cover and the recipient gets to fill the inside pages as they like. I think it’s fun to send a book, it’s just a bit different than your average mailart postcard.
The books get sent out sealed up like the picture above. The covers have been coated with a varnish first, to hopefully keep them together through the mail.
Above are the fronts and backs of each book. I include a rubberband mailed inside the front cover to keep the book closed like pictured above. Below are all of the books opened flat without the mailing addresses, of course.
The flickr pool with other postcards from Hanna’s swap can be found here.
It’s April First, but no joke, Courtney you won the chalkboard giveaway. I’ll be sending you an email shortly.
Friday night I decided to finally put together a Society6 site and offer some of my images for print. I’ve been wanting to make poster sized images for a while and this site makes it so easy to do that. I also love the idea of being able to make iphone cases and skins from my work. I have an image concept for a poster that I’ve been wanting to create for a couple of years and I finally was able to put it together last week. I’m not sure if I want to offer it on Society6 though because I’d like to get a print done for myself first to make sure that it looks good large.
With Matt’s help, I widened my blog a bit to make it a bit more current. Of course all of my old images were fit for the smaller size so old posts might look a little odd, but I’m happy to move forward with slightly larger images. Widening the blog meant widening the banner which led to Arrested Development jokes “Take a Look at Banner, Michael.” Quick Robyn PSA, if you haven’t watched Arrested Development, what’s your problem? Watch it immediately and thank me later.
edit: it has been brought to my attention that my blog might look wonky, but I think if you delete your history or cache, and refresh my blog it should look better.
We went to see Hunger Games last week and I really liked it a lot, so I’ve officially jumped on the band wagon and am now reading the book on Kindle. Go see the movie, I recommend it. The book, well, I’m not done so I can’t recommend it yet, but I like it so far.
Check back tomorrow for a post on my mailart contributions for the ihanna swap.
