I’m so tired. It’s a beautiful day out, but instead of having a productive afternoon off, I’ll probably fall asleep on the porch swing. School is back in session and that means one thing, the local university newspaper is back in print and now I must work my weird day (going in at 2 am, off at 10 am).
This weekend I was feeling exhausted by my need to work on something, anything creative. I have felt lost for a bit without an inspiring project that consumes my every thought. That thing that can get me through the day, and helps me fall asleep dreaming about it at night. After feeling this emptiness for what seems like an eternity, Saturday evening I hit my personal library and found just the inspiration I needed. 1. from the Complete Craft, a cuff bracelet that was originally done in beadwork, but I will be adapting for my own style (you can see what I’ve done so far in the above picture, and 2. Just the perfect push for an art show this winter, thanks to Erin and the book Kaleidoscope.
But finally when I feel so inspired and just want to dig into my new projects, I feel like I can’t even see straight.
I. Must. Rest. Swing. Is. Calling. Me.
Author Archive for robayre
gnomes lined up, originally uploaded by robayre.
After a sale in my shop recently, I’ve had gnomes on the brain. I’ve been making gnome stickers, gnome buttons and tonight drawing up these ‘lil guys.
Thanks everyone for the love on the “handwritten post” yesterday. I think I’ll do more. It made posting super easy and super fun.
If you haven’t seen her around before, I’d like to introduce to you one of my best-est, top-of-the-pop-friends, Erin, aka, pejnolan. I’ ve known Erin for 14 years. Holy moly, yeah, I know, I can’t believe it’s been that long either. She has always been an incredible support and inspiration to me. Even when I was a wee young thing of 16 years old, she was one of the few, in my very impressionable years, that I thank for helping to form who I am today. She has so much talent and vision and ambition. In some ways we are so similar and share so many areas of interest and life experiences, and in other ways I feel she sees things so differently and helps bring things to light for me that I might never have seen. For all of these things I am deeply indebted to her.
Tonight we spent time in her studio while she finished her Huskie dogs project. The pieces came out so rich and lush and look every bit of all the time she invested in them. I saw them in the early stage and after they reached a certain stage, they just popped and my jaw dropped. I wish each and every one of you could see them in person.
Tomorrow she will be saying goodbye to them as she drops them off to their new owner, but I couldn’t help but notice how well they would have fit in her studio permanently surrounded by the rest of her work that is defined by her very unique Erin-style. I’d like to encourage everyone to check out her flickr, her blog and her etsy shop.
porch swing, originally uploaded by robayre.
Today I can cross off one of my life’s dreams. That dream: having a front porch swing. It is not quite the porch nor is it the swing of my dreams, but it’s a swing and it’s on my porch, and I’m thrilled.
Matt and I purchased it from Lowe’s and I used a 10% off coupon that I just happened to find in the junk mail I was about to toss out. It came to less than $100, it has cushions AND it can fold down to make a bed.
While we were building it this afternoon I met a neighbor. A little boy (probably around 6 years old) was riding his scooter up and down our block. He stopped occasionally to inquire about what we were building, “Oh yeah, I want one of those,” he said as if he already has a list of home improvements to take care of. His name was Sebastian and I think I’ve made a new friend. I think Matt’s looking at him as if he were a stray animal (if you feed it, it will keep coming back). He lives in the apartment building right behind ours and goes to the same elementary school that I did when I was his age. He was waiting for his friend to come home. This totally brought back memories of summer vacations when I was a kid. The neighborhood kids were my life and I woke up with one mission, and that was to have friends to play with. Then I’d stay out till it got dark and it was time to come back in.
One thing that interests me about him is that, unlike myself, he is not shy at all to talk to strange adults. When I was a kid I was terrified of adults. I remember my sister walking us to the neighborhood 7-11 with change to buy candy (Lik-M-Aid Fun Dip, holla) and I would always ask her to buy it for me. I had the money, I was just afraid I’d have to talk to the adult at the register. I had a friend who was my same age who lived on the next block. Instead of ever going up to her door to ask if she could come out to play, I’d stand across the street and call her name until she came out. If her grandma came out to say she wasn’t home, I’d run away. Sometimes I wonder if it is the source of my shyness now. I was, SO, not shy when I was a kid (my kindergarten teacher complained that where ever she’d seat me to keep me from talking, I’d become new best friends with my new neighbor. But as I grew up, my peers grew up, and soon I was surrounded by only adults. Maybe I’m still afraid of adults?
So, anyway, Sebastian apparently doesn’t suffer from this same affliction. I gave him a sheet of plastic wrap bubbles and he asked me for two, one for his friend that he was waiting for. He asked me what grade I was, lol, when I said I was done with school, he said I could go to college and when I said I was done with college he said “That’s because you’re an adult”. When Matt came out with a diet coke, he asked for a can for himself. Nice try. When we finished the swing, we were sitting on our finished product and I brought out Bishop and Sebastian came up and sat with us and pet Bishop and talked about cats with me.
I didn’t give him any food while Matt wasn’t looking, but I sure do hope he comes around again.
I had a pretty crazy morning.
Once again, I woke up to the smell of fried eggs permeating the bedroom. Since it has gotten warm and we’ve had the windows open at night I wake up to the smell of fried eggs. At first I blamed the neighbors in our duplex, but they’ve moved out and the smell continues on. I mentioned it to Matt and he said he’s never smelled it. This morning, when I woke up to the smell yet again, I thought about Matt’s reaction, and started to worry. What if there really is no smell of fried eggs and it is actually a symptom of a brain tumor? Yes, these are the kind of worries I have. The kind of worries that most people, other than my sister, wouldn’t ever understand. Sometimes the smell is so strong that I almost feel like I could faintly smell it all day long, like it was stuck in my nose. I understand this concept all too well from when I used to change diapers regularly at the nursery. That smell would stay in my nose the rest of the day, and that’s no pleasant smell.
When Matt woke up the smell was gone and I confided him that I was worried about my health. This is when he tells me “My first thought would be that it comes from the nursing home across the street. Yeah, that would be my first conclusion, not that I had a tumor.” Yatzee! It had never occurred to me that we have an almost-restaurant (serving tons of people breakfast each morning) right across the street from our house. Problem solved. I hope. (checking glands and probing scalp)
Next…Matt opens the door to the house and then turns to me and says “Why is there a horse out here?” I think he’s joking, and I give him a quizzical look and he says “I’m not kidding, there’s a horse out here” but then he points down low, so I think he must be talking about a toy, like a My Little Pony. I get up and look out the front door to find this beauty sitting on our welcome mat.
My first reaction was “That’s creepy, I’m scared, somebody hold me”. But then I just started laughing and had to go get my camera. I’ve come across several of these horses before. This is a perfect example of magic in real life…waking up to a springed-rocking horse at your front door. At first I wanted to message a select few asking them to fess up, but then I started thinking that would ruin the magic, so I guess I’ll just let it be. In the meantime I have a magical horse living on my front porch.
THEN, finally as I’m driving to work, I turn to the street I work on and as I pass a parking lot I see this vehicle driving so fast through the lot, heading to the exit that would eventually cut me off. I look over to see who this joker thinks he is and it’s my manager at work and he’s pointing his finger at me. Other than the fact that he was driving a car and not a bike, it totally smacked of Better Off Dead, when the paper boy shows up everywhere on his bike chasing after the main character for his “TWO DOLLARS!”
Now, it’s Monday night and that means one thing, TV night: Jon and Kate Plus 8 and Intervention. I might even work on some stuff while watching TV too…maybe.
Woooo! I’m so excited to say that I had 3 sales at the end of this week and it has officially put my etsy shop up to 50 sales. I can honestly say that each and every sale is a thrill, an affirmation, and an instant mood lifter. Thank you so much to all those who have purchased something from my etsy shop. It really means the world to me and has been a dream of mine for as long as I remember.
A friend has been telling me about how she hopes to help her grade-school aged neice start an etsy shop. It got me thinking how thankful I am for etsy and how much I would have loved to have access to something like this when I was a kid. Since I was a small child, I’ve wanted to be an artist/a crafter/a maker. I remember one time in elementary school I made a “purse” out of paper. It was rainbow colored with markers. It was far from being functional, but it had pockets and a strap. I had a bunch of girls from the class clammering to pay me to make them one too. How exciting to know that it is now possible for children, who had the same dream that I did, to be opening up their own etsy store and dipping their toes in the entrepreneur-ial waters at such a young age.
I hope everyone is having a good weekend. Tomorrow my sister and I will be going into the city for the Gold Coast Art Fair. We went last year and it was AMAZING. Each booth was like a real little art gallery just transplanted - plop - onto the streets of Chicago. It was a great collection of very talented and professional artists. I hope to bring home some wonderful finds.
Oh, and one last thing: I found this short and sweet tutorial through Craft magazine’s blog or whip-up. It’s for directions to make rag bracelets and it should take all of 1 minute to make, and I’ve already been rocking one this weekend. Love it.
It’s Friday, it’s 8.08.08 and my it’s my brother’s birthday. He seems to have the best birthdate ever. On his golden birthday he turned 8 on 08.08.88.
We are going to Mongolian BBQ tonight to celebrate.
Is it 5 o’clock yet?
My friend Nicole sent me a link to this youtube video. It’s got great lyrics.
-Hello everyone who is Stumbling Upon me, I’m not exactly sure the reason for the recent influx of visits to my site, but I welcome them, and you, to my humble blog with open arms.
-Above, another Page A Day scan. You can see all the pages I have scanned so far here on my flickr.
-Today I broke my bike pedal off while riding my bike home from work, boo. That’s what you get when you ride an almost decade old huffy that has been stolen once, seat stolen a different time, and bike pedal broken off once before.
-Yesterday I realized that if you replace the o in my name with an i, my name sounds like ribbon. I’m not particularly a huge fan of ribbons, but this is the kind of thing I think about. It also occurred to me that as much as I loathe when parents name their child a nickname (Sam vs. Samuel, etc.) my name is Robyn, which is supposedly derived from Robert, which means Robin was probably a nickname for Robert at one point. My name is a nickname.
-Re: the last post: I’m not skilled at placing zippers, so I think I’ll ask my mom for a tutorial. I got it in, but it’s pretty funky.
-My sister sent me a link to this article in the Chicago Tribune. Apparently Paul McCartney was in Joliet, where my dad is from, just an hours drive away from where I live now. Paul went to some Route 66 museum and the article quoted some guy my dad went to high school with. My Dad = 2 degrees of separation from Sir Paul McCartney.
-I’m starting to have this new ritual for working in my studio. I pop on this pandora station , open the window and get to work while singing away. I’m not sure if by following that link you will get the same station as I listen to, with all my thumbs up and thumbs down, but it’s still worth listening to.
zebra, originally uploaded by robayre.
Inspired by a zebra from a wrapper of Hammermill copy paper I started making a collaged zipper pouch. I scanned the zebra and replicated him to make the above collage and printed it on iron-on transfer. I have been using a, much loved, Boygirlparty zipper pouch for years and it is just frays and tatters now.
You can see the progress of the pouch at my flickr here http://www.flickr.com/photos/robayre/2734662368/. I still need to add the zipper tonight, so I’ll be heading over to JoAnn fabrics after work. I’ll wash it and see how it stands up, and hopefully if it works I’ll be making a bunch more. For years I’ve been wanting to do collagework on fabric, but in my mind I wanted to make a skirt. It wasn’t until I knew I needed a new zipper pouch, that I thought of the idea of doing it on fabric to sew into a zipper pouch. I wanted it to look like my style of collage that I did for my mail art postcards, thus the “Place Stamp Here” indicia that have been on all of my postcards.
Speaking of recreating collagework in other mediums, here is some lovely artwork.
a link on how to easily grow wheatgrass, something bunnies, kitties and girls alike can enjoy.
If there is one thing to know about me I am obsessed with front porches, so naturally porch swings fall under that category. I am easily gushing over this picture of a porch swing installed into a home.
