Clockwise from top left, Rug on Overstock, Vintage Chevron Necklace by seahagandwalrus, Chevron flat notecards by mrYen, Chevron button or magnet set by yours truly
Archive for the 'Cool Links' Category Page 2 of 12
This lovely post comes with a soundtrack: I’m Writing A Letter by the Smoking Popes :)
Write Me Pen Pal collage, To Get A Letter Write A Letter pin, Happy Red Address File, Repurposed Envelope and Stationery Set
I’ve been doing a lot of sorting, organizing and de-cluttering lately, and so these three things below caught my eye.
A week or two ago I posted about the “Week of Undies” travel project . While reading through the outfits that Jessi picked for the “WOU” project, I came upon a post where she developed new guidelines about the clothes that she keeps at home. She lives in a very tiny studio apartment, with her husband, and has decided that she would go from having over 500 items of clothing, down to only 100 items. You can read the post here.
While I love the idea, I’m not sure if I could whittle down my wardrobe THAT much. I do know that I could definitely get rid of a lot of stuff that I no longer wear, really don’t like or that has been in storage so long that it hasn’t seen daylight in years. I have a flickr contact who regularly posts this image that simply states “Today I am getting rid of 100 things”. That message is very inspiring to me. I’ve been questioning a lot of my possessions and asking myself if they really serve a purpose or deserve a place in my life.
Under Jessi’s self imposed “100 items or less” project, one of the rules was that she would be ironing a label with her name and website into all of the clothes she donates. She said it will turn her project into a bit of a game, where the new owners might find the label, look her up and then contact her.
This reminded me of two other similar ideas that I saw online within the last couple weeks:
These shorts, via MissMoss. I’m not really into short-shorts, but what I love about this brand (The IOU Project) are all the little extras they put into all their clothing items. There is a “conversation” label sewn into all items, as well as a QR code which tells information about the artisan who manufactured the piece.
And then this video, via Andrea of HulaSeventy and Booooooom where Augustina Woodgate poetry bombs at the thrift store, by sewing poetry labels into clothes at second hand stores.
If you remember from the sneak peek a few weeks ago, I purchased a bag of vintage photographs from the flea market and decided to use some of them for the mailart 365 project.
I started out with the idea to create outfits using my paper collection.
Then I had the idea to do more of the environment in paper. This piece is a very “Robayre” piece, obviously, with all the individual pieces of grass. It was time consuming, but I love how it came out.
Here is another detail
Another environment piece
Another wardrobe piece.
While I was working I suddenly thought of the artist Alyn Carlson and her lovely paper hats. I love her hats and immediately I knew some of my vintage folks needed to wear some fancy hats! I love how they came out and it was so much fun to create their hats.
and another close up
Here’s a bathing beauty and her showy hat
and last but not least, a lovely pair and their extraordinary hats.
I’ve been meaning to post that for over a year. No need to worry about it, if you don’t use Bloglovin, but to claim the blog as my own I have to post it. I’m not even exactly sure I fully understand Bloglovin. I think it might just be another way to subscribe to blogs, like google reader.
Anyway, this post is really to share with you an AWESOME link I found earlier today. Seriously, I’m very excited about this. Thanks to flickr contact Carolyn_Sewell, I found out about Jessi Arington and her Week’s Worth of Undies project. The concept is this, in Jessi’s own words:
“It seemed simple enough… I’ll go on a trip, and the only thing I’ll pack in a tiny suitcase is the underwear I’ll need. All other clothing will be procured at thrift stores once I arrive at my destination. I’ll wear it, photograph it and have a grand ole time with it, but then I’ve got to give it away, returning home with only my original undies.”
You can read the initial post here, and subsequent posts share photographs of the outfits, and to be honest, I haven’t even gotten through them yet. I hope to them savor them after this post. In the meantime, I wanted to share this post because I think it is a perfectly fun idea for a road trip. Only, I’m not so sure about having to give away the new treasures clothing that I just found. I might change my mind after completing the series, but right now I’m thinking “what if I just donate an item from my own closet, for every new item I decide to keep?”
While we were at the flea market a couple of weekends ago, I was looking through one vendor’s collection of old photographs. The vendor was selling each picture for .50 and while I started to go through them and collect my favorites, my sisters were tapping their watches, ready to move on. I couldn’t walk away though because there were so many good ones and I was afraid that if I stopped going through the rest I’d end up missing some amazing pictures. There were pictures in there from probably the beginning of the 20th century up until the 80s or 90s. The vendor told me they belonged to the estate of an artist/art professor and he was also selling this artist’s huge paintings as well. There were some quirky photographs, but the majority of them were just group shots and pictures that belonged to his ancestors before him. Long story short, I ended up asking him the price for the whole carton of photographs and bought them all, filling up a big grocery bag.
My family has lots of old pictures from generations and generations back. They hold so much history, including all the family stories we grew up hearing. I love looking through them but would never cut them apart or use them in my own artwork. BUT, when I see old pictures like this I want to snap them up so that I can finally play. It kind of kills my sister, who is our family tree keeper. She says it’s wrong and someone should try to track down the current ancestors and give them their pictures back. I understand that, and so I just try to tell myself there are no ancestors, it was the end of their family line, no more children. And it could possibly be true. In Any of the pictures of the artist, or pictures from his generation, there weren’t any children shown, only from previous generations.
All of this is to say a few things:
I came up with an idea for a week’s worth of mailart, using my new/old photographs. Here are some sneak peeks above.
and
(picture via ransom riggs, here)
Mim shared a “trailer” for the book Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children. Ever since seeing this, and the old photographs used in it, I can’t keep it out of my head. I keep showing it to people. This weekend I had the idea to ask my mom if she’d allow to me buy and download the book to her Nook. I’ve never used an eReader, so I thought it would be fun. Turns out she had already downloaded it earlier that same day. Great minds think a like. She hadn’t seen the trailer yet, so of course I had to show it to her.
Today I showed the trailer to my coworker and he got intrigued enough to look up the author Ransom Riggs. Turns out he isn’t just an author, but a movie maker as well! As if I wasn’t excited enough about Miss Peregrine, guess how thrilled I was to find his page about his work “Talking Pictures” where he shares his collection of old photographs and the accompanying text scribbled on the back. Check it out here. Really, check it out, it is very cool. BTW, very few of the pictures I bought from the flea market have text on the back, sadly.
Looking at those old pictures and notes reminded me of Found Magazine, to which I used to subscribe. If you like old photographs, as well as found personal notes written on napkins, grocery lists and ephemera, you will LOVE this magazine. The magazine is filled with all of these things and more, submitted by it’s readers. The website showcases a daily “found item”. The co-creater, Davy Rothbart is an amazing story teller and has been featured on This American Life many times.
Okay, and then because I just can’t stop myself from going from one thing to the next, to the next, to the next. This reminds me of when my sister and I went to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. One of my very favorite things was a room which has original lyrics for famous songs written out by the artists as they were composing the songs. Many of them were scribbled on hotel notepads and stationery.
Okay, now to fullfill my daily requirement of mailart catch-up for the week, I present cards 97-103. I tried to stick primarily with ball point pen on cardboard for these. Many of them also have a gold shimmer ink.
card 97/365
card 98/365
card 99/365
card 100/365
card 101/365
card 102/365
card 103/365
I have been running across some pretty sweet things on the internet that I have to share them here.
This Simon and Garfunkel cover song playlist by Miss Moss.
When I was in college I made a hammock covered in growing grass for a sculpture class. That hammock would fit in perfectly with this line.
Check out this video of kites that Mim just shared. The end is mesmerizing. It looks like it is being filmed in slow motion, but if you notice the people and the kite tails are all whipping around at normal speed. Beautiful.
I really liked this article by Diane at the Dew Drop Inn. My relationship with music changed (in good and bad ways) with the addition of the ipod.
Sitting down is killing me, although while I’m at work I find way too many reasons to get up and walk around for a graphic designer. It would probably do me good to not sit so much once I got home from work.
Ooh, the possibilities with this shower curtain!
I posted on Andy’s wall… his real wall (not to be confused with a facebook wall)
AND, I’ve saved my favorite for last…
How have I not heard of this yet? Sell customized moleskines! Yes, Please! I’ve been listing my grass journals forever on Etsy, and while I’ve accrued plenty of favorites, and several front pages, they just don’t sell. Maybe I’ll have better luck on Moleskine Artist Marketplace.
My sister-in-law Dacia and I love garage sale, estate sale and thrift store shopping. A couple weeks ago we visited a local-ish antique shop called Josie’s. A coworker had tipped me off about this antique shop located on an old farm off of historic route 38 (the lincoln hwy.), about 10 minutes away from where we live. Although my coworker told me about all the various farm buildings full of antiques, we were still blown away by room after room in building after building full of antiques. We were there for 3 hours roughly and could have easily spent more time, but Dacia had to get to an appointment.
Immediately upon arriving I had to take out my iphone and take pictures of some of the amazing goodies that were there and others that would have to come home with me.
You can see it really was a working farm with chickens and miniature horses, sheep and even peacocks.
This Polaroid Landcamera in it’s lovely leather case, as well as one of these wooden bowls came home with me.
When I saw this little piece that was marked “penny rug” I was immediately drawn in. I had never heard of it before, but right away it reminded me of my yoyos and I knew that I’d have to take a crack at this craft myself.
I found these tutorials online
As simple as it looks, it was a lot more time consuming than one of my yoyo sets. I wanted my circles to be irregular and organic. I handcut each circle free hand, no templates. I basically spent ALL DAY Sunday making this below:
and here is the same thing with a white background
I still need to attach it to the background and was trying to decide, white or black. Unlike the dark more earthy colors that I’ve seen of penny rugs online, my initial inspiration was this photograph by Sandra Juto of granny squares on a white floor. I liked the white background of the floor, white edges of the squares and bursts of color in the center. But, according to comments on flickr, people like the darker background because it makes the pieces pop out, which is completely understandable.
I love how this came out, and can see myself working on these just as often as making yoyos. Busy work, perfect for doing while watching netflix with my honey. I plan on framing the one above, similar to my yoyo pieces. Once it is complete, I’ll return with another picture.
I never got around to posting the last 3 postcards from last weeks mailart365, so I’m doing a little mini dump today. I’ll post this weeks cards tomorrow.
I created 3 little stamps for the background pattern. BTW, is there a name for that scallop-like pattern? Anyway, I stamped the background of all three postcards at once.
I gave this first one a very light gesso wash to make the background more pale. It looked very Eastery, so I painted an egg shape in the center and then drew a girl with bunny ears inside that. I love drawing on gesso. If you haven’t tried it before, I highly recommend it.
It’s card #38/365 and the list that was written on this postcard is something like My favorite people.
The next card I put the mixed stamp stamp over it and called it a day. The card is #39/365 and the list on the back is things I hope happen in the next year.
Postcard #40/365, I did a dry horizontal brush in gesso and then another vertical to give it a hopefully textile like texture, then I stamped my polaroid hand carved stamp on it. The list on back is a list I really liked that I came up with, Things that should happen on road trips. I wish all lists were so easy to come up with.
This morning I was awarded the Stylish Blogger Award by Joyce at Young By Design. Thank you Joyce! I will return soon to share my fun facts and share the award with some of my favorite stylish bloggers.
I only have 4 postcards done as of today. I’ll probably pop in later this weekend with the other three.
postcard #34 - The list on the back reads Halloween costumes
postcard #35 - Things I can cook or prepare
postcard #36 - Things that inspire my artwork.
postcard #37 - Most important people in my life
Now onto the giveaway. Last night when I went into my studio to try and finish this weeks postcards I got distracted by another impromptu project. I really liked how it came out and have decided to offer it as a giveaway. I will publish the official giveaway post on Monday, April 11th 2011, but the idea is going to be that I will be giving the item away to one random follower on my facebook fan page. So, if you’re already there, then you have already entered. If you’d like a jump on entering the giveaway, “like” my facebook page. I’ll give you a couple of hints as to what the item is - 1. It has to do with music, and 2. You can put stuff inside of it.
