I’ve just finished this yoyo set that I’ve been working on for a while. It’s a bit different from the old regular ones. This new style contains 64 yoyos, as opposed to only 16 and it uses no matte. It’s in the shop here.
So, once again, it’s been so long since my last post that I have an inbox full of links to share, I think a lot of them came from Craft or whip-up.
-Here is an inspiring tutorial on papercut work. Back in the day when I first worked in graphic design my specialty was in paste-up and wow many people with my way around a pen knife. What can I say, I really love cutting. Sadly, I’ve realized nowadays when I need to cut something I revert to scissors…yes, I know, gasp. Scissors are a sin in paste-up. Anyway, I think I need to try my hand at some paperwork soon.
-This link reminded me of Rosa’s project, Found Art Tuesday. The Toy Society encourages people to leave handmade toys out for people to find.
-Here is an energetic mixtape I’ve made for you. Listen, and just try to not shake your booty.
-A funny link to AFI’s top 100 films summed up in 5 words.
-Hey creative ladies! This just in, keep plants in your studios and be more creative and productive! I read this on AOL yesterday: In a study from Texas A&M University, women who worked for an hour in a room decorated with two potted plants and a bouquet of flowers generated 13% more ideas than women in a room with abstract sculptures. Studies show that plants are a mood booster, and good moods are associated with higher levels of dopamine, the hormone that controls the flow of information throughout the brain. Your next bright idea: Head to a nursery or garden store and pick up a few houseplants of your own.
Last weekend I was downstairs looking for something in storage when I found these empty frames I had bought a couple years ago. They are small, cheap, IKEA frames, and I had bought a bunch of them, not knowing how I would use them. Well, all these years later, I see them down there and that was all it took. I think to myself - pencil drawings of posed arms, watercolored and framed with striping ribbon. A lot of my ideas come to me like this “aha! moment” but frequently I’m at a time or place where I can’t immediately drop everything and start working on my idea. Usually I will write and sketch out my idea, but often, by the time I can get to it, the magic is gone and I’ve already moved on to another “aha! moment”. Well, this weekend I was able to drop everything and work on my idea and these were the resulting pieces, the last of which will be used for Found Art Tuesday.
I could really see these pieces being something I would have done intaglio prints of, but I also like the idea of them being individual handmade illustrations. It makes them more precious.
Tomorrow I’ll post more about where I leave the found art piece. Matt thought of the idea, and I’m excited about it.
Yesterday I mowed, today it snowed. This morning I walked to work, no coat, just a sweatshirt. I get to work and it starts snowing. No Joke, and it was really coming down too. Big, huge, fat snowflakes.
Last week I got this lovely postcard, handmade by Katie (Oltremare), in the mail as part of an exchange. My first piece of mail art at my new place. I just love her eye for design and this piece will be a prized addition to my art collection.
Today I finally was able to fulfill my end of project FKFDPYM (Found Kemper Fluid Drawing Pen in Your Mailbox). After searching the lands (read: Michales, Hobby Lobbys and JoAnn Fabrics) high and low in all the northern Illinois area, Rosa told me she would send one to me. When I got home from work today I asked Matt if I had gotten anything in the mail and he said “Oh, just something from Project KPRMBJ7T” That cracked me up. It was so kind of Rosa to send me one these pens she raves about. I’m excited to have this new tool and got to play around with it some tonight. You can see it in the picture above, sitting on the watercolor postcard, on which I tested the pen out.
Tonight I found out that the Create A Day group was featured on 52 projects. I think we CADers all have Sheasy to thank for that.
Thanks Katie, Rosa and Sheila. You are all wonderful group of online chronies and have succeeded in making me feel very special and blessed. Thanks again!
Today I released my Found Art Tuesday piece into the world. You can see the painting in yesterday’s post here. This is actually a big step for me because I actually left it in my own city, which has always been a fear of mine. I was able to do this by doing it in a more secretive manner. I put it in a geocache that was near the art building at NIU. For this painting I was combining a couple projects in one, Found Art Tuesday and Geocaching. Have you heard of Geocaching? It is a world wide treasure hunt and so much fun. You visit the website and then use a GPS to find coordinates to caches that are hidden around all of us all the time. My hopes are to set up my own cache sometime soon that will be themed for artwork. Sometimes geocaches have booty inside, and if you take something you must leave something behind. Most of the time these treasures are just kid junk like happy meal toys, etc. I want to create a geocache that is filled with original pieces of artwork, for artists to trade.
I know I mentioned it yesterday, but I would like to mention it again. Found Art Tuesday has a new flickr group and I’d love for everyone to join in. It is so much fun. The thing that really appeals to me about found art is the idea of shaking things up. People don’t expect to find artwork for free out in the world. Imagine how most people are just living their lives on autopilot and coming across a piece of artwork makes you snap out of it a bit. Sometimes people are so caught up in this way of life that they don’t even notice it or if they do they pass it up anyway, or that they are too afraid to step out of their bounds of comfort and take a bit of risk and take it. Read Rosa’s experience of this weeks found art piece here.
Okay, so I’ve created the above piece for Found Art Tuesday today, but I haven’t had time to leave it behind and be found. I’ll do that tomorrow. The theme was Kindness. Check back tomorrow to see where I leave it. I’d also like to mention that Found Art Tuesday now has a flickr group. Everyone is welcome to join and have fun leaving artwork behind. The more the merrier, I’d be so happy to see what artwork you might leave behind for others.
And here is today’s Polaroid Week picture. Matt enjoying a slurpee.
I’ve had my heart jump twice this week so far. Once for fear and once for joy.
On Sunday in the process of moving car loads of stuff from my apartment to the house, I stopped to fill up on gas. As I maneuvered through the parking lot to an open pump a girl started backing up towards me. I hit the horn, but she continued and hit my car. The odd thing is, as I’ve been moving, I’ve had this fear and “feeling” that something was going to happen to my car. I even voiced my concern to Matt. Immediatly after it happened, my heart just jumped and continued to pound like crazy. I was prepared to see my car wrangled, but fortunately the damage was minimal. I was just so thankful that it wasn’t my fault.
The second thing that made my heart jump was earlier today when checking my bloglines and updates on 52projects. I found that not only did Jeffrey Yamaguchi cover Rosa’s Found Art Tuesday, but he also mentioned my website as a “site to check out”. How exciting!
I just discovered that I was featured in another Etsy treasury. This one is pretty clever. Check it out here until Tuesday at 1:19 am.
So far, regarding my resolution of changing my furniture around, I’ve only managed my bedroom. The funny thing is that it took me about a week to make the connection between how much time I was suddenly started spending in my room, other than sleeping (reading, working on artwork and even eating lunch), before I realized it was because I had changed the furniture around. This just goes to show further support of my theory that changing furniture around lifts the mood and creates more positive energies. AND discovering this evidence should also prompt me into action to finally change my living room and art area around.
I recently discovered a blog from a link to this amazing dress. The dress is so gorgeous that it led me to explore it’s designer’s blog and I have found it to be extremely interesting. Elsa is a wife and mother of two. Her husband is a producer and worked on the film The Kite Runner. Her son has been diagnosed with autism and she shares a great deal about this. Also, she is a creator and like me, she works in many different formats. On her site, she has shared hand drawn illustrations, to designed and sewn softies. But the thing that makes her blog so captivating is the way that she shares all of the parts of her life from her family, to artmaking process to her personal history, I love it all. Check it out.
My sister gave me this newspaper cutting a while ago and I wanted to share it here. I think it came from the Chicago Tribune. It talks about how there is this movement of people strategically placing things in bookstores, anything from realtors putting their business cards in books about home buying, to poets placing their self published books on the shelves. Who knew we were so trendy, putting our drawings on the shelves in the art section and drawing impromptu pictures of authors and then hiding them inside their autobiographies? This might interest you Rosa. Check out the article, it is interesting if not just to read the creative manners to which artists have worked and how some stores have reacted to them. I like the last artist, who does the reverse Andy Warhol.
The Makers are trekking to Dick Blick today to take advantage of their “Back to School Sale”.
Here is a link to a 30% off coupon. They are having a great sale on canvases buy 20 or more get 70% off, buy 10 or more get 60% off, and buy 9 or less get 50% off. Sale lasts through February 29th (can’t say that every year).
