Archive for the 'life' Category

Day Ten - Banner Flag Notepad

Published
by
robayre
on August 16, 2010
in General Update, Projects and life
. 1 Comment

Once again, I’m really stoked about the project I came up with for today for day 10 of the “create something every day in August” challenge.

I was at work and thinking about how we print notepads for customers occasionally. I immediately decided to create some as a new paper product for my Etsy shop, but it took me a bit more time to come up with a design for them. At first I was just going to look through my old artwork and use a cropped thumbnail as an image on each sheet. Then I got the idea to make a banner flag notepad and was just so excited to get home and start working on it. I actually made little banners, photographed them, photoshop-ed them, designed them on the computer, printed them out, cut them down and padded them, all this evening. I want to make tons of them. I’d actually love to get some professionally printed and padded, but I don’t know if they would be successful enough to sell. This is a dilemma I often have. I have the constant passion to design and create, but lack the exposure and/or buying demand for the things I make.

I made four pads all together (two different images, and lined and unlined), just to test the water. I’m so excited to offer them in my Etsy shop, there’s one pad there now. I’ll post more tomorrow.

Day Six - Bunting flags and Camping

Published
by
robayre
on August 13, 2010
in General Update and life
. 1 Comment

It may seem I dropped off the face of the earth with my daily project this month, but I’m still here. I was actually on vacation.

We went camping with some of our best friends. It’s a trip we’ve been talking about taking for YEARS and YEARS. After plenty of research our friend Nikki found a great place for us in Wisconsin to go camping/floating. The idea was that we wanted to find a place that rents giant inner-tubes and then shuttles you to a drop off location and you lazily float back to camp. It was an awesome vacation.

Would you believe that I took 3 cameras, 2 of them being film, and the third digital, and I didn’t take one digital picture the whole trip. So, normally I’d have pictures to show here, but for now, nothing.

Nikki chose perfectly. Our campsite was right on the beach. We drove a bit over 4 hours north to get there but once I saw how close we were to the beach I once again found more support for my whole theory that “Any amount of hard work pays off as long as my feet end up in sand and water.” The first evening, after the long drive, we all stuck our folding chairs in the shallow edge of the sand and sat, drank and chatted with our tootsies in the water. When we woke up the first morning the first thing I did was run straight into the water (about 10-15 steps away from our tent). We took floating trips 4 times, 3 of those being long trips over 2.5 hours in length. It was so much fun to just float along, relaxed, tethered together with great company. Our friends even brought their pooch, Monty, who wore a mini life preserver and was a huge hit with other floaters.

Of course the mosquitoes were out of control, I got crazy grease burns on my legs while cooking on our campfire, we thought our campsite was going to wash away during a crazy thunderstorm during the middle of the night, and despite the sunscreen I still turned quite red. Still, we had a great time, and definitely plan on going back again next year. Hopefully next time the mosquitoes aren’t as bad, but I’m not holding my breath. After all, I think they are the Wisconsin state pest. Within a half hour I killed over 30 mosquitoes in the bathroom and shower alone. FYI, flip flops work wonders as a fly swatter.

Back to creating daily. Before leaving for our trip I created a couple flag garlands (pictured at the top of this post), thinking I would use them to decorate our camp site, but we didn’t have a tree to our site! It was truly a beachy site. So, now I have these buntings that I created. I used this same method as this tutorial of mine from earlier this year. Once I find something fun to do with them, I will share.

I’ll hopefully be back shortly with more projects for the August Challenge.

Daily Challenge for August

Published
by
robayre
on August 1, 2010
in General Update, Projects, goals and life
. 5 Comments

In the wee hours of this morning, Rosa updated her twitter to invite others to create something every day for the month of August. In an email she reminded me of my challenge from last year where I also invited others to create something everyday. Last year during August I created a new piece of mixed media artwork on a 9×9″ piece of watercolor paper everyday (M-F) and had quite a bit of fun in the process. Talking to my best friend on the phone earlier today, she inquired if I was up to the task, and reminded me that I did some nice work last year. I decided, yes, I would try to create something each day in August (M-F). But, this year I think I will do a variety of things. I have a list going of all sorts of things I want to do.

Last month (July) I barely stepped foot into my studio. If you look above at the before you probably can sympathize as to why I couldn’t cross any of my things off my list last month. So, to start the month fresh, with a nice new work space, I’ve cleaned up my drawing table, so I could actually work at it, imagine that! Hopefully with the challenge and the more organized work space I can get the ball rolling again.

Once again, I encourage everyone else to try to create something new every day for the month and share it on your blogs/flickr/twitter/facebook/etc. It need not be a large daily commitment. I’m sure there will be some days in there when I make a pin-back button and call it a day. You might just jot down a quick sketch everyday, or perhaps you have a larger project going and you can share your progress daily. If you decide to participate, please comment and let me know and I’ll share your link.

Thanks for the challenge, Rosa! Here we go!

What have I been up to lately?

Published
by
robayre
on July 23, 2010
in life
. 1 Comment

Recently we went into the city. While killing time at Millennium Park I started spinning and unbeknownst to me my friend Nikki took these pictures of me on rapidfire. I put them together to make another animated gif. This is 3 of 5 on my 2010 list (no. 2).

I haven’t been spending much time in my studio this month. I haven’t been creating at all, which is really weird because it is normally a part of my daily life. I don’t know if it’s because of the messy state of my studio, the overwhelming list of things on my to-do list, the exhaustive nature of summer heat in northern Illinois, how social plans always seem to be in hyper drive over the summer, OR a combination of all of the above.

At any rate, I hope you are having a great summer! Hope I’ll return sooner, rather than later, to share some creative something-or-other.

Currents

Published
by
robayre
on July 3, 2010
in General Update and life
. 1 Comment

I haven’t posted in a while, not for lack of things to share. I have been keeping a looooong list of things I want to write about, but just haven’t for whatever reasons. Inspired by this post, I thought I’d drop in and share my currents.

listening: A playlist on my ipod titled Rad Music. It basically consists of my top rated songs.
eating: Last thing I ate was homemade Tuscana soup.
drinking: Snapple diet green tea
wearing: Red and gray striped pajama bottoms, blue ‘lumberjack punching a grizzly bear’ t-shirt
feeling: Hopeful, and also irritated by the fan blowing those little hairs against my face and making my face itchy.
weather: Warm, but cool enough to have the windows open
wanting: My art studio to be miraculously clean next time I open the door.
needing: I can’t think of anything I need. I’m satiated.
thinking: I have so many things on my list of things to do and I wish I could get them done, but I feel the messy studio is holding me back.
enjoying: the last few days that have been summery, but not so hot I wanted to lock myself up in the closed house, blasting the air conditioning. Sometimes I hate summer for making me sweat just for walking out the door. So, I really enjoy the times when it’s warm, but not hot and the sky is blue speckled with white puffy clouds.
wondering: What next week will bring. I’m excited for possibilities.

Have a great weekend!

Summer of Love

Published
by
robayre
on June 23, 2010
in General Update, My Artwork and life
. 3 Comments

Cover, originally uploaded by robayre.

I signed up for Kara Haupt’s online class “Summer of Love” and then promptly missed the first several days. I swear the class didn’t start until next week, but I decided to sign into the group blog to see if there was any early action. Imagine my shock and sadness when the first post that pops up says “Prompt Day Three”. Argh.
Oh well. So goes my life.

Any way, one of the main projects to make an altered book and all of a sudden I remembered this book I made back in 2007. It was for a huge group swap, where tons of artists were involved. Each person was to make a book and then pass it to the next person on the list, do a page in the next book, then pass it down the line. By the time your book would come back to you it would be filled with other people’s artwork. Cool huh? Yeah, well, it turned out to be not so cool. I made this totally kick ass book, above. I still think it’s awesome and still represents my style, check the grass. Anyway, I sent it to the next person in line, got the next two or three artists books, worked on them and sent them down the line. Turns out the girl after me in line, I think her name was natalie, was a total flake and scammed all of those books and never sent any out. It wasn’t until that point where the person that was behind Natalie was getting worried that she hadn’t received ANY books, when the group realized what was going. Needless to say I lost my own book, but then I felt even worse because I also sent other artist’s books to her as well. Man, that really hurt.

Moral of the story. Don’t be lame and flake out on others.
Also, pay attention to the calendar. I feel sort of like I’m living one of those dreams where it’s finals week and I just realized I forgot to go to class the whole semester.

garden update

Published
by
robayre
on June 18, 2010
in General Update and life
. 0 Comments

Last I updated about my garden I was just watering dirt, waiting for any signs of action below the soil. It seems like forever ago, and while I now have plants, they appear to be quite delayed from what other gardens seem to have going on. A coworker told me about how his tomatoes are taller than he is, and already producing fruit. My tomatoes, in contrast (above in top right corner), are not even one foot tall yet. Given, I did plant from seeds and it was pretty late in the spring. I was at a nursery the other day and see they had potted tomatoes ready to buy that that were way bigger than mine.

This year I have tomatoes, zucchini, cilantro, and mixed greens growing, and I JUST started some pumpkins as well. One thing I learned from last year was fewer was better and to thin out the plants, since I’m doing container gardening. As soon as I did that my plants starting taking off. The zucchini have tons of blossoms AND I was very happy to share my started plants with many people so far.

We’ve been harvesting and using the greens and cilantro for quite a while. Last year I grew all sorts of salad greens and I really couldn’t stand to eat any of it because it was all too bitter. This year I bought greens that said they were heat resistant. Cutting some from the pot and taking a bite I was sad to taste that it still seemed bitter, but I brought it in and thoroughly rinsed it. I don’t know if it is because they are a heat resistant or because of the thorough rinsing, but added to salads they don’t taste bitter at all.

And thanks to the garden we’ve had some delicious salads so far. I’m looking forward to zucchini bread and yummy tomatoes later this summer.

Lessons from Starved Rock

Published
by
robayre
on June 2, 2010
in General Update and life
. 1 Comment

Last weekend my sister and I did a little hiking at Starved Rock State Park. It was hot. I was dripping with sweat. I got bitten by tons of mosquitos. Along the way I remembered and realized a couple lessons.

1. I love being outdoors and in nature BUT I think I’m more of the “let’s find a pretty place and plop ourselves down and soak in all the beauty” type of person, as opposed to a “hiking-keep moving-push on” type person. That makes me sound slothlike. Don’t get me wrong I like exercising and being active just maybe not so much outside, in the summer, when it’s hot, and there are bugs, including ticks.

2. Also, I’ve learned that any amount of hard work pays off as long as it ends with my feet in water and sand.
We were hiking on a path as recommended by a friend, and really, we had no idea what to expect at the end. We were delighted to discover sandy rock/dunes and a sandy stream, running off from a waterfall in the middle of this ginormous and breath-taking canyon.

Yeah, it was pretty sweet. As you can see above, people were enjoying the waterfall and swimming.

I, on the other hand, was content to muck around in the sandy stream.

A special day

Published
by
robayre
on May 26, 2010
in Fun, General Update, My Artwork, goals and life
. 2 Comments

Last week was my sister’s birthday. Happy Birthday Chris! I hope you had a great birthday and will have an AMAZING year ahead! She has always been a supporter of my artwork and is ALWAYS there for me when I need help, or an opinion and guidance.

For her birthday she wanted to go to the Museum of Science and Industry. It was an awesome day. I haven’t been there since I was in elementary school and could have spent a couple days there before reaching everything they have to offer.

Unexpectedly, I was also able to (semi) cross off two items on my To-Do-List for 2010. At the MSI now, your tickets to get in become a “sci-pass” where you can record the activities you participate in and then access them online later. They had a sound booth that was similar to the storycorp idea, where you could go in and interview other people. I went in and recorded a short interview with my sister, which was one part of number 23 on my list.

Number 12 on my to-do list was to get an old-timey picture done. In my mind, that meant REAL old photograph techniques, like daguerreotypes, as mentioned in a few posts ago, rather than some quick digital pics that have been converted to grayscale or sepia tone. That being said…  MSI had a photo studio set up where you can take quick digital old-timey pics in an old car, so we played.

I’m the one in the back with the straw hat on, my sister is next to me and my brother in front of me, and his friend Chad next to him. The portrait woman was cracking up at Chad’s leg sticking out.

I have some art to share, as usual. This was the fourth grass painting in the series. I know I always say it, but it has to be said again. I LOVED this painting. It has a watercolor look to it, but it’s acrylic on canvas. It went to my sister for her birthday. I also made her the brooch in the above picture (orange and aqua at the top right).

I also made her a ring, and then made this one for myself. I used this tutorial  from Makeitdo, that I found through the craft blog.

Three Awesome Things

Published
by
robayre
on May 17, 2010
in Cool Links, goals and life
. 0 Comments

1. Maybe you saw this already, maybe not. I love it and I wish for all adults to have the same positivity.


2. This soul version of a Wilco song.

3. I purchased my first glass marble to start off my collection

I bought it from Lithomancy Glassworks on Etsy and it’s absolutely beautiful. Now, I can cross #1 off my yearly list.

« Older Entries