Here is the second installment of Art-o-mat paintings, 11-20.
And if you are interested in reading the previous posts:
Archive for the 'Projects' Category
I’m participating in the 100 Day Project again this year, after sitting out last year. I’m doing a similar theme asto what I did 3 years ago, and trying to finish up a lot of big projects that I’ve had in progress for a long time. It’s been about 20 days and I’m still feeling very excited and energized. The first major thing checked off my list was wrapping up Pattern January, which I let drag out for almost 4 months. I also finally ordered fabric samples from Spoonflower with my original designs, which was a BIG part of the 100 Day Project for me 2 years ago, but that I never actually finished. I also want to post more to my blog, AND give it a facelift, but more on those things soon.
In the meantime, I need to catch up on sharing my current Art-o-mat series, as promised a few posts back. Here are the first 10 of 50 acrylic paintings, made on handbuilt and stretched tiny canvases. When I started this (my third Art-o-mat series) I really wanted to go super fast and explore all sorts of things and try different ideas to hopefully develop as an artist. In the end I went through a handful of purely experimental pieces, but with 3 solid mini series/styles (grass quote paintings, blades of grass, and paintings of collages made from my own designed and decorated papers (gelatin prints made from handcut paper stencils).
And after I finished all my paintings I had the idea of taking a picture of each piece with a different and unique background.
Thank you for reading! Here is the introduction post for this series.
If you are interested in seeing the paintings from my previous 2 Art-o-mat series, you can click through the Flickr collection and albums here
I’ve been in a funk for the last couple days, and the fog has lifted! I’m adding things to my t0-do lists and feeling pulled in so many directions. When updating my list I accidentally crossed off that I had already posted about sending out my third Art-o-mat series, so here I am making it right.
When I started my third series I fully intended for it to be a very fast series. My first series was mostly paintings based on images that caught my eye, the second series was paintings based on collages I made. The third series started at the beginning of a new year and I decided that I was just going to explore and paint random things that came to me at the time, and hopefully it would help me grow as an artist quickly. I even aimed to send out multiple series in one year! Years and years later I finally wrapped up 50 paintings with a few smaller series included (grass quote paintings, grass profile paintings, and paintings based on collages from my gelatin printing).
If it hadn’t taken long enough to build each mini canvas, and then paint each piece, once I was done then I started out on a whole new set of obstacles including photographing each piece with a unique background. For almost a year I carried a bag of a few paintings around with me everywhere I went, looking for the best opportunity to chronicle each piece. THEN, once that was done I photographed each piece again, and the collection and mini collections and then needed to design the packaging and insert for the series. Then package it all up, and make sure they fit the requirements. To say I dragged the whole process out is an understatement.
Each series needs to be at least 50 pieces, and Art-0-mat may send 5-10 pieces to different machines and they can sell rather fast. I won’t know where my artwork sold until I get my coveted little green card. Machine owners can request artists and Art-o-mat will try and fulfill those requests as they can. I’m soooo looking forward to seeing where my pieces sold. I also have a new series that I want to work on already.
I’ve been sharing each painting down one column of my instagram feed, and I’m crossing my finger that maybe a buyer or two will spy the artwork they purchased and leave a comment. I think I’ll share a post for each 10 paintings. Meanwhile, feel free to check it out on instagram and follow me over there.
Also, feel free to click over to Flickr to look through all three of my previous Art-o-mat series.
In August I got it in my head to make a little art book filled with Circle Series pieces. I hadn’t done any Circle Series pieces for a while, so I thought I’d do some mini ones to get the ball rolling. When I started making Circle Series pieces over 10 years ago, it was meant to be very loose and free, but as more and more pieces have been made, I started to be more intimidated that they had to be perfect, which was the direct opposite of the original intention. Working in a small size would hopefully be less intimidating and I could combine it with another love, small art books.
I went to my studio and grabbed a piece of watercolor paper, cut it and folded so each page was a square, accordion style. The pages are 4″ and I think I just jumped right in without any expectations and somehow it ended up in a blue theme, which is not a direction I would have purposefully gone in. I’m just not normally drawn to blue. Greens, reds, yellows, yes, but not blue.
This piece was definitely inspired by my stencil stacks, which have been creeping more and more into my work.
This piece was definitely a nod to how my circle series pieces first began.
I had been cutting from a stack of 60s men’s magazines a lot at the time
and I was working on practicing my embroidery stitches at the time
I saved this one for last, as I had a general idea of what I wanted to do
Here’s a little video, to show it in action and give you an idea of size.
Day 11 – Rhymes with itten. I still want to add color to this pattern
Day 12 – Ogee. See more process images on instagram
Day 13 – Make up. I made circles in a “makeup” color palette and then drew a few patterns over them.
Day 14 – Tropical. This is my favorite pattern from the whole month. It was a very time consuming watercolor piece, much larger than showed here, but I think it was worth it.
Day 15 – Circle or Cube? I immediately thought of Q-Bert
Day 16 – Antique. This piece was inspired by the tiny fabric patterns from the 30s. While I was working I decided to try only half with the additional dots and leave half plain, because I rather liked the plain, but once I scanned it, I liked the more detailed part of the pattern after all.
Day 17 – Instrument. Another favorite. A wax paper comb. I drew the combs in Paper by 53 and then added the wax paper and music notes in photoshop.
Day 18 – Stay Warm. Watercolor illustration and then assembled at the desktop in photoshop
Day 19 – Chevron. This was my least favorite pattern from the month, mostly because I’m tired of chevron pattern.
Day 20 – Favorite Food. Illustrated in pencil and watercolor with added cheeky comments
There will be one more post coming to wrap up Pattern January
A friend inquired yesterday about how to make one of the kusudama balls that Matt and I make each year for Christmas ornaments. I realized I never shared the ornament we made for Christmas 2017.
I thought I’d pop in again to share the ornament and some quick tips that might help make your ornament go smoother. We’ve done it now for 10 years! Only 7 actually fit on the tree, because I kept having to relearn the same mistake for the first 3 years. That brings me to tip #1.
#1 Start with 3″ square papers for a 6″ diameter ball.
Unlike origami where you start with one piece of big paper and it folds down to a tiny size, the finished kusudama ball will actually be roughly twice the size of one square paper that you start with. The first year we probably used a 6″ square and ended up with a foot wide “ornament” that is really just table decoration now. The next year, trying to learn from my mistake, I think I referenced the instructions again and made 5″ squares, still not small enough. The third year, I thought I was going smaller yet, and still did a 5″ piece, both of these ended up being 10″ balls that are also too big to fit on a tree, and sit alongside the gigantic one for holiday decorations.
#2. Origami paper is not preferable for a long term keepsake kusudama ball.
We’ve done a few in origami paper and after a few years of storage and use in between, the corners have all gotten mangled. The paper is just too thin and flimsy. In previous years, we have used recycled magazines, origami and wrapping paper. Christmas 2016 was the first year that it occurred to me to use a paper I decorated myself. I picked a color scheme and used regular office paper with gelatin prints on the front and back. I use basic, cheap craft paint ($1-$2 a bottle) on my gelli plate and the added layers made the paper firm, but not too heavy to fold, or the ornament too heavy to hang from a branch of the Christmas tree.
3. It takes a lot longer to make one than you might think
You fold down and glue 60 squares of paper, into 12 flowers with 5 petals each.
I remember the very first ornament we made, I started out thinking if it went quickly enough, maybe we could decorate a whole tree with these handmade ornaments! That was a joke. One, because we made it TOO BIG, and Two, because the paper was so big, it took us way longer to fold and glue Three Since it was our first time doing it, we were learning as we went, and we had to reference the tutorial a lot and that added time and Four, we used white craft glue like the instructions said. Now, we have it down to a science, don’t need to reference the tutorial, and can pump it out in an efficient manner. Still, it takes the two of us working continually about an hour to make an ornament (just the folding and gluing, not including the printing of paper and cutting it down to size, etc.). It takes 2 hours for just me to make one. 10 years later, we have 10 ornaments (7 that actually fit on the tree) and I like having one for every year as a mark of our tradition.
4. Use a hot glue gun
The tutorial we originally referenced instructs you to use white glue. Um, no. That will easily triple or quadruple your assembly time and will result in a lower quality finished piece, with a shorter life span. I also tried a double sided sticky tape (like a tape runner), also a no! Every year when I take them out again I have to kind of “fix” the original 3 (white glue and tape runner) and that means gluing them back together again because these adhesives start coming apart over time. We now use a glue gun and it goes SO FAST and the pieces have stayed together marvelously. You have to know how to use a hot glue gun, be safe and efficient. There’s no take back if you glue something together wrong and you want to get the pieces together with fairly good precision. That being said, Matt glued this year and maybe last year’s pieces together, while I folded. If you look at our pieces you can see the meeting point tips aren’t perfect, but off much more and things might not meet together to glue.
5. Make sure you work space is clean
There’s nothing worse than soiling a piece you’ve invested a lot of time on.
Here are all of my previous kusudama posts, so you can see the other ornaments we’ve made, individually as well as in the collection.
The original tutorial we referenced has changed, and is now asking for donations and that people don’t share or direct people to the instructions? (how will people be able to donate if you get no traffic), but I’m sure there are tons of other instructions out there by simply googling it.
If you make one and share it to your blog, I’d love to check out the link. Thank you!
January 2018 was my third year participating in Anika Starmer (aisforanika)’s #PatternJanuary project. Anika shared the following list of 31 prompts for the month and participants make patterns.
I’d like to share the patterns I made in 3 posts and I’ll try to keep the commentary on each to a minimum.
Day 1, Pop. I made this cute and quick theme digitally, a combination of the Paper app, as well as photoshop on the desktop, and used my hand lettered font.
Day 2 – Ultraviolet. 2018’s Pantone color of the year. If you click over to this instagram post, you can read more (and slide through more images) to learn more about the development of this pattern, including referencing old images in my flickr archives.
Day 3 – Aquarium. This piece was inspired by the Wilco song I am Trying to Break Your Heart, AND the Heather Ross goldfish patterns. Once again, you can visit the instagram post to sroll through more progress images and inspiration pics.
Day 4 – recipe. For this pattern I ended up using some elements from a pattern from last year, added new and created a recipe card. See Instagram to see a flip video of the recipe card in action.
Day 5 – Tourist. I thought of Hawaiian shirts and made my own Hawaiian pattern. See Instagram to see progress pictures and the most adorable dress made from this pattern.
Day 6 – Shoes. I referenced a picture I had taken of a bunch of Chuck’s and made this pattern. You can see that reference picture and progress shots at instagram.
Day 7 – Plant Lady. This piece is a work in progress. I have actually made more plant patterns and so I need to scan and put them together still.
Day 8 – Winter. I’m sad to think this was actually my only pattern all month that was made from cut paper stencils.
Day 9 – Spirit Animal. I drew a Bison, scanned it and added watercolor. I would like to adjust this, but we will see.
Day 10 – craft. What says craft more than the variable plethora of adhesives. I made quick sketches of a few from my collection.
I’l be back with the next 10 patterns shortly.
I’m doing the 100 day project again this year. Last year during the project I focused on finishing up a lot of already started stationery projects and getting them listed in my shop. Here is a link to 2016’s 100 days. It kept me very productive and I enjoyed being part of the community of other creative and prolific makers, so naturally I’m going to participate again.
This year for the 100 days project (starting on April 4th, 2017), I am focusing on getting already existing work (especially patterns) up on POD (Print on Demand sites). Last year I closely followed and was SO INSPIRED by my friend Julie’s posts about artist’s making passive income. I’ve had a Society6 shop (where I upload images and customers can get art prints, or products with my images printed on them)for years, but it is pretty neglected. I also want to finally get some of the patterns I designed printed onto fabric using Spoonflower. I’ve had an account with Spoonflower since they first opened up and I had to be put on a waiting list and be invited to join. And then… nothing. I NEVER actually printed anything. Fast forward to present day and I am using the 100 Day Project to remedy this quandary. I have 2 kind of selfish goals 1. to get a cell phone case of my own artwork for my own phone and 2. order fabric of my own artwork to sew a bunch of things.
On the first day I posted this over on Instagram: I’m laying down some groundwork to help me stick it out. 1. My main focus will be to get my work ready and up on POD sites. I’ve had a society6 shop for years but have not kept it up at all, and I want to finally get a lot of my favorite patterns up on spoonflower, and explore other options as well. 2. If it takes longer than 100 days, so be it 3. If I want to switch up focus on things for a while, so be it. 4. If I only work on something for 15 minutes a day, so be it. 5. Most importantly I want to work on something creative and productive each day. 6. I’m gonna stick with my general #robayre100days hashtag. Here we go!
I immediately dove in and worked on this vintage mail pattern. Cleaning it up, making it a repeatable pattern, etc. 
I made it with 4 different backgrounds, pink, blue, gray and white and uploaded it to Spoonflower.
While I had it so close, I figured I might as well set it up as a digital (printable) pdf stationery set and painted a striped watercolor piece in the style of many of my other stationery sets, and uploaded it to etsy.
Next I wanted to work on my barn quilts pattern but before I got too far I realized I should have taken the vintage mail pattern and uploaded it to Society6. That opened a whole new can of worms because it had been so long since I had really dealt with Society6, that I had some learning curves. One thing that was GREAT to discover, was that if you upload original art files that are HUGE, it will enable other products immediately. Before, I had to customize each image to fit very specific dimensions for a mug vs. a cell phone case. Now, I can just re-position things on their website.
Another thing that is pretty great is that since I first opened my society6 shop, they have gone from offering art prints, mugs and cell phone cases, to a huge variety of additional products like towels, rugs, shower curtains, zipper pouches and more. For the next several days I just worked on adjusting the existing 24 patterns I already offered and enabling more products on those, like this handspun yarn, which was the very first pattern I uploaded there and my most popular product so far. I’ve uploaded a few more patterns now and am still doing research. One thing that was shared with me, and was very insightful was a Free Skillshare class on passive income, by top Society6 seller CatCoq, (you just have to create an account and log in to watch). Incidentally, Cat was also interviewed by Julie (mentioned above) in her passive income artist’s interview series. So, that’s where I am now with my 100 Day Project. And if that wasn’t enough, I also committed to participating in the #30Letters30Days project as well.
AND! Tomorrow (Thursday, the 20th) I am participating in a virtual book tour for Emily Neuburger‘s new book “Journal Sparks“. Check back here, and/or instagram and facebook for a peek into a project from the book and a chance to win your own copy.
Day 21 Folk Art – I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE this one. This is probably my favorite from the whole month. Last year the barn quilt author and artist Suzi Parron came to speak at my mom’s quilt guild, and then we did a workshop with her as well, where we got to make our own barn quilts. My mom has been obsessed for years and it was so interesting to learn about them. The most fascinating thing being that they are a brand new art, as in this century! Don’t they seem like something that should have been around in Amish country for hundreds of years? This pattern is going to be made into a fabric, for sure!
Day 22 Bicycle – This pattern was kind of a cheat, in that I made it years and years ago, but I don’t think I ever shared it fully. Maybe I posted a pic of a bike or two, but never the full thing. I have even made little pinback buttons of the bike illustrations pictured here. I penciled in the bikes, then inked them, then painted very wet and loose watercolor around them. In case you don’t know, I love bikes. My own bicycle in particular, and if you haven’t heard it before, I have bought my same bike FOUR times because I love it so much!
Day 23 Pomegranate – When I think of pomegranates I think of my mom and how she seems to take pleasure it preparing a pomegranate. She’ll prepare everything, gathering the fruit, a bowl, a knife and towel, opening it up and peeling it and filling a bowl full of the juicy gem like fruit pebbles. I also think about how much I love pomegranate too, but have way less patience and thus end up buying Pom juice in the fun shaped bottles for a rare treat. This pattern is a nod to the fruit and the juice in an abstract form, in a little art book.
Day 24 Rain– If I remember correctly, I had a different plan for rain, but it didn’t really pan out, so last minute I just did this with my Aquash water brush pen, and navy blue watercolor, and finished it off with splatter, and voila. It’s one of those patterns, that I wish they all could all be so quick and easy-peasy.
Day 25 Black and White – Last year I won a set of Gelli Arts mini shaped plates, and this rectangle one was my absolute favorite. I decided to make a pattern using just black on white paper, with my hand cut paper stencils.
Day 26 Turquoise – I was trying to go for that silver and turquoise ring thing. Turned out more meh than I had hoped for.
Day 27 String – I thought of this picture of handspun yarn I made years and years ago from fiber I dyed with koolaid. This also turned out more meh than I had hoped for. 
Day 28 Floral– Floral is another one of those pattern themes that I would love to explore, more, more, more and more of! This was just a quick pattern that I imagine being reproduced on fabric, but in a way that is reduced so the pattern is fairly tiny.
Day 29 Kaleidoscope– This pattern started out from the picture on the bottom, and then I assembled into kaleidoscope circles on the top on the computer. It came out way more busy than I had envisioned. That is funny because I restarted once when I deemed the first pile of collage papers to be too plain and basic.
Day 30 Plaid – Last year I had the idea of making a greeting card for Christmas with “buffalo plaid” that I would make from loose watercolors. I never got around to it, so this theme let me finally make that pattern that I wanted to do.
Day 31 Fruit Salad – I’m pretty opinionated on my fruit salads. There are few things worse than ordering a fruit salad at a restaurant and when it arrives it is just cantelope, honeydew and a grape. That is NOT a fruit salad. Fruit salad needs to have a LOT of variety. I built this sketchy fruit salad pattern on the computer and I rather liked how it came out.
And here the full collection. At the end Anika asked people to answer a questionaire on how the month went:
- 1. My favorite pattern – the barns/barnquilts for the Folk Art theme for the detail and subject matter being close to my heart.
- 2. Favorite prompts – swan, home, and floral. These are prompts that made me overflow with ideas and I want to go back to them and do more, more, more. The swan and floral themes were ones in particular that I already had plans for in my head prior to starting patternjanuary.
- 3. Biggest challenge – sleep. It’s something that I struggle with regularly anyway. My natural sleep habits would have me up late because I’m most productive and creative late at night, but I have to work at 6 a.m. Last year I finally stopped fighting it and started going to bed around 9 p.m. but the week before January I was on vacation so I slept like I wanted, meaning up late. Then working on patterns, wanting to do them justice, I ended up staying up late furthering the bad sleep pattern. I have been surviving on little sleep for the month (and being late to work more often than not, as well 😱)
- 4. Most frustrating moment – had to be the times that I allowed myself to fall behind schedule because I was so overwhelmed by the prompts that I really wanted to do amazing stuff. I still haven’t finished the dollhouse pattern.
- 5. Most popular pattern – rain. Funny because it was one of the simplest and quickest patterns I made after my first idea flopped. But I have to say that almost all of my patterns this month out perform my average posts. Thank you everyone, for the support!
- 6. Biggest surprise – citrus. It felt like the biggest dud, especially since I was feeling so rusty AND because the picture of it was taken at night, but it got so many likes and comments.
- 7. Proudest moments – being featured on other accounts and people reaching out to me about future projects due to these patterns ❤
- 8. Patterns I want to redo – almost all of them need additional work, and as stated above the dollhouse one was never completed, and I want to do additional swan, house and floral patterns, but as for completely redoing, there aren’t any I’d scratch and start over.
- 9. Goals for next time – maybe stick within one medium? My pieces were all over the place from digital and hand drawn, to watercolor, and collage. Although I do think that allowing myself to mix it up helped me to stick it out. I worry that if I limited myself to one medium that I might get bored and throw in the towel. I just thought of another goal and that would be inspired by @jessee_artschooldropout who made her patterns, finalized them and then uploaded them to spoonflower all in one go. That is amazing.
- 10. Plans for February – catch up on all the things I neglected during January. I have so many things that I need to do that I’m a little overwhelmed where to begin. But number one should be to clean off my work table so I can get back to serious work
Back for part 4 of my 100 day project. First part, Second part, Third part
Another one of my goals for the 100 day project was to get my etsy shop back up over 100 listed items. In my shop’s glory years (when I averaged a handful of sales a week over several years) I had around 100 items listed in my shop at any time. When I let things slide I realized I had gotten down to less than half that. I’ve been working steadily at bringing it back up again and I think I was around 80 items when the 100 day project began. I did get up to 100 items, but with sales and items expiring, it has dipped below and comes back up again. Now I’ve realized that I really need to get it closer to 110 or so to stay above 100.
This is a little out order, this was my post for day 100. When we bought our house there was a whole wall with pegboard in our basement and one day when I was down there I had the idea of hanging up some of my stationery sets to get a group shot. The lighting is not so great down there, but this was fun to put together. It’s really satisfying to see the collection.
This project was long overdue! Last Christmas my nephew (5 at the time) wanted stationery because he has a couple of pen pals. I designed this “adventure” set for him.
I painted the headers in watercolor, based on things I thought would interest him, dinosaurs, space and treasure maps. When I gave it to him at Christmas, I just printed a few sheets of each and gave them to him loosely. My intention was always to have them in a large notepad for better stability when a little kid is writing in it, so I did just that for the 100 day project. I finally made it into a notepad. 1 single notepad, for my nephew. The bottoms are lined for littles who are learning to write, and the pages alternate with illustrated headers and fully lined sheets. I’d love to design a companion set, and I would love to offer these in my shop, but they would really need to be printed commercially because it takes a lot of time printing and assembling, since each header is significantly larger than the types of headers I print on my regular stationery sets.
I painted some large watercolor patterns to use as additional backgrounds for taking product pictures over. A few years ago I drew out a large scribbly grid in a graph paper style and have been using it a lot. I wanted to make a few others so I’d have some variety.
I made these checkered watercolors above and a black and white stripe in watercolor too, but I still end up using the old grid one mostly anyway. I think they are too busy and too colorful/saturated. Oh well.
A simple lined stationery paper set with the tiny posie theme
I made it using elements from my tiny posie pattern I amade during patternswithanika earlier in the year. This set is available in my shop here.
Inspired by flags during a battle scene on Game of Thrones, I decided to make a notepad. I painted a few of these flag posts before settling on one I liked.
And tested it out to see if I’d be able to write my own messages over the printed black. Success!
For fun I cut down a few of the headers and made them into stickers, where the gel pen was printed on the protective coating, so it can be wiped away and changed as needed.
And the final notepad, which was printed on a natural speckled paper. These notepads are available in my shop. LOVE how it came out. It’s rare that I am inspired and then able to start working on something immediately. That helps so much! I need to make a bar graph that shows how the likeliness of a project coming to fruition declines rapidly as time passes.
Another goal I had for the 100 day project was to update some photos from some classic oldies from my shop, like my recycled envelope stationery sets. They used to be a top seller and I had a lot of returning customers for just this product, but when I let my shop slide they kind of got forgotten about. I still love the product, but I think I need to breathe new life into the listings.
I made a bunch of new envelopes to replenish my stock. I use an old shoe box (as pictured above) to sort and categorize the envelopes. It helps when assembling them, so I know each pack gets a good variety.
And here was an attempt to take a new product picture. One thing people have told me before on a number of occasions is that they don’t understand or know what this product is, and even though I love this picture, I don’t think it helps clarify that. I detail what the product is exactly in the listing, but I think most people look at the picture and decide from there if they are interested or not, and so many may not even get to the details of the listing. Maybe the craziness of this pic would make people click just to find out exactly what is going on? I just don’t know how to photograph this product in a way that makes sense, because all the envelopes are different and the stationery designs are a variety as well. If anyone has any suggestions, I’d love to hear it. Another item on my list for the 100 days (but that I never got to) was of a video that would show what the sets are like.
Looks like I will be back with one last post to wrap things up. Catch up on the previous posts here:
First part, Second part, Third part
