Category Archive for ‘Projects’ at Inspiration Junkie robayre.com

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Mailart postcards 125-131/365

Published

on July 25, 2011

in Cool Links, Mail Art, My Artwork and Projects

. 8 Comments

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.

Pinterest and a Wooden Mat

Published

robayre

on July 19, 2011

in Projects

. 3 Comments

The other day I came upon the above image and tutorial link on Pinterest and immediately knew I HAD to have one. At first I thought it would be easy enough to just buy a mat and paint it myself, but when I looked up how much it would cost to buy a wooden slatted floor mat, $$$, building one from scratch became more attractive. The instructions seemed pretty simple so this weekend my sister, mom and I started working on making 3.

As I joked to my dad, the tutorial was online, but I must not have read it too closely because I missed the first few steps where it must have read “listen to your mom and sister bicker at Lowe’s” and “Rearrange your brother’s garage to access the table saw.” All the same, the three of us put together a pretty decent assembly line.

We cut down 18 large pieces of 2×2, but only had enough daylight and strength to finish the first mat. Here is a picture of me and my sister proudly standing on our first creation. As much as I love the colors in the first one, I think I’ve decided that what I’m going to do is go with a simple stain, and then when I want to change it up, I can paint it a color and then maybe later, paint it a different way.

Down And Out Chic

Published

robayre

on July 18, 2011

in General Update, Projects and life

. 2 Comments

Earlier this year Claire of Bicoastally tipped me off to a project by Christina of Down and Out Chic to redesign a foster care room. I offered to donate a piece to decorate the room and was thrilled that Christina was already familiar with my Etsy shop. She selected a yellow framed yoyo quilt mini.

Christina did such a beautiful job. It was a selfless undertaking where she was given $150 to redo the whole room, and fortunately, so many people and companies offered to help. Donations were made from the art, to the paint on the walls, but most valuable was the donation of Christina’s time, vision and talent, because none of it would have come together without her. The room is meant for parents to meet and spend time with their own children that are in the foster care program. You can see the before pictures and it wasn’t a very comforting or warm space.

To Christina’s redecoration below:

and if you know anything about me, I’m gaga over the chalkboard paint wall. Brilliant! So, please check out her final post about the completed space with plenty more before and after pictures.

A Week’s Worth of Undies

Published

robayre

on July 15, 2011

in Cool Links and Projects

. 0 Comments

Follow my blog with Bloglovin

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?”

old photographs, ephemera and mailart 97-103/365

Published

robayre

on July 12, 2011

in Cool Links, Mail Art, My Artwork and Projects

. 2 Comments

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

Mailart 365, cards 90-96

Published

robayre

on July 11, 2011

in Mail Art and Projects

. 0 Comments

Okay, here we are, day one of the catch up. This is where I would normally post the cards and the theme of the text on the back, but right now I’m so far behind, I’m just focusing on the mailart pieces themselves. The backs haven’t even been addressed or written on yet. I’ll tackle that hurdle once I’m caught up.

card 90/365

card 91/365

card 92/365

card 93/365

card 94/365

card 95/365

card 96/365

A week behind

Published

robayre

on May 14, 2011

in Mail Art, My Artwork and Projects

. 3 Comments

My mom is retiring from teaching 8th grade English this year. The last several weeks my sister, brother, my mom’s coworker and I have put in a lot of time working on a surprise video for her retirement. Last night was the school district’s retirement program where they honor all the retiring teachers and our video was shown. It was great and the video had an excellent reaction from the crowd; some awes, some laughs and apparently even a few tears as we were told later. I’m excited for my Mom. I definitely inherited her love of making and creating and now in her retirement she will have a wealth of time to get at all those projects she’s had to put on the back burner. Both of my parents were DIY before DIY was DIY.

At any rate, all of this is to explain, or give excuse to the fact that I’m a week behind in my mailart365 project. I know you probably don’t care, but it is weighing very heavily on my conscience. I realize that all it takes is a week to fall behind, which then turns to two weeks, and next thing I know it spirals out of control until I feel so overwhelmed that I throw the towel in on the whole project. I’m just worried that this summer is going to be one of those where every single weekend is spoken for weeks in advance and I have no free time. I don’t want that to happen, so this is my plea. Please Life, stop throwing things at me. I’m only one person with precious time and I already work a full time job. Please, and thank you!

So, now onto another round of little mailart books. Have I mentioned how much I LOVE these books. I’ve already received thanks for a few of the books I sent out and I’m thrilled.

To read more about the concept behind the books, see this post. The above picture is the collection’s front, sealed and ready to be dropped in the mail. Below are the books open and without mailing addresses, to protect the recipients from ruined surprises.

The grass area is pencil and watercolor and the binding has fabric over it.

The background image is a picture I took of a framed yoyo set I made in all white fabric. The “OK” is chalkboard paint with white pastel and spray fixed. Which reminds me, yesterday I had another piece complete and I went to spray fix it and accidentally grabbed the adhesive spray. The piece was ruined, so I had to scrap it and start over. Yeah, I’m the genius who keeps her spray fixative (2 cans) next to her spray adhesive (2 cans). It’s a surprise this hasn’t happened sooner.

This background image was a camera phone picture I took of our lawn before the first mow this season. The grass drawings over it are done in gesso, pencil and watercolor and the green plaid is fabric.

the zigzag pattern bit is the only paper that I designed on this book. The rest is just little scraps from my paper hoard.

More chalkboard paint with fixative. The zebra is from the packaging of our copy paper at work.

I was going for a quilt like pattern on this piece.

Vintage map, gesso, collage and pencil.

And once again, all the pieces have been matte varnished to protect them against wear and tear through the mail.

Mailart for the last week of April

Published

robayre

on April 30, 2011

in General Update, Mail Art, My Artwork and Projects

. 10 Comments

Instead of my standard postcards, I’ve come up with a new idea for some mailart365 project pieces. It started out when my best friend showed me a moleskine app she had on her iphone. Unfortunately, she has a newer phone and mine won’t let me download it. No harm because it got me thinking of the moleskine cahiers that I love so much.

I’ve been making my own little cahiers for quite a while now, and this whole thing spurred the idea to make some more but then turn them into mailart.

I’ll send them directly through the mail, where the addresses, and postage are stuck right on the cover. Each book is 4.25″x5.5″ closed. I collaged on some pressed board, and then coated them with a sealer.

These are the open faced covers. I stuck a rubberband inside each book so the owner can keep them closed like in the picture at the top. I haven’t yet put the recipients address on them in these pictures, so that I could share them.

I thought it would be a cool collaboration of sorts. My artwork is on the cover and the recipient can fill the blank pages inside with their own words or artwork. I think it will be cool with the cancelled stamps.

It’ll be a crapshoot to see if it makes it through the mail or not.

We print and mail booklets all the time at work, but those are through bulk mail and these are obviously not bulk. I’ve seen pictures of a banana and toast with postage and addresses being sent through the mail successfully, so I think it’s a good bet they will make it to their destinations.

I made wafer stickers to put on the edges to keep them closed through the mail. You can see that below.

I really love these books and this idea. I think it would be so much fun, and so unexpected to receive a little blank book in the mail. I hope the recipients like them and use them. I can’t wait to make some more.

Also, I wanted to thank you for the commiseration, tips on other sites and terms to search for regarding the Ikea frames in the last post. I’m a bit more hopeful that I will find a suitable and thrifty replacement. I did hear back from Ikea officially, and it was pretty much the same thing the employee at a nearby store told me, the frames have been discontinued and that “IKEA products are not discontinued based on sales or consumer demand, but on product availability.” Bummer. Those frames were only $7 or $8, and other frames I’ve seen are closer to the $30 range. Ouch.

Antique Shopping and Penny Rug

Published

robayre

on April 19, 2011

in Cool Links, Fun, General Update, Projects, fiber and life

. 6 Comments

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

a storybook life

penny rugs and more

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.

Weekly Dump

Published

robayre

on April 16, 2011

in My Artwork and Projects

. 1 Comment

I was super busy and stressed this week. By Thursday I was pretty panicked that I didn’t have any postcards done for the following week yet, AND I had no ideas for pieces to make. Then I remembered how I have a huge stack of old cards in various states of completion. Some of these cards are years old, but I never sent out. I’m so glad for them, then all I had to do was write on the backs and send them out. Now, I think I need to start tons of new cards to have a cache like this for weeks exactly like this.

If you missed it, don’t forget to check out this post for a free giveaway! To enter, all you have to do is like my facebook page :)

Postcard 41/365 Things I’d love to carry with me everywhere

Postcard 42/365 Favorite online searches to buy things

Postcard 43/365 Things in my studio

Postcard 44/365 Things I’d like to grow in my garden this summer

Postcard 45/365 Superhero powers I wish I had

Postcard 46/365 Things I make and sell on Etsy

Postcard 47/365 Things to do when it’s raining outside