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
I’m trying to play catch up. I’m three weeks behind in sharing mailart365 postcards. The top two are brand new, but the ones below that are all postcards I made years ago but never sent out until now.
Postcard No. 71/365 - The list on the back “Patterns”
Postcard No. 75/365 - Things I can see outside my window
Postcard No. 69/365 - Things I can see on my work table
Postcard No. 70/365 - Things I’ve done in the last 24 hours
Postcard No. 72/365 - A few things about myself
Postcard No. 74/365 -Things I do every day
Postcard No. 73/365 - 10 Great Movies
I have no skill at titling posts. This reminds me of a newspaper I design at work. The customer never provides headlines. They send the articles without heads and I guess I’m just expected to throw something together. ugh. I’m a designer, not a writer folks, this is not a smart move. I usually just throw something together with the general topic of the article, but I always hope they will see how lousy the heads are and start providing them.
Speaking of heads. I finally put up my new banner on my blog, etsy and twitter. And, wouldn’t you know, as soon as I did, I wanted to change it to something entirely different. I thought I was going to have a meltdown. But, I’ve just decided to let it go, and not worry, be happy. It’s good enough. The most important change wasn’t really even the header so much, as making the background all white. I had a gradient gray color there before and it was claustrophobic to my posts. I wanted the blog to be like a gallery with white walls, so my artwork is the focus. I’m excited to”publish” this post and see it in action.
I didn’t have a chance to post my mailart yesterday because I actually had to go to work. Imagine that, a 5 day work week! And I was busy, busy, busy. Things have been picking up at work and while having 4 day work weeks has been a dream come true, I would also LOVE to get back to work fully and start making what I used to make on my pay checks. We’ll see how it goes.
So, without further delay, I present you with this weeks mail dump. And once again, just a reminder I’m writing a list on the back of each postcard that I send, so that is the text that appears under each card.
card 13/365 Bad Things I did as a kid
card 14/365 10 great movies
card 15/354 Things I’m looking for in my dream home
card 16/365 What I would do if I won a million dollars
I think I like this one most, for some reason :) Normally I’m a green person, but this yellow card kept grabbing my attention.
card 17/365 Times I’ve had an audience
card 18/365 Favorite places in my hometown
card 19/365 Things I’d rather do than go to work
Today was extraordinarily busy. It wasn’t until after dinner that I remembered that it was actually Friday and I still had to do a thing for today. I was exhausted from running around and was regretting that I would have to resort to just pressing a one inch pinback button for my thing. Even that small project seemed daunting in my tired state. Then I remembered a small handful of lathed wooden pill boxes that I bought at a garage sale.
Immediately I was inspired and filled with energy to create. The original and unfinished box is pictured above. Actually it probably had been stained, but I painted it white, cut a piece of felt for the inside and created the collage/mixed media piece to go on the lid. I plan on giving it a glossy resin coat over the image when I have enough pieces to make mixing the resin worth it. I bought a bunch of these small boxes so you will probably be seeing more.
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Completely unrelated, check out this tutorial on Design Sponge for making a beautiful chandelier. I think I’ve admired similar ones in stores before, but now I think I must create one for myself.
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Have a good weekend!
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!
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.
There are many things I really enjoy about Google Reader and one of them is being able to bookmark posts by “liking” and “sharing” them. I’m posting today to share a few things I’ve collected over time in my google reader. I’d love to turn this into a weekly post, but I’m not going to promise, since regular posts on my blog never end up being very regular. Pre-twitter these are things I would have shared here, but now I post them on twitter and forget about posting them here as well, and I miss that.
This cartoon is sweet and a pretty common theme to my life since becoming an adult.
I discovered this project (Ring A Day 2010) earlier this year when I was participating in 2010 Thing A Day. I love rings, but only creative and artistic pieces, meaning I basically loathe your typical jewelry store jewelry, ugh. It’s been a long time since I’ve been serious about metalwork, but a project like this makes me miss that time when I had more focus on just one area of art at a time.
Speaking of awesome rings, here is one that looks like a tree stump (scroll down below ads to see it).
I love this post on art zines at Doodlers Anonymous.
Here is an awesome project, as I’m obsessed with all types of vending machines. It’s a Doodle vending machine, also from Doodlers Anonymous. It reminds me of the postcard machine from Renegade that I wrote about years back.
And wait, while we are talking about my obsession with vending machines I might as well mention how I’ve long wanted to buy my very own coin machine. I think it stems from my obsession as a child to get things from gumball machines. Heck, it was the only reason I’d go with my mom to the store, so that I could beg for a quarter. For years I’ve had a machine bookmarked to buy. I promise myself it’s one of the items I’ll buy when I have my credit card paid off, which will be very soon, wooot! Anyway, earlier this year I discovered the Itty Bitty Art Committee (which just about blew my mind because I am also obsessed with little art). I read how they bought a little coin slot machine to vend tiny lucky origami paper cranes. This reminded me of a vending machine I saw at the Renegade one year where an artist was vending mini silk screen (or were they relief) prints from a gumball machine. And naturally, there is Artomat, which I occasionally contribute to, which vends original artwork through old revamped cigarette machines.
okay, one last link:
Crustless Quiche in a Cup! Yum, I love quiche.
Okay, that’s all for now, but I have tons more to share, so hopefully I’ll be back next week with more.
Here is my second animated gif for number 2 on my to-do list. Here’s number one from earlier this year. This time I made it bigger so you can actually see what’s going on.
Last week I was walking from my car to our house when I saw the brightest yellow finch. It’s been so long since I’ve seen one, I thought it was an escaped pet bird at first. The very next day I was at a BBQ birthday party and saw the boldest Indigo Bunting. It kept flying up to the bird feeder just a few feet away from us. THEN the very next day I was on a bike ride and a bright red Cardinal swooped right in front of me. I view brightly colored birds as a sign, and remembered this mail art piece I made and decided to list it for sale in my Etsy shop.
I recently discovered the coolest (new-to-me) artist through flickr. Alyn Carlson is a very talented artist, graphic designer and actress. She makes the most wonderful art hats, and they can be found in her Etsy shop here. I love how she posts often about colors, often in a Pantone theme, which really speaks to the graphic designer in me too. Well, lo and behold, this week she featured a photograph I took of my tootsie in grass, on this post. And then today, she shared my silver cast and handspun yarn Grass Ring. A woman who also loves grass is a woman after my own heart.
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.
FOUND ART TUESDAY! As usual, I wait until last moment and then frantically try to think of a place to leave my artwork. A place where it will be safe from the elements, not too populous so that I’m watched, and not too vacant so that the piece goes un-found.
Last week I was in Chicago, but could I be prepared enough to create a piece beforehand AND bring it along? Of course not. So, where did I leave today’s piece? Well, I had to run to the post office and drop off a package, so I figured I’d make it a two for one and leave my artwork in the lobby. As I left it I started worrying I could get in trouble for leaving my artwork. Hope not.
I hope the person who finds and keeps the painting enjoys it. As usual.
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