Drawings

These are some of the drawings I’ve done. I wish I could say that I’ve done them lately, but alas, I did them a while ago and have only gotten around to posting them recently. But here they are! If you can’t tell, I like painting and drawing plants, flowers, trees, and flora-themed stuff. There’s more recent drawings, but I have yet to photograph them. So more to come later…

Mirror, mirror

I adhered a faux wood contact paper on the back of the mirror, then spraypainted the contact paper white. The reason I used the faux wood style because it seemed slightly more durable than just the white contact paper, particularly at tight turns and corners or points.

I adhered the contact paper to the back of the mirror. You can also put the contact paper on the front of the mirror, but if you have a lot of little lines, all these lines will show up as a double image when you look at the mirror. So, I put the design on the back of the mirror to avoid this doubling effect. If you do this, you will have to sandblast a little longer than if you’re doing an image on the front. The sand has to cut through the reflective surface on the back of the mirror. I like the lack of double lines better, though.

The paper held up well under the sandblaster and gave me the nice corners and points I wanted.

Crayon Holder

I made this for my niece. She’s 4 1/2.

My First Wee Jee

This was for a show in October titled talking to the dead. All the artists had to make their own Ouija board. This was mine. It’s for children.

Furniture Redo

Repurposed some end tables into a multi-level shelf.

Quilt – in progress

Been working on this one for a while. Still trying to finish up the topstitching.

Earring Extravaganza

Spent a cloudy Saturday making earrings. I needed a bigger variety of beads, so the morning was spent shopping at some of my favorite bead stores in Denver.

printmaking

I’m trying to make business cards for all the creative stuff that I do. Instead of printing the business cards on the computer printer, I decided to make stamps and stamp the business cards that I bought at Office Depot. I carefully carved out the word Create in the font I liked and just as I was about to stamp it onto the paper, I learned an important lesson that was really very common sense-y.

The first stamp I carved normal, like you would read it. As I inked and pressed it to the paper, I realized that it would give me a mirror image. I kicked myself, laughed, then went ahead and carved a new one, this time the mirror image of the first one. Once that was completed, I had a usable stamp for my business cards. Silly me. I should have known better.

 

Today was…

Color, and cleaning and textures. It was fabrics, and finally a completed project. It was music and it was snowing. It was a productive day.

I’m making another quilt. This one will be made from leftovers from curtains that a professional seamstress friend of mine gave me. They are all beautiful, and I’m using all the heavy pieces. The purse, purple with fairies, was made from fabric from the Fancy Tiger <http://www.fancytiger.com/craftindex.html>…not sure who the designer is. The paper, leftovers from last Christmas. Not sure what they’re going to be. Painted the Santa silver. He’s been painted real colors, white, blue, and he’s now silver.

In the meantime, i also managed to cook myself a scrambled tofu dinner, do the dishes, bake two potatoes, and mop the floors. Woo! Productive.

It’s not Christmas yet, I know

Yes, i know it’s only the middle of November, and i’m not actually doing this project for Christmas this year, but finishing it up from last year. Yeah, so I’m 11 months behind. Whatever.

Embroidery = Coasters

I should have explained why I was embroidering. I’m making coasters out of these things. I’ve finished the embroidering, now onto making the coaster squares.

Squares

Triangles.

Seaweed?

Also, I need a better camera. My favorite digital one broke and the one I’m using now I’m not totally happy with. To fix the one I love will cost $125. Lame.

I (heart) Marigolds

I really do. They’re orange, and I’m into orange these days. And they smell nice. They grow really well in the sun, and they’re very friendly. This is my drawing of a marigold I picked from my pots on the ledge.

Oh how do my little ones grow

Highly productive Labor Day

I did a lot of stuff this weekend. I finished two purses.

This one:

The same one only kind of a cool lighting effect that I didn’t mean to do.

My tetris purse.

Also, I made a new light for my bedroom. I didn’t like the dangling fabric around a roundish egg shaped paper lantern thing, so I made this. It’s called an electra. Lesson for next time: Apply the tissue paper before putting the whole lantern together. But I didn’t actually think of the tissue paper until after I’d hung the thing, but it’s good to know for next time. If I get around to it, I may paint a glaze over the tissue paper to harden it. As long as the tissue paper doesn’t tear while doing it. That stuff is weak.

With the light on

With the light off. You can see the green tissue paper in the pentagons (I think that’s what they are. They may be decagons. But I say pentagon because they are made up of five different pieces.)

Then I refurbished one drawer on my sock dresser. I will work on the other two when I get more sandpaper.

It’s covered in a paper and then glazed over with a gold acrylic glaze.

Embroidery at Confluence

I rode my bike down to confluence park two days before the start of the Democratic National Convention. I swung by the Pepsi Center to see what was going on. A lot. And I have to say, the CNN people are hard to tell apart from the secret service, with their black SUVs, suits and glasses. The only way I could tell them apart was the CNN sticker on the dashboard of the SUVs.

This is Brooklyn’s, a popular bar for those who are on campus. Which no one was that week.

This was the line for press to get into the perimeter of the Pepsi Center. There were different passes for the perimeter and for actually going inside. This is only some of the 19,000 press who were in town for the event.

After that, I actually rode down to the park and sat and embroidered next to the creek. It was so nice—the sound of the water, the smell of the water, and everyone happy. The only interruption was the occasional herd of officers who marched by dressed for a riot. (They didn’t end up needed the riot gear after all.)

The Platte.

Me embroidering in the park.

Kayakers and swimmers.

Kayakers. Downstream there’s actually a kinda cool kayakers route thing. I think upstream too.

Final baby quilt

I finished the baby quilt the other day, shipped it to her, and I hope it got there on time. Saturday was Anya’s birthday. I’m happy with the way it came out, but there were some flaws in the final that were entirely because I’m just not very skilled yet. The bigger the piece gets, the harder it is to control some parts. But I’m learning more on each project, so I guess that’s good. I love the colors and patterns, though, as I knew I would. I hope she likes it.

The picture is not centered because I struggled taking it. I was just holding my hand out guessing whether or not I had centered it over the quilt.

Recipe for a good time:

Mix:

* 38,589 piece of fabric, 48 of those members of a quilt. The rest can be remnants, scraps, tiny pieces that will stick to all kinds of clothing, and even thread
* 1 water bottle
* 104 needles that like to hide out until a foot comes by
* 1 cat who insists on spreading her hair on the 48 quilt members. Not on the other pieces of fabric because they’re not going onto a quilt right now. It’s important to place the cat hair on the right pieces of fabric
* 1 cleaned glass of jelly to be filled with wine
* Wine

Stir all together for a wicked-crazy Friday night.

Yes, I do drink wine out of an old jelly jar. Cause I’m hip like that? (I don’t know…just cause it was there and, with the quality of wine I drink, the shape of the drinking vessel doesn’t affect the taste. Promise.)

Me personally, I was having a great time until the bottle of water got all jealous of the wine I was drinking and it decided to hide out under the quilt until I walked by. It jumped up under my foot so that I stepped on it, nearly fell into my bike, and spilled the wine all over every piece of the quilt. Nice work water bottle. I get it.

After that, every piece of the quilt had to go into the bathroom where I rinsed them in cold water. I hung up the wet pieces in the bathroom. I couldn’t put them into the washer or dryer because none of the pieces are hemmed. Everything would have unraveled and gotten hell-a f*cked up in the dryer. So — into the bathroom they went…

The blue checkered stuff in the background is not part of the quilt. It’s my shower curtain. Wooo!

After that, the party was pretty much over and I asked the water bottle to leave. (Actually, I just put it somewhere I wouldn’t step on it. Brilliant, I know. I astound myself sometimes.)

Lesson of the day: Stay hydrated. A jealous water bottle will wreak havoc.

On another note, I think I’ll be cleaning droplets of wine for the next two weeks. And I HATE the smell of old, dried wine.

Drew, drawn, drawed

This weekend, I headed over to my local art store and spent a ton of money spoiling myself on art supplies. I bought a new sketchbook, watercolor pencils, watercolor tubes, two new brushes (I’ve never bought brushes this nice or this expensive), some origami paper, drawing pencils, and a tiny glass alligator I’m going to put into my plants.

To organize my pencils, I borrowed an idea from here <http://boredandcrafty.wordpress.com/2007/07/17/artists-paintbrush-roll/&gt;, only adjusted it for pencils. By adjusted, I mean made it shorter. I also didn’t do the strap. But otherwise, I’m really happy with it.

Baby quilt, revamped

Here is the new design for the quilt for my niece, who will be turning two in July. She is so beautiful and smart and although I’m haven’t been the greatest babysitter for her, I still love her to death.

Here’s the redesign for the quilt that I want to sew for her for her 2nd birthday.

This will be the first time I make a quilt out of Amy Butler’s prints. I’m excited.

Color-rich

I love color. Working for the decorative painter gave me a new understanding of color, only expanding my appreciation. I notice colors everywhere I go. I realize that we all see in color (most of us, anyway), but rarely do we see the color. I’ve been taking the time to notice all the colors, hues, tints that make up what I’m looking at. Yesterday, I went on a run/walk in Cheeseman Park. It was cloudy out, drizzling. The lack of direct sunlight made it seem like the day was dreary, probably why no one was in the park. But I went out anyway. While walking, I swear, the colors of the trees, grass, bushes, tree trunks and branches, even the homes were all brighter. It was as if, without the sun to compete with, the new fresh leaves on the trees could really shine. It wasn’t that anything was brighter, only that the colors were more intense. I wish I had brought a camera on the walk because it really was so incredibly beautiful.
So, I came home and played around with colors. I just wanted to put them next to each other and see what happens. This is the result.

As a continuation of the previous entry, after the DAM, my mom and I went to the Fancy Tiger, my new favorite shop on Broadway, and bought some Amy Butler. These are the ones I’m putting into my new plan for a baby quilt.

Maybe not for an actual baby, but the plan is to make it for a two-year-old. My niece, to be specific. This is a rough idea and I know the design is going to change before the final (due in July, as that’s her birthday).

The color study reminded me of the color exercises I had to do in art classes and during my time at the Art Institute of Chicago. I think I’m going to do more of these, but I want to use acrylics. Or get some more watercolors. I only have three watercolors: Alizarin Crimson, Golden Yellow, and Ultramarine Blue. I want to work with some ochres, pthalos, cerulean blue, Prussian blue, red oxide. Anyway, I either have to start using those colors in a medium I have, or go out and get more watercolors. Maybe I’ll get the watercolors. Easier cleanup.