Day 25 --- Printing cards!

Experimenting with assorted color combos and a new place for my little press:

Days 18 - 24

Day 18 = if cooking is art, then cooking this amazing cornbread will have to suffice for Day 18

Day 19 = Does looking at and buying art count? I went to Milwaukee's International Folk Festival and bought a fair trade hat made from alpaca AND an amazing amber necklace.

Day 20 = more top-secret metalwork

Day 21 = I tried to finish a set of stamped spoons for my father, but it was too noisy to finish all in that one night :/

Day 22 = I went to see the Muppets. No art was made.

Day 23 = more cooking as art!!!

Day 24 = sketched some future lino designs

Pumpkin fun!

Seen on a local walk around the block, these guys made me pause and smile :D

Day 16 & 17 --- metalwork

Been working away on that metalwork project for Feb. I'm about half done! Yeah! Too bad it's a super-top-secret project because it would be fun to post pictures of it. Ah well. I can leave you with this, though. Here's a preview of what's involved in the super-top-secret-metal-project of mine :)



In February there will be more pictures.

Day 15 --- lino cut!

Day 14 --- acrylics and some stencils

This idea is sound, though my execution requires darker paint - or at least paint that is significantly different than the bottom layer. I will try again on this canvas later this week.

Base coat (here I was painting over a previous attempt at something or other):


Apply stencils:


Paint over stencils:


Remove stencils:

Day 13 --- more acrylics

Attempt at a still life. Meh.

Day 12 --- oil pastels

.....does installing shelves count as art?

Probably not... but here's a picture anyway. It only took me some three years to get around to putting these tiny little shelves up in my tiny little 2nd bathroom.

Day 10 --- let's try those pastels

Day 9 --- instant gratification

5" x 7"




9" x 9"

Day 8 --- more metalwork

Last night I worked on metal projects. Filing, sanding, soldering. I realized that I've gotten sloppy and will be remedying that. I also realized that my metal working equipment needs to be consolidated, efficient-ized, and I for sure need a ventilation hood for the soldering station. That stuff is pretty strong when not properly ventilated.

Day 7 --- playing with a laminator

Tuesday I finally made those plant tags I was talking about to attach to some contested plants in my backyard. These are now attached to the plants in question:



After finishing those I decided to play with some collage and laminate it.... unfortunately, I learned the hard way that two layers of cardboard going through my laminator = pain, sadness, broken things, and much much much pulling to get things unstuck. Here's all that's left:



(Luckily, I had some awesome help to get this unstuck from the machine. I do believe that the machine works again, too.)

Day 6 --- I like dots (and squares and pointalism)

Here is the painting I started yesterday and finished today:



Amber Waves
8" x 10"

Day 5 --- more painting

No picture today. This morning I started working on fixing up (yet another) half-finished painting. Still acrylic. I'll be trying out the oils later this week, I think.

Speaking of paint......

I went to visit a friend yesterday morning and on the way back from brunch, asked to stop at a thrift store..... turns out that they were having a special event where everything was half off, and so we discovered....




I scored big and got these 28 tubes of that oil-hybrid paint (the stuff that you can thin/clean up with plain water, but somehow is still an oil paint) paint for just $12.50!!!! AWESOME.

Day 4 --- More doodling in paint

11.75" x 11.75"

Day 3 --- acrylic doodling

Started out like this (long forgotten annoying painting in a pile somewhere):


Then between Day 1 and this morning went to this (which I found too busy and still annoying and even a little bit embarrassing to post)



And at lunchtime I brought out a little paint to tone it down:


4" x 6"

Still not my favorite, but I will grudgingly admit some improvement. NON-grudgingly, I will admit to being pretty darn cheery that I got my paints out in the middle of the day for a sanctioned break :)

Day 2 --- copper stuff

The beginnings of some jewelry....




.....and I think I broke my tool :( stupid cheap-o steel combo tool :[ Turns out that the inner screwy bits weren't strong enough to withstand the torque and I believe a small portion of the inside is stripped on one side. doh.



Hopefully still useable on thinner gauges.... we'll see tomorrow, I guess.

Day 1 --- Latvian Graffiti

Last night I spent a solid 90 minutes working on a secret metal project (reveal coming in Feb) and then went on to painting just because I enjoy painting. That being said, I think I need to start out with a better idea of what I want to end up with the next time I paint ;) to me, this just looks kinda messy. BUT! it was fun. I intended to wake up early this morning to paint before work, buuuuuut..... multiple snooze happened instead.



Latvian Graffiti
8" x 10"

Art Every Day Month

Inspired by friends who are participating in NaNoWriMo, I decided to see if anything similar, but more in my own line of hobbies existed.... and it does! Here's someone who's been doing Art Every Day Month for 9 years!




I'm #328.

I've actually been playing around with this idea for most of this year. In January, my mom sent me a link to a blog/person who had decided to make 2011 the year of the ring, and set a goal of making one ring every day for a year as an exercise in creativity. I was intrigued and in many ways wanted to try something like that for myself, but also scared. A whole year of promising to create something every day??!? That sounded CRAZY. Especially since at the time I was traveling more often for work, traveling for fun, and was spending more time than I care to admit working in general (heh - perhaps working a lot to help avoid facing personal life mess, too).

BUT.

In the past six months I've changed a lot of things. Fixed a lot of things. Gotten rid of people who weren't kind to me. Etc. Now, one month I can do. So. Here we go.

October = felt?

This month I prepared my very first fascinator for use at a fancy tea party:



Turns out that they are really fun to make AND I now see fascinator possibilities everywhere I look! Which means I'll be hosting my own tea party in January or February just to have a reason to create (and wear!) another one (^_^) And since I made too many green felt "flowers", I then experimented with barrette possibilities:



I'm surprised at how much I actually liked how those barrettes turned out!

Starburst (3x3)

My very favorite piece made during that week of teaching:



Which looks like this when it's held up to the light:

Cement Mushroom

After all of that stuff got finished in one measely week, I decided it was high time to finish this cement mushroom project and get the darn thing OUT of my kitchen. so yeah. It's done now. I know how to make better ones, too, now. Maybe next summer....

Fused Flower

Here's what I *wanted* to make more of, but certain other instructors in charge of the kilns wouldn't let me .... blah blah ... incompatible glass ... blah blah blah .... pieces might explode or break off ... blah blah ... you're lucky this one didn't break yet ... blah blah blah ...




:D

Just teasing mom. I know you're right. But I still WANT to make more of these anyway.

Fused glass (3x3)

Every so often when we were firing the kilns for fused glass we'd have a little space on a shelf that could still fit another piece in. And since it's a shame to not use every spot you have when you're firing, I'd get the occasional chance to create a little something-or-other to fit in those spaces. Some of these are experimenting with some technique that my mother wanted to show people and we were making sure it worked before telling them to try it :) like using a candle to bend stringers for those crooked mouths.

Pattern Experiments (3x3)

4"x4" mosaiced tile

Blue Flower (3x3)

4"x4" mosaiced tile

Blue-Red Explodey Flower (3x3)

4"x4" mosaiced tile

Mosaic Owl (3x3)

4"x4" mosaiced tile

Almost an auseklis (3x3)

4"x4" mosaiced tile

A Brown Explodey Flower (3x3)

Hmmmm....... It's been a while - eh?

I spent a week in Michigan teaching glass stuff this summer. That was fun. Inbetween questions, instead of staring at the backs of people's heads or something, I decided to keep my hands busy. Also, I needed some glued glass to demonstrate "how to grout" without demo-ing on someone else's work. The next few posts are of the little things I finished while teaching.



4"x4" mosaiced tile

I'm not sure, yet, whether to turn these in to coasters or decorative wall hangings.

Sketching in lino, Part I

A couple of art nights ago I let myself just "sketch" in lino.... apparently I had bugs on the mind since both prints turned out to feature bugs. Here's the smaller of the two:



I can't figure out a consistent way to cut nice-looking circles in lino. I think I want to make friends with a dermatologist so I can appropriate one (or more) of those sharp little tools that punch out perfect circles from skin that's going to be biopsied. I bet those would work on lino.

My kitchen was busy last weekend...

This is what just over 4 hours of canning will yield in my house:



(14 pints of canned peaches plus a medium batch of peach jam [8 jars], a medium batch of cherry-rhubarb [8 jars], and a small batch of peach-cherry [5 jars].)

And then you get even better/faster at it :) I've since also canned 5 pints of elderflower cordial (yay urban foraging!), but that stuff isn't very photogenic.

Repurposing glass for garden art

Later this week these dishes will be in my garden as large(ish) garden flowers:



Very much a borrowed idea, but it was too neat not to try out on my own. The plan is to use epoxy and then use my oven to anneal/strengthen the bond. I have another box of glass still in my car from last weekend's flea market trip waiting to be made in to some more once I find some inexpensive and interesting colorful second hand glass dishes.

Stained glass progress

The other day I realized that in August I'll be helping to teach a stained glass/fused glass class and yet I haven't actually finished any stained glass in.....well, years. So. Back to this project started in 2008....

Over the course of about 5 hours (across two days) I finished grinding, washing, and copper foiling it to get it to fit in the frame (with a few design mods due to carelessness and limited glass to make up for mistakes. ooops.):



I've since also finished 80% of the soldering, too, but have yet to take a picture of that. I'm still working out how I want to finish the outer edge and what patina to use on the solder. This is intended for my bathroom window, but I don't think I want to permanently install it. So..... lead came? Or a wooden frame? I'm not sure yet.

Copper disk earrings

I finally started using this etched piece of copper that I made in a class some 8 or 9 years ago. Of course, I forgot to take a picture of the metal sheet before beginning to cut it up. Sigh.

First, a pair of earrings:

Sushi plate experiment

Last week I visited my parents. You never know what kinds of adventures you might encounter while over there. This time, my mother turns to me and says, "I want you to make a sushi plate."

OK (^_^) of course! Here are the results. One worked, one did not.

Bails

Last week I practiced both basic soldering and mass production:



My mom asked for some bails for her glass work projects. The first 15 were kind of tough and rather annoying, but the next 20+ were easy peasy.

Sock monsters

I found an amusing book and decided to make sock monsters an activity for an art night. Here are the ones I made:



now what do I do with them?
I don't even really like stuffed animals...
Hmmmmmmm.