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.