And now... the post you've all been waiting for.....

Sooooo......I made steampunk twinchies for a swapbot swap. They even turned out quite decently steampunk, I thought... and then I got this rating:




Now, the $64-million dollar question is.... Do *you* see a frog here?  




Or perhaps a less leading question, what are the critters that you see in these sets?




I *intended* them to be (left to right, starting in top row):

spider, owl, bird
chicken, owl, spider

Is that what you guessed?


(this still makes me laugh and laugh and laugh :)

Abstract Twinchies!

Made for a swapbot swap earlier this year.

Burned Bird ATC

Slightly misleading title. The TREES were burned before being glued down, not the bird.  This might possibly be my favorite ATC so far.

Owl cameos

Experimenting with owls & cameos. Need more practice. Also - i need to try new glues. These glues ended up with unexpected results (1) The underlying glue loosened the pink & green paper dye (so the white pieces did not stay white - they were a bit streaky) AND turned the some of the papers semi-translucent. ARG. (2) The Mod Podge on top managed to smear glitter all over instead of keeping it in only the cameo border. DOH.

April Art = Experimenting with ATCs and burned paper

I started experimenting with ATC's in April, too.
 ATC = Artist Trading Card.
 It's a pretty neat concept.






The theme for these two was "Burned".  SO they had to include some kind of burned something. It's hard to see in these, but if you look close, you can see where the edges of the paper are charred.  It was surprisingly hard to get intentional burn marks without simply incinerating the whole thing.

April Art = Decorated folders

OUTSIDE:


INSIDE:


OUTSIDE:


INSIDE:

Proof of concept.... Wood + metal + Latvian designs

Here are two examples of the new idea made into actual physical real life objects....

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!

Coptic Bookbinding

For my friend's wedding:

Going for a walk

Spent some time playing with watercolor splotches and a permanent marker/pen a week or two ago:



More to come in the next few days, if I don'tget distracted by other stuff.

Beer Magnets

First attempt at beer bottle cap magnets. I have some refining to do, but these were kind of fun.

Squiggles.... part 4

SO... to come full circle, turn the watercolor one last 90 degrees to the right....



Do you see the girl's profile?
She's facing away from you a little bit....
She has a barrette in her hair....

Squiggles.... part 2

Now turn the starting point image 90 degrees to the right......



Do you see the lion?

Looking in to the squiggles.... part 1

Do you see the boy with dreads?

Rooster - mixed media

..... been playing around with watercolors, black ink, and oil pastels.... true to form i think that every possible color ended up in this one, too.....This was made by splashing colors on paper and then coming back a day or a week later to see what might have formed by those splashes. Then I took other art supplies (pens, markers, oil pastels) to define what *I* saw in a way that other people can see it too.... i never know what will come out of this, which is part of the fun! For example, notice that there's a little orange fish in the middle of the air...

A series of fairies, 1999

Since i can't post new stuff (no camera) I will post an interesting series of fairies caught in uncomfortable postions in everyday life. I'd say these are from.... 1999 I think. at the UW. 3 are from my drawing class and 1 is an attempt at a lithograph. I think I already waxed poetic about how much i like litho and how sad it is that it's a) toxic and b) not something i can do at home.











At any rate, you will also probably notice that I need to take some time to properly frame things at my house. I, ah, maybe have been on somethign of an instant gratification kick lately so when I find something I made a long time ago and want to put it up... rather than framing it and protecting it I have put a lot of things up on my walls with thumbtacks (even though I own a kajillion frames and a mat-cutter and could frame them if I even tried a little bit). Though, to be fair, my mat-cutter isn't set up and everytime i decide to use it I spend about half an hour putzing tryign to jury-rig a usable setup.

oil pastels on watercolor

I needed a quick art fix earlier this summer.... so oil pastel on top of Japanese watercolors seemed like the way to go.... i rather like making blotches of whatever color(s) I happen to pick out of my box. Then come back after it's dry to stare at the blotches to see what appears and finally to adjust it so that other people can see what I see. This time I used oil pastels on top of the watercolors. sometimes it's ink. sometimes it's acrylic. sometimes it's more watercolors.





I'm still researching digital cameras, so anything i post for the next month or so will be from my "archive" of pictures taken while "testing" a digital camera I borrowed from a friend. Most recently i've been messing around with straight up acrylics, trying to get bodies and body parts to actually look like body parts (instead of zombie people or distorted people or unidentifiable blobs). so far I have *1* that worked :) you probably will not ever got to see the zombie paintings. i try to paint over them as soon as possible. they're creepy.