Alleluja! An Etsy Treasure

Dear friends,

I have been wanting to share the following gift...no, make that wonderful "experience" I received for my birthday from my sweet husband. I know you will love this as much as I do.

This little curious envelope from Japan arrived one day last month, addressed to my husband. Okay, I won't lie and say I didn't know what it was. My husband is good, but he's not telepathic about gifts (even with my dropping major hints on Twitter). The envelope contained the little porcelain ceramic octopus pincushion that I had been eying on Etsy by Alleluja (aka Sawako Hayakawa). The unwrapping process was so beautiful, it felt almost ceremonial. I won't spoil it by showing it all here, because I really hope you will be so enchanted and buy one for yourself! (You deserve it!) I truly felt like I just received a treasure...


Inside was a lovely note written to my husband from Sawako in which she hoped it made us happy.

(Pincusion with it's accompanying pin along with some common millinery items for scale)

So she hoped it made me happy. I am ECSTATIC! Just look!


Here are some more (and frankly much better) photos from her Flickr photostream.


and she has other very lovely designs...

I simply adore these bobbin spools:


I also ran across this interview of Sawako on Lou Lou & Oscar, a beautiful blog. I enjoyed reading about how she named her shop and her love of movies.

(Thank you Sawako for allowing me to mention your beautiful and very original work here. Yes, you certainly made me happy.)

Magnetic pin-up board spruce (in 15 minutes)

Left over from the studio renovation was this rather plain magnetic pin board that had more of an industrial look to it that didn't fit the new decor. So, I recovered it.

This is the original Umbra pinboard. If you click on the link you can see it was not cheap and is really too nice to not find some new use for.

So, I took out some fabric remnants and chose a cheery polka dot. Added some trim, all done with my hot glue gun...



And we have a totally new look! And it can always be removed since the glue was applied to the back where no one can see anything. The fabric can be cut away.

I like the magnetic aspect of this board the best.

Punch the Clock

A simple enameled black clock from IKEA. Inexpensive and completely impervious to my attempts to take it apart to paint or otherwise decorate it. What to do.



So, I had some paper flowers that I drew with my Prismacolor markers and had cut out for a defunct project and some Positional Mounting Adhesive (PMA).


Follow the instructions provided with the PMA regarding positioning and application.




Sticking the flowers to the clock. That's it! They are permanent.





Time to feed the kitties!

Studio Renovation - about bleepin' time!

Hi there, all.

So without much initial fanfare, here are some photos of the room in general. In future posts, I can go into more detail on some of the crafty projects that we did and even some yet to come. (Studio Reno 2.0).

First and foremost, the whole effort was born out of the need to get rid of the nasty carpet in here. I mean, that just made no sense. So here is that nasty rug (before):

(Thankfully blurry.)

And here was the finished, naked floor. BTW, this is BALK veneer flooring from IKEA. (You're gonna see alot of IKEA in these photos):

Just beautiful maple!

More "befores":

(Hi, husband!)

Sad to say that the kitty beds were a casualty of the renovation.
They were fired from the firm. But it is cleaner in here without the fur.
I thought I would miss that light fixture. It was bright, but the bulbs
burned out constantly.

Check the mess that surrounded my roll-out drawing table! And
the closet with those file cabs showed way back in there like that.
Horrible.

White standard construction grade closet doors. When open,
they jut 6 inches into the space. And those were my tiny narrow
shelves that held my art supplies.

Another problem was this huge L-shaped desk that
took up that half of the room.

Those silly shutters for the cut-out overlooking the living room.
And that huge black cabinet above the desk which I banged my
head on several times during the renovation. Both are gone.

Enough. I love my husband and it's fortunate we get along so well in a work envirnoment, but I can't believe we were crammed in here together like sardines for 4 years.

Here are the "afters":

New lighting...

His desk.

My desk! La!
And tons of shelving.

I made the curtains and fell in love all over again
with my sewing machine.

Will ya look at those closet standards??? There's space back
there that I may discover a year from now. And the lateral
file cabinet which we salvaged from a place in Portland. It
locks and everything.

I love those antique fishing lures. My husband pulled them
out of a box in the garage and I had to have them.

-----------------------
Well, there you have it. Thanks for putting up with blurry photos. We're still hoping for that DSLR camera someday. And these photos are hopefully incentive for me to blog with a bit more regularity going forward. I'm still rather new at it. I also need to work again, and have projects backed up "Like planes at Kennedy". We started the renovation in April and it took alot longer than I thought. I'm ready to make stuff!

Why yes, I AM sill alive...

I thought I'd check in and leave a note telling you what has been going on here over at our studio. It's all exciting, but time consuming. We've been working on renovating, starting with ripping the carpet out (good grief, that was weeks ago already) and laying down IKEA wood veneer flooring. Already an improvement, right? Anyway, since the labor for this studio is being done by us, and since I have a tough time recovering physically from things like aching backs and angry little abused shoulders and crimped necks, some of it has been a SLOG. Also, this is a working studio, so we have been sitting in here basically up to our eyeballs in junk and chaos and renovation detritus doing nothing but paid work. No wonder I have a headache this evening as I write this. (Or it's the fumes of machined engineered wood and glue getting to me.)

We got most of the storage system installed in the closet today and I need to sew a curtain to put up over the closet where we use to have bifold doors. Right now, the focus is on getting the supplies out of the other parts of the house (I swear, there isn't a horizontal surface in this house that isn't completely covered with stuff) and storing it in its newly designated storage place. And I am really looking forward to tossing and recycling alot of stuff. It looks like a lot of empty storage now, but I know we will fill it somehow. We gotta purge (she types as she looks over her shoulder at her husband)!

Also, the weather has been fabulous here in Portland and, well, the sun is my Boss. And when the Boss says get out there and re-charge, I do what the Boss says. So there you have it: delays, and more delays, but alot of fun and hopefully pictures soon to come.

And I really want to find a way to work one of these snazzy giant Martha Stewart pom poms in the design somehow:


Thanks for putting up with me tweeting on Twitter in lieu of posting formally here. It has helped me feel like I am staying linked. I look forward to returning and posting more regularly. And getting back to some of my languishing projects!!!

3/50 Project

While I am getting the studio reno done (and it's taking foreva!), I thought I would touch base, break in (whateva!) and tell you about a great cause that I know you can easily commit to and tell others about.

The 3/50 Project asks that you to pick 3 of your favorite independently owned, local bricks and mortar stores and if you can swing it, give them $50 of your business a month. Let's face it, when this recession is over we don't want to be left with only the Walmarts, Targets, and Kmarts of the world.

I'm thinking of my three...

In rainbow order...

Dried paint in my little dishes. I'm working in fairly close to primary colors for my current project.

An older drawing

Here is a painting in the studio, more or less permanently stuck to the wall. I had to take the picture in situ. (Okay, I merely wanted to say "in situ".)

I was obsessing on sea invertebrates last year. And paisley. Sometimes in the same drawing. I could go back to that obsession at the slightest provocation, flowers being a distraction at the moment.


I can't even remember what I used. Markers and paint pens. As I recall, it took forever to dry because the surface was not the correct one to use. An educational project that worked out.

I am also hesitating to show anything in the studio at this time because I plan to do a before / after once we put in the wood laminate flooring next month.

More stuff...

Here is another simple motif. This one was lots of fun. Why aren't gel pens more legitimate to artists? Scrapbookers don't seem to be embarrassed to use them.


gouache, gel pens, on smooth cardboard
---------------------------------------------------

Here is the finished drawing of the Hawaiian red ginger plant in the moleskine. This was done with colored pencils in a more traditional style.



P.S. Man! Does this family need a DSLR camera! I swear, that ginger bud is NOT as overworked as it looks in that photo. However, I do think I need to remove the "wax bloom" and apply some fixative at this point. (I just forgot.)

New flowers motif

I guess I'm trying to start a new Decorative Arts movement.

Or I am channeling Spring. Whatever, here it is:


colored pencil, gel pens

Oh Nine

Here we are, just on the other side of the threshold of a new year. I find resolutions very hard to resist making at New Years. I am a sucker for new beginnings and personal reinventions. All occurring in one annual event, it's a compulsive person's dream come true! However, I can see why failing resolutions make people wary of ever making them in the first place, but I tend to make resolutions with the idea in mind that I have a year to accomplish them or I reach a point where they are no longer useful for me to keep, or I discover that I need to resolve to do the baby steps first.

I have expectations, for sure. For one thing, after wars end (which hopefully we are on the brink of), there have historically been periods of resurgence of handmade or hand crafted goods. Certainly, we are already in a Handmade Hey Day. But my hope is that art takes on a new value to comfort and heal whereas the recent period of delusion and consumerism could not. I feel so fortunate to be living in a time when technology is so helpful in "getting the message out", whatever the message is. But my sincere hope is that more people will find themselves reaching for things that truly satisfy their inner bliss rather than searching amongst all the stuff we've been collecting (and as it turns out could never afford). My belief is that bliss is only achieved in one's personal expression of creativity, however that manifests. I predict many people will be having their own little Recession Renaissance. I would love to hear about yours.

As for resolutions, my personal ones are to try one large scale project this year, and to get really good at Adobe Illustrator. If I have the time, I may pick up crocheting again (which will be like learning it all over again, it's been so long). Resolutions I will never make are to "finish" anything. Some projects are not meant to be finished. It's make or break time with me and that painted wicker trunk that's been sitting under plastic in my living room. Husband, time to throw that wooden canoe form you were constructing in our garage.

In summary, I really don't need any more stuff or gadgets. (I admit, won't be sad when my iPod Touch battery finally goes and I need to buy a bigger one. More GB is always appreciated.)
I simply need to put ass-in-chair and connect with the larger universe that is trying to infiltrate art in a resistant and needy world. If it's your hope as well, then you must resolve to do it. There has seldom been a greater need.

Finally, I promised to report back on the Japanese Embroidery light. It arrived. I did as instructed and installed a 40 watt bulb and it turned out to be so hot, it warped my self-healing cutting pad. I replaced it with a 40 watt warm fluorescent and it's fantastic! I can draw at night again! It's HUGE.


Happy New Year, friends and family. MAKE IT a good one.

What I want for Christmas... next year

I have imposed a moratorium on art and crafting supplies for all of 2009.

I have enough.

I don't need any more stuff. I have ideas and supplies enough to make everything. I don't need paper. I don't need ink. I don't need pens or pencils. Nothing. Done with the shopping and collecting.

But next Christmas, I want this:
My husband wanted to buy it for me this afternoon, but I stopped him. I feel overwhelmed by what I need to be working on in 2009. It's on my Amazon wishlist for that momentous occasion when I am ready and have time to work with it.

Besides, there is always my birthday!

What art and craft projects are you planning on working on next year?

I miss my eyesight!

Since I seem to be more prone to drawing in the evening (which also has not changed since I used to hole up in my bedroom as a teenager), I have been struggling with being able to see and trying to avoid the frustration of dealing with shadows, to no avail. My work is also very up-close and detailed which means I am usually hunched over without my glasses, for no pair seems to work for me. It's naked eye, close-up stuff. Plus, I'm just getting damn old.

Anyway, I recalled seeing this little doo-hickey (pictured below) months and months ago while perusing the web and looking at Japanese Embroidery.


It's sold in two pieces; the lamp itself and the cardboard house. You supply the 40 watt bulb. Anyway, all together it was $22 plus shipping and I will let you know if this is a help or a hindrance once it arrives. Certainly, one could make such a thing. But I did enjoy giving the Japanese Embroidery site some business in order to support what looks to be an arcane and rare art form. (One which exceeds my ability to see.)

By the way, the store site has a great quote in its banner: "The hands are the exit of the spirit."

Where it all started

In the summer of 2007, I drew something for the first time in 20 years. It was on my desk surface. Well, it wasn't really a desk. And it wasn't even my desk at the time. It was a slab of particle board that my husband hauled up from the garage in order to give one of our subcontractors a place to sit and work. I can say little about what possessed me to start doodling all over it one night when my the husband was out of town. But it started with a simple expression of my feelings toward the current blithering idiot who lives in the White House. That phrase remained on its own for a few days, in stark black marker pen. And then the doodling...



In any case, Daniel's Desk turned into a silly mini obsession that took a few hours of my time. My style here is exactly as it was when I was 16. Seriously, the graffiti, the angst, the flower-power. All is as I knew it.

So why did I ever stop drawing? And why does it seem like it is happening again? This time it feels like a blockage. But when I was 17, it was crisis of confidence and endlessly playing mental tapes in my head by people who liked to caution me about artists who "starve", and questioning what I was "really" going to do with my life. And since you can't stifle creativity, it next bubbled up and took the form of building doll houses. After that, I made all the little doodads that go inside the doll houses, which took me to polymer clay. Polymer clay morphed into making little figures. Little figures took me to beading and jewelry making which in turn made me think of making money. When that didn't happen, it was the end of the road. The sad thing about it all is through yard sales, gifting, and losing stuff during many moves throughout my life, I have nothing to really show for it. No body of work. And I stopped drawing. Until one night when I decorated a desk and expressed how much I hated Bush. It was cathartic and is proving itself to be very hard to recapture.

Swim!

I am truly like the proverbial cow's tail (always behind). I have been so busy with a very heavily scheduled routine, filled with appointments to my various practitioners (weekly chiropractor, acupuncture. Hell, I am even on a 3 month teeth cleaning recall these days). Then there is my toiling as the mediocre bookkeeper that I am for my husband's business. I am doing a little bit of scribbling in my sketchbook, but nothing I've latched on to emotionally (yet). I have no drawing of cows to display here.

I have this fish though. I drew it for a friend (whom I've known since childhood) when she was diagnosed with breast cancer last year. The caption for it is "Swim!". When I drew it, I remember feeling like illness must feel like a giant net ready to scoop you up and pull you out. And at the moment when you realize the net is there to grab you, someone screams at the top of their lungs: "Run! Get the hell out of there! "

I want just the opposite. I want to rest in the net and pretend that the house won't go to hell overnight if I don't clean it every day. Wanting time to do your art has to be one of the most torturous yearnings one can endure. Like having a crush on someone who doesn't return the feeling, you feel almost spoiled and selfish for wanting it at all costs with such little return. And sometimes I can't figure out if my responsibilities are the "net" or if my lack of exercising my talent is the "net".

To be clear: I am, in no way, saying that I wish major illness upon myself or that illness has any role energetically in the creative process, although it may for some people. It's more of a metaphor for priorities, and the sudden slap of awakening that one needs in order to get busy, whether it is toward the process of healing, or creating, or anything that is otherwise taken for granted in favor of the less urgent things in life like housecleaning, or unpacking a suitcase, or shopping for t-shirts and the myriad other things that absorb small chunks of my day until it is eaten away along with the sunlight I need to draw. And if creating actually did have some role in healing, wouldn't we do it first? It's about priorities, and if you are woman, it's often about stealing time to do something that is good for YOU, not the others in the household, which gets into a whoooole other set of nonsense tapes that play in our heads and kill the energy needed to get started. It's about suddenly getting the RIGHT to be selfish. Is illness the the only excuse we are allowed?

Also, full disclosure, I copied the fish in large part from a photo of a textile. Sometimes, when you are TRULY stuck and inert, copying something helps break up the logjam. As for my personal logjam, that was the first thing I drew OF ANY SORT in 20 years. And now here I am trying to keep it all going and discussing it on a blog. But that fishnet? That's aaaaall me, baby.

No, those aren't oranges!

I can certainly live with this:


Actually, I am really happy with this little sketch. It looks even better in "real life". The sheen of the oil-based colored pencils competes with the hard lines to the naked eye and it makes the veins of the leaves less obvious (more subtle). It's interesting, seeing the difference in a photograph versus seeing the real thing up close.

And comparing drawings, the bougainvillea now REALLY looks like "amateur hour".

Berry beginnings

I've had this blasted pre-migraine headache for most of the week. Add to that, the Olympics and the pre-emption of my evenings (amazing how a sports event can encourage inactivity - I think I've gained 5 pounds), and I haven't had much energy or focus to do more than this.


I was having a bit of a scale issue, but managed to sketch in leaves that seemed to fit the scale of the berries. I think the leaves are a bit close together so don't be surprised to see some change there.

Anyway, a massage, more ibuprofen and the end of the Olympics should have a positive effect.

I've had these week-long near migraines before. There have been several bodies of work on artist expression and migraine. Most notably, Oliver Sacks' book Migraine and his discussion of Hildegard von Bingen's artistic and spiritual inspiration as a migraine sufferer. And there are some interesting examples of artwork created while "under the influence" of migraine. That's all well and good, but I don't know how I could even lift a paintbrush while having a migraine unless it's to stab it into my eyeball to make the pain stop.

The whole thing is interesting, but migraine neither diminishes or improves my artistic abilities, which is fine by me. I find drawing to be much more difficult than even having a migraine.

My next artistic boondoggle

Last year I snapped a random photo of a random plant, like so many random plant photos I take all the time. I was looking through my photos to find another plant to draw in my sketchbook and found this:
Not knowing what it was, or even recalling the photo, I had no idea of the scale and would have liked to find the plant again so that when someone looked at my drawing and said "my, what lovely oranges", I could shoot back and say "noooo, those are the berries of the blah-blah tree" (duh.) But what to do? I couldn't find the tree/bush/shrub anywhere. I queried basic terms like "yellow berries", "Oregon", every combination I could think of. Nothing looked like the photo above. Finally flummoxed, I found my old tattered Sunset Magazine Western Garden book, and looked under "Colorful Fruits and Berries" and low and behold we have a sorbus aucuparia or a Rowan Tree. I was unable to locate the tree on line because my Rowan photo was basically of unripened fruit! This is how a fully "fruitioned" Rowan tree looks in late August when the birds are feasting on the fruit:



Well, being a former dabbler in all things "woo woo", I knew I had picked one special tree as an artistic undertaking. I read about all its magical uses, lore, and legend and I find I am totally enchanted by this tree!

I set about trying to find the tree that I snapped last July. (The date stamp on the photo was my only clue.) For days I looked, ceasing all drawing until I could find it. And three days ago, I found three fruiting Rowan trees at the top of my street. I hadn't walked up there in some time since being diagnosed with anemia (hills being difficult for me), but we were driving by and I just turned my head to look out the window, and there they were.

So, with kind permission of the trees (you're supposed to ask them if it's okay to pick, NEVER use a knife and be sure to say thank you), I took a few leaves and berries for my composition.


Some berries have been sketched in the book, but I am finding they are still very yellow, so I decided my drawing is of the Rowan in mid-July. Said drawing will be appearing in some emerging state in a couple of days.

And by the way, since finding the three trees up the street, I must have seen twenty more in various places in the area. I cannot wait until May to see them flower!