ATC's - check these out!

Here are some of the ATC's that I will start passing out today. I love these little dollies. I got the idea from artgirlz.com They sell these wonderful kits to make 3-D dolls, and in the kits are pewter arms and legs that go with the felted bodies. Too thick for ATC's, so I made my own out of cardstock. It felt odd not to gel or glaze them, but they wouldn't have moved if I had.

Here is a close-up of one of them:

And lastly for today is an ATC with a hand drawn face, a version of a "zetti" face, (you can google that if you are curious), a postage stamp with a clock because "The moment you love, you are unlimited.", the teatag saying, and some lucky numbers because lucky numbers are pretty unlimited too.

This photo is low resolution, and so you don't get, quite, that I covered it with that glass bead acrylic gel medium that I talked about yesterday: dickblick.com The backing is torn strips of very pretty origami paper, all glued down in its raggedy edged glory.

And so that is my story for today. Have a lovely, artful day. And DO ask me for an ATC if you see me today!

ATC Mass Production

Well, I gave myself a treat this past week: ATC mass production. Here is a horrible photo - but you get the idea:I have about three of these boards full of ATC's!

Now there is a big yell-y, nag-y voice in my head that is using words like" glutton" and "shame" ... >sigh< (I clearly have some work to do here.) But I want to tell you that, nevermind the very old and outdated tapes in my brain, (who is stripping those reel-to-reels as we speak), I am finding this to be a great way to make ATC's!

This is what I did: I made big background papers - remember that brown paper bag paper that I was making? I talked about it here a month or two ago - here's a picture of where I stopped sewing and adding stuff to the big paper:

Well, I glued 2 1/2" x 3 1/2" cardstock to the back of the paper and cut them out - about 9 of them. Then I cut out some phrases and images from a scrapbooking collection that I had, and found some great quotes in an old farmer's almanac. I glued everything down with some netting strips, using, our favorite: acrylic gel medium. Here are some from that bunch:I did that with a couple of different background methods: tearing strips of pastel printed origami papers and gluing those down, raggedy edges and all, then drawing little zetti women and gluing those with some messages from teatags I have collected; painting a kleenex onto a piece of cardstock with ochre paint - letting it get all wrinkly - and then experimenting with a red drybrush technique over the top of that, cutouts glued on top of that and gold pen borders, (which look awesome next to the red).

The result of making many cards at once, all of the same background, is that the specialness goes out of it and I felt free-er to experiment - - - resulting in some really delightful cards. And those which were less successful I was fine with regluing or changing. I let go of the pressure to make REALLY PRETTY CARDS and just had fun ... which I think comes through in mostly every card.

I wanted to make so many because I want to pass them out to advertise the swap at the Rockport Library on Wednesday. I will be carrying them with me on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday - ask for one if you see me!

And speaking of the swap, I just want to advertise what a cool library this is, with a very wonderful Librarian - Molly - and a bunch of other fabulous librarians too - Iris, Jane. I mean, imagine: letting a bunch of artist loose in your library every month, actually inviting us in! Imagine being a librarian and spending your downtime at the desk making little scissors-paper-glue confections to advertise the fact that you are inviting a bunch of artists into your midst. Molly has even bought some new, ATC related books for the stacks, (and in April we are celebrating National Poetry Month by ransacking - gently - the stacks for poems for our ATC's!). For a whole year we have been invited to make art and make friends at the Library!

How fab is that? Very. Thank you Molly.

I am off to go paint something with glass bead gel medium. I'm not kidding: try dickblick.com It looks a-maz-ing when it dries.

New Website page

Well, since beginning to work with the library I have been working on ATC's a lot. Paper collage mostly. I decided that my website needed an ATC dedicated page, so check it out: http://robinsunne.com/atcs_-_artist_trading_cards I put in some examples, and some techniques.
Oh! The masking tape technique on that page comes from a book by Nancy Welch called "Paper Craft". I think that it is out of print because I had to order it from the extended Amazon community. I reccomend it. The photos are well done, the writing is clear, and so far, the techniques are a lot of fun.
So listen, if you are in the area, or coming to Maine in the summer, please stop by the Rockport on the last Wednesday of the month to swap ATC's. I keep hearing from all over that folks will be by. Like that mom of a 7 year old said: this stuff is, (with all due respect to those of us in our communities who are recovering from chemical addictions), addicting. (Sort-of: but in a good way.) Sorry, that doesn't sound respectful at all. I think that this mom is having trouble getting her girl to go to bed at night, or do chores or something, (I so relate), because she is too busy making art. This comes close to "not a problem at all" in my thinking. Certainly not anything like the honorable and very difficult work that people do to heal from chemical dependency. Sweet F. is a good girl and I am sure finds time to have a life in between ATC's, and her mom was laughing when she told me about her art inspired daughter.
I didn't tell you, I started to do some beading again. I found myself breathing once more. I forgot that I feel like that. The word 'bead' comes from the root word for 'prayer'. I felt like I was remembering how to pray. >happy sigh<
And the last news for the day is that I have some artwork out and about:
The office of Dr. Aimee Davis at the Breakwater Building in Rockland, ME, has 5 pieces - and I bet that they wouldn't mind if you stopped by just to look. Two of them are in the Prayers Series. Lots of reconfigured trash. Very wonderful pieces. The headers on my website are sections of Prayers I. http://robinsunne.com
Waterfall Arts in Belfast, ME, has "October Bird" - a beaded and trash embellished piece that I have been chatting about here on this blog since, um, October.
Next up is a piece that I will submit for jurying down in Portland, ME, and then I had better slow down on all of my volunteer art projects for a while as my studio is nearly empty of finished works! (YAY!!!!)
Have a lovely day.

My ATC Brown Paper Background

Well good day all. Here's my Brown Paper Background so far:

You can see there, just above 6:00 and at 8:00, two coins - Pondsong's idea from the comments on February 1st - but these are paper copies of coins, the brown paper was too thick to take a rubbing which was my first alternative idea to her idea of putting real coins on the paper. Here is the sheet of coins that I copied, I have got Chinese yuan, Greek drachma, Italian lira, Canadian dollars, I think that those are UK 5pence, and some US half dollars. I adore holding coins - even more than paper money ... silly me ... (well, I'd rather just invest those) ...anyway, those heavy round clunks that they make together. Big beads.

These are paper ones.

I would like to show you some of the ATC's that I have made to date:

The one on the right has an image from an old book of postal stamps that I enlarged a lot. It is shiny with acrylic gloss medium on it as both glue and finish. The one on the left is drawn with markers on watercolor paper.This one also has acrylic medium on it, with stickers - the houses - and sticky letters. I get outraged at the CEO's of corporations who spill their pollution everywhere. Though here I am using plastic gel meduim and plastic coated stickers... sigh ...These two are from a series on trauma. I was thinking that when people are first coming out of a traumatic event - international terrorism, natural catastrophies, domestic violence, any of it, that it is tough to gather the brain power to even ask for help. So I got to thinking about what we all can do to help each other. These cards were one background at first, painted/drawn with Portfolio brand oil pastels - think watercolor pencils, only lusher! I worked on pretty heavy weight watercolor paper, and when the painting was done it looked like a storm at sea. Good background for trauma recovery theme. I cut the painting into regulation ATC sizes and added words. The big letters are stick on, and the handwriting was done in permanent marker.

I went to the funeral, yesterday, of a woman who was a remarkable teacher on the subject of trauma recovery. For years she taught, well, life skills to people who had not managed to learn them elsewhere, things as basic as how to hold a conversation and make it true. Bitsa taught us how to see the child of "God" in everyone, even ourselves. She just pointed a whole lot of us in the correct general direction. May I just say, here, Goddess Bless Bitsa Hoag Turner and her family in this time of transition. My love to you all.

And here are the Guardians, corporeal images of the ones which make it possible for us each to find what we need. Thank you.

(Here's a fun link as a treat for your inner - or outer - child: http://countdown.tentwostudios.com )

What's an ATC??

Eeeps! Sorry to Pondsong and any others who might not be clear what I am proposing here.
An ATC is a small, baseball card sized piece of art to trade. Like baseball cards only ... different. So: 2 1/2" x 3 1/2" big, you can paint or draw or collage endlessly. Google "artist trading cards" and you will get lots on the history and techniques for how to make them. The Swiss artist who thought this up back in 1997 had the idea that we would set up "swaps", times and places to trade them. I have gotten most of my information about ATC's on the internet, and there are many internet groups who trade with others internationally. But I don't live near any that I know, nor did I have friends who made ATC's, and I wanted to trade in person as well as on the internet. They seem soooo wonderful don't they? Little pieces of art to just bring beauty and wit and deep thought into the world. Eventually a series of events got me to ask my town librarian if we could swap at the library once a month and she said yes!
Anyway. Especially with collage methods, one can make large background papers, combining painting, and drawing, and all kinds of gluing down just about anything, to have a foundation, a starting place for some cards. We then cut this background paper inti 2 1/2" x 3 1/2" pieces and then make a tiny collage on just that small card. (You can then add words, dried flowers, photos, bits of ribbon, wood, metal, anything!)
Because I am going to be teaching this workshop at the library, (Rockport, Maine, Public Library), I am trying to make some cards to be a step or two ahead of all who come for inspiration, and to have some cards to swap when the time comes. I thought yesterday that it would be fun to have a bunch of us making a background paper at the same time. We are all bound to do it differently and we could learn from each other in that way.
Get it? So go get a brown paper bag and start your own background paper. I like the idea of a penny on the final ATC, and, and! How about this: put the penny, or any coin, under the paper and rub over the top with a crayon or colored pencil! Do lots of rubbings! Oh My! I gotta go try that! Thanks, P! Bye!

ATC's and Brown Paper Backgrounds

PHEW!!! Family art project there. Kinda took me away from all of this. I'm here now though, and what news I have for you!

Last fall the Rockport Public Library put on a show called "Out Of Bounds". I talked about it in earlier blogs: it was all about altered books. Let me tell you that it was soooo wierd to have the librarians telling us to cut up and paint on the books. Wow.

Anyway, those art techniques are often the same ones used for making Artist Trading Cards, and my longing for a local place to swap - because trading cards are for trading, yes? - came screaming up to the forefront. So I asked Molly Larson, the head librarian, if we could set up one at the library. And she said Yes! Actually, she said way more than yes: she said that many folks might not know what an ATC is, or how to get one, and would I like to sort-of teach a workshop. Along with the monthly ATC Swap. And of course I said yes. Too. I said yes, Molly said yes: we were having a little yes party. What a good time. :)

So then I wrote a guest column for their Newsletter, http://www.rockport.lib.me.us/_pdf/newsletter/newsletter200802.pdf and now I am thinking about how to make ATC's all the time, and this morning I came up with a great idea. To make background paper for future ATC's. Well actually I had started this paper a couple of days ago, but as I was working on it I thought that I would really be having fun if I was working on it with some friends. I choose you!

Here's the idea:

I will start us out coloring, and variously transforming the background paper and you can follow my directions. Then you can, by adding comments here on the blog, give the rest of us directions to another layer of transformation and we will follow you.

Brown Paper Backgrounds Sewn Up With String...

1. Take a regular brown paper bag and cut it open.

2. Crumple it up very tightly - try not to rip it though. Flatten it out. I actually repeated this step a couple of times to make the wrinkles pretty small.

3. Color the paper lightly with the side of a colored pencil. (Hmmm.. you can hardly see the color in this photo - it was red.) (O.K., light red.)

4. Get out some rubber stamps and stamp all over the paper. What color ink will you use? What theme of stamps will you use?

5. Hand sew your paper. I have started out with just a running stitch, but you could use a cross stitch, or a chain stitch, or anything.

O.K.,now, I have given you a couple of ideas. Your turn! What shall we do next?

I love, you love Valentine

First off, I want you to be proud of me: I did NOT spend acres of money at the bead shop this week, but called them and had them send me just the two vials of beads that I needed. I spent $4 on shipping which was less than I would have spent on the gas to get there. Yay me.

So I have been sewing away on my latest project: I love, you love Valentine. It gets its name from the drawing on the cloth that I did where I made a border out of the declension of the verb "to love". (I love, you love, she loves, they love ...) I have a couple of ideas about including some "reconfigured trash", but for now I am still in the beading stage. Here is a view of one of the corners: (those center, dark, sort-of maroon/fuchsia beads are the ones that came in the mail this week!)

Now this is what I keep calling 'line beading' in my mind: one stitch, one bead, all in a line. It is very mediitative and I love it. Onward! I'm off to bead. Remember Martin Luther King. Here's an idea: What would you say to him if you could sit and talk to him for a bit? I think that I would thank him for his dream and for being willing to go public with it. I would tell him about my dream. And I would also ask him about his history with infidelity and all. Why do we work like that?: all full of good ideas in one part of our lives and all, well, without faith in other parts of our lives. It is something that I think about. As I bead and all. Have a good Monday.

October Bird detail pics

So, I was looking over October Bird and I realized that I didn't give you any detail pictures of some of the trash embellishment - to say nothing of the beading. So here you are:

Slanting from the upper middle across that right hand corner there are stack of seed beads, (see tutorial below, back in November, I think), surrounding chips cut from those fake credit cards that the banks send you hoping that you will go in debt to them soon. Because there is so much silver and blue here in the sky, I cut the silver printed fake numbers from blue background cards and GLUED them down with a bit of dimensional paint, (don't be shocked that I didn't sew them - I didn't want bead or thread to distract from the shine and detail of the numbers). (Hmmm, do I have some agenda, even elitist agenda about stitching down everything?? I'll ponder that.) (Google "slow art". Lots of talk about that recently.)

Just below that section, and again in the photo below, you'll see these great clear plastic/wire spirals. These are made from the wire with which some toys are affixed to their packaging. Also in these pictures you can see that silver swirl which is silver, (candy wrapper), paper cut to size and also glued down.

Credit card parts, packaging wires and candy wrappers are the "trash" embellishments on October Bird. I am going to enter Ms. Bird in a nature/art show at Waterfall Arts in Belfast Maine. Try www.waterfallarts.org/ February or March I think. Meredith said that they are thinking that they might have hundreds - 1500!! - of entries, all less than 12" x 12". It will be art about our human footprint on Earth. By putting throw-a-way trash into my pieces I hope to keep how much we toss - that is NOT bio-degradeable - into my/our minds. We have choices.

Paul McGurren is writing a dismal/brilliant series of articles about what we put into our landfills, and how it all gets processed. Try http://freepressonline.com/ Yuk!, but fascinating and abominable and gross and very brave of Paul. If we don't talk about it we won't have access to our healing imaginations. There must be a better way. I am not sure that we can make art of it all - though I do my best.Well, I am off to work on Valentines. I will show you how I am doing the next time that I write. I ran out of one of my bead colors and will have to see if I can get more next week. I hate that: I go to buy a $4 tube of beads and see about 1000 other beads, and their sisters that would work well too.....$$!! But I'm going to be a good girl this week. At the bead store.

New projects - Valentines

-yawn-

Well good morning!

That was quite a long winter's nap! Lots of Christmas projects in that last month or so, and naturally I cannot go showing peoples' presents on an internet blog!

On to new stuff after I brag and show you the completed October Bird:

Cool, eh?

I had so much fun doing her.

Next are Valentine's done in the same way: draw on fabric with permanent markers and then bead to my heart's content. Here's a start on Valentine One:

That is the center heart, and below is a bit of the border.Gotta go. See you soon.

We have a winner!

Angela Davis won the commenter's gift! Send me an email, O.K.? robinsunne@robinsunne.com Lovely treats just for you. Thanks for the comments everyone.

Blog 30th - Commenter's Drawing on Blog 14th!

O.K. Last day to comment for a small treasure chest of goodies. Go back to Blog 14th and leave a comment, we will pick a winner tomorrow and post your name if you haven't made a link, or just contact you privately for your address so that I can send you your thank-you-for-reading-my-blog gift! (A little art, a little sweet, a little challenge...)
See you tomorrow. And I will start showing you some of the art projects that I have been finding in my studio as I have been cleaning. Wow. (I have been a bit more prolific than I thought I was.) (Cool ideas too. They take me by surprise - I forget where I have been in the last few years.)

Blog 26th - My New Pincushion

So, maybe you think that I have dropped off the face of the Earth. No, I have just been cleaning my studio. Y'know how you just trip over an UFO just one too many times? (un-finished object) Well, you'd think I was pregnant with all the nesting and cleaning going on around here. (I'm so not pregnant, so I get to wonder what cosmic turn is up.)

Well one of the great things about sorting through is that one finds long lost things. I now have several thimbles, all together in a tiny drawer on my desk, a great number of my scissors, including the deckle edged ones, in their own drawer, with the X-acto knives, extra blades, and sharpening stone, and I have been finding lots of needles! Yay! So many that I had to make a new pincushion. I found a piece of felt, got some small rocks, and stitched away.


ROCKS?


Yeah. You know how you reach for pins on a round pincushion and the "tomato" rolls, and then you grasp a pin and the whole pincushion comes with you? Very aggrivating. So I sewed the design that I have spent years wondering when I would take the 1/2 an hour to make.


I traced a circle on heavy cardboard and cut it out. Then I cut a slightly bigger circle of felt, and four triangles of felt each with bottom measurements a smidgen more than 1/4 of the circumference of the circle. None of these measurements were exact, or, for that matter, even measured. I guessed big and recut as needed.


ANYway, I stitched it all together and made a small pouch of the rocks to sit atop the cardboard - for weight so that I can pick up pins without flinging the pincushion about - and stuffed around and on top of the rocks ... do you get it? It works so well. You deserve one too. Let me draw you a cutaway view:


And here is the pic:


It even has a tassel at the top so that I can move it without getting poked! And it has a flat base so that it doesn't roll around.


My world is perfect. (It's the little things.)


Here's hoping that your little things are making your world perfect too.

Blog 20th - October Bird..again. Still.

Another piece of October Bird.

More silver foil. More beading. Though I think that this section is up for revision. I really like how those packed lines of beads look. The original drawing on the cloth has back and forth scribbles to color in these sections, so the beading is reminiscent of that - though you can't really tell as the beads cover up the drawing ... well, anyway.

There are some guys in the latest issue of American Craft that have six foot panels of glass beading. Oh yeah. Steven and William Ladd. My idea of a good time. Hundreds of hours of beading. It wins out over bombing the National Museum in Bagdhad, or inventing Christmas tree lights with "lead and other substances which are known to cause birth defects and cancer. Please wash your hands after handling." I'm not kidding. Go read the packages. Lower right hand corner of the back panel on the box that I saw yesterday. I am so not kidding. The people who invent this stuff? How do they sleep at night?

California has a law that makes manufacturers at least label the boxes with warnings, but what sickness of spirit makes a person approve of the decision to add toxic substances to Christmas Decorations??!! So shall I decorate with gloves on this year, and tell the children not to touch the tree/tree lights? Or shall we skip the lights this year? Maybe I could put little footlights at the bottom of the tree ...

Oh dear...

I'm gonna go back and bead.

Blog 19th - October Bird

Oh, Hi.

I have been working on October Bird.

What do you think?

I am getting close to done. See up at the top of this picture? That is silver paper. (Chocolate wrapper - fairly traded chocolate I'll have you know.) I just feel so strongly about using reconfigured trash in my pieces; it's pretty, it's free, there's just so much of it! I need something more... the picture isn't quite balanced ... I will go and keep beading. I wish you Monday morning occupations that you love as much as I love mine.

Blog 17th - Quilted Vessels

Don't forget to Comment For Prizes on Blog 14th!




So, I am working on the paperwork to write a book on my Quilted Vessels, and I would like to hear what you think.
Would you buy a book that had a big gallery section of these vessels? Would you buy a book that taught you how to make them?
Would you be interested in the book if it also contained lessons on how to handpaint your own fabric?
How interested would you be to have the beading lessons included?
Some of the vessels use "reconfigured trash", or recycled treasures as a part of their ornamentation, would you be interested in seeing how to do that?
Thank you for your input! Here are some pictures of Quilted Vessels.
Homage To My Art Ancestors

In Her Dark Grace

I Must Change My Mind

Pond Dance

Embroider My Heart With Compassion

Blog 15th - Altered Books

Lots of pictures today. Here is the book that I started with: The Columbia Viking Desk Encyclopedia.First, I pasted the edges of the pages together with acrylic gel medium, and cut a niche into the papers. Well, before the first I perused the book and tore out pages with great drawings; I found pictures of architecture - things we have made - bridges, houses, arch and column styles. I cut these up and pasted them randomly over the inside of the end pages and inside the niche.Then, with the paper that I had cut from the book I rolled some beads. Ever done that? Over a knitting needle or toothpick roll evenly cut strips of paper until you get a bead of the heft that you like. You can use triangles and get a semblance of round-ish bead, but I wanted tubular beads.There are the strips with glue on the ends to hold the many strips together, and an experiment with blue acrylic paint and gel medium to see if I could make the blue transparent, and the beads lined up with their pearl and Swarovski crystal spacers. I had also pasted tiny pictures of the history of furniture styles, exampled in chairs over the ages, onto the beads - which I wanted to see through the blue paint.

Below, here, I had painted the beads and was drying them - and in the process invented an amazing Bead Drying Rack! I tucked a T-pin through the bead and stuck it into a piece of blue foam insulation board. (I usually paint fabric on these boards, so they are paint ridden anyway.) They let the beads spin around while I painted them, left them open to the air on all sides and I could move the board into a safe place for the hours that they would take to dry. I am so pleased.

Here is a picture of the back end paper - a view of the Pacific Ocean and its encircling land masses - the front end paper has a map of the Atlantic.And here is the end result!

You can go here to get to the Rockport, (Maine) Library website for the Out Of Bounds Altered Book Show http://www.rockport.lib.me.us/OutofBoundsAlteredBookProject.php or just come to the Rockport Opera House on Friday evening, Saturday or Sunday to see the show! See you there! R

Blog 14th - Say Yes

Now this is my idea of enough beading!

I have had this YES up on my wall for a while, and now it is time to pass it on. I have listed it for sale at http://robinsunne.etsy.com There are glass, stone, plastic, metal: all manner of little beadlings, about 1/2" of colorful beadifiers.

I learned YES at The Bread and Puppet Circus with my Haystack Mountain School of Crafts class from the summer of 1982. I still have the original small paper poster that first said YES to me. My YES is that I believe myself. That tiny piece of paper told my to hang in there with my dreams.

What is your YES? Let's have a Commenters Drawing: all of the commenters to this post, between now and the end of the month will be put into a hat and I will get one of my children to draw a name and you will win ... well, I will make up some wonderful little goody box of treats. Something will definately have beads on it!

O.K., so what or how is your YES? To whom did you say YES? Let us know...

R

blog 13th - Doodle applique

Good Morning ... or ... um, whenever it is for you,

Enclosed are two pictures of a piece that I took on the road with me yesterday. It is a homework assignment from my Creative Chick Doodling class, and involves one of my all time favorite passtimes: applique. Here is the first picture, of the overall:

Here is a close-up of the stitching.

Susan uses floss and a bigger needle and I have found that less rhythmic, (I have to pull so hard and my hand strength must not be what hers is), so I use a single thread and a size 12 needle - very tiny, but it glides through all of those fabric layers. I am calling this stitch a "cross-hatched-herringbone".

Let me see if I can make you a tutorial ... Here!

Once again my camera and I have not figured out how close I can get, but let me walk you through.

1. Come up at A, (I came up at the outside edge of the top fabric ). Go down at B, up at C, (1/8" or so inside the edge).

2. Go down at D, up at E, (outside edge).

3. Go down at F, up at G, (inside the edge).

4. Keep repeating 2. and 3. overlapping all of your cross-stitches. This is not a neat stitch, with the angles of the crosses all parallel. No, this is one of those dreaming stitches: your size 12 glides, you meditate, and Goddess takes care of all the angles.

It is doing a great job with all of those fraying edges too.

See ya tomorrow.

R

Blog 12th

Hmmm, my time is not enterely my own. This blog-a-day thing isn't quite happening. I am working on October Bird, but in the past few days have only gotten so much done. Anyway, here is so far:

Most of what I have done is just followed the green lines in the drawing with green beads - an activity that I find extremly satisfying, (or just easy and mindless). But I have also been figuring out some other embellishments:I have some area beading and some stacks that follow one of the blue lines. After the beads comes the trash. I have some silver papers picked out ...

See you tomorrow.

Blog 9th

So here I am in this November Blog-A-Day thing and I am not writing every day. 'Course I didn't find out about it until the third and so there goes that. I thought that it would be good practice for me in this my new Let's Be An Artist On The Web job though. Just to get used to working on the various pieces that I have going and inciting a sence of accountability.

Today's news is a bit mimimalist as I have been, as I said, working on two altered books for our library's Out Of Bounds art show next week. I will submit the books today. I hesitate to show pictures on the internet too soon for fear of "ruining the surprise". Or maybe it would be good advertising for the exhibition which is Friday through Sunday at the Rockport Opera House, here in Maine. Maybe I should go ask the Librarians.


Those done, I get to go back to October Bird. I have gotten her pink self about as embellished as I like. Here:

See those "feather" stitches on her wings? Get it? ... I really love the feeling of thread and beads on fabric. Lovely little Braille-like bumps telling intimate stories.

I have been thinking and talking about our physical beauty. Some people think that our beauty shouldn't be so important. But I keep thinking that often what someone looks like is our first knowledge of a person. Unless we know them in writing - like here on a blog, or an author in her book, or we hear someone on the radio. But as long as sight is one of our active senses, looks are what usually draw us first with the people in our lives. The other senses are more intimate - though maybe sound on the radio, or in a speech in a crowded place is less so - normal talking voices need proximity, touch needs, one hopes, permission, which implies a relationship. Smell requires a moment and nearness, and certainly taste implies relationship, even if you are only sucking the venom out of a snake bite and in the relationship of healer.

So touch is intimate, (I love to sew), and sight is our first knowledge of another. Why wouldn't our looks be important? We lowly humans who have lost much of our awarenesses of psychic skills. All I'm saying is: why fight that? Why shouldn't we train ourselves to use our beauty for whichever good causes we stand for? Dress up, look fabulous, and go speak about Peace, or Kindness to Mother Earth, or Voting. Not that dating isn't important too, but as long as people are being drawn in by the visual - well, why not use the audience to say something important?

Oh, all right. Enough. I am off to sew the sky.

Blog 8th - doodling and rubberstamping

Weeell, I don't want to show you just yet what I have really been working on: those final days before the show and all: OUT OF BOUNDS at http://www.rockport.lib.me.us/ our local library, is an art show of altered books! What a hoot! You go into the library expecting to borrow books and on the way out there is a box of old books that they are giving awayfor us to cut up and paint and otherwise artistically mangle! The really cool part is that after the show during the weekend of the 16th, the library will keep certain books, (we'll be juried), to remain in circulation! You'll be able to go to the library and borrow art. Now how wonderful is that?

Next weekend I will show you my two altered books. For now I will show you a rubber stamp that I made:

It is 4" x 4" square. There it is all inked up. Below on paper:And below here it is printed on cloth. Cloth that I printed in Susan Sorrell's class on fabric painting.See the background shapes? They are paper clips laid over sun dyed fabric. I think that beading this one will be great.

Gotta go, more tomorrow.

She recognised you...

I heard this yesterday in a radio talk by Father Greg Boyle: "The woman was crying because she recognised you as the shape of God's heart." He runs a business in L.A. that hires ex-gang members. The 'you' in that quote was a man who, an ex-gang member, now works in the office hosting tours of the facility in Los Angeles, and who was just returning from a dinner at the White House. I sometimes feel like an ex-gang member myself. Different gang. We, the priveleged, slay with different weapons. Long story. I watched a boy play in the tidal mud and sunshine, looking, probably, for crabs in the shape of God's heart, and wondered what that felt like.

I worshipped the yearning in that woman's son in L.A. that made him charm the visitors, and I worshipped the yearning for krill in that little boy on the beach, and I wondered.

I worked on the heart of Heartroot yesterday.

Above the whole, below the root ...

and here the heart.I used golden iris beads, and pink translucent, and deep red, and gold, and gold translucent ... I sew the beads in, deep and full, wishing that I could recognise the shape of God's heart at my fingertips.

Blog 5th - dyed, beaded Timtex

Yipes! We had a power outage yesterday! I can now passionately add to my gratitudes list: I am grateful for bright, electric light to sew by. I am grateful for running water. I am grateful for sunshine on my diningroom table when I don't have electric lights. I am grateful that the Y had power. And, of course, I am grateful for all of those nice Central Maine Power people who fixed the broken transformer on our street at 9 o'clock at night!

Back to art:

Here is the heartroot!

And a side view to get a better sence of the depth and crustiness of the thing.

And a tiny beading tutorial.

Position One , on the far left there, is a stack: string two pony beads, (size 8), and then a seed bead, (size 11), pull the beads all the way down the thread until they rest against the fabric and go back through the two pony beads - NOT the seed bead - and down into the fabric. (One may stack up as many beads as one likes.)

Position Two, is what I have been calling a jump: string 6 seed beads and go back into the fabric a short distance away. The closer that you go back into the fabric , then the taller the "jump" will be.

Position Three, is a pony bead on its side - just a bit more height than a seed bead. I was trying to go from a low profile near the brick colored seed bead edge to a higher mound in the center of each root finger, the pony was a good first stage.

Position Four is that single seed bead which I also used as a filler.

Position Five is another stack: this is a stack of 6 seed beads and behind the front line of techniques is a stack in progress showing how you come back through all of the beads except one.

Sigh. Beads sure do make me happy. Oh! Y'know, I just remembered: on my 40th birthday, (which was a toughie for me, 50 was easier, just like Judy told me - that it is one or the other that gets you, but not both - anyway, on that birthday I only asked for beads. The giver's choice. It was great! I received beads that I might not have bought for myself but that have been terrific additions to many a project.

Remind me to tell you about Rudy and the chispas. Might explain my bead happiness.

R

blog 3rd - heartroot

I just found out about NaBloPoMo: National Blog Post Month, check it out at http://nablopomo.ning.com/

Now I have to write once a day - I thought that it would be good practice. Here is what I am working on today:

I dyed some Timtex - really stiff interfacing - and tried so hard to embroider it with floss, but gave that up for a line of beads. The Timtex is so stiff though that I was having trouble holding on to it as I navigated all of the twists of the line ...

so I cut the center out and now the beading goes a bit more easily. And I have an idea about sewing it all back together.

Here is the heart and the root. Not crusty enough yet. More, much more is needed.

But the Out of Bounds Altered Book Project is due in less than a week, and I am behind in my class, and I haven't finished October Bird yet, and here it is November... Yeah, I will have plenty to write about as long as I get my little fingers nimbling along here.

Wait 'til you see what I am going to do to the root.