Weekly check in

I have been pretty overwhelmed with school work this week and haven't done anything remotely crafty at all except for making some swap cards for the hell of it as a break from (yes you guessed it) more school work.

Anyway, not to much to report though I have a quick picture I snapped in class after a 6 hour marathon of screenprinting. This is one of three planned crystal forms for my autobiographical panel assignment. There are a few blemishes so it's far from perfect but it does look damn good when you stand a fair distance away haha.

Ahh school is taking over

I suppose now I'm glad I don't have any pressing deadlines to meet crafty-wise as school (as indicated by the title of this post) is quickly getting a bit crazy.

I'm taking 2 studio classes; Intermediate Fibers (Screen Printing/surface design) and Intermediate Printmaking (Intaglio processes), both of which are pretty damn time consuming as far as planning and then execution. I'm also taking my last Art History class which is a little annoying (not the subject, I love the subject, just school program drama and my decreasing level of motivation) but that's not as much fun to talk about.

Anyway in fibers, the current assignment is to come up with a panel that is autobiographical in nature incorporating at least some screenprinting, but any other techniques/processes can be used as well. I brainstormed up this fun design that involves these geometric crystal forms I'm planning to screenprint, but holy moly just the planning for these forms is taking forever. Oh and I didn't mention that the panel has to be roughly a yard and half square. That's kind of big. Anyway, we do have a couple of weeks to get this done, and I think I'll probably need all of it the way this is going so far. I hope it'll go a little quicker once I have the crystal forms mapped out and printed. Cross your fingers for me!

And in Printmaking I just did my very first acid etch which turned out ok...Certainly could have been worse, but definitely could have been better. What I love about the class is that the teacher really pushes me to explore my "concepts" and really examine my images to make them more meaningful....since I'm at the Intermediate level we have to now start writing an "artist statement", which I can't said I'm thrilled about. I have such a hard time pinpointing exactly why I did a certain thing a certain way, more often it's just because it felt right or made me laugh...It's hard trying to be serious when most times I'm not a serious person. Maybe I'll share it here with you guys. I'd love feedback.

So here's the print in all it's glory. I'd love to hear what people think of when they see it...I can share a bit later my thought process on how I got there.

A spooky little book to kick off the season

It is starting to get cooler again which always makes me a little sad because I know winter will be right around the corner =/ I'm not a huge fan of Michigan winter but whatever, at least it makes my urge to stay inside and craft not as crazy hah. Anyway, I made a wee book for a swap on craftster that was Halloween themed and definitely got me in the mood for the season a bit - I'm even planning a fun costume for Halloween =)

It was for Kira at Oops I Craft My Pants who is an awesome artists and person! She loves bright colors, Halloween, and animals so I tried to run with those themes in mind.

I'm not 100% happy with the covers but I just didn't know what to do for them...they turned out ok I think. I was really trying to bring out the color here.



Some in progress pictures to show the layering effect I've fallen in love with!







Here's how each page looks as you flip through in order - I wish the pictures would have shown the dimensionality better but oh well =/







Kira is famous for her wicked witch bookmark feet so I included that small detail here for fun! Also check out what's drying on the line - there's a naked ghost somewhere! haha.















Detail of the binding - I love the look of coptic stitch!



And some close ups of my favorite pages





And now I don't think I have anything else top secret that I can't show you! Hmmm, well maybe I can start doing some little tutorials, or highlight other awesome people I know. We'll see....=)

Picture Flood Time

Some of my recent projects were finally delivered to their homes so I can post here =)

A TM bag made specifically for Erica_tattoos on craftster; I tried to change up the format a bit making it longer than wide.















I also made her a whimsy canvas - this was actually the first one I made, which resulted in me wanting my own hah. Lesson learned, I didn't take nearly as many close up pictures of this one, and I really should have. Oh well.







I also wanted to make something for her little boy, because I know I love receiving gifts, and its gotta be hard when your mom gets a bunch of fun stuff and you don't get anything so yeah...hopefully they fit ok.



And just as an aside, I finished my "TM object for the shop" goal of the month. I decided to make my first notebook cover! Funny as this is usually what most people start with. Anyway, I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. I need to work on better pictures though.







Ok that's all for now. Today's been long, and I am going to veg out until I go to bed I think. Night all!

Just a quickie

I spent 4 hours today in my fibers class screenprinting so frankly my arms/wrists/back hate me right now and I'm going to be brief.

1. I am disappointed to say that my cheerful little expression stickers have already been removed from the art building =( I'm going to guess it's the janitors who are responsible, but I'm not going to stop haha. Public art like that is ephemeral (I had to look that word up in the dictionary to make sure I was spelling it right lol) which is part of the charm I guess. Still wish it stuck around a little longer. I'm going to have a few more "art bombs" to drop in the next day or so (I had two in my bag today but forgot of course).

2. A quick little bookmark and pendant I made for the Bead Soup swap over on craftster. Easy and quick, just like me haha. Just kidding.

Hoopla experiments

Here's a hoop I just sent to a lovely lady in Australia. It was based on zentangles which are both challenging and beautiful to create - this is one of the few hoops I've made that is 100% original in design and I'm pretty proud of it.

One more post for the day: Whimsy AWESOMENESS!

I've been trying to take pictures of this particular piece of art I made for myself what seems like forever! It defies the common camera. I had to finally pull out my make-shift lightbox to really get some nice detailed pictures. I love love love the graphic finger pointing so I decided to use it as my inspiration.



Made from a whole horde of whimsies that I've had forever. I'm so happy I finally found an awesome way to display some of the whimsies I've kept, unsure of what to do with them since it was hard to use them in my TM work or otherwise. It's such an eye spy of everything. My favorite details are the cup and saucer, sitting horse, bird house, shoe, biscuit, hand. Can you find them? =)



















It's pretty amazing how simple it is for how awesome it turns out. I traced a stencil onto the canvas and decided which areas were going to be light and dark (this could easily be done with other colors besides black and white, but I love the dynamic look so I went with it). Then I pulled out my whimsies and glue and went to work filling in all the spaces that would be sprayed with color. It took a while since I had to find small bits for all the more detailed areas. Seed beads are great for a bit of filler too in these areas. Then after all the gluing is done and it's completely dry I made a stencil out of contact paper to lay over the areas that were to remain white - this is somewhat tricky because even though you try to maintain the lines you drew as best you can there is going to be some overlap. I cut out the stencil and then trimmed as needed when I tried to lay it over the white space itself before peeling off the back of the contact paper. Hopefully this makes sense...then go to town with the spray paint of your choice in a well ventilated area - I took mine outside. Once the canvas is completely covered and the paint is dry peel away the contact paper and touch up the edges because there will be some degree of spray that manages to get under the contact paper. Voila - done!

Now to find a place to hang it.

Bringing a little cheer

My own version of art bombing...maybe not art per say, but it makes me smile =)







I've had these novelty eye/mouth/expression stickers forever that I've hardly used so I decided to embellish a few things today. The first one is a drinking fountain in the art building at my school; the second one is in the woman's bathroom right by the first. The last one is a bit of a joke at work for a co-worker who is notorious for leaving funny doodles and notes around when he's particularly bored. I added on later some speech bubbles so he'll find a funny surprise tomorrow when he gets to work.

And the Winner is.........

Primdollie!!!!  

Send me an email at QuirkieCraft@gmail.com and we'll work out your awesome prize package!

Yay, that was fun - over way to soon it seems like though. Thanks so much to everyone who participated in my first giveaway!! I feel the love and want to keep sharing it in turn!

School started this last week and I am thoroughly exhausted, even though we didn't do much of anything yet. Another week or two and I'll be back in the swing of things, but I'm still trying to finish up all my summer projects that are half done before school work becomes too much. I'm pretty excited about my printmaking class though - once I have some prelim sketches I'll share them on here.

While I don't have anything really done yet to post (except one piece of art I made for myself that stubbornly refuses to take pictures well) I have been working on my first yarn bombing project!

For anyone who isn't familiar with yarn bombing, essentially it is street art in the form of knitted or crocheted designs applied to the landscape in some form. Here's some awesome examples I pulled from the web:









It can be as big and dramatic as you want, or as quiet and intimate; it doesn't matter. I love how each piece must have taken at least a little moment of forethought in the creator's mind about how they wanted to interact with the environment. It just brings a smile to my face, the unexpected.

Mine won't be nearly as crazy wild for sure, but I did snap a few pictures while I was working on it.

Here are some stars sitting on my keyboard as I work - I chose a star pattern because I thought it would be pretty and would stand out more so than more linear designs....I'm kinda just winging the whole thing as I go though. I don't have a "drop site" picked out at all. I was thinking I'd bring it to school with me eventually and put it up between classes or something haha.



Here's a picture when I started sewing them together - I think it would work out well against a fence but I almost want more of a challenge than that. Like wrapping it around a pole, or suspending it between two vertical objects. I made a lot more individual stars that haven't been sewn on yet, and I think what I'll end up doing is sewing it all together and then cutting it down to the needed size on site.



Its very exciting, but I must admit I'm a little nervous that someone will come up to me and tell me I can't do "whatever it is that I'm doing". I might wait til it gets a little darker in the evening so it won't be so noticeable when I put it up hah.