Making a stationery caddy (from old boxes)

Here I am again with another of my re-use passions. Collect little boxes eg groceries and medicines and the insides of toilet rolls and sticky tapes. Cut all the tops off.
Find a sturdy box that will hold them all.

Experiment with how the little boxes will fit inside the big box, taller ones at the back. Height and width depends on what you will want to store in each compartment.

It looks a little drab in the picture above, but watch it brighten as soon as you put the things in:

Of course, the most fun is in the decorating. An easy way is to paint it all, but you can also cover each box with a pretty gift wrap glued on with wallpaper paste (messy and a bit of a fuss to make initially, but once you have a batch, you can do them all and it's water soluble and dries clear. Here's the one I use at work; made many years ago, from tubes of different diameter only:

Another lampshade

A chandelier for the bathroom, which currently has a bare light bulb. If it shades TOO much, then it will move to the entrance and Plan B will need to be concocted for the bathroom. I saw this kind of chandelier in Atmosphere, a craft shop in Port Elizabeth.

It's been fairly easy to make, but VERY labour intensive. Stringing thousands of beads and tying them on to the wire frame, string by string. It is ALMOST done - as you can see in the picture, I just need to complete the outmost ring. I've been stringing beads in every spare minute I can find, at work, in the car, and will hardly know what to do when it is finished.

Sigh

I didn't get to my art journals this past weekend and somehow I feel down about that. Mainly because I really wanted to, but when I sat down with it, I just felt blank. So it was a weekend of plugging along on finishing other things which didn't require any artistic input, just lots of repetitive actions to complete them. I'm working on a beaded lampshade, which I'll post soon, and I'm quilting one of the house-warming lapquilts. Also doing some house-repairs (scraping, water-proofing and re-painting a piece of wall - how exciting...)

And just struggling to shake a pervasive case of the blues...

Don't swat it....!

... it also has a right to live :)

Art Journals!

Wow, I have just discovered these. Or re-discovered them, I'm not quite sure which, as the concept seems very familiar.

I have been SO awesomely inspired by the following sites:
Cramzy, by Emmy from the Netherlands. Decorative embellished pieces to feast your eyes on. Lots of photos of exquisite work - thanks so MUCH Emmy, for showing your work to us all and inspiring an old girl so far away!

Fabric Art Journals, a group blog by several artists, one of whom is Arlee. Awesome stuff there.

Follow links from both of these blogs and you will quickly use up all your allotted bandwidth (I did!) and go to sleep very, very happy with your head filled with the sumptuous images of colours and textures and possibilities.

I did a cover for a journal, and the first page. Photos will follow.
Edit 15 Aug: Photos added:
Whole Cover:

Front Cover (left) Back Cover(right)

...Can hardly bear to be at work while it lies at home on my desk, BEGGING to be worked on! - and by evening I am just too tired. Ah, weekend, where are you??

More pics: First page:

Strictly speaking, I suppose this is actually an altered book, since I used an existing book and I am just covering the pages and using the spine and structure of the book. But who's speaking strictly?? I WILL move onto making the book out of the actual pages I make, but this was an quick way to get started. I also want to do mixed media, to use my many lovely papers, so it helps to have a foundation to stick things to.

Here are two of the lovely papers:

I have stuck them down to make backgrounds and as soon as I can get finished with this workweek-thing that steals my time, I will begin embellishing these pages, as well as sewing some other fabric-based ones....

Wednesday is Hump Day (as in just getting over the hump in the middle of the working week, NOT the other kind of hump.) This isn't THAT sort of blog ;)

Making envelopes (from old magazines)

Requirements:
1. Magazines. Glossy, corporate-reports are good. Travel brochures are also great. The glossy ones are good to use as they are harder to recycle, because of the gloss.
2. Used envelope to take apart
3. Used cereal box to glue envelope onto, to make a template. Make a window template, so you can see what the envelope will look like on the front.
4. Pen, to draw around template onto paper.
5. Scissors to cut out envelopes
6. Glue of some sort, to stick sides of envelope together.

Optional: Ruler and an old pen which has run out of ink, to use to score lines to make folding easier and more accurate. Sticky labels to put on the front, to make an area on which to write the name and address (or just use a light-coloured piece of magazine paper)

Is "brotherly love" only a reality when we're asleep?

Kuhleke is finished

Kuhleke Moya Wam means "It is well with my soul". I previously blogged about this quilt, while I was still busy with it.

The Quilt Inspector insisted on being photographed with the work as she poses prettily.

Detail: Left, is me sitting in my Afro-pessimistic pose, at times when I worry that South Africa will end up like Zimbabwe is at the moment, a very worrying situation. I worry especially about what will happen when I am too old to work, or fend for myself.

Below: Watching what is going on, looking at and assessing.

Left: Happy, rejoicing, because, as the slogan on the TV ad goes, South Africa is "Alive with Possibility" and it is an exciting time to live and work here, to raise my daughters, and to contribute.

Another Housewarming present

This scrap quilt is for a friend who has bravely bought a house at the age of 59. Isn't that fantastic? She gave me two bags of scraps and bits of haberdashery, braid etc, so I decided to make a scrap crazy quilt for her out of these bits, that she must have carefully hoarded. She often talks about how her mother would make scrap crazy quilts when she was younger, so I think it will be special to her.

Detail: This golden "flower" is beaded, and was amongst the bits she gave me.

Postcards

I have very little idea how to format the placement of these pictures - tried to spread them over the page a bit, but they seem to have got into rather a random layout...

Anyhoo, had some fun a while back making postcards.... nice way to try out a technique without too much investment - and if it works well, you can do more.

Handmade paper with pineapple bits in it.

Very random stitching on sheer fused onto background:

I bought this very cheerful elephant fabric as a child's dress at a jumble sale for the princely sum of R5 - went home and cut up the dress. Here it is with some Elle Plume yarn around the edges and below, without.

Some very zany neon-coloured snakeskin bellbottoms I bought at the second-hand shop and also cut up. You'd have to be on acid to wear them as clothes but they make cheerful postcards... :)

These two blueish ones are rather random and not all that successful in my eyes, but there's no accounting for taste and since I hope to offer them for sale, they may just appeal to someone!:

The last two are my mother's taste - ethnic, striking in design. Not much to be done, as the design is so strong, so I mainly quilted them, and outlined the one at the bottom:

I found my camera cable...!

Today is a very happy day. I mislaid my camera cable some months ago and today I found it! It has been a major mission to get photos off my camera without the cable, so I am overjoyed!

I ran around taking pics of recent things I've been doing, so my blog can brighten up, at last.

A bag I made from Da Gama fabric (it came printed in the pattern, so all you had to do was cut, a no-brainer, but a very useful bag to lug projects around in.) I lug a lot of stuff around, to catch all the little bits of time; very necessary if you're a single, working parent with a desperate yearning to make art all the time.

This is actually a fairly old one and I may already have blogged it, but I keep doing a few more stitches on it, so it's at least in progress... I'd like to do more in this vein, perhaps of proteas and local South African flora. The huge oak tree right next to my house is just an endless inspiration (but it would be nice to do some local flowers).

Bobby Brain posing on a house-warming present I'm making for a friend who has bravely moved. The pieces are just pinned down in the photo, I later fused everything and am now stitching everything down, as it's meant to be a utilitarian lap quilt and will need to withstand frequent washing.

Once I had it all together, and looked at it, I felt the colours were way too haphazard. I had that sinking feeling, when you've put lots of work in already and then look at it and realise it just doesn't work and you have to decide whether to dismantle or soldier on. Had this been a wall piece, I might have dismantled, but as a lap quilt, I think it's okay for it to be a bit random. (Note: must persuade her NOT to put it on a wall.)

What on earth could this amorphous mass be...?

Sorry, no more information until it's finished, it's my Innovative Threads Entry for 2008 and all will be revealed in time.... It's been 2 years in the making, so what's a few more weeks?

[wicked grin]

More box mania

I just can't resist making boxes to keep stuff in. It's part of my recycling and re-use passion. I find these great cardboard boxes and midify them to make them into units of shelves and drawers that fit into them. Incredibly useful and almost free (they just need some sticky tape to hold them together, and optionally some sticky contact paper to decorate them). I use old cardboard from the backs of exam pads, and old cereal boxes etc etc. Cannot describe the satisfaction. I must be crazy - but it's a very fun sort of crazy :)

I finally did the very adult thing and bought some REAL furniture. Made by some folks from Zimbabwe (and can we help but feel for anyone from Zim these days??) who came down for Festival this year and put their stuff by the side of the road. They were sitting making it as I stopped; makes such a nice change from everything being mass-manufactured from China! I bought about eight of these. Note, ummm, how they are also boxes..... lol :) Very good looking in a salt-of-the-earth sort of way and slightly rickety (had to stabilise with a little wad of folded-up paper under one leg; see pic) with grass-woven baskets. I just love them.

Inno 2007

... and I forgot to mention that I was accepted again for Innovative Threads! This was the second time I entered and the second time I was accepted. If this goes on, I could actually start to believe that perhaps I am not all that bad as an artist! It was SO exciting: a friend (who also had work accepted) and I flew up to Durban for the opening. A real extravagance, but we're worth it! I stayed with my mom who really enjoyed going as well and we floated home on such a high. Very memorable.


This is my entry: the roundish object at the top of the design wall.

Detail:

... and here is the text I sent with it:

"I marvel at the advances medical science has made and the quality of life that our constant scientific research has given to many people. This work is about cell biology. Gene therapy is depicted in the middle and the Mandelbrot set represents mathematics and imaging technology. The nerve cells have to do with mental health advances and computer chips enable powerful medical technology, which can correct faulty biology. For all the havoc we humans have wreaked, I see these technological advances as a shining example of the highest good mankind CAN achieve. I wish to speak for the good that can be done with medical technology and it is my fervent hope that future stem cell technology will be able to cure my Type 1 diabetic daughter."

Markal Paintstiks

I've just ordered a set of these online and am very excited about trying them. They are called Shiva paintstiks in the USA, I think. They are oil paints in stick form and can be used on fabrics. Doesn't that just sound like something that HAS to be tried?? :)

Rosalie Dace's Workshop

Hard to believe this happened in April and now it is July and it's the first time I am getting to write about it -shocking. It was a thoroughly enjoyable workshop and Rosalie gave us lots of insights and tips. It was called "The Thinking Eye" and was about drawing inspiration from the work of Paul Klee. This was the first work I produced, with lots of trepidation and not much hope. I don't think I can reproduce the Klee work that I drew the inspiration from, here as I'm sure it is covered by copyrights, but if I can find a link, I'll post that.
(Edit 1 Aug 2007: It's called Insula Dulcamara from 1938)

I don't much like what I made, but Laura loves it, so it is going to hang in her room. Don't know if you can see the thinking eye in the brain - and the question mark I added because I didn't feel I knew what I was doing, and the tear because I actually went home in despair the first night... so actually it was quite autobiographical of the process...

Next I decided to work with Value, which Klee seemed to have a good grasp of and I definitely DON'T :) I made this small work, which I also don't really like, but it's better than the first.

After some unhappiness and wondering what was wrong with me, I came to the conclusion that I just wasn't very fired up about Paul Klee's work. It just doesn't make me want to get up and rush to create. Nevertheless I learnt an awful lot and have no regrets whatsoever. Just to be in a class with a person whose work I have admired for so long was a treat.

After I had this little epiphany about Klee, I tried working with the sheers, as Rosalie had also shown us, and made something totally unrelated to the work of Klee, and which I like the best:

Rosalie threw out several gems of wisdom, one of which really stuck with me:
"Value does the work and Colour gets the credit." That really made me look differently at my work, as I am totally seduced by Colour and tend to ignore Value.

The other maxim she has was "Cut and Shut" regarding the Rotary Cutter, and several people, including myself were caught out having Cut but not Shut. A good way to remember, especially for those of us who have children and pets about, as well as a degree of personal carelessness. (I've already had six stitches in my hand from a rotary cut.) And Rosalie, if you ever read this, I've been VERY good about this ever since the workshop.

All in all, an experience to be recommended if you ever get a chance to do a workshop with Rosalie Dace! :) And maybe one day I'll learn to appreciate Klee.

(Edited and photos added 31 July 2007)

Pay It Forward

I was surfing blogs and found this Pay It Forward (PIF) meme on both Kate's and Susan's blogs. It sounded like a charming idea, so I signed up and hereby post my own PIF message:

"I will send a handmade gift to the first 3 people who leave a comment on my blog requesting to join this PIF exchange. I don't know what that gift will be yet and you may not receive it tomorrow or next week... LOL... but you will receive it within 365 days, that is my promise! The only thing you have to do in return is pay it forward by making the same promise on your blog."

Am I Back?

Could it be? Work has calmed down a fraction and maybe, just maybe, I could get back to posting a few things again. Watch this space.

Internet woes

I seem to have disappeared from the blogosphere. Many apologies. I have lost my internet access at home (working on that!) and work has been way too hectic to be able to blog from there (where I *do* have internet access).
Will really make an effort as soon as I get access again.