B Yourself

Set the Black Cat to the task of doing the cutting on multiples of a Paula Best rubber stamp, the "B Yourself Mannequin". I scanned a print of the stamp at 100% and traced the outer edge, cut multiples in cardstock, and then hand stamped using a stamp positioner. It was a little off in places, requiring a tiny bit of trimming, but not much. 

There's probably a better way to do this, but I haven't investigated yet.

It's hard to see in the pictures, but I cut three images for each tag to paper-piece

them together: basically the bottom is the whole stamp, the middle is the

mannequin minus stand and wings, and the top is the head and rabbit.

So that's a lot of mannequin that I didn't have to cut out by hand.
That is an excellent thing.

I tweaked a basic tag shape in the MTC program, and cut tags from Donna Estabrooks'

"the Colorful Life" 8x8 cardstock pack, and then cut a shadow layer in black.

On some of the tags, I used the
Tim Holtz Pickett Fence Distress Stain to tone the colors down.

The "B Yourself" figures were partially colored first with various Distress Stain 

colors and then over-colored with Copic markers. Some of them got a final distressing

with the Picket Fence stain. Added ribbon and a little key charm to finish.

These three also got a "believe" stamp, embossed in white detail EP.

I also used the cutter to design and cut an envelope for the tags, which were then embossed with the cuttlebug and finished with a tiny 3D letter "B" sticker. Some of the mannequins got brown faces, for all of us Mocha Divas (saw that on the TLo blog commentary recently, and it tickled me), and the rest are bit more fantasy face.

Something Old, Something New

The new labels!

Rock, Paper, Vinyl

In a previous post, I mentioned using the new digital cutter to make new labels

for the card catalog that holds a lot of my crafting supplies and rubber stamps.

And I rather blithely mentioned that paper didn't work so well. 

May I present Exhibit A: Paper Not Working So Well

Then I remembered the little sample of cut vinyl that came with the cutter as a test cut.

I'd never cut vinyl on the Craft Robo, so it hadn't occurred to me until now to use it. 

So I dug out a roll of vinyl that I'd bought a long time ago and never used, and it worked really well. The experiments I'd tried with transferring and gluing paper were marginal at best, and the vinyl has an adhesive on the back already. "Weeded" (vinyl sign talk for getting rid of the little bits inside the shape with an x-acto or other tool) it and lifted the letters off the backing with transfer tape . . .

and then transferred it from there to a piece of transparency paper.

That was rather fun. 

A lot more fun than scraping tiny letters off a mat.

Pilsner Urquell - The Day Pilsen Struck Gold

Behind the scenes:

Black Cat Cougar Digital Cutter

I have a little obsession with digital diecut machines. Not that big, I guess ... as I am reading recently in various forums about people that have several, and prior to this week, I just had the one itty-bitty one. Now I have a bigger one that will cut 13 inches wide rather than 8 inches) and can cut through a variety of thicker materials that the bitty one couldn't - a Black Cat Cougar "Cub".

Here's the Cougar with my cute little first generation Craft Robo. 

Project One is making a record of different kinds of papers and settings used ... cut the tags on the Cougar out of cardstock. Printed out labels to put on them and glued on a little sample of the paper.

Project Two is cutting labels for the drawers of the card catalog. Needed to be done, and I thought cut labels on a clear background would look more interesting visually than just printed ones. Kind of a "because I can" moment. I'm using an Arts and Crafts style font, Chelsea Studio.
After experimenting with paper, I discovered vinyl. How could I have not known about vinyl before now?! After cutting the labels in vinyl, it was easy to transfer that to a transparency and then trim the transparency to fit the drawer front.

3D Printing

My favorite: Helvetica Cup (This link also has a very cool visual of the quick brown fox and the lazy dog!)

3D printing is just such science-fictional magic ... I think this must be the beginnings of the Star Trek Star Trek replicator. Cunicode (via BoingBoing) company designed 30 coffee cups in 30 days using 3D printing technology. Basically, if I'm understanding this right, layers of binder in a container of ceramic dust were built up one by one to form the object which is then dried, the excess ceramic dust removed, then fired and glazed. 

The first 3D printer work I saw was from an Etsy jeweler, nervous system.

nervous system vessel pendant - white nylon and sterling silver 

Their beautiful organically-inspired jewelry is made from different plastics and metals 

(and with some different processes as well, not just 3D printing.) 

Here's their blog: nervous system which has more details about the beginnings, the process, and the inspirations for their lovely art-to-wear.

3D Architecture Dutch Stamps

Postage stamps for philatelically and technology inclined architecture lovers.

New Yorker Cover - iPhone Brushes App

A couple of videos - the first one showing the cover drawing in progress by artist Jorge Colombo (from the New Yorker blog). I love that the artist extols the importance of the "undo" function! And the second video is an interview with the artist via ABC.

David Hockney's Fresh Flowers

via NPR

Catching up on NPR podcasts . . . I just listened to a show from December about an art show featuring tiny works by David Hockney composed and displayed on the screens of iPhones and iPads (In Paris, A Display From David Hockney's Pixelated Period : NPR).
A few things that I liked or wondered about:

1. When Mr. Hockney first began making these little works of art, he emailed them to about two dozen friends in the morning after they were finished. (Imagine being on the email shortlist of David Hockney? And what happens after you get one of these digital paintings . . . should you save it forever? Wouldn't you feel just awful if you accidentally or on purpose deleted it?)



via NPR



2. The paintings were made with various painting/drawing apps for the iPhone/iPad, including an app called Brushes. Here's a look at what other artists at the Brushes site and at a Brushes exhibit of art in Austin, Texas, which opened on March 10, are doing with the app.

3. Hockney would get so into the "painting" process on the iPad that he would sometimes wipe his fingers on his clothing, as if cleaning the paint off. He prefers using his fingers to using a stylus for different effects, and sometimes will use the fingers from his non-dominant hand.

4. The 20 iPods and 20 iPads in the exhibit were on 24 hours a day, and occasionally Hockney would email a new painting to one of the devices, swapping out images.

5. . A quote from this article on the BBC site (which includes a video of Hockney talking about the show) -
"Drawing is rather like playing chess:
your mind races ahead of the moves that you eventually make."

6. There's a companion app that creates a video as you're using the Brushes app, and that's how these videos of drawings from start to finish were created. Portrait videos by artist Olechka are here, and a New Yorker magazine cover here. This cover was drawn in May of 2009 by Jorge Colombo while standing outside Madam Toussaud's Wax Museum in Times Square. (I'm sure we passed by this very spot, or close to it, when we were in NYC in the summer of 2009. We could see the Madame Toussaud golden hand from our hotel room!)

Christian Tagliavini

Amazed wonderment about these 1503 Series photographs by Christian Tagliavini (studiojudith). At first, I thought they were computer-manipulated photographs, but they are carefully crafted portraits of live models wearing die-cuts of what seems to be a combination of fabric and/or paper-backed or stiffened fabric (Correction here: I thought the very long necks on some of the models were post-photo computer manipulation, but Christian explains in the comment below that while Photoshop was utilized for certain atmospheric effects, the long necks are a result of an illusion).

More wonderment at these photographs, a 2008 series called Dame di Cartone (Cardboard Ladies). Kind of like real people paper dolls, yes?

There is a Casting Call on his site, where you can apply to be one of his models. FYI, he's looking for "great character" and perhaps an "element of surprise". I wonder if you might get a flight to Switzerland if you are chosen?

Christian Tagliavini:
"I start with the idea, then I search someone to impersonate it. I build up stories and dramatize them using photography and creativity as a skillful artifice being at the same time author, stage designer, costume designer, casting manager, director and photographer."

How does your garden grow?

This year not so well. Guilty of outright neglect.
Next year will be better. Pinkie promise.
Right this very minute I am making a cold cucumber soup with fresh dill. Not from my garden, which has mostly never had veggies or herbs in it anyway. Unless you count the mint that threatened to take over the city. But still.
And I am trying these zucchini fritters from whipped to go along with.
(100 Proof Press (veggies), Herbarium or Leavenworth Jackson? (guano bag)
I cannot tell you how I ended up with a bag of dancing guano (that's bat ... fertilizer). Well, actually I can tell you how I ended up with it ... it came in a grab bag purchase. I don't think even I would willingly buy a stamp of a bag of dancing guano. It is kind of cute, though.
I cut the stamp outline and the shadow out with the Craft Robo.

More Artistamps

An homage to Wilson's in Door County, made to go with the postcard below. Just a cropped unedited photograph with text added. I think I had the pinhole perforator when I made this, but for some reason chose to use the old Fiskar's postage stamp edger instead. The perforator might have been buried under the leaf blower and other lawn-related junk as it lives in the garage right now.


A Wilson's hot fudge sundae (pencil/colored pencil, pen), with A- waiting for me to take the photo in the background. My kids are very tolerant of my quirks, generally speaking.

This is the first artistamp I ever made, I think. No graphics software, so just text printed on cardstock, and then the sisters were collaged together on top of gold tissue paper, glued onto the background, swiped with a gold inkpad, flicked with gold paint, and then reproduced by color copy. It was made for a book group invitation to a discussion of Wuthering Heights.

Letterheads Paper Doll RR

At long last completed and mailed! This was a paper doll round robin through the Letterheads Yahoo group. The participants began with a concept paper doll and case, and mailed them off to others to add bits and pieces. My doll was a Dias de los Muertos theme, pictured HERE, (Cris' additions to my doll are added there as well), and this doll is the brainchild of Cris P., a magnetic doll housed in an LP album case. Each slipcase was to represent a place that you had traveled to or wanted to travel to, and would include travel ephemera along with magnetic clothing and accessories for the doll.

I chose to have Cris' doll visit "Reality TV" via Project Runway in New York City, and was bound and determined to coordinate the Craft Robo with Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop.

I finally figured it out, the cutting, print and cut, the remarkable importance of "orientation", but there was much ado and a lot of wasted paper...
Sleeve front: The outside of the envelope formed a pocket for the "travel" miscellany, (a map of Bryant Park, an adapted Fashion Week schedule, an invented ticket, and a postcard), with a backdrop of a NYC cityscape, and a foreground collage of Season 5 contestants with Tim Gunn and Heidi Klum.

Inside the sleeve are three components:
1) The Workroom (three dress forms with magnets on the back to hold the paper fashions, and three magnetic PR "challenge" outfits. My daughter pronounced the first one to be an "out", and the other two were modeled after a "garden" and a "museum" challenge.)

3) "Tim Gunn's Bon Mots", which has paper sliders that pull out to reveal some of my favorite Tim Gunn quotes from various seasons. I tried and failed, for various reasons that I cannot even comprehend, to do this completely with the Craft Robo and Illustrator, but the circles, slider holes, Tim Gunn pulls, and the backing sheets, at least, were cut out on the CR. I had to manually match the NY pictures and glue in the quotes so they could be seen in the windows.

The Bryant Park photograph by Sonja Peiper used in the postcard is from wikimedia, an archive of free-use photographs; the NYC image by Roswitha Schacht used on the outside of the LP sleeve and Tim Gunn's Bon Mots is from morguefile, another public image archive.

More or less how...

Paper Sculture and the Craft Robo

Yet another crisis when trying to use the Craft Robo, this time the culprit appears to be too much pressure and not enough test cuts (i.e. none). Ruined a blade and the cutting strip this time. However, now I know how to do multiple test cuts and will do so religiously from now on.

In my search for answers online, I clicked a link on the Graphtec America Craft Robo Store titled "See What Others Are Roboing".

That led to the flickr photos of Polyscene and EnWhySee, along with a side trip to the paper engineering site of Ingrid Siliakus.

These examples of paper engineering aided by the Craft Robo are from Polyscene's photos.














































This is an example of some of the very complex work from Ingrid Siliakus' gallery. Do look there if you like this kind of work... amazing! I'm not really sure, as the site is in Dutch, but I think the cutting and scoring is all done by hand, with many test models before the final piece is completed.



















Figuring out how to simplify the completion of paper engineering projects was one of the main reasons I bought this machine, but I'm still struggling with the basics. Inspired now to keep trying, though ... (but now I have to wait for new blades to arrive.)
Both of the artists linked from the Craft Robo site are using sheets of a lightweight plastic called polypropylene, but so far no luck locating any.

Catrina

For a Letterheads paperdoll swap, I made a Catrina (Day of the Dead) paper doll. This is her traveling case. The saying on the front of the case translates as "When we live with hope, we die happy". The ribbon closures tie at the side, and a pair of eye milagros adorn the front of the case. That's an Acey Deucey stamp - the one with the guitar.








On the side of the case, the words translate roughly as
"There is more time than life".

When the case is opened, there is a top layer with a coffin-shaped piece tied on with string and a heart milagro. Marigolds, flowers of the dead, were constructed of dyed paper flowers and glued to the case and the coffin piece. The hand milagro lifts out the portion of the case that covers the paper doll's clothing.


















The skeleton body was manipulated in Photoshop from clip art and printed on cardstock. Her articulated limbs were attached with the tiniest of eyelets. It was a little tricky making the eyelets tight enough so they weren't floppy, but loose enough so she could be posed. Her makeup was done with Prismacolor color pencils.


















Before she went off to her next round robin destination, I made two outfits for her. They were attached at the back with little bendable copper strips. Her dresses were primarily constructed of decorative paper glued to a paper base, with various trims attached. The trim on her ruffled dress is a lace-stamped tissue paper, her boa is also made of tissue paper. Her bridal veil is fabric trim, along with the pearls accenting the gown, and she carries a simple bouquet of calla lilies.


















Doesn't she make a beautiful bride? She's off on a round robin. I'll post her new duds and bibelots on her return.

UPDATE:

Cris P. added THE most inventive and beautiful items to Catrina's wardrobe!

All manner of tissue paper Dias de los Muertos miniatures, including a little booklet with a sugar skull recipe and the tiniest papel picado banner...

















Queen of the Rodeo...


















The traditional Catrina hat...


















An envelope of faces...













And more! Thanks again, Cris!