From the Archives: Fun with Art Stamps

Zettiology (flying creature, alpha, cloud),
100 Proof Press (buildings)


Ma Vinci's Reliquary (numbers), 100 Proof Press (ribbon)
and?



ERA Graphics


Paula Best


hmmm... Redhead?



100 Proof Press (dancing elephant), Leavenworth Jackson (shell), Gumbo Graphics (cityscape), Stampscapes (stars)

Crazy Quilts and the Contemporary Crafter

I saved this article by Gayle Worland from the Sunday paper on March 1, because there were a few things that really resonated with me in the interview with Beverly Gordon (professor of textiles and apparel design at UW-Madison and the curator of this exhibit, "A Fairyland of Fabrics: The Victorian Crazy Quilt" )

She compares the craft of these women to present day scrapbooking (and that segues into other paper and fabric crafts), citing an emphasis on creativity, invention, and play, and the importance of "abundance" and "collecting" of material as part of what fuels the craft(s). There's also the intriguing aspect of collective motifs - themes or subjects that appeal to many of us who do the same kind of art and craft that are reflective of our time and cultures and interests.

I quite like this quote the article ends with:

"There's a sense that there's infinite possibilities with materials and making beautiful things ... It's about making something with little bits, the fascination of combinations, because essentially they are a collage."

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.

Artistamp Mailing List Anniversary

It's time for the annual AML (Artistamp Mailing List) anniversary exchange. This is the 10th anniversary, though I have only participated in three of the exchanges so far. At the moment I can't find the first one I did, but the last two years were still on my desk or by the computer.

9th anniversary: digital photo of watercolor/rapidograph (old college-era) piece and added text in Photoshop.

8th Anniversary: another re-purposed watercolor, this one was unfinished (for good reason), but fixed the bird's beak and added a background in Photoshop.

Zetti Ornaments

Ornament for a ZettiZoo exchange ~

Sewn taffeta body (stamped with Stampers Anonymous text stamp U1-722), domino face (stamped with Zettiology 0101E face), alcohol marker coloring.

ArtGirlz crown. Collar beads are a modified "gift tie-on" from Target Christmas season '07.

Didn't find any more in this year's selection... but I did collect some glass chandelier drops there this year, so didn't feel so bad then...).

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.

Anthropologie

Anthropologie transforms discarded books into sculpture:

Pictures are from (1,2) casasugar, (3) apartment therapy through aesthetic outburst, and (4, 5) dreambirdz.

These displays almost make me want to buy some overpriced clothing... or at least a doorknob.

Random Doodles

My daughter has a campus newspaper comic strip!

We keep up with what she's doing at Random Doodles ...

Orizomegami

A couple of pics of orizomegami papers that were made by 3rd-5th grades when I was teaching elementary art. (Actually, I called it orizomegami, as that is what I did in an after-school class once upon a time, but really we did a combination of orizomegami (folding only) and itajime (sandwiching the folded bundles in clothespins and binder clips and the like). A book I used for reference is Paper Art, by Diane Maurer-Mathison. We made some things out of the papers... some japanese stab-bound books, little holders for seals they made. And some of them were simply mounted on paper for display. These papers were some of the leftovers that kids bequethed to me (or I fished out of the trash can ... for them it was all about the process, which is something I should get back to! I'm going to see if I can find some of the pictures of the ones we mounted... many of them were stunning. I've used a few of these scraps as backgrounds for cards, like the one below. The bird was designed by my friend Mary for Prickley Pear.

A Bug's Life

While looking for something else, I stumbled across the website of
Jennifer Angus, who is an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin - Madison, in the school of Environment, Textiles, and Design. (Yes, that was my first degree... except it might have been called something else back in the day)
She does these amazing installations that are made of real (though thoroughly dead) insects, mounted on walls and placed in precise patterns. Beautiful, repellent and fascinating at the same time, somehow; a marvel from across a room or inches away...


















These last three photos are from an installation at the
North Dakota Museum of Art.
There is a video that shows some of the process of doing an installation on her website, and also some educational games for kids.
She says that the insects are reused for installations until they cannot be repaired anymore, but I can't imagine that we will ever run out. Of bugs, that is. Insects will be the last living creatures on earth. I missed the Chazen exhibit last year in Madison ... it would have been great to see in person; I have a well-known and cataloged fear of insects coupled with a kind of morbid obsession.

Breaking Dawn Masquerade Ball

Barnes and Noble announced a masquerade ball for the book release party of Stephenie Meyer's Breaking Dawn, and we decided to make masks for the event. M. and friends gathered on a Friday night and decorated paper-mache covered plastic masks with paint, fabric trim, feathers, sequins, jewels, etc. We made a fine mess.














I decided to make one at the last minute. You never know when you might be invited to a ball.














At the ball, there were many fans who were dressed in prom/homecoming type dresses or vampire black and fancy and not so fancy masks. I don't think I've ever been to a midnight release party, but it was kind of fun. I pulled up a footstool and browsed through several art/collage books after admiring all the finery. We chose not to dress up, but did carry the masks with us.















This young couple, who had made their masks that day, using plaster strips to form them, allowed me to take a picture of them. They and we were at the very front of the line, along with others who had submitted art (M.s friend!) or had been to all three of the release parties.















At one minute to midnight, the wrappings were torn off the cases of books waiting behind the counter. By 12:05 we were out the door and on the way home...
M. finished the book before she went to bed tonight. I still have two more to go before I can read it.