365/2013 - Day 44 (two days late)

I needed to take a short break from the blog for a couple of days

But here is the blog post for Day 44 (which should have been posted on Wednesday, February 13).

The day started out with a mobile version of Wednesday Morning at Joan's at Leann's house.  We worked on a printing technique using contact paper as a resist.

I didn't get very far with mine because I had so many cuts to make in the contact paper.  I ended just pulling most of it off and the photo above is what I was left with when I did the floating-the-acrylic-paint step.  I intended to work on it more when I got home but I didn't have time to.  I will work on it more eventually because I like it.

I needed to bring all of the seven pieces I am working on for the spirit show to the ready-to-paint stage.  That meant a couple more coats of gesso for a couple of the plaster cloth guys.  I mixed black paint into some white gesso for this coat so I could see where I'd already been.  I also intentionally made the gesso darker because the light in the temporary studio is odd.  Gah!  A few of the guys still need another gesso coat and a couple will need a touch up coat after that.

Whew -- then it was time (already!) to go meet up with Jane and Leann for a quick dinner before the Artist Trading Card meeting.  It was a great meeting.  We exchanged our ATCs and house book pages and bound our books.  I still have to make my cover but I wanted to get it bound while the equipment was there.  I will blog about the book more when I finish it, but here are a few photos.  The pages by the other nine artists are all so different and so wonderful.

I was so worn out by the time I got home and settled in front of tv with medication/elevation/cold packs that I apparently fell asleep and missed my deadline for the day.  That is why this blog entry is late.

I will catch up with Day 45 a little later on today...as well as posting today's "real" entry.

365/2013 - Day 42

house themed book pages

YAY -- I made my pages for the book swap in our Artists Trading Card group.  The theme is "house" and you can interpret the word however you choose.  The pages are 4"x6" horizontal and you leave a half-inch margin on the left side of the front of the page for the binding.  We have ten people in the swap so we made ten pages, we will trade nine and then put our ten-page books together with cinch binding.  We can decorate our covers later...which is what I will need to do because I will be purchasing chip board for my covers the night of the trade.

I chose "tree house" as my idea.  This also reminds me of Doctor Who's TARDIS and people often comment that my house looks bigger on the inside than it does on the outside so I figured it was an appropriate image and idea all 'round.  I cut the doors on my house so they'd open to reveal the inside, front and back.

All I'd really need in my tree house would be a giant, well-stocked art studio and an indoor pool.

2012/365 - Day 338

hmmm...

Still thinking/brainstorming about the house page.  What's in my head doesn't translate too well to the sketchbook page -- yet.  Still very early idea(s).

I would draw/construct/collage a house on the top part of the page.   The doors of the house would open up to reveal the page underneath that shows an interior -- probably a magazine photo or something...another collage.

So...I would take one page and find an interior (or collage an interior) from magazine images and glue them down in the general area of where the door will be -- that would be the bottom layer of the two-piece page.  Then I would make the top part be the exterior and yard, with the doors that would open to reveal the interior collage.

Again...this only needs to make sense to ME later on...LOL.

part two -- later that same evening...

I was feeling like I wanted to sew something so I scooped up my sewn-together-piece-of-fabric guy and made some legs for him.

I grabbed some leftover fabric that I really like.

I was thinking I'd like to try and just free-hand the shape of the legs.  

I put pins down the middle of the fabric so it wouldn't slip (just in case).

I didn't care if the legs were not perfectly matched.

I trimmed off the excess material.

I tried them out with the sewn-together-piece-of-fabric...looks kinda cool.


Then I turned the legs right-side out and stuffed them and forgot to take photos of that process for myself.  It was frustrating because I couldn't get the stuffing even -- or as even as I was hoping for -- my homemade stuffing device was too big for most of the leg, only the very top fit.

So I put the legs into the body (like Suzanne showed me with Spikey) and sewed across the edge.

Sometimes I do wish I had a machine and knew how to use it.

How the inside edge looks...for now.

Bootsy was intrigued.

Yeah...not a cat toy, Bootsy!

Not too bad!

I didn't notice until this photo that I (somehow) got the stripes even...it wasn't intentional, that's for sure!

I pushed some stuffing into the body to see how it might look.  

I haven't decided on anything yet...I don't know the body shape, the head shape, whether it will have spikes or not, whether I will add a head or just section one out of the body...no idea where to go from here -- yet.