Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Thank You

With certain events coming up, I really need to get better about sending thank you notes.  So I started that effort by making a couple for the wonderful women who supervised me in my internship this summer.  They both taught me so much and were so awesome to me that I wanted to make them things.  I went a little overboard perhaps on one of them, but I'm pleased with the way they each turned out.

For L:
lilla2

lilla7


And for V:
vanessa1

My high-volume thank you notes will not be handmade unless they originate with Etsy, but trust me, they'll be just as heartfelt.

Friday, September 3, 2010

Je rêvais enfant de vivre libre...

No, I don't actually speak French.

But after the insanity that was my summer, I have definitely been dreaming of freedom.  Or maybe just free time.  And once I had some, I squandered what I had.  But no more!  Even as the semester begins again, I'm afire with artistic desire.  And inspired by some pretty awesome artists.

See, thanks to my gentleman, I've gotten hooked on the musical Notre Dame de Paris, and thanks to that I've gotten hooked on Garou, the Canadian singer who starred as Quasimodo.  And thus I was inspired, quite insistently, by this song:


(Decent translation here.  I think.  You should watch this one, too, if you have the time:  Au plaisir de ton corps It's more upbeat and... ok I'll stop, this post is not about Garou....)

I've always loved the idea of gypsies, mostly the sort of bohemian style we associate with them.  So this song "Gitan" kept poking at me.  "Poke, poke, HEY when are you going to do some ART about me?" Okay, okay.  I gave in.  I started (appropriately) with a stripey 7 Gypsies paper, and inked some blue onto it a la Tim Holtz.  Over that, I stamped and embossed a couple of my favorite Michelle Ward stamps with clear ink and powder.  Shiny:
gitan2

From there I added a layer of orange ink, which of course the clear embossing resisted:
gitan3

gitan5
(Working with this color combination was a leap of faith for me...)

So the background was done. Now to build it up, right? First thing I reached for was the new tape from Tim Holtz.
gitan10
(Oops, that one came out blurry. Sorry.)

So then, to go with the urban gypsy theme, I needed something to indicate freedom. This is the "vivre libre" after all. Wings! Wings indicate freedom. I'll do wings. I'll do wings on grungeboard and affix them to the thingie so it'll have some depth. Oops, grungeboard fail. Oh well, maybe I'll just emboss them. I think I'm destined to work in two dimensions. Here we go, embossing wingalings:
gitan11

Oops. Embossing semi-fail.
gitan12
Does anybody have any idea WHY on the black stripes the embossing powder stuck to the ink, but not anywhere else? WTF? Oh well, just looks grungier, right...?

Well now it needs a rockstar touch. Rockstar. Stars! I've got stars.
gitan15

It was at this point that I started spending way too much time fiddling around trying to figure out what else to stick on this thing. It rejected many of my ideas. What I ended up with was this:
gitan17

I still wasn't sure whether it was finished, but I asked for some expert advice and was assured that this is the finished piece (you know who you are - thank you for your help!):
gitan16

All it needs now is a home. I haven't decided yet what to do with it, whether to mount it on something or to frame it or what. But for now I'm just going to enjoy it.

P.S. You might notice I fiddled with the blog appearance.  It was time for an update... What do you think?