In the Name of the Father

I hope everyone out there who is or has a dad has had a good Father's Day :)  We started with bringing breakfast to Mr. Pocket's dad (and mom) and finished up with dinner with my parents.  And I got to give my dad a little project I put together just for him.  I actually decided on this gift because I had done a similar one for my mom for Mother's Day, and decided that it was only fair to put the same amount of effort and love into Father's Day. 

Ok, so here's where it gets Jesus-y.  If you have problems with religion, this is your warning that there is religious content ahead.  Not trying to convert anybody here, just showing my art which happens this time to express my (and my family's) Catholic faith.  Ok, disclaimer over.

So the gifts I made for my parents for their respective holidays started out as canvases turned around backwards.  I used photos as the focal point for each, and embellished around them a la Finnabair, but simpler because it's me.  For Dad's, I used a photo I found of the stained glass window at the United States Naval Academy Chapel, because he is a Naval Academy grad and retired Navy pilot.  The window depicts Jesus walking on the water.  As another meaningful element, I used the first and most recognizable words (and alternate title) of the Navy Hymn, which also tie in with it being Father's Day quite well.

The background is a sample of textured wallpaper from Graham and Brown, which I painted and wiped off.  Many thanks to Seth Apter for the tip on where to find fantastic textured wallpaper :)  The waves in front are painted and scrunched tissue paper.  Various embellishments came from my stash, some are Prima, some are random, some are Tim Holtz.  The bottles are filled with water and a trace of Distress Ink, and some of the Glossy Accents I used to glue the corks in place leaked into the water, which made it cloudy kind of like real ocean water.  Happy accident. 

Detail shots.

The words are stamped on a length of the Tim Holtz ribbon that I sprayed with a shimmer mist that's pretty subtle, so you probably can't see the shimmer in the photo.  But I managed to get wings in, since Dad was a pilot.  Also, I LOVE that wallpaper.  Now I need to get more.

So, in case you were curious, here's the original, which I made for Mother's Day.  I've always wanted to do a Marian piece for my mom, since she and I both have a particular devotion to the Blessed Mother.  So finally I figured out what I wanted to do, and shortly before Mother's Day this year I learned a new word.  "Kecharitomene" is a Greek word that means something more than "full of grace" but less stilted and formal than "most highly favored."  It occurs only once, as far as anybody knows, and that's in the Gospel when Gabriel appears to Mary to tell her she's going to be God's mom (pretty heavy news, really).  So I decided I wanted to work that in, and originally I was going to fill the background with different names and epithets for the Blessed Mother, but in the end I decided it would be better with just the one term.  For the photo, I used a photo I took of a statue of Mary and Jesus at Kloster Eberbach last year in Germany. 

I sprayed all those white paper roses with pearl colored Perfect Pearls, and painted paper rose leaves gold.  All the metal pieces on the frame were the wrong color for the piece, so I painted them gold and whitewashed them with gesso.  The rest was all bling from the stash, and that Tim Holtz ribbon sprayed and stamped.

 

 

So there you have it.  I'm getting back into the art groove, and parental holidays have been helping, LoL.  I've been moving forward with my 52 Card Pick Up deck, too, but I'll show more of that later.  For now, I hope you've enjoyed seeing what I made for my parents.  Hopefully it shows how much I love them.  They're both pretty spectacular :)

Thursday Theme: Taking Charge

Alright, so I did interrupt this series to take Thanksgiving off.  But I'm back to finish out my musings on my creative identity with the final card, pointing to the future.  The Emperor. 

The Emperor stands for stability, authority, and control.  Of the traits associated with the Emperor, control started to stand out to me more as I thought about it all.  But whereas control can often be thought of as restriction and taking away agency, I started thinking of it as something liberating.

It has become apparent to me that what I need to do in order to find and feel comfortable with my own artistic identity and style is to take charge.  I need to be the one in control of my art.  That doesn't necessarily mean isolating myself in my own ivory tower of art like the Seven of Swords can imply with its suggestion of standing alone.  It means deciding what I want to present and how I want to make it happen, and then making it happen my way.  But like any good leader, I can and should allow myself to consider influences from others.  Not to the extent of becoming a puppet and regressing to my past of mimicking other artists, but more like a line in the Tenacious D song "Dio," where they sing to the great heavy metal vocalist Ronnie Dio "Your sauce will mix with ours / And we'll make a good goulash baby..." (they use a lot of food metaphors).  The important part is that I maintain my identity and control how much I season my sauce with others' influence.  I think it's imperative that, as artists, we all take charge of our art and make conscious decisions about where we are headed.

As an example of what I'm talking about, I've been doing a couple of things lately.  For one thing, I was working on corrugated cardboard.  I had to be careful not to be trying to make it look just like Michelle Ward's excellent work with cardboard.  So I added natural and dimensional elements, broke up the field a bit with some strong lines, and kept most of my elements pretty clean.  I'm pretty confident that what I ended up with would not be confused with Michelle's work.  The other stuff I'm working on is going back to sketching again.  I've been looking at a lot of pencil art lately, and there's a big trend of photorealistic sketching out there.  It's beautiful.  And I've looked at some tutorials and stuff, and I kept thinking "man, I don't think I could ever pull that off."  But I gradually came to realize that I don't need to, and nor do I want to.  Just because I am getting back to sketching doesn't mean I have to make everything look perfect and realistic.  By the same token, I also don't have to succumb to the "doodle" trend in mixed media.  I can work in my own style and work towards perfecting the look I want.  A look that is realistic but not perfect. 

From all that, I've started to realize that what I want my art to look like is something that took some effort but was still fun.  I don't want it to look like I've got some sort of god-like ability.  I want it to look like the work of human hands, but hands attached to a mind that constantly challenges itself to improve.  I'm moving away from messy towards intentional, yet organic.  I suppose what I'm aiming for is a bit of a paradox, but it's my paradox and I'll take it by the horns if need be.

Of course, another thing I have to take charge of is my time.  I need to be making more time for my art.  But now that I feel like I have a direction, I think that whatever time I spend making art will be more meaningful than it has felt for a while.

Thank you for sticking with this and walking along this long and lonesome road of introspection.  Please, leave any feedback you can.  I would love to read what you think about these sorts of concepts.  And now, back to all art, all the time on this blog :)

Thursday Special

We interrupt this Thursday's Theme with a special message.  Today is a special day.  This day, January 3, is my Mom's birthday.  Happy birthday, Mom! *throws confetti*

At this point, we've been to dinner, given her presents, and rolled home.  But I still had a blog post to write, and I want to dedicate it to her.  Don't worry, there will be closeups of that tag up there.  Patience, pocket padawans.

I want this blog post to be about my very awesome Mom because without her, I might not be the artist I am.  With a different Mom, I probably wouldn't know how to sew, or knit, or crochet, or sort-of-but-not-really-well-so-I-don't-bother cross stitch.  I might not have gotten into stamping or mixed media.  I might still be artistic, but would probably have stuck to traditional 2-dimensional art forms.  And that's great, and I love sketching, but there is so much more to unlock. 

My Mom is super creative.  She didn't really know it until she married and moved away from home, but she has always been an artist and had a particular eye for color.  She started with embroidery and moved on to all kinds of fiber arts, from regular sewing to quilting, and crochet to knitting, and from sewing and quilting and knitting to wearable art and beading.  She loves papers and ephemera; we used to read Victoria magazine together and she started buying Somerset Studio when I was in middle school.  As a kid, spending time with my Mom, I was surrounded with all this stuff and I wanted to play with it all.  So she taught me, and encouraged me, and told me I had a talent.  She was always so adventurous with art and that encouraged me to be so too.  And we always had fun, whether taking a class together or just putzing around in the basement with fabric or yarn or stamps.  She gave me my own space in the sewing room, and when I outgrew having a play room, we turned that side of the basement into a "studio."  We designed a yarn room together when my brother's old room became the new guest room and the old guest room was suddenly available (and our combined yarn stashes threatened to take over the house otherwise).  And now, even though I have my own place and my own supplies, I still go back home to play with Mom and share tools and ideas.  She'll show me what she's been working on - nowadays it's usually either new tags with cool techniques she's been experimenting with or bead and metal jewelry that she's designing and making with her ever-growing arsenal of metalworking tools - and we'll have some tea and talk about what we want to do next or what's been inspiring us.

The best times, I think, are when you can just be friends with your Mom.  And creativity has always given us a place to be friends. 

Well, after writing all that, the tag will seem awfully simple.  But it was really fun to make, and Mom liked it, so I guess that's all that matters.

Here's what I used:

(The stencils are, of course, by Michelle Ward.)

Here's what I did with them:

Happy birthday, Mom!

What Have I Been Up To?

Sadly, not a lot of art being made around here.  Mom and I did take a class that I enjoyed, doing a Tim Holtz project:

It's not really my own ideas and design, so I can't really claim much credit, but I like it, and the class was fun.

At home, I've been focused on other stuff, though, and it seems that my mind has room for only one creative pursuit at a time.  Currently, that creative pursuit is Middle Eastern dance.  I started taking lessons last year, and I'm really enjoying it.  And while I don't practice perhaps as often as I should, I'm starting to put things together on my own a bit.  And I'm designing costumes in my head, which I'll actually sew once I get myself to settle on some fabrics.  There's a sale on at JoAnn Fabrics this weekend, and while I don't usually shop Memorial Day sales (too crowded, and our vets didn't die for 50% off at Stuff-Mart), I might actually get that going.

I've also established a tiny little garden in pots on our balcony.  I wanted to grow tomatoes and herbs this year, along with my one pot of lavender.  And since the only one of our balconies that gets sun is the one off our master bedroom, our tiny little kitchen garden is upstairs instead of near the kitchen.  That's okay, once we get tomatoes on the plant, then if I wake up hungry I can roll out of bed and pick breakfast ;)  Mom and Dad came over and planted it with me last weekend, since I squandered my youth not helping them in the garden and therefore don't know my way around a potting shed.  Here are some glamor shots:

The newly planted tomatoes are in the red-covered Earth Box with some marigolds; lavender in the center and herbs in the pots to the sides.  Parsley, rosemary,thyme, chives, and mint.  Still have to get my basil.

My lavender, and marigolds on the downstairs balcony.  I've been playing with Instagram, too.

This weekend, work is closed Friday and Monday so I've got a forced long weekend.  I've got quite a long to-do list for myself, which includes cleaning up the Spare Oom so I can more comfortably get back to my art, finishing up a couple of art projects I started ages ago, and a few culinary adventures.  The first of those culinary adventures is done:  lavender lemonade!

First you pick your lavender lemons:

Just kidding.  That's a tiny lemon that didn't get used, I couldn't resist posing it in my lavender.  It nestled in so nicely!

Anyway, what you really do is make a simple syrup and steep dried lavender in it for about 10 minutes, then strain it.  Then you proceed to make your lemonade with equal parts syrup and fresh squeezed lemon juice (borrowed my mother-in-law's electric juicer - so much easier!), and dilute it with water til it tastes the way you want it.  It turns out looking something like this:

I'm sad I can't share some with you all.  It's delicious.  It's even Mr. Pocket Approved.  The herbal/floral flavor of the lavender is a really nice accent to the lemon.  I'll definitely be making it again.

I'll try to post more this weekend, with my continuing adventures in the pocket-sized kitchen.  And yes, our kitchen is pocket-sized.  Anyway, coming up next is bread, to be baked in my enameled cast iron dutch oven... here's a teaser...

Turn, Turn, Turn...

It's been much too long since I played along with Michelle Ward's street team.  I often meant to participate, but things kept getting in the way, and the month would pass and I would have not posted to meet the challenge.  This month, though, I can't miss it.  Michelle has asked her crusaders whether we notice a change in our palette or style with the changing seasons.  Well, my dear, the answer is YES.  That phrase from Ecclesiastes that the Byrds made so famous might as well have been written about me.  I am such a seasonal person that even my taste in music and food change.  I'm almost a different person in the spring than I am in the winter.  Jeans remain a wardrobe staple, but instead of dark sweaters and boots, I'm wearing them with bright colors, especially green and white, and with mary janes until it's warm enough for sandals.  I start listening to lighter, happier music.  I eat more veggies and drink green tea instead of black (though I do still like a good cuppa black tea to get me going in the morning).  The advent of cherry blossoms makes me gravitate towards Japanese art and motifs - this is when I re-watch Rurouni Kenshin and dig out my scraps of kimono silk that I've bought at quilt shows, thinking maybe this year I'll decide what to do with them.  And my art definitely looks different.  In my paper and mixed media art, red moves aside for green, compositions get more open and less cluttered, I use less hardware, I move from crosses and gears and hardware to flowers and birds and the occasional butterfly.  Last year I showed this tag, which I think is one of my favorites of every tag I've ever made:

Very simple, two background colors and two stamps.  But it just says spring to me.  When yarn crafting in spring, I spin lighter colors into thinner yarns, I gravitate towards lace patterns in both knit and crochet, and I generally only work with light or bright colors.  I wound off one of those skeins of yarn I got at the Homespun Yarn Party this year.  Guess which one?

The color's a little washed out in this picture, but it's Downy Oshun, Hon!  Baltimorean beachy glory.  I've started a crochet project with it, but I don't like how it's coming out so I might frog it and start over.  It just needs to be a light, lacy triangle scarf or shawlette.  The only trouble is that it's wool.  That's my other spring thing.  I'd love to be working with cotton or silk.  Unfortunately, all my favorite yarns in my favorite weights and colors turn out to be wool or some other warm fiber.  Oh well.  Air conditioning generally requires a warmer layer, so it'll do.

I wish I had more to show you.  This spring has been a little busy:

(Okay, I know, I'm a showoff. But isn't he cute?)

Plus, having moved, my ability to do paper and mixed media art has declined.  See, Mom and I share supplies, or at least we always did when I lived at home.  Now that Mr. Pocket and I are on our own, I haven't built up enough supplies in my new home to really feel like I can do much yet.  As I acquire more, I'll be able to put things together, but now pickings are still slim.  On top of that, I haven't felt the knit or crochet mojo as much, so that's not happening.  I definitely feel the need to create, though, so hopefully I'll build up more supplies or be able to spend some time at my parents' house enough to do some work.  I did house-sit for my parents one night last week, and this is what I came home with:

It's a bit of a transition piece, spring into summer.  Maybe later this week, I'll post about summer, because that's a bolder, brighter style for me than spring...

THIS...

...is what makes Mr. Pocket the best.

It was waiting for me on our bulletin board facing the door when I got home today.  +50 Good Mood.

I Do

Mr. Pocket and I are happy to announce that as of Saturday, 7 May 2011, we are officially married.  Looking forward to many many years this way :)

So, it's been pretty busy around here in the Pocket, what with getting married and all.  And that's without having done much DIY.  You would think, being the crafty soul that I am, I would've DIYed a ton of stuff for my wedding.  But no, cooler heads prevailed and I avoided that stress.  All I did myself was, as you saw in the last post, the guest book.  I did it with lots of help from my friends in the conservation lab at work, at lunchtime and after hours.  Couldn't have done it without them.  And now I have finished pics to show you, and time in which to post them...

I got the text block from A.Fain Books on Etsy.  Such a godsend, as I do not have a board cutter or a large paper cutter.  Though I did end up cutting new boards at work, on the recommendation of my friends in the lab.  The decorative papers for the covers and end papers, as well as the book cloth for the spine, came from Paper Source.

I love this green lokta paper.

The end bands were an ordeal.  I guess I should say that figuring out the end bands was an ordeal.  I couldn't remember how to do them from last year when I bound my first book (and until now, my only book).  So between asking my friend Vicki for her notes and scouring the internet, it took me a while to find the way I had done single-color end bands before.  Once I had it figured out, though, it was a breeze.  Used silk thread from Mom, sewn over the same tape that the text block is sewn onto.

Overall, I learned one very important lesson from making the guestbook for our wedding.  I love it and I need to do more bookbinding.

Shiny

Shiny is a great word. Shiny can mean reflective (of light), luminous. Shiny can mean glowing. To Firefly fans like myself, Shiny can also mean good, great, fantastic, wonderful, A-number-one awesome sauce.

Shiny is the work of Etsy artist Lura Jewelry.



You should check out her shop. My man did. And now, Shiny is how I feel.

The only question is how much of my wedding I can DIY without going insane...

What's the worst that could happen?

OMG SEMESTER'S OVER!!!!!

And I start summer classes next week. Hmm.

I like learning stuff, it's the homework part that I dislike about school. It keeps me from doing crafty things. Although, to be fair, something else has kept me from my crafting recently. Class has been out for over a week now.

I picked up Twilight a while ago. How bad could it be? What's the worst that could happen? I get addicted like all the tweenie Twi-hards? Well, YES. I got completely sucked in. Read the first two books slowly during the semester, and read the second two in the week since class ended. Damn. I haven't done anything else. Work and read. Read and work. It's kinda scary how sucked into things I get. Oh, and for the record, Jacob Black is the MAN.

And last week was Sheep & Wool. I could only go on Sunday, because I had my last class on Saturday. (Did not keep me from getting to Pam's house that night for awesome party time! I'm so glad I got to meet/see everybody!) It was supposed to rain on Sunday. What's the worst that could happen? I have a raincoat and galoshes. No biggie, right? Well, mostly right. If you can ignore being soggy and miserable. Which miraculously I did, well, mostly. Let's just say that by the time I got home, I was really glad I got sheepskin slippers.

So I finally finished the mittens of doom. No more school means no more reason to not spend the time figuring out how to cross-stitch. (Oh yeah, I didn't mention that fact when I said I'd cross-stitch the letters on after the crochet was done? My bad.) So now I get to start my Raven shawl! I'm rinsing all the skeins first, to make sure I don't have any, er, surprises (dye-related ones) when it's finished and I wash/block it. I've got the first two skeins soaking now. What's the worst that can happen?

Glub Glub

No, I haven't fallen off the face of the earth. I'm just drowning in life a bit. Having lots of trouble keeping up with homework, which means that craftiness of course suffers even more. But there may be crafts to post this week, I have had a little time to play with yarn, so there might be a little bit of Valentiney blog fodder. In the meantime, check out what I found: www.geekcrafts.com I'm totally hooked.

A Long Absence

I am sad to report that I haven't been doing much crafty stuff lately. I've been spinning a bit, but irregularly, and I haven't been documenting my progress. Other than that, I've given up on my crocheted sock (wasn't turning out the way I wanted; I guess it would help if I started out with patterns rather than always making shit up as I go along), haven't worked on my tank top, and pretty much stalled out on everything. I'm sorta finally starting to go stir crazy and want a crochet hook in my hand, but still not enough to get me going quite yet. It's strange, how for a while you can want to do only one thing all day, and then for a while you're really not interested. I figure if I don't force it, my creative desire will come back, and am trying not to worry about myself for not being in the mood for yarny pursuits.

Meanwhile, a while back my friend Megan tagged me for a meme. I'm thinking it'll be a fun way of getting my blogging juices flowing again. So here we go!

Rules:
1. Link your tagger and list these rules on your blog.
2. Share 7 facts about yourself on your blog, some random, some weird.
3. Tag 7 people at the end of your post by leaving their names as well as links to their blogs.
4. Let them know they are tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

7 Magnificent Facts:
1. I'm rather shy. Have a really hard time starting conversations with people I don't know very well. And perhaps a related fact, I cannot stand answering machines and voice mail. I'm completely inept at leaving phone messages.

2. For a medievalist, I know shockingly little about the Middle Ages. I like to blame the structure of my undergraduate education requirements for that -- limits on the number of credits you can take in a given department kept me from specializing quite as much as I wanted to.

3. I hate Monopoly.

4. I like steampunk. Didn't really notice this until recently, when I learned that several of the movies and themes that I like are considered to be steampunk. The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr., The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, stuff like that. And I've been drawn to this kind of stuff more and more recently.

5. I don't like being drunk. Really don't enjoy it. Feeling like I can't even control my own limbs properly is not a good feeling.

6. I'm a right-leaning moderate.

7. Actually, I have a hard time talking about myself, describing myself in things like this. It's taken me forever to come up with all this stuff, and I still end up feeling like why do people want to know this? Why do I want people to know this? And if I'm gonna feel this way, why did I do the meme to begin with? Ah well. Guess I'm also a paradox like that.

Gonna break the rules. No tagging. I don't know enough people that would do it anyway. If you feel like doing this meme, go for it. If not, don't sweat it. Freedom of blogging! :)