The Reward of Treats

Two weeks ago I was supposed to be writing about the Treats chapter in The Joy Diet for the book blogging group The Next Chapter. But I hadn't read it yet. So I put it off until I could get to it after the busy-ness of Halloween,etc. I have to say I didn't get much out of this chapter as I have out of the other ones so far. This one is all about rewarding ourselves with treats as we take risks and make progress, at a minimum three times a day.

As I sat down and made my list of things that make me smile to help come up with some new treats, I had a hard time thinking of ones that I don't already use!

Here are some of the ones I already use:

Chocolate covered almonds which I only get to eat when I've been working in my studio,

a special tea that I can have when I've made phone calls I've been putting off

Wearing my favorite perfume even just for running errands

Buying cut flowers at the store just for having the beauty around.

None of these are earth shattering or unusual I would imagine, but I did find that I had to make an effort to remake them so that they would seem new enough to accomplish what The Joy Diet is all about.For example one of my main ones would be the treat of time to read. I already read so much already, it is such a big part of my life that I had to work hard at coming up with a way to make it a recognizably separate "treat". My solution there was to allow myself to read at times of the day when I usually would say it was a no-no, at first it felt kind of naughty curling up with a book at 10am when I'm usually in my most productive work period. But I didn't let myself read all day, and it did seem such an unusual treat to get to have that morning reading time that I did work harder before hand. Interesting how trainable we are isn't it?

I'm going to continue trying to rework the self-treating I already do in this way to keep it fresh and useful and inspiring, and hopefully that will end up training me to keep pursuing the risk taking of making new and unusual artwork, entering it in shows and pursuing other ways of getting my artwork seen.

I really liked author Martha Beck's discussion about smiling that ended with this:

"Smiling is very serious business to our bodies and hearts, and to practice this part of the Joy Diet, you must treat it with respect." No fakey smiling allowed here, only the real deal, that means something.

Turning the Page To November

One last Halloween related post, I added one single solitary house to my very-long-in-process Halloween Houses quilt. It was a paper pieced version of a cabin that I printed out of EQ5. It is bending because it is still on the paper which was pinned up. I tried to get the skeleton in the doorway but managed to chop his head off. Guess it doesn't matter since it is a skeleton image, right? I like the ghosts in the windows though. Looking at this one, it makes me think that living in an orange house with a purple roof would be pretty cool. Only seven houses made so far, I think I definitely need a few more.

As you can see it is not yet a quilt by any stretch of the imagination. Just a hodge-podge of blocks at this point. Some crazy-pieced, some paper-pieced, one applique, the rest just plain ol' pieced. I can see my way to completion on this one though, had a few good assembly ideas while it was up on the design wall staring me down the last couple of weeks. Those have been duly noted and I've moved on, flipped the calendar page to November and have this up there now:The Fall Leaves or maybe Autumn Leaves quilt which I talked about last November, but didn't make any progress at all on it, even though I had lots of fabulous plans. Well, it is good to have the blog post from last year to remind me what the heck I had in mind. Looking at this one up on the design wall the last couple of days
makes me appreciate the different backgrounds that all the quilt block swappers used when they made these blocks, I'll have to make sure that the new blocks I make also vary the background fabrics.

Fall Colors

Some beautiful, colorful flowers from my Dia de los Muertos altar.

Really pretty flowers even if they aren't the "right" type, that's what happens when you wait too long to buy your marigolds.

One of the strangest "pumpkins" we've ever bought. So bumpy and stripey.

And warty and uneven. And as of now, still yet-to-be-carved.

A Lock Box

What's this?
Yes, another box. Why not, right? Turns out I have a whole lot of boxes in the queue just hanging out waiting to be decorated. This is an old vitamin box, I love these for keeping bead projects together, especially because it has a sliding lock.

I used the origami paper leftovers from the shoe box, along with some cancelled stamps from Japan and a lot of matte medium to hold it all down. I love the green/red complementary look with the black white checks.

Guess I need to put something on the inside of the lid since I didn't take off the label first.

Am I done with boxes yet? We'll see when I sit down to make something tomorrow...

A Box Filled With Affirmations

Yesterday I made a third box in a row. Not intentionally working in a series, I'm just on a box decorating jag for some reason. This box holds circular affirmation cards, (box and cards were free downloads) .
The box is folded from card stock which I painted in purples and greens, and covered the lid in a grey silver pinstripe.

The edges are painted silver, a smiling moon is stamped in silver with some silver embossing glitter over that. As well as some phrases that I felt went along with the idea of the affirmations.

The lid has a domino and a ball-bearing. The domino functions as a handle to open the box.

Inside the ball-bearing is a small silver charm that reads Thank-You. All held in place with lots of glue and why not some silver glitter.
Everything then has a coating of matte medium which made the box feel much more sturdy than just folded card stock once it dried.

Three Things To Keep Me Busy

Three things I'm participating in this month, all alphabet soup titles, but still all three seemed like a good fit:

Yes, I'm trying NaNoWriMo one more time. So far so good, I'm already up to more than 6,000 words out of the goal of 50,00 this month. And I have chosen a much more open ended story this time. Last time around I really wrote myself into a corner and just kinda gave up.A new one that I've heard a lot of good things about. It was inspired by NaNoWriMo, but Art Every Day Month sounded like something I could use this month to keep me going on the creative art making path. It will be interesting to see how it balances out with NaNoWriMo or if one turns out to be more compelling or useful or easy or hard.
And after two succesful months in a row of posting everyday on this blog, I feel like I'm in the habit so I signed up for the official NaBloPoMo- National Blog Posting Month (also inspired by NaNoWriMo). Hopefully the daily posting won't fall by the wayside, but since I'm supposed to be making and sharing Art Every Day (see above) hopefully-fingers-crossed it won't be a problem.
Hope your November is full of daily challenges and fun too.

If The Shoe Fits

Here's another box that I've just finished, this time a shoe shaped paper mache' that came just plain with the red twisted paper on the top.

I covered it inside and out with Japanese origami paper and painted the edges and shoe rim with red acrylic paper.
A coat of matte medium to seal the whole thing.

It is a late birthday gift for a friend, hope she likes it!

A New Box Lid

I saved this great sized little box from some feta cheese, it has a great locking lid and I thought I could use it for beads or something...

A little matte medium brushed on and some paper napkin images are glued down.

And why not a piece of lace?

And some sparkly glass beads too, just around the edges.

And why not, a stamp too?

Happy Halloween and Samhain!

Happy Halloween and Samhain! Here is a final bit of holiday sewing that I accomplished during the month.
I wanted to add to my long-in-process Halloween Houses quilt with something different than the pieced and paper-pieced houses and log cabins that I have completed so far.
I had to play around with the shapes until they fit together well. Free-hand cutting with no pattern makes it challenging. Sometimes I'm better at eyeballing sizes when I use this method.

I fussy cut the stem so that the bat and notes were on there without getting cut off.

Here's how it looks next to some of the other blocks after appliqueing down the shapes with orange and brown rayon thread.

Dog Collar Scrunchie

I just had to do some sewing with my colorful Halloween fabrics, so I made a dog collar scrunchie for Zelda. Might as well decorate the dog too, right?
I measured the widest part of the plastic buckle, then cut 3 strips of fabric, each about 1.5" wide across the whole width of 45" wide fabrics. I wanted it to be pretty close to the size of the actual collar so it wouldn't be too floppy.

I sewed those together on the long sides and then hemmed the ends, then I sewed the final seam to make it up into a tube and turned it right side out. Next I just fed the collar in and scrunched it up.

See how happy she looks?

She had to show me the other side.

Then she had to signal that the photo shoot was over by politely crossing her paws and shooting me a most dubious look. Sheesh, I really need to trim those claws don't I?

Friendly Ambulance Company

This scene was on my ironing board the other day. Curious, since I hadn't been involved in the use of the scissors or seam ripper so I asked the most likely suspect, my older teenager. He just decided he didn't want labels showing on his clothing anymore. That it was bothering him that people (especially at his high school) care so much about what particular brand one is wearing. That he thought people should care about people and not what they wear. And he also didn't want to give free advertising to big corporations who don't need extra advertising.

I completely understood what he was talking about, and was kind of tickled by the last part about advertising since that is something I've tried to get my boys to be conscious of being manipulated by companies' advertising... In most cases he had successfully removed the labels without damaging the clothing underneath. I helped him repair the small holes in a few things.But then left behind are shadowy areas of different colored fabric, one of which is on the front of a jacket so we wanted to cover it up somehow.

He'd found this patch at Goodwill a while back, it originally said "FEDERAL AMBULANCE CO." We were worried that this might be Federal as in Federal Government and that he shouldn't wear it, sometimes there are laws about impersonating federal employees, etc. I looked at the word and said "how about I change it to read Friendly Ambulance Co. instead?" Well, that cracked him up big time, and after he was done laughing about he asked me to change it. So I did. After some removal of stitching and figuring out how to switch letters around this is how it ended up. No before picture, but I'm sure you can imagine it. This is going on one of his jackets, and he'll definitely be dressed as the unique person he is.

Costume In Process

I was at Beverly's Fabrics a couple weeks ago to get some glue and decided to get some fabrics to make myself a Halloween costume. I didn't really have anything in mind, but went to the remnant table to see what was there and if any ideas would spark up.
I found these three fabrics which I think will work together really well for a gold witchy woman costume. (I was a green witch last year) The upper left is to be a tunic-y blouse, the gold on the bottom a skirt, and the gold lacey stuff a skirt overlay. All of this was super cheap since it was on the remnant table, maybe $15 for all of it.

These other various nettings and tuelle and so forth are from my stash, they may make it into the costume, I was seeing if they complemented the piece on the right that is to be the skirt overlay.

The blouse has turned out well so far, for sleeves I used an embroidered sheer, it has an overall pattern of various sized circles. the neckline is just an elastic gathered style, real simple but it suits the fabrics well. The fabric for the skirt worked out to be just the right size for the simple gathered waist style I wanted to make. The overlay part was a bit trickier, but I safety pinned it in place while I was wearing it to get the draping right. (safety pins instead of straight pins!) Yes a dressmaker's form would come in handy for something like this. Guess I should get around to making one of those duct tape ones.

Now for the sash/waist thing I had sketched out originally to pull the top and skirt together. Haven't made it quite yet, I have to search for that gold satin embroidered upholstery fabric to make an obi-type sash. Hopefully I can find it and get that done, because it is almost Halloween!

Oh and a hat of some type, I was unable to find a gold witch hat in the stores. Maybe some gold spray paint or gold netting over a plain black one? Or make my own? I don't know yet. I guess I could make a golden sparkly wand too, there are plenty of sticks all over the place because of this second very windy day in a row. I have the gold hair spray and gold shoes and nail polish already so I'll be good and sparkly.

Imagined Crinolines

(satin side up)

I'm not sure why, but I just bought this enormous and fabulous satin and netting wedding train at Goodwill. I saw it a couple weeks ago when we were shopping for costume parts for my son and almost got it then, but there wasn't enough room in the car. Plus I knew that since my family was with me, I'd have to explain why the heck I wanted to buy it, and at the time I didn't have a clue why this thing was calling my name.


(net side up)
After a few weeks of thinking about it, the car steered itself towards Goodwill the other day when I was doing other errands (with an emptier car and no family members along), "I'll just go see if it is still there, if it is, then I'll buy it." There it was with all the other hoopskirts and bridal gowns they put out every Halloween. I snagged it for $13. As you can see it is rather long (about 6 steps down my staircase), it has a really high quality satin and many many layers of netting.


Major confession time:
I've always wanted a nice puffy crinoline to wear under those imaginary Audrey Hepburn circle skirts and dresses that I envision wearing while I scamper off to who-knows-where.
I realize up front that this will most likely not be figure flattering for me at all.
But I miss that dressing up fun that I used to have with my mom's party dresses from the 50's which had the built in crinolines, the swishy, scratchy feeling, and the feeling of taking up more room than I'm usually allowed.

And somehow, this wedding dress train was demanding that I Am Your Crinoline If You Make Me. Well, ok then, now to figure out how the heck to transform this satiny, net-filled thing into a useable crinoline and then to actually wear it. I may even have to throw a dinner party to have an excuse to wear it. I'll admit that I was very likely inspired by the Project Runway episode this season where they transformed divorcee's wedding dresses into new outfits.

But for now, I really have to work on this thing, it is taking up a LOT of room in my studio at the moment and I'm worried the cats are going to start clawing it up. I had a few links that I was going to put on this post to show you what I'm envisioning but unfortunately the power went out (very windy today) and now it is back on so I just want to get this out there before it goes out again.

If anyone has any tips or tricks or ideas or whatever to suggest please do, I'm (as usual) making this up as I go along...

Happy Blog-i-versary!

Hey, I just passed by my 5th blog anniversary this weekend. Hard to believe that it has been five years of blogging about all the art making and life living and etc. ...
Thanks to my dear readers for sticking around and giving me your ears(eyes) on occasion. I truly do appreciate your being there and listening (reading), and even commenting sometimes!
Here's a mosaic of some of my favorite pictures of just this last year.

The links go to my flickr account.

It has certainly been a color-filled year!

1. banana slug, 2. 2009 Journal Quilt 4 detail, 3. hibiscus, 4. my ecrr face, 5. yum, 6. skybluewalkinbeauty, 7. seaweed2, 8. feeling blue detail, 9. hail in hand, 10. stagnaro porthole, 11. zelda at vet, 12. myecrr2julieclose

Last of the Brow-Beating Light

I'm Made of bones
of the branches
The boughs and the brow-beating light
While my feet are the trunks
And my head is the canopy high

And my fingers extend to the leaves and the eaves
and the (bright?)
Might I shine?
It's my shine (child?)

Lyrics from The Queen's Rebuke in The Decemberist's Hazards of Love.

But the river is deep

To the banks

and the water is wild,

I will fly you

To the far side

Grass, Earth, Rock, Leaf, Water, Sky and Tree Reflection all in one picture.