Something For My Nicho

I've had a few nichos for a while now, can't remember where all of them came from exactly, I know I got this one from Silver Crow. I chose it because of the eye motif at the top, and how the wings look like they could be leaves. Anyways, I finally got around to making a little assemblage to put inside, so I can hang it up and enjoy it. As opposed to it being in my to-do-something-with-someday box....

Assembling some tools of the trade. Cardstock for a base, shiny wrappers from some fall colored candy, a ruler, scissors and glue stick. Measuring the inside of the nicho it is about 2.25x 2.5"

I glued several pieces of foil over the printing so that there wouldn't be any of the words showing when I'm done. Makes for some good texture. The metal numbers are out so I can choose which one, will it be 3 or 9?

Central image chosen from a Pomegranate Publishing calendar catalog (nice small images sizes) it is one of my favorite Susan Seddon Boulet images. I thought it looked a little flat, since there is so much room in the nicho, I added some fluffy fibers around the image.

Lastly I added the number 9.

I'm really pleased with how this turned out, now it makes me want to go make some more stuff to fill up the other ones that I have.

Treasure Island

This past Sunday we went to The Treasure Island Music Festival in the middle of the San Francisco Bay on, you guessed it Treasure Island, (the island that the Bay Bridge goes through). It is a Naval station, but they let them use it for this festival, this is the third year I think, and we'd heard it was a fun show to go to. It was what is currently called an indie/folk/rock show, there were plenty of hipsters, freaks and just plain folks there on a pretty, cold, foggy, windy day. There were a lot of bands slated to play that my boys like a lot, one that I love to pieces, so it made it worth the attempt. My brother joined us too which was really cool!

I copied this picture off the local music website Bridged because it has the three boys in it, there they are towards the back working on some communal art. The three boys are my two teenagers Alex and Zach and their friend Jake. I didn't take my own picture of them because I figured they'd be pissed off at me, but a passing stranger, no problem ,right.

The first band we caught was Vetiver, which is a local SF band. They were really good, folk/rock type of music. Up in the bleacher section of VIP seating were some really cool monsters. We saw them again on stage at the very end of the show.

The bigger stage had a great video screen as a background, where they showed closeups of the bands that were playing. Nice since we couldn't really see their faces too well from as far away as we were.The first group on the big stage that we caught was Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes. Alex Ebert, the lead singer seemed, well, um, let's say really really out of it, (like maybe not quite knowing where he was) but he sang the songs kind of quietly, took most of his clothes off (it was freezing and windy!) and the rest of his group gamely soldiered on and backed him up. Especially the woman up on the big screen here, I believe her name is Jade Castrinos. She had an absolutely gorgeous voice and the most adorable smile and dimples, they should have had her sing more. They did one love song/duet "Home" that had me in tears it was such a touching song.
I think this is the best picture I took all day, catching their drummer Josh Collazo, right in mid-stroke, hair flying.

A view of San Francisco across the bay and through the fog.
There were several other bands that we saw all of or part of their sets, but I didn't photograph for one reason or another, Grizzly Bear (one of my new favorites), Bob Mould, Beirut, Yo La Tengo, The Walkmen.

And finally, sunset zoomed past into dark, and The Reason for me to be at this show, The Decemberists took the stage. They performed their newest release The Hazards of Love from beginning to end, completely, perfectly and even better than I'd imagined they could. Amazing stuff. Not for everyone though. If you liked 70's prog rock/story songs and like the current indie/folk stuff I'd recommend it. The crowd really got into it, especially during the bloody and thoroughly vile song "The Rake's Song" all singing along while 5 of the band members pounded out the rhythm on various drums.

I tried zooming in for some good pictures, but that just made it worse, but still of course pretty because of all the cool colored lights used on stage. The big video screen behind the band showed a really beautiful/weird animated/live-action video that went along with the music. A lot of it was gorgeous and suited the music really perfectly, some of the rest was a bit too abstract. They are going to release a DVD of this video along with the Hazards of Love music that it goes with, it will be called "Here Come The Waves: The Hazards of Love Visualized". Hopefully in time for the holidays, hint hint.

So blurry, but so beautiful anyways.

The blurriest yet, guess I was really just enjoying the show! I took a few videos, and the music part turned out ok, but the poor camera was trying to focus on the closest things (ie peoples' hands going up in front of me), so they aren't worth showing you here.

Standing behind Alex and Jake, as The Flaming Lips take the stage. We also got to hang out with Jake's parents and aunt, which was really fun, made it a grown-up outing as well as a family outing. It was great to be able to go to a rock concert with our kids, and also be able to let them roam around on their own and feel pretty good about it since they were sticking together. I don't know how much longer we'll be "allowed" to be near them at a concert, or if we'll keep liking the same music, but for now, it is a fun thing to do as a family and with our friends.

Alex and his friend Jake with the blazing Flaming Lips light show in the background. They're wearing the freebie headbands emblazoned "winner" and "loser" that they scored at the show. I think this is Alex's "Mom, stop bothering me and let me watch the show" look.

The glowing ball at the center contains the lead singer of The Flaming Lips, Wayne Coyne. He is inside a giant, see-through blow up beach ball that he then tries to walk in, right on top of the crowd. He mostly ended up crawling because I suppose it is really hard to stay upright when you're rolling around on top of the crowd's heads. It was a trip. And hilarious too. Just like the rest of their show, really funny, fun and energetic.

I hope that next year's lineup is this good, I think I'd like to go again.

Defining Creativity

I didn't get around to posting this last Friday, but here is my take on the latest chapter of The Joy Diet, which I'm reading together with a bunch of other book bloggers at The Next Chapter.

This one is all about Creativity and I got a lot out of it, a surprising amount really since I think I spend a lot of time and energy on creativity as an artist.

I was really impressed first of all with author Martha Beck's definition of creativity or as she puts it: The Act Of Creation : the process of realizing - making real - events, objects, or relationships that originally exist only in our imaginations. This is a really new and more inclusive way of looking at creativity for me, instead of just limiting it to what I'm doing over in my studio, but in the whole rest of my life, (a lot of which of course affects what's going on in the studio.)

But this is crucial, especially if we take to heart one of the main message of this chapter that you are always responsible for creating your life whether you like it or not. Owning up to the fact that I am inherently and completely creative day to day, minute by minute, decision to decision is both inherently empowering and very scary too. It is very easy to forget this, and just bumble along from thing to thing without ever really taking this responsibility on and working out how I feel about it.

What is that lesson that Spiderman has to learn over and over again? "With great power, comes great responsibility", well Spidey, I'm right there with you in having to learn,re-learn and learn again this ultimate truth.

The part of this chapter that really helped me turn around my thinking that I'm helpless and ineffective in changing anything, or making better decisions was the exercise of challenging and changing your dichotomous thinking. Either/Or, Black/White, One Thing or The Other.

I'll write the exercise out here so you can try it, just fill in the blanks, and I bet you'll be amazed:

My Dichotomous Life

I can either be ____ or _____.

I can either have ______ or ______.

I can either do _______ or _______.

***now using the exact same things you've written above, fill this out:

My Creative Life

I intend to be both _____ and ______.

I intend to have both _____ and _______.

I intend to do both ________ and _______.

See, it is just that easy to figure this out, both things are going to happen, so start out with the intention that yes indeedy, both are going to occur, then you don't have to fight yourself about the "bad" one happening!

That's amazing to me, it was such a d'oh moment. I hope it is useful to you too!

Scary Doll How-To

Here's a Scary Doll how-to, to make the doll I showed in my Halloween Party post on Saturday. I got the idea from WiseCraft ,but their starting dolls were fashion dolls (ie Barbies), our Goodwill was fresh-outta-Barbies so we snagged this curly haired doll whose hair was a little out of hand to start with.

The first step is to spray-paint the doll with a matte white spray paint. Front and back, hair included. Do a couple of light coats. Outside of course! My son Alex helped me out with spraying so I could take an action shot. I figured if I tried to do both I'd end up spraying either myself or my camera lens somehow.

A little paint ended up on my camera body anyways as I was turning the freshly painted doll over and then picked up my camera. sigh.

We chose not to spray paint her clothing but to instead "distress" it.

She was scary looking enough already for me at this point.
But Alex thought we needed one more step, involving the application of shall we say, excess and concentrated heat.

Here she is after being ever-so-slightly singed with a heat gun used for paint stripping and Tyvek melting. I think this made her even creepier, more worn out and old-looking, kind of ratty and dirty and decrepit. And by the way if you do this burning step, do it outside (very stinky since all the materials are synthetics), and have a source of dousing water at the ready.

I think she's pretty scary looking. In the original instructions they were suggesting going over the faces with black Sharpies to make more zombie looking faces, but I like this ghostly apparition vibe.

Turns out that certain teenagers are more creeped out than you would imagine by this little ol' doll, which is why I keep putting her in unexpected places. Hey, I've got to keep them on their toes somehow. And get back for all those times they put the plastic scorpion in my shoes (Rotten Little Monsters!).

Halloween Party Extravaganza

Welcome, welcome to my Halloween Party!

Be sure and visit some of the other parties going on around the Fanciful Twist extravaganza.

I've got all the decorations lit up and ready to spook and scare you.

I hope you remembered to dress up, and bring the mushrooms for the vegetable dip.

We're already gossiping and talking about those who haven't arrived quite yet. Yes the spiced cider is really spicy, that's what happens when you use brand new spices instead of those old ones in the back of the cabinet.

Some of us can never leave home without all our familiars, I don't know what I'm going to feed Herda's raven!
But that's ok, even one of my familiars has one of her very own!
Have a seat in my very best arm-chair.

Some of us may have gotten dressed for the part a bit hastily, I think Zurina has definitely rushed too much.

And she's even forgotten to put their eyes on and that hair, I told her to not bother with that hair iron, if you've got the curls, go with it I say.

We're gathering around the lit up Spooky Town houses and having a big bowl of:

Moosewood Carrot Soup with nice crusty sourdough.

There are also some Healthy Halloween Sandwiches too:

Would you like some Ghoul-Ade?

And to finish it all off, a completely fabulous cake:
I hope that you have a fabulous and magical Halloween!

Freebie Bag Makeover

My dear husband bought some books the last time he was at the airport, and they packaged them in this really nice freebie promo bag. I really liked the brown color and this was a seriously well-made bag (especially for a free one), but I just didn't like all the adverts all glommed all over it.

Except I did like the quote which is I suppose from a character named Enzo, in the book being advertised The Art of Racing in The Rain. I know nothing about the book, but I am intrigued by the title.

I thought the best thing to do would be to add some pockets as that was what this bag was lacking. So I measured the area I wanted to cover up, cut out and ironed two fabrics right sides together. One is going to end up as the lining. I decided to make a curvy shaped pocket, just to be different, and I guess I was inspired by the swirly spirals of the fabric.

After sewing the two pieces together, (leaving an unsewed area to turn the pocket right side out), I clipped the curves so that the edge will be curvy and not lumpy when turned.

After turning right sides out, I ironed the pocket, turning in the edges of the turning unsewn area. Then it was all about positioning the pocket to cover up the advertising and pinning it in place to sew it on.
But before I sewed it down I added two more contrasting pockets, sewing them together in order so that they'll be functional. All of the pockets are lined for extra strength.

An action shot of sewing around the edge of the pocket. I had to sew slowly as the bag fabric was a heavy canvas with a waterproofing coating on the inside.

And here is how it looks! Instead of one weirdly shaped pocket, why not three?

On the other bag side with the quote I just underlined it with some pieced together fabrics matching the ones on the other side.

A close up of the top of one of the pockets, it says CONNECTION, which I honestly can't remember why I chose that word (and I made this yesterday. hmmm, CRS really has set in). And you'll notice that I used the selvedge edge of the fabric without turning it over. I thought it look really cool and added a little bit of interest and texture without looking terribly selvedge-y.

Now to figure out what to put in those pockets!