Fiber Fool

Of course, with the addition of sewing and more serious photography to my plate combined with the increasing interest in knitting and spinning, some older crafty pursuits have kind of fallen to the wayside. At the same time, some crafty skills from long, long ago were also put to use this year.

In miscellaneous crafty output I have included the binding of two books (I think I may have also bound 2 knitting journals that went out before photographing), the making of one collage, the making of one digitally manipulated image (I need to do more of this as it is something doable when pain levels are higher, though I lost all of my “goodies” in the hard drive crash), designing freezer paper stencils for a ton of baby onesies and painting five of them myself, making teeth out of polymer clay and beading into jewelry, and weaving many weavette squares that were then sewn into lavendar sachets.

I remember feeling quite pleased with the books I bound as well as the collage, but somehow I’m just not finding much time to do these things. The culprit may be more due to the state of my “studio” than finding time. It is more finding the time/energy/low pain levels to clean out said studio so that it is quicker and easier to sit down and create things like collages and make prints. Definitely something to go on the list of 2007 goals…

It was also a blast to return to some crafting I hadn’t really done since I was in junior high or high school. I remember sculpting a whale for my sister to use in a diorama for school and being heart broken when one of the kids broke it on the bus. I was so proud of it. I went on to make some rose pendants and such for friends as gifts one Christmas. After that I didn’t do much. Of course this was all before the widespread use of pasta machines to condition the clay and before they came out with some formulas that are a bit easier to work with. I was pretty proud of my teeth beads and the jewelry never fails to get a comment. It’ll be fun to pull it out each Halloween season.

As many of you have pointed out, indeed I have accomplished a fair bit in 2006. It is just that it is scattered all over the board in terms of skills and supplies used. Tomorrow, for ECF I’ll take a look back at my photography (though all original photos before mid March of 2006 were lost in the hard drive crash) over 2006.

In my week hiatus I did a fair bit of reading again. I checked out a book on how to use digital photos in art work from the library several weeks ago and finally got around to reading it. It is Theresa Airey’s Digital Photo Art, puiblished by Lark Books.

The book contains some introductory material, including information on various mediums that can be used and what brands Airey has found to work well for her. It is a decent sized section of the book and does a good job of overviewing a wide variety of materials. There are then nine seperate sections on different types of art work you can create from a digital photograph that includes such things as printmaking, photo transfers, hand coloring, encaustic painting, etc. Some of these sections are entirely computer based while others employ the digital photos soley as an “underpainting” of sorts.

Sprinkled amongst these sections are 12 artists portfolios that focus on artists who use digital imagery in their art. Some of these were very informational because the artist walked us through their process to create a specific piece. Other portfolios were not so informative and read more like PR copy. Despite the book being published just last year most of these portfolios did not include web site addresses for the artists. I would have liked web sites for all of them (though everyone probably did not have a web site) so that I could see more of their work.

I did not find any of the techniques to be earth shattering or out of the normal range of my thinking. The book was still inspiring as it brought to the forefront of my mind techniques I have maybe forgotten about. It also introduced me to a few new add-ons and software packages for photoediting that I would like to look into. Though pretty much all of the step-by-step exercises that were all digital relied upon these extra software packages.

Overall the book was inspiring and informative. It would be even more so for someone who hasn’t combined digital imagery with their non-digital artwork before. Despite that, I think this book may find its way into my studio library as I think it would serve as a nice resource to break through a creative block.

This is an art journal page that I did in March of 2004. It holds true yet today, though the invisible woman is smaller now…

In honor of fall and the colors popping up all around I’m sharing a piece of art I made last November. It was also chosen as the Art of the Day at EBSQArt today!

Now, I’m off to go capture some pictures today I think. I lost all my gorgeous ones from last fall when my hard drive crashed. We also dusted off an SLR and lenses we got when Drew’s parents moved and I just need to pick up some film and I have fresh batteries in my digital…

It seems this time of year my mind often turns to printmaking. I think perhaps it is the sudden burst of color in this often brown landscape on the eastern slope. Many may be surprised by the number of printmaking techniques you can do at home with little or no toxic chemicals or expensive equipment.

I do not have a fancy printing press and I don’t usually work with oil-based products because of the messy clean-up. The prints shown above and in my printmaking set at Flickr were all created using simple materials and supplies that I had around from my other crafting activities of the past and present or could easily obtain from a local hardware store and/or craft store.

As some of you may know, I’ve taught classes on-line for some time and I’ve scaled way back on them lately. However, if there is a call of at least 7-10 students who are commited to going through any of my six week classes I will offer it on a schedule that works for both of us. Well, a group of talented textile artists have requested a session of Printmaking for the Home Studio this fall. It is the perfect time of year for me to teach this class and I’m looking forward to the extra discussions on how to transfer the techniques to fabric. There are currently 12 students enrolled and they have kindly allowed me to open the class up to anyone else who many be interested.

It is short notice, but it took some time to nail down the dates that would work for everyone. The course will begin on October 11th (a Wednesday, though for all whose payments have cleared access info will be sent out that Monday, the 9th). It is set up such that the first couple of weeks have little specialty supplies needed so even if you are in a rural area and need to order in your supplies for the class you should be able to keep up just fine. Whenever possible I try to offer several options for the supplies so if you are a crafter already you may be able to get through the course with no additional supplies.

This looks to be a fired up group so the session should be very stimulating and for those in the US, we’ll be done around Thanksgiving time so there will be no assignments hanging over your head when you have holiday activities to ready yourself for.

To sign up, please head to the information page on the main site found here. I’m having problems with PayPal buttons working within the blog, but I hope to also get it listed in the shop section of the blog later today, but we’ll have to see…