May 18, 2007
Creative Connections is more than just the name of this blog–its how we live our lives at my house. All sorts of stuff comes together, goes elsewhere and wraps back around into our lives again eventually. This weekend finds us getting ready for the Dyeing Days starting Monday, and while I sort things into the various bags for each color, I’m listening to music from my past, because my husband is going through 25 years of recordings and digitally archiving them. He’s a musician as well as a landscape and mosaic artist, and I’ve recently set him up to do podcasts. He’s coming round to where the computer meets the music, and thats a challenge for someone who claims to be a techno-primitive in style. The fingers are faster on keyboards of another sort, not the PC. But hey–he managed to move from acoustic to electric guitar, and I’m betting that this too will be a more comfortable medium eventually.
Some of the old recordings even include me, back in the days when I split my time between art and music, before adding children to the mix. (Ample Parking was the name of our ’80s band) Then I retired from the music scene and made art and family and writing my full-time jobs. I don’t miss the smoky-bars-3AM scene but I do sometimes miss playing music with others.
And now, the kid who’s persistant kicking along to the music decades ago while still inside made me put away the bass guitar is making his own films, and coming home to work with his Dad on some soundtrack music; isnt it just convenient that there happens to be hours and hours of it available?!! If you’d like to hear some of it, visit:
http://feed.at-the-helm.us or his accompanying blog: http://bryanhelm.wordpress.com
I think I’ll turn the volume up and go back to sorting–its great to be able to use my eyes, ears, hands, and brain all at the same time.
May 16, 2007
I’ve decided to take the plunge and move this blog onto my own server, where I have more control over the storage and also the options…it means going from the free WordPress.com site to WordPress.org instead—both are free to use, but the first is easier and more limited in some ways. The second requires hosting abilities—do let me get you a napkin! Actually, napkins dont really figure into it….
So until I figure out all the switching details, I’m working on the site and adding to it while I learn both here and there. CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) are a different code than HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) and I’m not a native born speaker of either…when I was learning to talk the new rage was the Electric Typewriter, and computers were just something my GreatUncle worked on at the Census Department, where mysterious machines filled rooms and did less calculation than my three dollar solar powered calculator does now.
While I figure this all out, do take a look at both the versions–here and there–and let me know what you think of the differences. polyclay.com/blog
May 14, 2007
Time to turn to another set of projects–we have made a timing adjustment to the dye schedule, and are waiting another week. When the white cotton crochet hats with wired brims arrived last week from Dharma Trading Co. and were tried on and instantly admired by both of us, my friend and I realised we had a math problem. That’s when 2 Hats+46 Dye Colors = Another Order (placed that very day). So our dyeing days have been postponed but we’ll be better prepared in another week, as the pale piles accumulate.
A creative mind is able to adapt to a change in scheduling. Just turn to a different project; there are ALWAYS at least ten different Things To Do visible in the corner of my mind’s eye, and thats because they block the view of all the rest of the list. A little bit done here, a few hours of concentrated effort there, and a wide variety of things do– eventually–get done.
I’m going to do a bit of polymer clay work today, and put away the messes I’ve made from taking things out for classes at my local bead store, and have some fun! That includes the glitter and metal leaf, the clay and the Jones Tones foils. One of the uses of little bits and scraps of clay is to take small amounts of colored clay and add metal leaf. This is a VERY thin sheet of metal, and can be found in silver, gold, copper, and anodized color bursts, swirls and patterns. It sticks to raw clay without any adhesive.
Place it all on a solid color background, roll it out, and you have a multi-colored sparkly confetti-style design. Portions of this were placed on chunks of polymer clay and pressed into a mold of my own making.
Today I’m going to take some actual clay time where I can listen to music and make faces. These will go in the spirit doll kits. The faces shown here are from the 2006 Miniature Mask Swap. Its just one of 90 designs that were traded between polymer clay artists. AFTER the dyeing happens, I’ll be taking pictures of them all. That’s too big a project for the next few days, but it is the next on the list. But for today, I’m going to putter around the studio a bit!
May 14, 2007
Time to turn to another set of projects–we have made a timing adjustment to the dye schedule, and are waiting another week. When the white cotton crochet hats with wired brims arrived last week from Dharma Trading Co. and were tried on and instantly admired by both of us, my friend and I realised we had a math problem. That’s when 2 Hats+46 Dye Colors = Another Order (placed that very day). So our dyeing days have been postponed but we’ll be better prepared in another week, as the pale piles accumulate.
A creative mind is able to adapt to a change in scheduling. Just turn to a different project; there are ALWAYS at least ten different Things To Do visible in the corner of my mind’s eye, and thats because they block the view of all the rest of the list. A little bit done here, a few hours of concentrated effort there, and a wide variety of things do– eventually–get done.
I’m going to do a bit of polymer clay work today, and put away the messes I’ve made from taking things out for classes at my local bead store, and have some fun! That includes the glitter and metal leaf, the clay and the Jones Tones foils. One of the uses of little bits and scraps of clay is to take small amounts of colored clay and add metal leaf. This is a VERY thin sheet of metal, and can be found in silver, gold, copper, and anodized color bursts, swirls and patterns. It sticks to raw clay without any adhesive.
Place it all on a solid color background, roll it out, and you have a multi-colored sparkly confetti-style design. Portions of this were placed on chunks of polymer clay and pressed into a mold of my own making.
Today I’m going to take some actual clay time where I can listen to music and make faces. These will go in the spirit doll kits. The faces shown here are from the 2006 Miniature Mask Swap. Its just one of 90 designs that were traded between polymer clay artists. AFTER the dyeing happens, I’ll be taking pictures of them all. That’s too big a project for the next few days, but it is the next on the list. But for today, I’m going to putter around the studio a bit!
May 13, 2007
Today is Mother’s Day, and I am happy to have a Mother and to BE a Mother. I’m thinking of my human Mom and of the Earth that is our mother too… and while my human Mom is a buzz in her own right, the buzz I’m most thrilled about today is the bees.
We’ve been growing our own salad greens, herbs, and hot peppers, squash and tomatos for many years now and its always a reminder of the source of all creativity when Spring comes and the plants begin to show their colors again. Nothing like salads and salsa and spice to make meals more enjoyable!
This year is already good–we have three kinds of spinach and six kinds of lettuce that are already giving us more baby salad greens than we can eat, so we share, both with the bunnies and the neighbors.
But we’ve been noticing fewer and fewer bees this year. So, I was absolutely delighted to see that for this year’s Mothers’ Day celebrataion I have flowers; they are blooming on my raspberry bushes–and BEES in them too! At least six–and while far fewer than in other years, its good to see any of them at all here.
Lets hear it for Mother Nature! Creativity starts there.
May 4, 2007
When we do the annual Dyeing Days at our house, we get colorful from head to toe. All year long, everybody keeps an eye out for things that are composed of natural fibers that just might benefit from a jolt of new color. Tshirts are certainly a part of the pile, but we also dye jeans, shorts, socks and hats and other clothing.
Then there are the bolts of cloth, the spools of ribbons, the hanks of fiber and skeins of yarn. This year I have a bowl full of bamboo beads ready to get colorful. They started out as a placemat. They’ll soon be dyed to match silk and rayon ribbons and more. Bamboo and other wood and vegetable fiber items can be dyed beautifully using Procion Fiber Reactive Dyes. When my kids were little, we used their wooden blocks as part of the tied resists when we dyed a batch of clothing, and the resulting wooden blocks were really gorgeous. We liked the shirts too–but the blocks were the visual winner THAT year, and we hadn’t intended it at all.
In addition to my wardrobe of colorful, comfortable cotton socks, shown above, here is a picture of 12 pieces of cotton cloth that were dyed a few years ago using bound dye resists like string, rubber bands, and wooden clothespins. (Those soaked up the color too, but werent as nice as the wooden blocks, which were made of nicer wood.) The cloth is 100% cotton jersey and cotton flannel.
I get my dyes and more from Dharma Trading Co. who have had “Fiber Art Supplies and Clothing Blanks Since 1969”. The selection of dyeable goods there is staggering. They have clothing and accessories, fabric by the bolt or yard, ribbons, banners, fibers and household items. All are in black and white, and can be dyed, painted, and embellished with a myriad of textile arts techniques. Take a look there if you enjoy color!
And if you do, be sure to visit Maggie Maggio’s Smashing Color site. Its a visual treat and a great informational source for artists who use color.
May 3, 2007
As I learn more about the potentials of blogging, I am refining and adding to the structure of this one as well as trying to find time for the actual posting! Today I am adding to the “blogroll” or list of links. I have so many wonderful sources of information and supplies and inspiration, and I want to share them. So I’ll be adding more as I go. AND I’m getting things ready for Major Undertakings–all sorts of things happen around here in the Spring, and not just planting the vegetable garden. We are only a week away from the annual Dyeing event, and I’m working on pictures and words for several new books, including the Miniature Masks collection. I’ll post more about that later this weekend.
The most recent Miniature Mask swap yielded a fabulous matchbox mask from Ellen Rumsey Bellenot. The mouth opens and closes–I love it!
Apr 30, 2007
Although I’ve been building websites for several years, blogs are a new phenomenon to me. My own Polyclay Gallery site just keeps growing and growing, and yet I feel a certain discontent when I see wonderful interactive sites like Cynthia Tinapple’s Polymer Clay Daily blog. Her clean, colorful, and constantly changing page is a “must see” for any polymer clay enthusiast. She made it irrisistable–blogs are a great way to be visible AND in touch with others. Although I update my web site with new pages and quarterly updates, its just not the same. And, many of my interests don fit neatly under the polymer clay “umbrella”, although they mostly all DO interconnect there!
So, it seems time to follow my own advice and start blogging on a regular basis. Please do come back and see how things progress, and I welcome comments.
