Pottery Fun!

I purchased a Groupon to Created By Us pottery for my mom for Christmas. She fought a wicked snow storm last weekend to come up and visit with me.  We went to create our pottery pieces and as part of her birthday present I told her she could pick whatever piece of pottery she wanted. We decided to paint each others pieces. We both picked out the colors we would like but the other person chose the design and painted it.

We had a ton of fun creating. I just went and picked up our pieces after they were fired. Unfortunately for my mom she has to wait another month before I see her again. My mom created a business card holder for me and I created a fancy candy/party dish for her.

Before final fire.

Before final fire.

All completed.

Special purple glaze. My mom's favorite color.

Finished piece.

Creative Light Weaving

I've had the pleasure of viewing for a couple of years a beautiful weaving that is hung in the art therapy clinic at the college I work at. If I remember I will take a pic and share.  I've been unhappy with the lighting in my office all academic year and only recently after seeing the wall weaving again did light bulbs go off in my head.  I decided to try making my own weaving but more thin and transparent. The thought process was that I could make two and drape them under the ugly fluorescent lights in my office which would hopefully block some of the strong fluorescent lights.  While I have a large window and three lamps if you live in Rochester, NY you will realize why this is sometimes not enough light during the 5-6 months out of the year that it is dark and gloomy.

I basically had no idea what I was doing and other than glancing at the wall hanging I didn't do any research.  What I did was find some great broken sticks in my backyard, bring them inside, put them on the floor and found some twine. I proceeded to tie the twine from one stick to the other at the distance apart I desired and about 1" from each other down the sticks.

Then I took scrap yarn (the funkier the better), cut up wool sweaters, scrap fabric, and felting wool and weaved them in from one side of the twine to the other. *Hint start first row weaving under, next row weaving from the top, next row under, then top, etc... the entire time until you finish the length of your weaving. I did not do this for the first 25% of the weaving and wished I had. It stays together better and looks more dynamic.  When finished with the weaving portion I then tied glass beads throughout and small little sticks I took from an old wreath. Total time took about 3 to 3.5 hours. I thought it looked good but wasn't sure if it would work.

In the end I had facilities help to replace the fluorescent bulbs with a warmer bulb and then put the weaving up. I decided to only to one weaving as two might be to much. Right now I have clients and co-workers who immediately notice it, love it and walk closer to observe and look at it. I think the color combo I used looks warm, inviting and wonderful. I'm pretty pleased with the results and it fits in with my eclectic artsy style office.  Ironically for once this was something I didn't find on Pinterest but everyone keeps asking me if I got the idea from Pinterest!

Here's pics of the wall hanging that inspired this piece:

Mary Lou Panter Scholarship: 2nd try

I'm excited that I have again this year attempted to win the Creativity and Madness  (http://creativityandmadness.com/), Mary Lou Panter Scholarship.  This is my second go around in submitting an essay.  I got a bit creative with my essay this year, but I can't let my secret out of the bag yet because I don't want anyone to steal my idea! I have good vibes about my submission.

They have to be sent in via email which always makes me anxious because I worry that it will get lost in cyber world.  However; I sent it this morning at around 11:30am and have already received a confirmation reply. Hooray!

Good Morning Casey

Thank you for your essay

We will announce the winner on line on April 14th

Good Luck

Barry

Barry M. Panter, MD

The American Institute of Medical Education

So pleaseeeeeee keep your fingers crossed for me!!!! I'd really love to win a trip to this conference. It would be such an honor and a wonderful life adventure.

Update: Well, I didn't win yet again! But this time about 2 weeks before the winner was announced I received this book in the mail as a thank you for entering the scholoarship. I was excited and still think this is a great consolation prize.

DIY Shaggy Lamp Shade

I've been searching for a lamp replacement for a few months since my last cool lamp fell and broke. I did try multiple repair efforts but none of my efforts worked.  Once again I didn't quite realize how expensive lamps are. I found a neat one at Target after Christmas (my sister has it), the sign underneath it said $15 so I decided to get it only to find out at the register it was $25! I said no thank you.

I came across this Pinterest picture of a DIY lamp shade and thought "yes I must make this". http://pinterest.com/pin/383720830720606690/  I set out to find myself a lamp base and the correct lamp shade and it took a bit.  Eventually after going to two Savers Stores, I hit the jack pot and found everything on my list at one of them. I purchased this new (but ugly colored) lamp base and a beat up lamp shade for about $6 with a 20% card.  

I got home and ripped the lamp shade apart, used a file to sand down the glue and extra fabric adhered to it, spray painted it black, ripped lots of extra fabric into strips and went to town tying a ton of knots while watching the latest episode of Vampire Diaries. :)  The fabric ripping and tying took about 1.25 hours. I then moved down to the basement, laid down some plastic, decided on using black spray paint (was going to try for a green/blue but thought it would be to much in the room it was intended to go in), and proceeded to spray on a couple coats of paint.

The next day I put it all together and I loved the results. I may want to someday paint the lamp base a more daring color like the green/blue I originally thought of but it's good for the space it's in now and looks pretty neat lit up at night.

My next project using this idea comes from the original link; http://thepleatedpoppy.com/2011/02/scrappy-lampshade-tutorial-and-long-story/.  I want to get a shade like this and tie fabric further apart and create a hanging lamp for our group therapy room at work. We are in need of additional lighting for the room and I love the effect this lamp shade has on the ceiling with the main light off.

Below are some pics of the steps I took. Sorry for the poor quality photos. I went with the quick and easy "craptastic" phone of mine instead of my camera.

*Not to fond of the energy saving light. May have to switch it out.

Life is a Balancing Act

I created this simple image today as I facilitated an art therapy group. The directive was to share something about yourself. I created these birds on a line and wrote "Life is about finding balance and trying to maintain it." I'm sure I've seen similar quotes before but this was my own version.  I've also created similar birds in other projects before.  I shared with the group that although I put 5 birds on the line (which isn't an even number) that it still means you can find balance. That often times life isn't perfectly balanced and we have some sort of stressors but that we can work on balancing life the best we can at any given moment. It's hard to tell but the white edges of the paper were colored black with a permanent marker.

Feel free to share your favorite quotes here...

Jolly Rancher Lolly Pops

I found this recipe if you want to call it that, on Pinterest the other day. I thought "hey I can totally make these." Of course you'd have to know the following about me; I don't cook or really bake. I've been working on it slightly but I'm way away from being a chef. Cooking has never really interested me but I do enjoy others great cooking.

Anyway here's the link from Pinterest; http://pinterest.com/pin/269019777711908381/.  Now if you try to follow the link somewhere you get nowhere.  You have to just use the visuals provided.  I'm having a girls night party at my house next weekend and thought I'd make some of these lolly pops up as a thank you. I also thought sending one to my nephew and giving one to my co-workers 4 y/o would be pretty cool.

So this Saturday morning I set out on an adventure to make these easy peasy lolly pops. Here's what I learned.
-Parchment paper goes in the oven not wax paper.  (Thankfully co-workers corrected me prior to putting wax paper in the oven. )
- The recipe said put the oven on 200 and bake 5 min.  It took 10min. at 200 degrees.
-Then I stuck the lolly pop stick on them squishing it down but it did not cover the stick like the picture shows. I ended up taking my "clean" fingers and having to pull the melted candy over the stick.

Overall a bag of jolly ranchers made 23 lolly pops. Besides the jolly ranchers I purchased lolly pop sticks and plastic bags from Micheal's Craft Store, both with 50% of coupons.  I probably spent $6 dollars on this project total. Was kind of fun and was neat to try once. I have a lot of left over sticks and bags so we'll see what I try next. I think this would have more fun to create with kids.

Whimsical Acrylic Painting for Art Show

I completely forgot about the faculty/staff annual art exhibit and for the past 2 years I've participated in it. So here I was with less than 2 weeks to figure out what I wanted to create and submit into the show. I actually narrowed it down to only 1 weekend this past weekend as work was about to get crazy including a weekend conference out of state.

I took a co-worker and couple of 40% off coupons to Michaels Craft store on a lunch break last week and with my co-workers help I purchased two 12"x24" canvasses for a total of 15 dollars.  This was a bit pricey for me but hey when your working on a time crunch sometimes you gotta pay the price.

I thought I'd create a couple of mixed media paintings using owls as a main focus. This was because my sister likes owls and I thought she may want the paintings to hang in her house when they were completed. (I Facetimed her when they were completed and asked but while she liked them they weren't "her colors".)  I went on the internet and searched mixed media owl images and came across this woman's blog called Sweet Repeats (actually I may have misspoke- I may have found her by looking up owl images on Pinterest and a painting came up and provided a link to her blog).  I really enjoyed looking at her artwork, style and technique in general. http://sweetrepeats.blogspot.com/  I saw that she even offered a course/workshop on how to create whimsical owls. After researching the net for some inspiration I got down on the floor (literally) with newspapers, paint and canvasses to start to create.

I ended up creating my own backgrounds on the canvasses by layering a few different shades of paint after first applying one color to each background. I used different materials around the house to create different textures and patterns, including a pick/comb, an old credit card, the paper holders around coffee cups from a cafe hot cocoa purchase, a body wash luffa sponge, a couple of paint rollers, and stamps.  This was a fun process. I must say that a blow dryer that I got just for craft purposes was the best investment and idea ever! Up until a year and a half ago for some reason I never thought to use a blow dryer when layering paints. I have no idea why since I'm soooo impatient. Any how the blow dryer (which was purchased at a thrift store for $4) came in very handy since I made so many layers.  The first canvas was easy to get to a place where I was satisfied with the background. The second canvas not so much. There's probably about 20 different layers on it until I got to a point where I was satisfied with it. I then referenced different images of owls and created one on each canvas. I put a tree and flowers on one and a moon, stars and branch on the other. I drew the images on with pencil charcoal lightly then repeated when I had firmed up my image. I watered down the paint colors and proceeded to paint the image and followed up with another layer of charcoal outline.

Overall I created both paintings in about 6 hours. Oh my let's just say I was sore from sitting on the floor that long even with an occasional break. Boy must be a sign of how old I'm getting.  I was really pleased with the outcome as I focused on not being perfect and just had fun experimenting with layers and colors. It came together well and the charcoal pencil was an added dimension that was different and brought interest to the pieces.

 It ended up being worth the pain as my co-workers response to the paintings were very positive and when I turned them in to the exhibit coordinator she and another woman commented on how great they were. A couple of people even mentioned how they would like them hanging in their homes. To bad we can't sell are artwork at the exhibit!  Now I'll have to decide what I'll do with them!