New Book

I recently celebrated my birthday and as a little gifty, I purchased the book Digital Textile Design by Melanie Bowles and Ceri Isaac. The book gives really clear ways to use Photoshop and Illustrator to create textile designs. After discovering Spoonflower I really wanted to be able to create some repeat patterns and voila! this book shows up while I am perusing the shelves of my local bookstore. I'll post some designs when I get it all figured out!

A Bouquet of....

...carrots anyone???!!!!??? I was doing a lot of cooking yesterday and lopped off some carrots from their stems and was left with this silly looking bouquet. Couldn't resist photgraphing it.

Daily Tiny Art

Here are the tiny drawings I did in the past week. I decided that having three dimensions on each piece just was too much to fit on a two inch square. So, I decided to eliminate the rubber stamp image, except you will find it on the first image...the hand is a rubber stamp. You will still find a border and a leaf image on each piece.

Day Four

Day Five

The cake was for my mom's birthday.

Day Six

Day Seven

Day Eight

Day Nine

Butter Sculpture

First it was crop art and now butter sculpture! You can find so many wild things at the state fair. It is tradition to sculpt the likenesses of the winners of the Princess Kay of the Milky Way contest in giant blocks of butter. Here are two of the sculptures.

Crop Art

This past Monday I went to the Minnesota State Fair and had a great time...ate bad food, walked for miles, saw animals and lots of great handmade items. One of the funniest categories to enter is Crop Art. All of the images are created out of seeds. You have no idea how many kinds of seeds there are...sizes, colors, textures...amazing. The subject matter ranges from fanciful and kitschy to political to portraiture. There is a woman named Lilian Colton who is famous for her crop art. Check out this link to see more about her artwork. Here is a small selection of what I saw.

Wearable Crop Art

Young Girl

Nut Goodie (Minnesota's favorite candy bar)

The AIG Bull

Wall of Portraits by Lillian Colton

Tiny Art, Day Two and Three

This is day two of my daily two inch art creation.

It only takes me about 15 to 20 minutes to do this, but I find I look forward to it and think about what I might do during the rest of the day. Not obsessing, mind you, but just an occasional thought.

Day Three

I have discovered that I have a very critical voice in my head pointing out my "mistakes" Didn't realize how pervasive it is, even on something as simple as this. Hmmmmm, maybe I need to get out my copy of The Artist's Way and get to work on it.

Daily Art, Day One

Many of you know that I am living in cramped quarters and most of my art supplies are in storage and inaccessable right now. Not making art for awhile puts me in a tizzy...I feel ungrounded and out of sorts. I was talking to my friend Randy the other night and she reminded me that making art doesn't need to be a big production and it can easily be done every day. I just need to re-define what art and art making is.

Soooo, I began yesterday to make a very small piece of art every day. I set some parameters for the pieces I would make. Each one would be on a piece of two inch square paper, have a border and incorporate a leaf motif and a stamped letter. (My brother just gave me an amazing set of vintage upper and lower case alphabet stamps that had been our grandfather's. I've been itching to use them).

Creating a piece everyday not only fulfills my need to make something but also serves as a daily record.