Lines of Destiny and Design

This is an Artist book that I made for my design class, and I am absolutely in love with it!

It's an exploration of the shape of my  life, and how much of it is due to conscious decisions/actions (design) and how much is just blind chance (destiny).  I believe that my life is neither completely in my control nor completely out of my control. It's a little bit of chance and a little bit of choice.

I made the doll out of muslin and embroidered on the face and the bones. The dress, a copy of another doll dress, is made out of silk-ish polyester, and burn-hemmed.

The book is watercolour paper painted with gouache cut into organ shapes. I added tiny tarot cards, mesh, beads, drawings and embroidery.

In astrology, all of the signs relate to specific areas of the body. For example, Cancer (me) relates to the stomach and the breasts. Each page in the book is an organ and one of its related zodiac animals and tarot cards . The minor arcana (cups, wands, pentacles and swords) of the tarot all relate to specific zodiac signs, for example, cups represent the water signs (cancer, scorpio, and pisces). I chose some of the cards intuitively and some deliberately. Each card is related to the zodiac sign it is placed with. Some of the cards describe things that have happened in my life while some represent things I want/ am working towards.

I don't necessarily believe in astrology or tarot, but I think the imagery is interesting.

Screen printing is magical

I haven't posted anything in almost 2 years! Maybe it's time to pick this blogging thing back up? Embroidery and screen printing on cotton. A diptych (love that word!) entitled "Dream of me, Tigerlilly" for my intro class.

Naughty Cat and Some new projects...finally!

I have been totally lazy lately. But I swear it's not my fault.

I've been working a whole bunch of extra hours in an effort to get some time off in the spring to go tour Selkirk College. I've learned that the only way to get my boss to do something for me is to do something for her. That totally sucks. I'm pretty selfish and hate giving up my free time. But it's for a good cause.

As a result of all the extra hours, I got a long weekend! Woo! Which means that I had the time and motivation to get something done for the first time in a couple of weeks. I went full freaking throttle this weekend! And I have the pictures to prove it!

But first a cat story.

We adopted this Corduroy Rogers from the SPCA when we moved here. I've always had a pets, and a place never really feels like home until there's some sort of furry four-legged creature there. Unfortunately, I have a great deal of pity for things that are pathetic. Roy is totally pathetic. He's cross-eyed and a bit "retarded". He's also really foul-tempered a lot of the time. I don't love this cat. I tolerate him and try to give him as much attention as he'll take.

The other morning I was trying to be nice, so I gave him my cereal bowl after I was done with it. It just had a tiny little bit of milk in it, enough to be a treat, but not enough to give him tummy problems. I will never give him milk again.

About five minutes after he finished, I was standing at the kitchen table cutting some fabric. Roy started freaking out and biting and kicking my ankles. Hard. I tried to shake him off but he just wouldn't let go. So I picked up the first weapon I could find...the cover for my sewing machine.

He totally looks that perturbed all the time. He deserved it. No one bites my feet.

After a couple minutes he calmed down so I took the cover off and he trotted away indignantly and laid down on the couch. So from now on, the sewing machine cover is also Roy's Naughty Room. He walked around for a couple minutes in it. I wish I had video cause it was hilarious. 

I'm pretty sure that he hates me. A lot. Oh well, he'll get over it. I thought the whole incident was hilarious and couldn't resist posting the pics of my glorious victory over the Roy.

Now to the crafts....

I had this idea a couple of months ago to make a new pillow out of an old sweater. I've dragged this sweater with me everywhere I've gone and it was full of holes and completely threadbare. I hate to part with clothing once I've become attached to it so I wanted to make it useful again.

(Does anyone remember the song about the guy who has a coat and it wears out so he makes it into a jacket, and then a vest and then a patch and then a button? I can't remember what it's called, but I'm sure it's about me...)

Anyways....I made this design for the pillow that was going to be an outline of a hand and all the veins and arteries. I thought it was sooo cool. It got off to a great start and then I totally forgot about it. Until this weekend.

Somehow I ended up finishing the stitching. And it was soooo cool! Too cool to be a pillow, so I made it this instead....

It was this ratty old shirt with a really unflattering neckline. So I brought the neckline down (I like to show a little skin) and added my awesome "pillow" design, and voila! a brand new, cool as hell shirt!

And I finished it just in time to wear to my new favourite place! The Streaming Cafe!

Next I made myself a brand-new bracelet inspired by this post. I just tweaked the design a little and I now have a very cool button bracelet!

It's so cute and it make this great clicking noise when I"m working. I like noisy jewelery!

It's all held together with some gold and brown DMC thread that I got at the thrift shop. Where else? I refuse to pay full retail price for crafting supplies unless I absolutely have to !!

Phrenology...the funnest pseudo-science of them all!

It's almost done!

I'd been wracking my brain for a few days trying to figure out how to do the lettering on my brand-new phrenology head. I love things that are crocheted, but they are impossible to stitch anything on and get half-decent results. The solution? More crochet!

I think it's coming along nicely. There are still some things that I'm wrestling with, like how to make the eyes and the mouth. Should I try to name the sections or not? I'm thinking not, just because I'm going to run into problems with the lack of space. Some of the sections, especially the ones over the eyes, are really, really small. At least I'm getting something accomplished.

The week of 1000 projects to finish

Continuing on my last post, I haven't really been working on much lately. What I mean to say is I haven't been finishing much lately. I've started several things and have yet to finish one of them.

However, I do  have some progress pics of the things I have started and intend to finish. I hope to finish at least one of these this weekend.

First....

This was supposed to be a robot. I thought I could make a little figure and stitch on some robot-y details, and voila! Robot. Not so much.

This one, simply called Pastel, looks more like UltraMan. I think UltraMan is a kind of robot, but I'm not sure. Not exactly what I was going for, but still good.

And then.....

This one looks American to me for some reason, I think it might be the colours. And the stars.

And here they are together. Although they aren't at all what I was imagining when I came up with the whole "I'm gonna make some robots" idea, I still like them. They're playing "airplane" on my new coffee table.

Next, instead of making a third robot/ultraman/unknown thing, I made this....

Her name is Minerva, and she's all kinds of crazy.

Those are her "Weapons of Justice". She's kind of pointing as if to say "You! I will fucking smite you with my tree. So watch out!"

I found this fabulous bag of scrap fabric at one of the local thrift stores. For $2 no less. I love thrift stores. LOOOOOOVE them.  In this bag was a whole bunch of great little scraps, some of which I used to make Minerva's clothing and "weapons", and some of which I used to start this next project.

Look at all those great patterns!!!  This is (hopefully) going to be a purse. The problem I have with making purses (and I do this quite often) is that I almost always refuse to use any kind of pattern. For some reason I have this irrational dislike of using patterns. I'm learning to get over it, as you can see with the zombies and robots and such. They are all made from the same pattern. For some reason I'm still not able to get over this dislike when it comes to the purses. This has resulted in some truly horrible creations over the years, most of which disappeared when we made our cross-country move. But I digress.

I'm planning on "free-balling" this purse and hopefully it will be the last one I do that with. Learn to love the patterns, the patterns are your friends. I may or may not post this for sale in my Artfire store, I'm waiting to see how much I like the finished product.

I believe I posted about this next project already. It is not going well. I want to finish them because I hate giving up on things. Every time I give up in a project I think about Edward Scissorhands and get sad. So not only will I finish this one

And this one

 

But I will also finish the orange and pink ones that have yet to be sewn together and stuffed. I hate craft limbo. It's a horrible place where fabric can actually feel emotional pain. That's where Pink and Orange are right now. I will rescue them. At some point.

This last one is the project I have the highest hopes for, not only because it will be very cool, but because when it is finished I will finally own something I've been dreaming of having for years now.

Ok, so it's hard to tell from the picture, but at some point in the near future, this is going to be a phrenology bust! It won't be all that big, but I'm running out of space to display my creations anyways. I'm going to embroider on all of the sections. Out of all of the things I'm working on right now I think this has the most potential.

So until all of these projects are finished, I will not start anything else! No new projects until these are finished.

Yeah, we'll see how that goes.

Na na na na na nana naaaaa...Flash Bat!

I love this little guy!

...and he loves to boogie!

Flash Bat was born on a piece of paper at my old job. I used to be able to doodle and work on some of my projects, which was great. But the job ultimately sucked donkey butt, so I had to quit. Now I do all my "work" before and after work.

I crocheted the first Flash Bat almost a year ago, and gave him to a friend (Hi, Hillary!). The original Flash Bat was twice the size and didn't have ears. This is proof of evolution. Everything gets smaller and grows ears as it evolves. Someday the human race will entirely be made up of beings who are 1 meter tall and have no less than 3 fully formed sets of ears! It's science, people!

Does Flash Bat know all the secrets of Evolution? You bet.

The new Flash Bat (maybe I should call him Flash Bat 2.0?) also has a little snap on his shoulder to keep his arms in the "modesty" position. Not that Flash Bat 2.0 is all that modest. He wants you and everyone you care about to gaze upon his naughty bat-bits.

Can you see it? Bat Wiener!!!

He also has bat nips and a very lovely bat butt 

I'm not sure how exactly I came up with this idea. A lot of times, I would just sit at my desk with a pencil in my hand and things would magically show up on the paper. I think this was one of those times.

I managed to find the original sketch! Which is (I think) the ultimate in progress pictures!

 Yes, I drew this at work.

I also have a picture of Flash Bat 1.0. The quality and angle suck a lot, but you get the general idea.

 

The original Flash Bat, in all his naked glory.

His eyes were made out of these great buttons that were navy plastic with rhinestones in the middle. Sniff.  I miss my volumes of craft supplies.

Anyways....

We went out to the thrift stores yesterday to look for a coffee table. There were no acceptable coffee tables to be had, but I did find a bunch of great fabrics (including a bolt of bubblegum pink stretch vinyl) AND a fabulous bag of scraps...for $2!! I love the thrift stores around here! They are heavy with awesome crafting goodies!

So I'm off to make some Luchadores from my haul of awesomeness from yesterday!

Awesome new wallet. Too bad I don't have a huge wad of cash to put in it!

The new wallet is finished!

I've been using it and showing it off for about a week now, and I thought it was time to post it and show it off a bit more.

Of course I don't have any "in between" pictures, because I always forget. I'm more used to just doing something, and I'm always more concerned with the way the thing is going to turn out.

I had the same problem in art class in high school. My art teacher was always complaining that I never did sketches or showed any evidence of the "planning stages".

It's hard to show evidence of something that doesn't exist. So I learned to fake it. It's real easy to fake sketches. Unfortunately it's hard to fake digital photos. For me. I'm sure the FBI does it all the time.

So all I have to offer are these pics of the finished product. Which happen to be pretty impressive all on their own!

 

 

 

I don't know if I've ever mentioned this, but I am a little in love with Mexican art. I love the whole "Day of the Dead" aesthetic. It's festive and simple and colourful. And there's something fascinating about the way they treat death. I'm getting all goth now. Better go drink some coffee and kiss my sweetie! I don't want to fall into a black pit of darkness from which my soul will never escape.

Tomorrow....New Zombies!!!!