August 2002 Archive

Friday, August 23, 2002

Easy-clean Paper-cup Candle-making
Mwah-ha-ha! I am drunk with power. I turn a big puddle of a candle into a dozen little ones! AND I wrote instructions on how you can make these snazzy candles too.

posted on 11:55 PM

Monday, August 19, 2002

But I did get 3 out of the 4 screens done for the Pandora print portfolio. Details still under wraps.

posted on 11:58 AM

Wednesday, August 14, 2002

But yesterday I got my tracing paper, black origami paper, .08 black Micron pen and Silkscreening book.

Hooray.

posted on 11:27 AM

Monday, August 12, 2002

Last night I finally started drawing sins. Strange thing is, I already created a 18" x 24" etching on the topic my junior year of college. It was a huge undertaking and I thought out the sins to the nth degree. In that case, each sin was drawn and their characters were created with the differences in their eyes, hands and wings. Now I'm trying to approach the same subject matter with the familarity, but without doing the same thing.

In this case, I've got about 1/4 the space, and Pandora's out of the picture. Just the sins.

I went to the library and got a few books on the subject. Surprisingly, in antiquity, the sins themselves were very rarely represented, at least according to the illustrations in Dora and Erwin Panofsky's Pandora's Box. They are either little winged wormy things or women. But in either of those cases, they don't represent the specific sins.

Mine do, big time. Last night I thought I'd gotten stuck after drawing Gluttony and Lust and would go to bed. But I forged ahead, and pencilled in Gluttony, Lust, then Sloth, Pride, Greed and Envy. Only Anger and Hope are left to draw. (Hope was the one that was left in the box when she opened it) I'm having flashbacks to a exercise in drawing emotions from Scott McCloud's class, since I'm trying to distinguish Envy and Anger. Right now Envy looks like Envy, but if I don't make Anger really look like Anger, it'll be confusing, especially since they are right next to each other.

I'm documenting the process along the way, but I don't think I'll put it online until the portfolio is finished. Don't want to spoil the surprise.

posted on 9:32 AM

Saturday, August 10, 2002

Lotsa good stuff going on. Working loads on the site, which feels good. And here's a few physical things I made:

Dyeing Linen
Here's me wearing three layers of recently dyed items.

My recent dye binge started when my friend Alise, tossed a linen dress to me after our garage sale. She thought it would fit, which is did, but was natural linen color, which is so not me. So, I died it a fantastic red-orange color (the outer layer in the photo).

While I was in Minnesota, I bought two $2 pairs of linen pants at a thrift store, along with an already lovely green linen dress. My sis, Burgundy, saw my penchant for linen, and gave me a skirt/short linen combo. Of course, these were all linen colored, so that needed to be remedied. One pair of pants are seen above, were died a rockin' marigold yellow. The skirt/shirt combo were died a shade in between the dress and the pants. The skirt turned out great. The shirt sort of spotty, even after two dye baths. I hadn't realized that while Burgundy handed it to me as a set, they were two different items. Didn't even notice until after the first dye, when I was surprised about the slight spotchiness. I'll probably re-dye the shirt red, I think, after I order a darker red than the bright, chemically red dye I have now.

That leaves me one more pair of pants - can't decided on color.

And I want to throw out a plug for Dharma Trading, from whom I buy my dye and supplies. The catalog is überinformative, the customer service quick and friendly, and the products great. I used their Procion dyes for all of this. Besides paints and dyes, they have loads of "clothing blanks" which is plain white clothing in cotton, rayon and silk. They are very careful to find or make clothing with cotton thread - so it'll dye as well. Lots of clothes ae sewn with polyester thread, that is synthetic, and therfore not as dyeable.

Cucumber Sandwiches
Okay, it's not really a project, just a snazzy photo. This was one of those empty-fridge meals. I had wheat bread, neufchatel cheese and a cucumber, so I made these open face sandwiches. Tasty and lovely.

Circle Boxes
Here's the three wooden boxes I talked about earlier. They need a couple more coats of varnish, but turned out very snazzy, I think.

posted on 12:07 PM

Thursday, August 08, 2002

The paper mache salt-boxes are a no-go. Box is too bumpy/flimsy to work alone, and I was too impatient to do a smooth, proper job of fixing the boxes with additional layers.

So, I checked the supply closet and found three wooden boxes. So, I'm painting the insides bright orange, the outsides glossy black and modge-podgey the circles onto just the tops. Will be way shaper than the vases, methinks.

Orange paint is currently drying.
posted on 7:54 PM

Wednesday, August 07, 2002

Huh?
I'm suppose to be doing client work. But hell, why not make something while I enjoy watching Law & Order? So, I started my salt box recycling program. I've been dyeing several linen items and dyeing means using loads of salt. So, I'm recycling my the boxes and making snazzy paper mache vases. First, I'll be building up the salt boxes with paper mache. Then, I'll paint 'em black. Next, I'll decopague on the circles above, made from magazine cut outs. Viola! Snazzy, graphic vases.

Back to the computer grindstone.

posted on 10:55 PM

Here's what I made this weekend:

Hair sticks
Cooking this weekend, I looked over a saw the jar of wooden chopsticks sitting on the shelf, outmoded by my snazzy plastic chopstick I bought. I decided to give them a second life as hair sticks. I don't have. and never had the hair to utilize these myself, so I'll be putting them in the store when it's up. I took out my vintage sequins, leftover rhinestones and glitter. Took a lot of time deliberating on the patterns, and came up with these 5 sets after some painting, glueing and varnishing.

Red flower cards
The tiny red flower sequins just barely used on the hairsticks (tough to see against the red chopsticks) inspired the next project. This blank note card. Had enough recycled terra-cotta-colored envelope, origami paper, red A2 envelopes and sequins to make 22 of these. The glueing on the sequins got a little boring, but I did it in two shifts and watched movies, so it wasn't too tedious.

The biggest joy of these two projects was that it was bricolage. No more spent. Existing materials used.

Hooray!

posted on 12:04 AM