Adventures in Fashion Design

Back in December I got a call from the amazingly talented and lovely Sandra Wise of Pinky Herrera Designs
Among many other wonderful things, she made my dress for AshLee's wedding last summer.

She's working on a new line of men's dress shirts and wanted to know if I would like to collaborate with her. Would I?!?! So she dyed up some fabric and cut out some shirt pieces and sent them to me. And I got out my stamps and stencils and played to my heart's content.

The shirts are back with Sandi now, getting sewn up and ready to make their debut at Chance Fashion's February menswear show in Seattle next weekend. How exciting is that?!

Making...

Here's a little painting I made this weekend. It didn't turn out the way I planned it, but I like it anyway. Gotta let the art do its own thing.

Here's a peek at a bigger project I'm working on.
It was a lovely weekend full of making over here.

Dear January

I used to loathe you January. I found you dark and depressing and loooooonnnnnggg.

But then I discovered the potential of your quiet, unscheduled weekends. I learned to see you as an opportunity for creative renewal.

And now I'm bubbling over with creative ideas, struggling to focus on just one or maybe four things at a time, to really make the most of your lovely stretches of open time. And now you are flying by so quickly when I'm having so much fun.

Release

Waaaaaaaayyyy back in September when I finished up my 30 Days project, I had no intention of taking such an extended blog break. Sheesh!

See, I took pictures to share!

And I even made some art. I just never got my butt in the chair to actually share stuff with you.

All is well here. It was a happy, busy fall, full of art and work and football and fun. Much to my surprise, I chose to bring some new friends into my life. I'm still adjusting to the added busy-ness that brings, but on the whole it's been delightful!

The word RELEASE has chosen me for 2012. I already started on the solstice by releasing some emotional junk I'd been holding on to much too tightly. It feels wonderful! RELEASE has so much potential. I think it will be a good word and a good year.

I'm ready to fly into the new year. How about you?

Days 22-25 of 30 days of creativity

I finished up this little piece, which mostly involved gluing things down. This is 8" by 8" collage and paint on a pre-stretched canvas. For the rubber stamps, I stamp them on tissue paper and then glue them down like any other piece of collage. Makes my inner control freak happy.

I've been collecting pretty fabric at yard sales all summer and Sunday I turned some of it into this little tote bag. I donated it to the breast cancer fundraiser we do at work, so some lucky person will win it in our raffle.

I've also been playing around with making these little charms and stringing them on necklaces which will be sold as part of the breast cancer fundraiser. Can I just say how much I love stamping words on washers?

Days 20 and 21: Resolution

It's funny, this creativity thing, some days you do a bunch of work and don't have much to show for it and other days you're sick with a stomach bug and don't do much, but the little bit of fussing you manage looks good. Some of the bits and bobs resolved into reasonable compositions these past two days. Although I'm not so sure about that big flower, I think it's a little overwhelming.

This piece still needs a ton of work, but now I have a direction.

These pieces and some others I've been working on are a little different than my usual style and frankly I've been wondering what the heck I'm doing with them. So it was nice to also get a bit of resolution on that front as I recognized that I sort of have a series going on here, little composition exercises using elements that draw me in.

How did it get to be the 19th?!?

Sheesh, that went really fast! I have been keeping up with my daily creativity even though I haven't kept up with the blogging. Mostly still working at bits and bobs in the background. I also attended a great Fabrications Quilt Artists meeting at Sew Uniquely You. Next month I'll be demonstrating hand embroidery stitches - contact me for more info.

Here's another little encaustic experiment. Better, but still nothing to write home about. But it's the doing that matters!

Here's some more bits and bobs. I'm s-l-o-w-l-y getting a little more organized in the studio. I do a lot of throwing different elements together to see what happens. I'm thinking this process will be facilitated by being able to find all the different elements. Just a theory. ;-)

Back on the wagon: Day 12

Not much to show for days 8 - 11 as my creative time was limited to looking through books and letting ideas marinate. My friend Dianne says sometimes making art is more of an internal process. I'm going with that.

I got back to physical art making last night as I started messing around with these little pieces of wood I had covered with plaster a couple of weeks ago, inspired by this beautiful book.

The madonna piece started with a Holy Toast stamp pressed into the wet joint compound. Yesterday I carved into the dry plaster and added some paint. Needs more work but I'm not sure what.

The flower is a first attempt with encaustics. Clearly I need WAY more practice/instruction if I'm ever going to do much with this medium. I'll probably scrape this off and try again. But I'm posting a picture because it's a great example of another benefit of the 30 days of creativity plan: the crap quotient.

The crap quotient is the idea that making some really crappy art is an important part of learning and growing as an artist. When you're committed to making something every day, it's so much easier to accept the crap quotient. It's just part of the rhythm of daily making, rather than a frustrating "waste" of precious creative time.