Art Finds Friday - November 5, 2010 & giveaway

1) POETRY

I am reading B.H. Fairchild's latest book and so far it is excellent. He is a master at long sentences that somehow don't lose the reader's attention and narratives of strange characters' momentary events, steeped in unusual histories. I love how he sees the deeper character in those people he comes in brief contact with or imagines. His poetic voice is very American, independent and confident. Good stuff, interesting. (Not for kids).

There is a very powerful poem 'Madonna and Child, Perryton, Texas 1967 about a screaming baby who calms down only when the momma nurses her baby, his description is so spot on. It is such a poignant moment that 'forty years later this scene still hangs in my mind'.

2) WHAT I MADE THIS WEEK

A junk mail journal with painted junk mail for the paper and cover, my own photography, and rubber stamps - these Fanciful Outline Lowercase Alphabet. I received these stamps in my capacity as an Artist On Call for Stampington. Every few months I get some new stamps to work with, some of this work then appears in Stampers' Sampler magazine.

3) THE ARTISTIC MOTHER

I spotted my book in my local Hobby Lobby. This photo is of my dad looking at his daughter's book and his grandkids' photos!

4) FOLLOWER LOVE

This week I would love you to go check out the blog of Kelly Thiel. She is a very talented sculpture artist, art journaler and mother. She gives her readers a very interesting look at the process involved in creating her bronze sculptures. She also blogs about being a mom and posts some recipes. Worth a look.

5) GIVEAWAY

I came across this book 'Inner Excavation' on Liz Lamoreux's blog about 6 months ago. The subtitle is 'Explore your self through Photography, Poetry, and Mixed Media'!!!!!!! As those are the same arts that I am involved in I immediately went to Amazon and hit 'pre-order'. About 2 months ago I was again on Liz's blog and I read more about her book and, completely forgetting that I had already done so, I pre-ordered it again! Imagine my surprise one day, when the book was released, that 2 copies of the book arrived to me!  I guess I really was meant to have this book.


Well, as I have 2 copies I am going to give one of them away. To you, or one of you!

So leave me a comment and tell me which is your favorite of these 3 arts: Photography, poetry and mixed media. I will announce the winner next Friday (11-12-10).

Inspiration boards

I so enjoyed reading the comments about how you are mixing your media here. I am glad that we are all in this mixed media world together.

Thank you for weighing in and for entering my journal giveaway. There is a winner - it is Peggy of Pig Logs and 'tater berries'. Let's talk via e-mail and when I have your address I will mail you your little notebook.

*************


I have only a small window a day to myself to think and create. This month I added something else into that time slot. It is an online class all about blogging. I signed up for it on a whim, hoping to gain a little perspective to help me plan my blog, but it has turned out to be so much more. It is 'Blogging Your Way' hosted by Holly of Decor8 and co-taught by Leslie of A Creative Mint. It is an amazingly professional course with many articles and podcasts and homework that makes you think and do some real soul searching.  It is leading to me thing about so much more than blogging. Good stuff.

And well attended. There is probably over 500 folks in the class and it seems that many folks are doing the homework and posting it to the forums. Reading about other's blogs and blog ideas has also been food for thought. 

On Friday's Leslie showed us all about styling photographs and making inspiration boards. I showed the post to Lily, so as you can imagine she wanted to do one too. So she did:

Inspiration Board by Lily, age 8

I love having artistic children!!! (see those little stamps mid left? they are some stamps I have been carving from photos this week for a Stampington project).

Another aspect of the class was to make an inspiration board specifically for my blog. I can't believe I have not done this before. It is not like I have not read about it, but taking this class gave me the opportunity to do it. Here is mine:

Blogging inspiration board

When 'Blogging Your Way' course comes around again I highly recommend it.

I started to talk about this by way of telling you that I am using up my time on something other than, albeit related to, blogging. I have some major deadlines coming up too, so I will not be blogging for a while. I will be back, fresh and with a new lease on blog life soon.

Take care,

Shona

The beauty of layers

I am a dyed-in-the-wool mixed media person. I love layers. I love non-minimal. I love to combine art and images, words and photos. Movies are made (or broken) by the strength of the soundtrack. Somehow for me combining the arts always feels stronger.

Combining art with a friend's:

This is our latest Echo submission for the theme of Portal:

Shannon Mucha, left; Shona Right

  

Combining photos with rubber stamp photoshop tool:

Combining photos with mixed media art:

Combining photos with poetic words:

  
How do you mix your media?




*****************


Giveaway. 

Leave me a comment if you would like to win one of my little notebooks. 

Only if you promise to use it, to fill it with some words of reflection, words that will record something beautiful about your life.... deal?


I will let you know if your name comes up by Wednesday 9/15/10 ****** update ****** I am extending this deadline to Saturday 9/18/10 as I don't have a post ready for today!!!! I am working on a blogging schedule to keep me organized.  

 

30 lb (less) later....

Okay, so I had a baby last year, but excuses aside I was 30lb heavier in December that I am today. I am back to my pre-baby. Yeah! But more importantly I feel healthy and fresh.

And I can attribute it to the South Beach diet. It focuses on cutting the carbs, like Atkins, but better cause it has such good recipes. It helps that you can buy anything you want sugar free in the US (in Ireland this summer I had a really hard time sticking to it.... what do diabetics in Eire do??).

Now, as an extra layer of accountability I have teamed up with Shannon Mucha to make art out of our diet healthy lifestyle. Each week we are going to photograph one of our South Beach meals. The only rule is that have to post by Friday in our collaboration Flickr group, Bloom. So we can shoot the shopping, prep, cooking, presentation, family enjoying the meal.... any aspect of the process of bringing food to the table to nourish our families. 

So today it began! Even though I chop onions and steam spinach everyday, I was nervous. I know that there is a huge 'food photography' world out there and I have never taken food photos, think Pioneer Woman!!! I am not even going to try to match that. I am going to try, if possible, to find my own foodie voice. 

Prep

It will be a challenge. But it will be fun cause it is new (I love a new challenge) and Shannon is doing it too (everything is better when you have a buddy on board) and the focus is on my home and the beauty of home making. 

Cook

I am not going to say you should do South Beach today, but seriously folks - between the Muchas (Shan and hubby) and the Coles (Mark and I) we have lost about 115lb these past 8 months! It really works. And we have not been miserable or starving. Nope, we have eaten yummy food. No, really yummy, not 'diet' miserable food. And I no longer crave sugary or starchy foods or feel sleepy and sluggish in the afternoon. Oh, if I could turn back the clock and be 35 again too!!!! Alas, South Beach can't fix everything. 

Serve

Of course, I love that my kids got in on the act too.... here are 2 photos that Lily, 8 took while I was cooking:

Lily's favorite image. She 'knew' this was a good capture as soon as she took it.

Lily got up on a stool to get this one! A photographer in the making.

****************

Thank you to all those who entered my peg giveaway. My camera finally worked again after removing all the batteries from camera and computer (yes, a simple fix, phew!)

Here are the pegs (I may do a few more too):

and they go to.....

Jolene of Pieces of Me

Send me your address and I will mail them to you soon!

How to make a homemade gallery

The final piece to my house remodel was to create a space to hang some of our artistic creations in our new craft room. The craft room has windows that had these ugly window treatments, not curtains but triangles of heavy material that served no real purpose. I decided to take them down and hang art from the remaining curtain rods.  My sweet girls helped me put it together. It took 2 days, I thought I would share it with you:

Day 1, we decorated some wooden pegs:

1) We took apart a whole package of wooden pegs, setting the wire joining things aside.

2) We painted the pegs (this one was done by Lily, age 8)

3) When they were dry, we stamped on the flat side of the pegs with Staz On ink:

4) We reassembled the pegs (I put all the wires back on as they are difficult to do, I used a two needle nose pliers so that I didn't break all my nails!)


Day 2, we added the wires and hung them up:

1) We cut pieces of wire about 12 inches long (yes, my daughters did help on this).

2) Next we threaded the wire through the round middle of the peg, bent a short tip over and twisted it. The photos should explain it better:

3) Then I attached the wired peg to the curtain rod

4) And then we used the pegs to hang up all our art work.

Viola: our own art gallery!

(next project - paint those craft room walls!!!)

There are many ways of making a hanging gallery in your house, but I like this one because of the painted pegs. I like that our 'art' has function. I like that we made it together. As the girls grow we are doing more and more crafty things together. I love it!!

THIS WEEK - a 'leave a comment' giveaway!

I would like to give away some of the pegs that I made to someone who loves functional art! I stamped them with some stamps from this collection over at Stampington & Co. I can't show you a photo as somehow my camera has decided to not communicate with my computer, but I hope to get it fixed soon and show you how lovely these stamps look on painted pegs. They look something like these ones that I made a while back:

So for a chance to win some of these pegs, please leave me a comment and I will do a drawing next Wednesday (9-8-10). 

Quick and easy soda can earrings

At lunchtime the other day I was browsing the 3rd issue of Stampington & Co. Greencraft magazine and I was arrested by the simplicity, beauty and brilliance of earrings on page 24-25 made by Loretta Castagnolo - out of soda cans!!! I showed them to Lily, who is 8 and into anything pretty, and who as expected wanted me to make her a pair.

We literally took a can out of the trash can, cleaned it and within 10 minutes had a pair of pretty pink earrings ourselves! How is that for immediate gratification?

It helps that I have jewelry making supplies ready in my craft room. But really it didn't take too much - just a butterfly hole punch (mine is a Martha Stewart one), 20 gauge wire, wire cutter, needle nose pliers, awl and earring findings.

1) cut the top and bottom off the can (careful, it is sharp)
2) punch the image (butterfly) from a pretty part of the can
3) use awl to make little hole in butterfly
4) cut a piece of wire about 2 inches long. thread wire onto butterfly, twist into S loop, trim any excess
5) attach the earring finding to wire

Thank you to Loretta for her inspiration (I would have contacted her to ask her permission but there was no contact email or website in the magazine and google turned up little by way of her name).


***************


Last week the winner of my Saturday giveaway chose decorative over functional. That leaves the function journal free for this week's winner.....

Ellen

of Shimmer and Tulle

Let's talk over email so I can get your address and mail you your journal!

******************


Please check out my post on the Wishstudio. I particularly like this essay as it is all about keeping a positive mind, a mindset necessary to soar through the artistic mother life!

In contrast to the photo of my little guy crying over at the Wishstudio:

Momma loves you Maximus

Peek inside #3

In my book, The Artistic Mother, there are some projects that have multiple pages, some that couldn't be shown due to space limitations. But as I was in possession of all of the art work in my book at some point or other I can give you a unique peek inside.

This week I would like to show you another of the Round Robin books, shown on page 22 of my book - the one started by the very talented mixed media artist Carrie Harney.

Other pages in this Round Robin book are by Mindy Mitrani, Cindy Mayfield, myself and Sarah Keith.

Confused? well, just enjoy the artwork!

*****************


I never know quite what some one would like to own - something decorative or something functional. So this week I am giving away the choice of each.

1) Something decorative (this wall hanging):

or

2) something functional (this notebook):

which will the winner of this week's Saturday giveaway choose?

I wonder.....

who gets to choose anyway?

it is.....

Kristin of Acorn Hill Studios

congratulations! let's talk via email, you can tell me if are you decorative or functional.

For everyone else, next Saturday I will have another follower giveaway.

*******************

Over at the Wishstudio there will be a Q&A for the contributors to the site, myself included. It seems that you can submit a question for myself or any of the other contributors and then the answers will be posted at a later date! Sounds interesting! I may ask a few myself of the other gals.