From the Library: Fabulous Jewlery from Found Objects

Lots of basic techniques for working with found objects using commonly available (i.e. in your garage/basement/workshop) hand tools. Many of the jewelry examples were constructed using more specialized jewelry making tools and techniques, but not so much as to be discouraging for us craft dilettantes.








Beverage can brooches--I want to try this one, it looks like it has some possibilities, even beyond brooches. AND it would use up some of those "vintage" beer cans living in my basement...








I also want to borrow this idea, using my new lozenge tins. I don't know about cuffs, per se, my tins seem a bit big, but maybe a pin or pendant?

The only books I ever returned to Amazon...

Buying craft books online can be such a crap shoot...


This one is emphatically for miniaturists, for whom quilting is an adjunct activity to building and/or decorating doll houses. It doesn't shed any new light on piecing technique, process, or design. Which, really, is probably obvious from the cover/description/and various Amazon reviews.

For the doll house completists, however, it does offer good insight on selecting fabrics for use in teeny, tiny doll house quilts; as well as solid instruction on the basics of piecing, for those who aren't already quilters.



This one is what it says it is, I just really don't like the abundance of swirly, rainbow hand dyed fabric. In my heart of low brow hearts, I really like commercial fabrics.

His guidelines for fracturing the quilts are interesting, but not so hard as they require regular consultation. Check this one out from the library.

Tin full of art

I love the concepts of small things, hidden things, talismanic/fetishistic/amulet-like accumulations of things...

Although in the realm of "altered" things (books, tins, what have you) and artists trading cards, so many of the examples (I'm looking at you Cloth Paper Scissors, Somerset Studio) skip magical and go straight to twee. I'm beginning to worry that that is a function of the medium, or over-saturation to the point that everything is going to look tired and sentimental.

Baby and spoon; more acquisitions

I am fascinated with tiny baby figures. Spoons are beginning to interest me, too, but this is not so long standing as the baby thing. I have been toying with the idea of standing the baby in the bowl of the spoon, and suspending the spoon within a hollowed-book shadow box.

Somewhere (note to self, find and add it here...) I have the preliminary images for a pregnancy/ childbirth collage. The general idea being ambivalence towards maternity/pregnancy, domesticity, the absolute and not benevolent tyranny with which children (or the concept of capital-M-Motherhood) rule their mothers.

Inspiration

I have been trying to build up ideas for shape, texture, and pattern, for use in art quilting--in conjunction with breaking the plane of the design with complex piecing. These images inspired by a Day in the Country (although the dogwood lives next to my urban front porch.)

Recent acquisitions

Unknown remedy, "soothing for irritated throats"; Stopit Tablets, "for simple headaches, simple neuralgia"; Meloids, Mellow Voice Pastilles,"a most valuable product in a most convenient little box."

Two silk scarves and one tiny linen hankie with drawn-work border.

Edgeworth Extra High Grade Plug Slice, "the best combination that can be made, only finest selections of leaf being used. Every box of it is guaranteed not to burn the tongue and to give satisfaction."

Another resolution

Whereas it is hereby resolved, I will complete at least one project per craft magazine or book purchased, and;

Whereas it is hereby resolved, I will attempt to complete at least one project per craft book borrowed from the library, or, at a minimum, blogging projects of merit and interest, and;

Whereby it is hereby resolved, I will return all books borrowed from the library on time.

Michael and Amy, art quilt for Caryl

Still in the bits and pieces stage. I thought I had lost the photos and would need to ransack the "studio", ended up ransacking it for an entirely different lost item which never did turn up, but these photos did, complete with fabric I forgot ever purchasing...just goes to show, I guess.

Not entirely sure how this will come about. Copied the photos to fabric, using high M/Y saturation. The photos themselves have a great dreamlike, bleached-yet-saturated quality that I want to emphasize. I think the layout will be largely geometric.

To have and to hold, ver.2

I am thinking that perhaps this will become a series. Of 3 or 5 if in a row? 4 if in a square?

To have and to hold

The scan does this no favors... too much glare off of the gel medium holding it all together. I think my quandary always is: how much is enough and how much is too little? I like the serendipitous play between the hand and the ghost fingers, but is that too much a a lacuna in the middle? Thinking, thinking...

O miau e da nossa casa

I found this at a neighborhood garage sale (this house has such mind-bogglingly excellent garage sales, that I am consumed with curiosity to see what they actually keep...!), and I just love it more and more everyday. I think the text is Portuguese, although according to Babelfish, it says "miau and of our house." Um, ok.

It's very dirty, and I'm a little afraid of cleaning it. Asked at the scary-hardcore embroidery shop, and the scarily hardcore owner gave me the gimlet eye and third degree, then recommended putting pantyhose over the brush attachment of my vacuum cleaner and giving it a gentle vacuum. Hmmm. Now to find the brush attachment...

About 11"x14" wool on some kind of very stiff, very open weave cross stitch-type fabric.