Thankful

I am thankful we have a nice house with family, food and warmth to fill it. I hope you all have a wonderful, peaceful Thanksgiving with family and friends.

Sneak Peeks

I have been working at the museum all week. We are installing an exhibition of Jun Kaneko's works. He is a ceramicist that creates huge pieces. Some weigh 1300 pounds. It has definitely been an engineering feat to get those pieces in place (we still have one more to go). We also have some of his paintings and drawings.

I wanted to give you a sneak peek to show you how we were wrangling them into place. But the pictures I took are on my cell phone and I don't know how to download them to the computer. I don't think the phone came with a USB cable and the instruction manual is no help. If I ever figure it out, you will get to see them.

Below are some pieces I'm working on for the online class I am taking from Jane LaFazio called Mixed Media with Paper and Cloth. These are just starting out.

What a Bunch of Hoopla!

After my workshop on Saturday, Anna and I went to a Hula-hoop making party. I had wanted to buy the stuff from Home Depot to make big hoops over the summer, but never got around to it. When I found out about the party, I figured that would be easier. They already had the hoops put together and we got to decorate our own.

You can see by my hoop below that they had a lot of colored tape choices. (I think I used about every color on mine.) Anna chose blue and orange camouflage tape and white for BSU colors. It took us quite a while to wrap it all and we didn't get to stay to learn some of the tricks because Anna's friend had invited her over to spend the night. It was a fun project and Anna is very excited.

By the way, it is easier for adults to do if you have a bigger hoop (that's why it's hard if you try to do the kid's size hoops).

Printmaking Workshop II

Last month I took a printmaking workshop at BSU on monotypes. This weekend I took another printmaking workshop, with the same teacher, on polyester plate lithography. It was all day yesterday and today.

I really had no idea what the process was. Yesterday I learned a lot and was a bit overwhelmed with all the possibilities of this technique. I also was getting quite frustrated as I could not get my prints to work. So the first day all I accomplished was this print below that is about 3" x 4" and I just traced some clipart.



I was hoping and determined that today would be better. After I came home from the class I looked through some photos on the computer and messed with them in photoshop. Then I printed a copy and took them to class today. You can xerox or laser print directly onto the polyester plate (it is a thin plastic-like sheet). I ended up with some better results.


The class also decided to do an exchange so we had to have at least 10 prints if we wanted to trade. Mine were not all of the same thing. I also printed this angel on fabric. It turned out pretty well and I will heat set it later.


The bowl was hand printed on Japanese paper. The rest were run through the press.

Yo!

One day while I was at JoAnn's, I purchased the Clover Flower yo-yo maker. I had seen them and thought I could use it on my scraps while watching football. I started with my red fabric thinking that Christmas was ahead. I have about 30 of them now, and more scraps to go. I know I could make a garland with them. But I was wondering if any of you readers had any other suggestions of what I could do with these?

Freaky Friday

Anna did not have school yesterday and today. Today I was hoping on working on a secret project; maybe do some art dabbling, in hopes of having some art content for those of you interested in that. However, it was not to be.

We received a call this morning from Anna's friend's dad saying that they discovered her friend had head lice. Since Anna had spent Halloween night at her friend's house, they wanted us to know.

I've never encountered this problem before so I had to go online to figure out what I was suppose to be looking for. I found some pictures, examined Anna and determined she had the nits (I didn't see any adults, but apparently they are very hard to see). So off to the drugstore we went to get some treatment.

Then, we had to do some fine combing and treatment. I decided that I probably had it too (was wondering why my head was so itchy) and repeated the steps on myself (not so easy to do). After that, it was massive cleaning and removing bed linens. I've been working on it all day and still am not finished. I also had the great pleasure of having to call another friend of Anna's and tell her step-mom of the situation because Anna was over at their place yesterday.

Anna was very upset as all of her animals are now in quarantine for two weeks. This will be the first night, in probably ten years since she's had big cat, that she will not be sleeping with Big Cat. Big Cat is in a plastic bag in the freezer. (I read online that you can freeze stuff overnight and that will kill the lice. Quicker than the plastic bag method. Fortunately, Big Cat is really not that big. He fits in a gallon Ziploc bag.)

The timing is also a bummer for me because I have to work both days this weekend (a first for me at the art museum). That means I will probably have to do laundry and cleaning after I get home.

Wool Bird

Halloween is over and I'm ready to move on. It seemed like it dragged out over a long period of time this year. Anyway, here is a little wool bird ornament I made from fabric from an old coat. The shape was from the new Quilting Arts Gifts guide. But, of course, I did it a bit different than they did.

Halloween

We had a fairly quiet Halloween night. I took Anna over to her friend's house early. She and Lauren were going to have dinner there, go trick-or-treating and then Anna was spending night. (Lauren lives in a flat part of town and the houses are closer together, so they can hit more houses).

Below is Anna and Lauren during school. They were both "Warrior" cats (it's a book series). We "umphed" Anna's cat scratches with some red felt sewn behind, as she didn't think they were noticeable before.


We did manage to get our pumpkins carved the night before Halloween. Anna tried to do a tiger with a little too much detail for the size and got frustrated. I think it still looks like a scary animal. Frank did the joker face from Batman. I did a super simplified version of Wall-E from the Disney movie.