Art, Quilts, and Other Adventures

Of piano recitals, tulips and birds

Yesterday was our piano recital.  I teach 3 kids, and my boys take lessons (from someone else...).  The other teachers and I decided to do a group recital day.  There were 3 sessions -- my students and my boys were at the 3 PM session.  I think there were 13 kids playing at that session -- a nice number.  Not too long....

I had been worried about the performances of my boys simply because they've been really silly at practice time lately.  Racing through their songs....goofing off....not listening to anything Mom has to say.

Thankfully, all of the children managed to do a wonderful job at the recital.  No major flubs, nobody being silly.  In fact, my boys, and my 3 students pretty much played their best at the recital, so I was proud and relieved.

Of the 13 kids at the 3PM recital, 8 were boys. Eight!  All of the boys seem to be drawn to the bouncy, jazzy type songs.  They were all very cute. The 13 kids ranged in age from 7 to about 10 or 11.  The teachers announced the name of the next performer, and then when they got up on stage, each kid announced the names of their songs.  After they played, they all gave a bow of some sort (head bob, slight bend at the waist...one of the girls even give a tiny curtsy).

Of course, I think the kids all thought the refreshments afterwards were the best part.  One of my boys said to me later "It was really annoying when people kept coming up to the table of performers and telling us what a good job we did."

At least no one was trying to pinch his cheeks or give him a sloppy kiss!

I've had trouble getting going this week.  The weekend was a little bit foggy:   Benadryl doesn't normally make me drowsy, but this weekend, boy....I had several Benadryl induced naps.  It's such a trade-off:  sneezing and watery eyes, or drowsy foggy brain?

I have been trying to get back into crafty/arty projects.  Today I worked on the "T" spread for the next Altered Book round robin book.  I'm not sure I'm completely done with it, but here's where I'm at for now:

If you can't read it, the text is from the song "Tiptoe through the Tulips"

I also made a bird:

CarlaB has instructions on her blog (Feathered Fibers) for making this bird: she uses fabric, mine is out of paper.  I'm contemplating using it for a page in one of my upcoming altered books.  I discovered after the glue was dry that one of the leg is longer than the other.  It's actually one long braid, and I thought I'd stuck it in with the two ends hangingout fairly evenly.  Oops.

I can't remember the last time I actually cooked a meal, so I thought I'd surprise my family and actually cook something tonight.  I'd better get going on that........

TTFN-
Suzanne

Alphabet Round Robin Ship Day

Today is the deadline.  My Alphabet round robin book has to be in the mail today.  I have really struggled to make up my mind about what to do to get it started.  It's now in the box and there is no turning back!

Here's the book closed:

As I said in a previous post, the cover (front and back...) are a work in progress.  Right now it is just painted with black gesso, which is very flat.  I also managed to get some glue on the front cover.  The hardest part of this project (for me, so far...) is dealing with the paint and glue and not making a mess!

Here's my sign in page:

Does that pinky-purple fabric look familiar?

The pink sheets that I want the artists to sign are also from yesterday's sunpainting experiment.  I experimented with a sheet of Tyvek.  It had pennies and some salt on it.  The Tyvek doesn't absorb the paint the way fabric does, so it didn't sunpaint the same way, but it still had some interesting effects:

(The blue paper was colored with Tsukineko ink  -- I dipped a cosmetic sponge wedge in the ink and then splotched the ink on the paper)

I was going to send it out with just the above done.  but then I had an idea.  And I put this page together:

The black and white polka dot fabric is fused to some Fast-2-fuse interfacing, which is fairly thick.  I was inspired to do the beading by Laura and her February 12x12 journal quilt.

The black scribbles on the paper around the little quiltlet are the names of objects that are red.

All of the pictures are clickable, so you can view them slightly larger if you so desire.

I was hoping to do some more sunpainting today, but the wind kicked up, so that's not going to happen.

Better get to the post office!

Weather Report

I guess I'm not sure how much snow we got here in East Central Iowa.  Several inches accumulation.  It's hard to tell in our yard because of the blowing snow -- we have bare patches some places and drifts of several feet in other places.

Unfortunately, one of those drifts was right across the bottom of my driveway.  My DH's big F-150 can get through the drift OK, but my poor Honda Accord was not up to the challenge.  I tried to shovel it so that we could go to the library and the post office, but it was too much for me.  Crusted over and heavy.  We stayed home all day.   Did I mention that the boys had a snow day?

I did make them go out for awhile.  It was cold and windy, though, so I didn't make them stay out for too long.  Just long enough to get some fresh air.  Joe came back in covered in snow and I said "It looks like you were stuck head first in a snowbank."

His response:
"How could you tell?"

Here they are in their snow gear (before going out):

I spent part of the day messing around with paint and glue.  I don't really have anything finished to show for myself, but I did get a lot done.  I signed up to participate in an Altered Book Round Robin.  I finally figured out (sort of) what I'm doing for that and spent part of the day working on it.  We are supposed to mail by the 19th....

Quilting Fitzy posted a question of sorts on her blog today -- how do you get to sleep she wondered.  This one struck me -- and I thought I'd share.  Aren't you glad?  I'm pretty sure that my husband doesn't do anything more than lay his head down on the pillow and he is out like a light.  Unfortunately, sleep doesn't come that easily to me.   I have to do something similar to QuiltingFitzy (who thinks of the steps of a process, like making a quilt) -- I have to think about something specific -- anything -- a quilt pattern,  an idea for my book, a scene in a movie, a fantasy....something to focus on.  As I think about that one specific thing I can fall asleep.  If I let my mind wander to everything else in the world, my brain starts to spin and sleep eludes me.  So how about you?  How do you fall asleep?

Altered Book Art

December 25's post was a page from the altered book that I have started.  There were a couple of questions/comments in from readers, and I wanted to say a couple of things about altered books.

First off, the most recent altered book I can be seen here.  It's by Kim who's other blog is SkybellArts @ Blogger

If you Google for Altered books, or altered arts, you'll find lots and lots of resources.  Lots! LOL!

For a gallery of altered book projects, you can visit the International Society of Altered Book Artists

I even found a magazine:  Altered Arts Magazine

I've also just joined a Yahoo group -- http://groups.yahoo.com/group/alteredbooks/ -- which seems to have tons of links and suggestions in their archives.  I haven't spent a whole lot of time there (yet), but one of the original things I was looking for was thoughts about copyright issues.  Apparently, they don't allow conversations about copyright in their group anymore (too much controversy...), but there are a few links in their Link section.

The reason I went looking is that the book I picked to start with is a relatively recent book (published in    ).  I had seen a few notes in various places that in order to avoid copyright issues, you should work with a book in the public domain.  Unfortunately, when I got the bug in my ear to start this, I did not have any old books to use.  The reading I've done suggests that while I'm probably OK to continue using this book for my own purposes, displaying it probably isn't a very good idea.  At least if I intend to alter it in such a way that the text is still at least partially visible.  If I were to completely obscure the previous text, I'd probably be OK.  This is just my opinion, and probably may not even be true, but it is how I'm interpreting the articles and information I have read.

So, I'm on the hunt for an old book to use.  I thought I hit the jackpot at the library today (in the used book sale room, and no, I wouldn't dream of using a library book!), but the copyright on the book I picked up as been renewed, so I don't think I can use this one, either.  Phooey. 

As far as what to do (and how to do it...) -- the short answer is to do whatever and however you want.  Make it up as you go along.  My plan is to try to do every page, and yes, the other side of the page might impact what I'm doing.   Of course, with something simple like colored pencils, that's not a big deal.  One thing I did (and will do more of) is to glue a group of pages together and treat them as one.  I punched holes around the edges and wrapped a ribbon around the edges.  There are a gazillion things you could.  I think the main thing is to keep it 2-D -- you can't really embellish with beads or buttons or other things of that nature.

All of the ideas that I've got so far have come from looking around online.  I've also seen a variety of books at the bookstore that have suggestions, too.

And Debra was right in her comment -- I want to be perfect at XYZ right NOW.  Not tomorrow, not in 10 years after lots of practice -- I want it NOW.  What a goofball I am.  I didn't get to be the kind of quilter I am today overnight -- I won't be the kind of artist/quilter I want to be in the future overnight either -- it takes work and practice, and I'm looking forward to the New Year and the new creative opportunities that I intend to make for myself.

r words

I feel a little like I'm exposing my underwear when I show projects like this.  It's very uncomfortable and likely to be embarrassing, but here I am anyway.

I'm a quilter, and I have a pretty high comfort level with my skill as a quilter. I love to share quilt projects, because I'm pretty confident about them.

I'm trying to try some other things, and when I do they end up looking like I'm back in elementary school.  Which, I suppose, is true in a way -- my "art" skills are frozen back in the day when I decided I didn't really have any "artistic" talent, so I quit trying that avenue of creative pursuit.  (The words "art" and "artisitic" are in quotations to denote the fact that yes, I have figured out that maybe I do have some talent in that direction, it's just different than I thought it had to be in order to use those labels in regards to myself).

After seeing a variety of altered book projects online, I've decided to try one of my own.  It seems to fit in with the fascination I seem to be displaying for letters and words, and I hope that maybe it'll lead to some fiber art ideas as well.

I've done a couple of pages.  I haven't decided if I'll post all of them (maybe in a separate blog?) or not.  At any rate, I'll probably post the ones here that fit in with my letter a day series.

For today's entry I turned to the next page and circled all of the words that started with the letter R.  I used Prismacolor pencils to color in the grid.  (Plus a few Derwent pencils, but I discovered that I vastly prefer the Prismacolor -- much creamier and easier to color with).  The black "R" is glued on top.  Originally it was colored in with a red and purple grid (with 2 purple blue dots), but I decided to color over the top with a black Prismacolor art marker.  Something about the scan makes the "R" look odd -- it doesn't look that ugly in real life.  Honest.  I may try photographing the page instead of scanning to see if that might look better.  Or not.

I do like that you can still see the hint of the grid underneath the marker.

You do not need to be kind if you choose to comment. (LOL)  I won't even be offended if no one feels the need to comment! (VBG).

And now, I'm ready for bed.  It's only 9:10 PM, but my day started at 5 AM when one of the boys crawled in bed with me and started to chat.  He would let me snooze for awhile, but then he'd think of something else to say.  He was waiting for 7 AM when he could get up and go check out what Santa brought.  He fell back asleep and we had to wake him up at 7:10.  It was a busy and wonderful day, and I'm exhausted, so time to go throw on one of my new pairs of jammies and hit the sack!