SWOON

I am still wanting 500 colored pencils!!!! ...I just can't seem to get over the lovely design of the display options and the enormous variety of hues! I dream of the wall display being in my art classroom, however impractical it may be... Too, I dream of them in my studio... in my living room... in my bedroom... Really, there is no inappropriate location to admire such a beautiful spectrum of color. Let's be serious; colored pencils are a universal material and an essential building block to be used by anyone for anything at any moment, providing infinite opportunity for creation by the hand of the beholder!! I'm hoping that professing my love for these pencils will convince the internet deities to send them to me!! Pretty please?









Too, I am still in love with exploring the idea of an origami installation in the art classroom, especially after seeing this image found on wise craft:

Swoon

<3

Neo-Traditionalist

We believe in being glass-half-full sorts of girls.

We believe that often times, granny is chic.

We believe in peddling vintage Schwinns with flower baskets.

We believe in poetry, picnics, and piñatas.

We believe one is never too old to keep a diary, the secrets only grow more scandalous.

We believe in arranging fresh flowers unruly like an English garden.

We believe in adventure and traveling the globe, be it to Marrakech or Malibu.

We believe in mixing lucite with oriental rugs. Thrift store finds with heirlooms.

We believe in handwritten thank you notes, better late than never.

We believe in needlepoint, letterpress, decoupage and forgiving Martha Stewart.

We believe in piggy banks and cookie jars.

We believe in book clubs full of Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Austen and Woolf.

We believe station wagons are hopelessly chic.

We believe in recycling our Grandmothers’ names. Eloise, Jackie, Faye…

We believe in collecting: stamps, shells, books, big glittering diamonds…

We believe in marrying the boy that writes us the best love letters.

We believe in highly competitive board games—Chess, Scrabble, Chutes & Ladders.

We believe in spontaneous road trips and charming, chintzy bed & breakfasts.

We believe there’s something to fortune cookies, wishbones and 4 leaf clovers.

We believe in classics, shaken and stirred.

Aching for Bookmaking!

In the past week, I have become enraptured in bookmaking! It all began when my sister, who also graduated with her BFA in Art Education from Temple's Tyler School of Art, taught me a few years ago how to make books. Since I made my first book with her, years ago, I have wanted to do it again, but haven't had or made the time! Now that I have ample time to experiment and create, I am seizing the opportunity! About a week ago, I ventured to the library for some books and came across this FABULOUS publication called, How to Make Books; it is so remarkable, intelligent, and easy to follow {with fabulous projects and ideas} that I am going to purchase it to have and hold as a resource!!

Esther K. Smith, the author of the book, encourages new bookmakers to start their bookmaking adventures by creating instant books, like zines, cloth baby books, etc., which help a new book artist work out kinks and get accustomed to the process of creating books! I have made 3 self-hinged accordion dummy books thus far, and it's led me into wanting to experiment with the hard stuff! I'm ready to take a crack at some bindings such as Coptic and Long Stitch books.

This revived interest of mine, in an under-appreciated art form, is something I've always thought about exploring in the art classroom with students! How wonderful would it be for students to create their own, well-bound sketchbooks?! Ironically enough, Allie, a blogger and teacher who authors one of my frequented blogs called, Bakers and Astronauts, has embarked on a new unit of inquiry in her preschool classroom: storytelling, paper-making, and bookmaking; this unit is exactly what I am interested in! I hope you take a moment to admire and consider bookmaking as it applies to you and your needs or desires and look at Allie's post about paper-making, as a part of her and her students' book-making adventures! I hope you'll be inspired to make a book of your own, whether you sketch, journal, make lists, take notes... everyone can use a beautiful, personalized, handmade book!!












Additionally, as a profuse lover of textiles, making books creates an outlet for utilizing textiles which really excites me!! One can create covers, belly bands, pocket covers and even utilize textiles within books to illustrate with fabric {a lesson I explored as a student teacher with my 6th graders in which we created fabric landscape images with scrap/recycled/reused fabric, studying foreground, middle ground, and background components to composition}.


Allie, on Bakers and Astronauts, also recommends a book called, My Friends, by Beatrice Alemagna in which Alemagna illustrates an animal that is an odd amalgamation of appliqué, fabrics, and stitching which vaguely resembles a most unusual animal, perhaps a dog or sheep. How wonderful would it be to utilize Alemagna as an artist to explore sewing work, stitching, creating fabric illustrations, which in my mind all culminate under the umbrella of bookmaking!! Another potential unit of inquiry that I will tuck away for when I have a real classroom full of students :)

For those of you who are interested, please read this interview of Beatrice Alemagna on the blog, Fine Little Day!

One last declaration: through my bookmaking expeditions, I've discovered that the bone folder is the greatest tool ever; everyone should own one!! So, go out, get yourself a bone folder, and happy bookmaking to you all!!

Cin cin!

Cute as a Button...

(Image courtesy of Creature Comforts)

A little bit about buttons, courtesy of Wikipedia:

In clothing and fashion design, a button is a small disc, typically round, object usually attached to an article of clothing in order to secure an opening, or for ornamentation. Functional buttons work by slipping the button through a fabric or thread loop, or by sliding the button through a reinforced slit called a buttonhole.

Buttons may be manufactured from an extremely wide range of materials, including natural materials such as antler, bone, horn, ivory, shell, vegetable ivory, and wood; or synthetics such as celluloid, glass, metal, bakelite and plastic.

Hard plastic is by far the most common material for newly manufactured buttons; the other materials tend to occur only in premium apparel.

There is even a phobia of buttons, called koumpounophobia.

(Image courtesy of Creature Comforts)

Buttons are especially sweet adornments! Even when you find an ugly button, it is probably so ugly, it's cute! Buttons can be used in varies ways; as tactile play things, to hold a shirt, pants, or skirt from falling off or opening, as closures in general, to advocate for a cause or a band, etc (see above definition). I have been thinking a lot about buttons in my sewing rendezvous and thought about them today as I revisited my cooperating teacher's blog, where she has described her advocacy through the Art Alliance in her school district. She has created a button to wear each day, symbolizing her support for the arts and to visually represent this to others at her school.
Of course I love this because EVERYONE should advocate for the arts, and she has used recycled materials, re-purposed into a button. Brilliant, Lainie! Along with advocacy purposes, I love buttons as a fashion statement, as adornments creating sophisticated detail to a garment or what have you. The thought of creating buttons intrigues me, particularly using unconventional materials to create them. I stumbled upon a tutorial to make buttons from polymer clay, which I think is an interesting thought and choice of material and thought it prudent to share! Here is the tutorial. While the color palette isn't quite the level of sophistication I'm going for, it's the process that I find worth playing with, for those of us who don't have immediate access to clay and kiln usage!
*This also ties into my fascination with creating wearable art!! Perhaps button-making or crafting unconventional closures could tie into a unit?!

Here are some other tutorials for making buttons from Design Sponge:

It Is Up To Us!

Presently, support for education in Arizona is quite frightening, particularly for areas like Art and Visual Culture Education. We MUST advocate for change in this state and across the country! On May 18th, 2010, please go to your polling place and vote FOR the 1 cent sales tax increase to save Arizona schools. Without this sales tax increase our schools will not function at the level needed to help our children and youth succeed! A penny a piece will save Arizona schools from massive budget cuts. I urge you to voice yourselves and vote!

On the same note, my awesome cooperating teacher from student teaching is advocating for the arts in her school district due to a major scare, not only in the state, but in her district, which will gradually eliminate specialists, thus eliminating enrichment opportunities for the children and youth of southern Arizona!

"This past November there was an override election for our school district. Since 1993 the continuation of the override has always passed. However, this year it did not. What this means is that over the next 3 years 90 "specialist" teachers (art, music, pe) will be phased out. This is in conjunction with the awful state budget means that the continuation of those classes is very fragile." -Lainie Kitzmiller

Thus, the Visual Arts teachers in her district have formed an "Art Alliance," to advocate for the arts in schools in every way possible, expressing the importance of art to a child's development through critical and creative thinking opportunities not offered or present in core subject areas. Please do your part and advocate for the young people of our state! Spread the word to your friends, families, and colleagues urging them, too, to make their voices be heard and VOTE!

Parisian Love

I am unabashedly not a football fanatic, which is astonishing to many people, particularly on Superbowl Sunday! Here and there, I'll tune in to a game or two, especially when it's the Philadelphia Eagles; gotta represent!! I never watch an entire game, though. They are so boooooring in my book, "I'm completely bored; I'm a border collie," for you Gavin and Stacey fans. So, I admit, yesterday, during the Superbowl, I became disinterested right at about half-time. Oops? While I was watching, I did enjoy a few of the commercials. Most prominently, I enjoyed the Google commercial! I found it refreshingly simple, clever, and cute among a sea of mildly offensive, humdrum advertising. Watch it here.

Oh Dear...

Well, it's been much longer since I have posted than I had intended, but such is life, bustling and busy! Living in a demanding household takes up so much time! Not to mention feeling under the weather and slightly unmotivated, too. All of these things put me much farther behind than I would wish. Thus, sadly, I still have not compiled my cross-country visual journal, though I seriously intend to. It will happen eventually, I swear! In the meantime, I have been thinking up ideas for neck pieces and doing some hand-sewing; yo-yo's and flowers, predominately, which will be put to use in creating said neck pieces. Today, I am inspired by this DIY tutorial for fabric flowers: Michonne. Oh the things you could do with them!!! They're so delicate and lovely.


This week, among the yo-yo's and flowers, I attempted to sew a little, lined satchel;

whilst I tend to make everything much more complicated than necessary, biting off more than I can chew... it's how I roll, always taking the more challenging path. Though, after this experience, I realized just how much of a novice I am!! Particularly with the ephemeral pressure of my foot to the pedal and wavering tempo of the sewing machine (mostly because I pin everything to death and don't want my needle to break), creating inconsistent stitches... blah! And perhaps I should have avoided a contrasty thread and a crazy stitch... yay for being overambitious! I need a sewing mentor... how nice would that be?! Until I find one, I think my mission has morphed into attempting more simplified projects that won't make me growl at my final product! I also discovered how much I want a rotary cutter. I believe this simple tool will make sewing projects a breeze! ...maybe?

I think it's about time I trek to the sewing supply store and get some supplies for my creations!

(lovely and inspiring photo from Lena Corwin)