Has it really been six months?

Well, yes, it has been. I tried to start a different blog, but it fell flat. It was a stupid idea, really, wasn't it? I mean, if I wasn't writing here, why in the world would I think I could magically write under another title, on a different background?

Since we last talked, I have read the first two Twilights, had knee surgery and gone on more college visits than I care to recount here.

I realize I have a full 5 days before I need to commit to this, but there is no time like the present. I think I need to get more organized about this blog thing. It was easy when I first started the Paperdoll Post. It was to show my year-long project of making a paperdoll every day for a year. After that, I lost my way. What did I really have to say, anyway? I'm not doing year-long projects anymore. Seems like a lot of people are now. When I first did it in 2004, some people thought I was crazy. Some people didn't believe I had actually done it. I am. I did.
Oh - the commitment - I bought a notebook and divided it into months and started planning my 2011 posts. I am shooting for 4 posts a week. One about the Sketchbook Challenge, one about an ongoing project I'm working on, one about a finished project and maybe one about home dec - we're on the interior redo at the moment.

Lofty goal, I know, but I must do this. No...I want to do this. So I guess you'll just have to read it.

The 25th of every month will be a Christmas project. Start early. Avoid the last minute rush.

Happy New Year.

Love,
Debbi

ps - I am team Jacob.

This is a meaningless sample post to show my f-i-l how easy this is.

http://www.yahoo.com/

Summer...

My summer break finally started on Tuesday. I think this is the latest we have ever been in school around here. We always get out in May, but we have a new Supt. of Public Instruction who says 180 days means 180 days, so we had to make up Every. Single. Snow. Day. In years past we have been able to do a one-for-two deal. So this was the closest I have ever been to having my birthday during school. I turned 43 on Wednesday. It's okay, 43. Here are the journal pages I did on my birthday:


Yep...I'm back journaling. I go on and off with it. I was doing really well for January and most of February, but then I got derailed. I was writing so many worries in my journal that it was no fun! It became a total downer and a way to test my life. I would write down everything I was freaking out about and then keep going over the list until everything was resolved (or not). But I wanted to make cool art books, not monuments to my neuroses, so I quit. Then I had a great idea for a new book structure. I made one and started working in it June 1. It is a worry-free zone.

The book is pictured with a newly planted hosta. Remember last fall when we did the big reno at the house? It didn't get finished until November, so we left the landscaping for this summer. The hosta is in a new shade bed JR and I put in on Memorial Day. The wheels turn around here...they just turn slowly. I limited my summer to do list to only 25 items. I have a good start on it, but there are some things that have to be done before I can do other things on the list - like a yard sale - hate 'em, but it's time...we have so much excess stuff.

Court goes to Speed Camp for 3 days this week. She is so pumped for it. Doesn't sprinting around an asphalt oval in 90 degree heat for hours on end sound like fun? To her, yes; it's heaven on earth. Truthfully, I'm thrilled she has a passion. Passion seems lacking in too many people, not just kids, these days. More passion for one's talent - that's what the world needs.

Two Projects

Logan Barrett, Whitley, Courtney and Andrew Solliday. In our new orange foyer. Looking precious. This was taken at around 2:45 on Saturday, April 17. Prom. The end product of two months of asking, thinking, planning, shopping and doing. Worth it. It was like a very long and complicated mixed media project.

If you know me, you know that worrying is my part-time job...my low-paying part-time job with sucky hours, like 2:00 - 4:00am. So if you know me, you would think that me sending my little girls out the door in separate cars with separate boys at three o'clock in the afternoon for essentially an all-night date would be a Worrypalooza. But you would be wrong. This is the truth: I did not worry one bit about any of them. I know both of the boys a little - they've both spent a few hours holding down the couch in the family room and I have never seen their names in the police log for speeding. And I know my girls a lot and I trust them. So there, Worry, take that.

And thanks to the Barretts and Sollidays for raising nice young men. I keep thinking I'm lucky to have daughters who are lovely inside and out and that these boys asked, but then I realize I'm not lucky at all. I am blessed.

I was actually inspired to make a little picture book. For the first time in I think months, I actually FELT like making something. What a relief. I started it Monday and finished it last night. I love a finished book, don't you? Here are some of the pages in progress.

Where I've been...

where I am ...where I am going. I have kind of abandoned this blog, haven't I? I really didn't mean to. I have spent 2010 so far on a roller coaster of emotion. No, nothing big has happened in my life. No real crisis of any kind.

I have this habit - a lifelong habit - that I must kick. It's sucking all the color and flavor out of me. I fixate on things - not literal objects, but situations. I spend hours and hours trying to read the tea leaves and then more hours brewing pots and pots of tea until the leaves say what I want them to.

I guess it boils down to a couple of core issues:
1. I fear that I will drop the ball...that all the sign I should do something are right there in front of me and I will, from sheer stupidity, miss them and wreck my Whole Life.

2. A lack of faith.

I am spinning my wheels creatively because I cannot focus on art when I am mentally writing a script for a Lifetime movie based on an inconsequential exchange with a stranger at WalMart.

This is just a season I must endure. I know it will pass. I must be patient with myself and ride this out.

Until then...

Spring Break Art Classes

More Info to Come...stay tuned...

From my January Journal

New Year, New Project

Wow! It's 2010 and I don't want to believe it. Too many big things will happen this year; things I am not ready for...Courtney will get her drivers license, Whitley will turn 18, have her senior pictures taken, start her senior year of high school, and, gasp, play her final high school soccer season. Mommy's not ready.

As some of you know, I did year-long art challenges for five years, beginning in 2004 with the Purse Book Project. I took last year off for a variety of reasons, the main one being that the projects had lost a certain amount of their soul. I was doing it for the sake of saying I had, for the sake of the challenge, not for the art.

I have to tell you, it was strange not to have that thing I had to do every day. I often felt I had forgotten something or had one one black shoe and one brown shoe...like something wasn't right. So for 2010, I hope to find a balance of sorts; a gentler year-long project that will benefit me in some way other than having created another monument to my stubbornness in the form of a stack of 365 useless objects.

Art Journals, right? Everybody does it. I see so many incredible pages online from Teesha Moore, Judy Wise, Kelly Kilmer and so many others and it makes me want to art journal. So I make a book - that's the easy part - and start to fill it, but then I don't like it for any number of reasons, so I abandon the journal and give up on the idea of art journaling for a few months. I mean, maybe it just isn't for me, right? I can't do everything; nobody can. So maybe I file Art Journaling in the same mental folder as wearing a size 0 skinny jean, the one labeled "It Ain't Happenin', Sister".

It seems just plain wrong that I can make all kinds of books from the old ways Gothic to a single-sheet and not be able to fill them. So this is the year that I conquer Art Journaling. I know I need help. I need an expert. I signed up for Kelly Kilmer's online class "A Life Made by Hand" to get started. I made this little book - a simple hardback pamphlet for my first book. Not too many pages and lots of space built into the spine to accommodate collages on the pages. The image on the cover came from philosophy packaging. I decided to number my books, with the modest goal of filling one per month this year.

I love the way this little book went together, so I made a few more. We had two snow days and I couldn't waste them cleaning. They don't have cover embellishment yet. Not sure which one I'll use next. Those are pictured at the top of this post. These books were all made from materials I had on hand at home. The pages are white cardstock of a Very Pedestrian Variety. Two of the books are made from full 8'5 x 11 sheets and the smaller ones are half-sheets. One is folded the tall way, the other width wise. Very economical. That has always been a peeve of mine in bookbinding - all those off cuts! Strange sizes of paper that I save, but never use. NO SCRAPS, I say, in 2010!

I'm working in my book every day and using the prompts from Kelly's class. It's January 9th and my journal isn't in the landfill yet. Maybe there's hope.

It's Felting Cats and Dogs!

Get this book:

Sweater Chop Shop by Crispina Ffrench. She'll tell you all about what sweaters to buy and how to felt them and cut them and sew them.

These are NOT in the book. They are my own simple creations. The gray kitten is cashmere. Just for fun. It was the only cashmere sweater I have ever owned...4.95 at the goodwill.

Lately I find myself easily distracted from Real Work, Art and Otherwise by the comfort of making simple, little meaningless things while standing at the kitchen table listening to the radio.

We have a new-this-year table that is the perfect height for standing and working.

Advent Madness

The advent calendar... I had never really considered the advent calendar until my pal Cathy sent me this link last Tuesday. http://whipup.net/2009/11/23/30-of-the-best-advent-calendars/

Then it was all over. I HAD to make one. Just finished it. Hot off the Singer. It's on canvas with 25 little collages for the numbers. I sewed strips of clear vinyl over the rows to fit those little chocolate squares. I want a more complicated one...

Here it is empty, full and a little detail...

Moore-naments?

I don't know what else to call these little things I whipped up last night. A few weeks back I ordered some of Teesha Moore's collage sheets with every intention of making some collages on canvas to hang above the coat hooks in the New Foyer. I don't have the long row of repurposed doorknobs mounted on a weathered white board on the east wall with a white bench underneath, so I have no current need of the six 12 x12 collages I planned to hang above the whole mess. Yet. I do, however, need Christmas ornam

ents for my Doll Tree.

On the tree, there are currently 4 blackapples that I mentioned in the last post and my mixed media action figures which are in the 2009 edition of Quilting Arts Gifts. There are also six or seven Katie Kendrick style dolls that were featured in Cloth Paper Scissors Issue 9 ( my cover). And these - the Moore-naments! Three of them are mounted on paper-covered chipboard and glittered up. I put a piece of blank cardstock on the back so that I could use them for gift tags if I felt so inclined. The other two are layered on fabric and felt, then backed with brown grocery sack. I machine stitched around the layers and added some sparkle. Since the back is paper, these could also be gift tags. I spent about an hour to make all 5 and I am trying to resist making all of the collage I bought into ornaments. Eventually that foyer will need some artwork!

I think I shall call her Kit

New doll from this pattern:

http://www.marthastewart.com/article/black-apple-doll?lnc=38f9cf380e1dd010VgnVCM1000005b09a00aRCRD

Pattern created by this artist:

http://theblackapple.typepad.com/

This is the third one I have made. It's a good thing to make when I don't feel like thinking of anything, but feel like making something. Kit will be on the Doll Tree for sure. She is sitting in my unfinished window in my unfinished foyer. J.R. calls it The Orange Room.

Christmastime

Already? YES! I have kind of phoned it in on my decorating the last two or three years and all the renovating around here has inspired me to get my A game back on. I saw this mantle and fell in love! I have the fireplace and the animal head. It belonged to my grand-dad and nobody wanted it when the family auctioned off his worldly possessions. As usual, my house was the last stop before the dumpster and I became the proud owner of a trophy head. In case you are wondering, yes, all the hunters in my family eat what they kill. It's all very Grizzly Adams. Anyway, the other bit about decorating and renovation is the budgetary aspect. I have new all around me, so I must do my decorating on the cheap. Hmmm...sounds like a challenge.

Okay, so here it is: I will recreate the lush mantle and garland around the deer using only items I already have and items purchased at - drumroll, please -

THE DOLLAR TREE

Can it be done? So far, I have picked up some silver grapes, some shiny white stems and some silver glitter balls. I also got 3 packages of pine garland, 15' each, which will need some work to build the base for the pinecones, lights, dooddads, ribbons and baubles.

My main tree is sliver, red and light blue and it's in the same room as the fireplace. I want to do a tree in my new foyer with a bunch of pink and gold stuff I got on clearance at Kmart last January. I want it to be a doll tree, covered in Good Girls, dolls from the black apple Martha pattern and other figural fabric follies.

Sometimes...

things just don't make sense. Sometimes I don't have an answer for one of my girls. Yesterday was one of those times. Yesterday our high school boys and girls cross country teams ran in the semi-state meet for a chance to compete in the state finals next week. There were 23 other teams there, too. The top 6 teams and the top 15 individuals move on to the finals. Our girls team was ranked 5th coming in and, to be honest, everybody expected them to make it out. Everybody has been racing well and staying healthy through the tournament series. Almost everybody. Courtney had a great regular season, but the last couple of races, she struggled a bit. I think the effects of playing two varsity sports simultaneously have taken a bit of a toll on her body. And...hate to say it...but a little "team drama" got into her head and a seed of doubt grew into a fully bloomed case of insecurity.

But yesterday. Yesterday, she felt good! No back pain after a week to heal up and get her head on straight. Yesterday was shaping up to be a great race for her. Until about the One Mile mark. A runner behind her stepped on the back of her shoe. And it came off. So Miss Courtney had to run over 2 miles in ankle deep mud and even deeper standing water with one sock foot. She finished. Over 2 minutes slower than she would have, but she finished. She probably asked me 10 times why this had to happen. I had to tell her I didn't know.

The girls team finished 6th and advances to the state finals on Saturday. I guess the guy who projected us to finish 5th didn't account for Courtney's missing shoe.

The boys team didn't advance, but Whitley's boyfriend Logan finished 11th and will be running in the finals.

By the way, her socks were white.

And Now for Something Entirely Different

WELCOME TO MY STUDIO...One of my studios, I should say...the one I share with about 225 other artists.

I have been an elementary art teacher for 15 years. This is the third year I have been in this art room and it still looks new. I keep it pretty simple. One of my professors at IU told us once that too much stuff on the walls of the art room can overstimulate kids and actually hamper their creative process. Seemed counter intuitive to me at the time, but now I agree. My students notice the tiniest little thing new in the room and are very curious. Sometimes, I bring in something I have made or a piece in progress and sit it on my desk. Let's just say it's well-fingerprinted by the end of the day.

I have only 3 rules:

1. Create with intention. Think before you mark or cut.

2. Share materials kindly.

3. Clean up your own mess.

I teach grades one thru five in a rural area. Fifth grade has been working on creating value with hatching and crosshatching. This is black water-based marker on construction paper. I keep my materials to a minimum and always try to present lesson that the students could recreate easily at home with inexpensive materials.

I do a few seasonal crafts every year, just for fun, so we have made pumpkins and scarecrows. We might do some kind of ornament or decoration around Christmas.
King Tut is at the Indianapolis Children's Museum and although our school system can no longer afford to send kids on field trips, our fourth grade teachers applied for grants to take their students to see the exhibit.


Wanting to seize on their enthusiasm, I moved the lesson on symmetrical balance up a few weeks and we made these masks. Metallic paint, jewels and glitter, glitter, glitter. I think they look great and the kids are so proud of them. Fourth grade is now shifting gears radically and studying Hokusai. We had a long talk about how different aesthetics all have value, comparing the ornate Egyptian artifacts and the simple woodblock prints.

In an effort to support literacy, my fourth and fifth graders are keeping art journals this year. They do some writing every art class...mostly writing vocabulary and making sketches of artwork we study. It feels all very scholarly.


The drying rack is bursting with second grade paintings of active lines. Thank you Kandinsky.

My desk is always a bit cluttered, but I don't really mind. My art journal is on the far right edge of my desk. I try to fit in a little doodling or writing during my lunchtime.

Clean up can be a challenging time since my sinks are adult height, but we manage. Usually I give the yung 'uns a wet paper towel to scrub their table while I wash out brushes myself. I want them to be clean!!

Third grade made these robots - LOVE the way they turned out. The skill here is freehand cutting geometric shapes.

This room is huge and very well equipped. Here is one of closets. Some of those bins are empty.

The last photo is the scene outside my classroom door.

I hope you have enjoyed this little trip around my art room!

Two Snaps for You

Out of about 400 I've taken so far this cross and soccer season. I can't help it. W & C are my favorite subject!

Here are the photos I wanted to post yesterday. Top - Whit and Court on the pitch. Stars won the match. Whit had 2 goals and 5 assists and Court had 1 goal. Bottom - Just after the gun at the Mater Dei Invite in Evansville last Saturday. Court is the one in the middle with the French braids. Court was 14th and the Stars finished 2nd overall on a very hilly course.

Where have you been?

I've been at the soccer field and the cross country course. I would love to show you some pictures of Whit and Court in action, but Blogger won't let me. Sorry.

Oh, and Taylor, if you're reading this, honey, hang up on him next time.

Productivity

I made this today!!! I envisioned it last Tuesday, bought the fabric for the body (AMH) on Thursday and drafted the pattern and made muslins on Sunday. It's a clutch made on something called a Facile Frame. Facile is French for easy. It's kind of an old-fashioned, mid-century kind of a thing. As you may remember, my husband and his dad own and operate a shoe store of sorts, with a full-scale shoe, boot and leather repair operation in addition to the retail. There are drawers and drawers full of rivets, snaps, handles, fasteners, closures, buckles and other interesting and useful bits. So when I asked J.R. for a Facile Frame, he asked, "What size?" I went with a 12" long frame. The frame comes in two pieces which are fed through a channel in the top of the purse. The ends are fastened together with pins. It works on tension. Here is the clutch open:

The lining fabric is leftover from the soon-to-be Owl Embellished Tunic. This bag went together really well. I graduated the seam allowances of the lining, batting and outer fabric so the pieces all fit together. For the final version of the pattern, I need to very slightly rework how the channels are finished on the inside. This is fine, but it could be better. Sew and learn, I always say. I love imagining something, working out the dance of making it on paper and then realizing the thing in three-dimensions. The hardest part for me is being honest with myself about when I need to rip parts out and resew them. It's a matter of whether I want it done NOW and WRONG or LATER and RIGHT.

Here's another bit of productivity. This is where our garage used to be. We're getting a new one, along with 22 new windows, 5 new doors and new siding on the house to match the new garage. Our house is kind of free-style Tudor, built in 1980 by a contractor for his own home. Slightly idiosyncratic to say the least. The lower part of the exterior is field stone and the upper part of the house and the whole of our former garage are the stucco-and-board-frame business. I have never loved this house. We bought the land - 3 acres in town - and the location - the right school district for where we wanted the girls to go. We have lived with the house. We've been here 11 years and it's just flat time to redo things. The siding I picked (J.R. let me do whatever I wanted) is a sage green called Cypress. We're getting white windows and dark brown doors. We're also knocking the foyer off the house and rebuilding twice the size. The entire entry of the house is getting a redesign. We have a contractor who does excellent work and is very committed to doing the job right. Hoping for dry weather! Projected finish date - September 30.

Whooo, whooo?

Or is it Why? I have been thinking about retro owls lately. Not sure when it started. I have another week of summer vacation and I'm working on some shall we say, wearable creations. Yes, clothes. I'm making myself some clothes. How nerdy is that? I made a skirt a couple of weeks ago and bought the fabric to make another one from my favorite fabric store, Shiisa Quilts in Bloomington. When I bought the skirt fabric - I think it's Amy Butler - I bought 3 yards of a funky orange and brown floral from the clearance rack. I only wanted 2 yards, but you get a yard free when you buy 2. I used Simplicity pattern 3535, one of the Project Runway patterns, and made a top from the orange and brown. It was harder than beginner, but not too difficult. I did a bit of unsewing here and there to make sure it looked nice. The sleeves have a tie that was a little tricky, but it was fun to see it turn out right. I picked out a bit of the sleeves last night; need to resew. Some of the gathers at the shoulder didn't look clean and straight. The owl? Oh yeah...I was thinking that an owl applique on the lower left of the top would look cute and interesting for school. The print is kinda 70s and so is the owl. I don't want it to be too fussy or too weird.

But does that really matter anymore? Looking weird? I'm old enough to be a little eccentric AND I'm an art maker and art teacher. I think that's license to look a little different.

I was home alone yesterday afternoon. That's been happening a lot lately and I don't like it. I did something I haven't done all summer - I watched Oprah. Hated it. When she raises something besides a cocker spaniel, I'll take her parenting advice. Anywhoo - while she droned on and on, I worked on some owls in my art book, trying to figure out a simple pattern for my applique. Why didn't I change the channel?

I like the one in the upper right corner best. I think I'll make the owl then try it on the top before I applique it on there. About 6" tall? All prints, no solids? The little V feathers will be embroidered I think.

Should I bother to read The Time Traveler's Wife? I already read my one book for this summer - My Sisters Keeper - Painful. Jody Picoult is the female Nicholas Sparks. Somebody please tell her that Nicholas Sparks has got it covered. I HATED that book. I read it because the girls wanted to see the movie and I told them they had to read the book first. It was sitting there, so I picked it up. I skipped ahead to the end after about 6 chapters and was STUNNED at the lengths to which this so-called writer would go to tie up all the loose ends in a neat little bow around a great big shiny package of Are You Kidding Me. I am not unpleasable, but I do like books that show the messiness, the conflictedness of it all without the aforementioned bow-tying.

Some books I have read and liked:

Ethan Fromme by Edith Wharton

What Maisie Knew by Henry James

Saving Fish from Drowning by Amy Tan - ANYTHING by Amy Tan

March by Geraldine Brooks - Go read this today

Valley of the Dolls by Jaqueline Suzann

Water for Elephants was ok, but Wally Lamb does opposite gender better than anybody. Whenever I read an author writing in the voice of the opposite gender, I always compare it to She's Come Undone. Picoult fails miserably in speaking in the attorney's voice in MSK. No man describes his own apartment as "sleek and modern". How did that even get past and editor?

So I am wary of movie books. I looked on Wikipedia to see the plot of the Time Traveler's Wife and it seemed a little Sparksy. Any thoughts?

So I guess I took a little break...

about a month, from posting. It's not that nothing is happening; au contraire, much has happened. This July has been the coolest on record in Indiana, so it doesn't feel like summer. We're not suffering. Weird.



Whitley got her drivers license and now she drives herself and Courtney to cross country in the mornings and soccer in the evenings. I feel kind of lost, not watching the clock for when to take them and when to go get them. That's been like my job since forever. Weird.

Whit went to soccer camps at Ball State and DePauw. She got MVP at Ball State. Court did a couple of Jr Olympic meets and did well. I've had Court to see a couple of docs about the sleepy foot she is still battling when she runs distance. We have a real diagnosis from no less than the Colts team doctor - she has exertional compartment syndrome and will surgery to fix it.


JR rescued a tiny abandoned kitten from the Jaws of Death ( the dog catcher - and the animal shelter here is a kill shelter) and let me bring it home. He's a guy and it's a kitten. It was quite a surprise. I named him Santino and he's asleep on the couch.

I have a article in the upcoming Sept/Oct ish of Cloth Paper Scissors. Look for it early next month.