greenclogs

little of this, little of that

Someone is riding her bike without training wheels and rode to school today without them for the first time. She is very very proud, as am I. That same someone also has a new buddy who lives only one block away and is the other pea in her pod. It's so great to see them together. 

A snapshot of what I did today. Cutting out dolls (I really need one of those tiny rotary cutters) and doll clothes, working on some Christmas and winter themed cards for the shop. They'll go in this weekend, for all of you who are procrastinators like me. 

Lastly, a question. How on earth do you organize your scrap fabric? I was digging through my bin today and it was such a pain. There has to be a better solution that isn't hard to maintain. Smarter people?Ideally people who aren't naturally organized but really try to be? What do you do?

clear the decks

My swap packages are out the door, as are some overdue and soon due birthday gifts, which makes me so very happy. This week is "clear the decks" week - I'm wrapping up much of the partially finished stuff that is cluttering up my space so that I can reorganize it. Now that I've been in here for a month, I know what's working and what isn't and can reorder things in a way that I can be most productive. 

Painting the room (the aquas) as well as my bedroom (the purples) has landed on the list. I'm just not loving the colors in this room, so it's going to be repainted while I have everything out of the way. 

All this deck clearing is happening so I can focus on beginning a new creative endeavor next week. Stay tuned. 

finishing up and moving forward

I just had to delete all of my typepad cookies in order to be able to sign in to update today. Ugh. Corrupt cookies are a bad thing.http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=991

You want to see completed tie dye tshirts, right? Right.

They're both quite happy with them, but now they have the tie dye bug. I guess I'll be placing a Dharma Trading order soon. We made 3 more shirts tonight that are marinating - I'll be able to show them off on Friday along with our volcano eruption results. 

Also finished up today were the other half of the gocco cards. I used the same image on a different color card with different ink. 

The green paper is really hard to capture. It's a very mossy green with the ivory and brown bike printed on it. This one has a much more rustic feel than the other one. They'll all be packed up and shipped out tomorrow. 

The mental health day seemed to do Annika a lot of good. We discovered yesterday that the main source of her angst is that she is a first grader so she should not be in second grade math. So we talked that out and she had a much better day today. Ah, school with its propensity for sameness. Even in a school like ours, where everyone's individuality is respected and encouraged, the little ones all try to fit in. At least now we know what the problem is so we can support her in feeling good about herself and her abilities. Thanks for all of the support you all gave me. It's hard to know what to do in those situations, but I think that keeping her home honored her need for some Mama time and gave her the space she needed to work through her feelings. Her teacher also said that Monday was not a good day in class, so I did them both a favor by not sending a fragile ego to class that day. 

In other finishing up news, Annika's room is finally nearly completed. We'll show that off tomorrow. I do need some more cute artwork for one of her walls and I'd prefer to buy prints from independent artists. There are some Black Apple prints on her wall now. Who else on Etsy do you like besides her and Belle and Boo? I'm open to other suggestions that have a similar vibe. Thanks!

take 2

The production line for art of the note. Much better. My new ink arrived with my screens and bulbs, so I swapped out the color to the same color of the bike that inspired the image. I'll also be printing these on a different color paper with different ink, so I need to clean the screen and finish the batch. I am so much happier with how these turned out. The other one had charm, but it just didn't sit right. This is what I was after.

When I'm all done, I'll post a project wrap up with the inspiration source and the final set. As always, I've really enjoyed the creative process that goes into these swaps. I learn something new every time.

inky, part 2

Gunnar and I were taking turns on the gocco this weekend so I could finish my mid-winter gocco swap project. Does anyone get these things done early? Erin? Tracy, I know you didn't this time, but usually? I spent nearly a month trying to figure out what to do and ended up rejecting the first idea for this one (I still like the first idea, and will try it later). It felt like time was slipping away from me. When I took that photo of the little bird in my banner, I fell in love with him in the bare branches. Not much says "winter" in Phoenix, but this little guy sitting there seeming to be wishing for spring to come, said it to me. I wasn't going to be able to effectively reproduce all of the bird's details on the gocco print, since my drawing skills aren't the best ever and I'm still new at this whole gocco thing. The essence of that bird in the branches with the stark blue sky behind him was what I was after.

G commandeered all of the blue card stock for his project, and I had purchased sheets of canvas at Dick Blick when we were in Las Vegas, so the bird became a teal blue silhouette against the branches and a white sky. I used the same process that Gunnar used in making my original image, but I made 2 of them - one of the branches and an outline of the bird and one of the bird only, colored in fully. 2 master screens were burned, and I practiced on paper to line up the images and figure out which color went on first. The final images were printed on canvas and on some heavy sketch paper.

The canvas print has a rustic textured quality to it that I love, but some of the crispness of the image is given up for that woodblock-y look. My favorite part was watching the branches evolve as I used up the ink and finally figured out the correct amount to keep on there for seeing detail, but not fading away. Oh, and the ink takes forever to dry on canvas. 10 hours between passes. Not a last minute medium.

The paper image is crisper, but doesn't feel as much like "art" to me. It sounds silly, but I value the heft of the canvas. These are great too, but the canvas image is the official swap item.

All in all, a successful gocco weekend.

inky

We had a very inky day yesterday. With some deadlines looming for Valentine's day (and the Valentine exchange) as well as the mid-winter gocco swap, Gunnar and I had work to do. First up was Gunnar's project. On Saturday, he completed his design. He went into the photo archives for inspiration and chose this photo from our last trip to the zoo.

In Photoshop, he turned it into this

We printed the image at 3.5x5" and he put in on the lightbox, tracing the elements that he wanted to use. Then he chose light blue cardstock for his paper and brown ink. Here's the final result.

I am so proud of the work he put into his artwork and of the result. He's pretty pleased too.

Tomorrow, I'll show off my work. Right now I have to package them up and send them on their merry way. Prepare for way too much print gocco this week, since my swap images should start arriving in the  mail soon. One has already arrived and I love it. Hooray!

lazy Sunday and the elephant dance

It's 3PM on Sunday and we're all still sitting here in our pjs. Today is one of those lazy but busy family days - playing Jenga and Skip-Bo, creating Polly Pocket villages, drinking homemade smoothies, baking cardamom bread. Most importantly, we finally finished Annika's elephant.

Meet Peanut.

Peanut decided to take over Annika's trike but was frustrated that she couldn't reach the pedals. So she decided to show Moomo who was boss instead. She saw Erin's elephants and knew what she had to do.

As a follow-up to Friday's post. Annika and I had a great day and she seems fired up for school tomorrow, so the fingers are crossed. Meanwhile, we're all ready for Valentine's Day thanks to the trusty print gocco.

Here's to a good week of school!

weekend wrapup

That was a busy weekend. Holiday parties, sleepovers, photo shoots, studying for finals, destroying the house engaging in creative play, cooking up a storm. You name it, we probably covered it. We got some fun crafting activities in this weekend too.

As a reward for the end of the Tote Bag Project, we broke out the new-to-us print gocco and made the first set of Christmas cards. Here is Gunnar's design. I told him to keep it simple for the first try, and so he did.

Annika has a very elaborate design that we're trying to pare down for the rest of the cards. That print gocco machine is very addictive. The flash! The pretty paint colors! The truly perfect images it presses out, card after card. I'm in love.

This afternoon, instead of doing the things I should have been doing, like tackling my list of Christmas presents, I cut out and sewed a dress for Annika.

I'm telling myself that she was too busy in her own world to really notice that I made it (and tried it on her) so I can still wrap it up as a Christmas present and she'll never know the difference. Right? Humor me. It's another dress from Girly Style Wardrobe. In the book, it's the purple one with the boots. And while I love that look, it would only work in Phoenix for about 3 days a year. I'm pleased with how it turned out - the collar treatments in that book always throw me for a loop, so I end up winging them. Something about the diagrams just don't translate for me, but it all works out in the end.

This week I'm moving on to gifts for people who read this blog, so I'll find other things to post pictures of in an effort to keep them a surprise. Two more weeks! Time to get in gear.