Fabulous Necklace

I recently attended CREDO II a fabulous retreat/conference offer to Episcopal clergy through our pension fund. One of the participants had a necklace that I really liked:


So I thought, I could make that! And I made the most Fabulous Necklace in the World.

Three years ago, I had a Blessing Way before the birth of my younger son. Many of my friends couldn't attend, but wanted to participate. So each of them were invited to send a bead which would be made into a birthing necklace which I could use as a focal point in labor. They were on some ribbon, but I never quite knew what to do with them afterwards. Now, I've figured it out.

I took my Blessing Way beads and some of my favorite other beads into my local bead shop and showed the owner the picture and my beads. She set me up to work, and I added a few more beads from her collection and some seed beads, and voila!



I love this necklace. It's chock full of love and reminders of friends; it's hand-made; it's made by ME; and...it's got a magnetic clasp in the back! I've never heard of magnetic clasps, but they rock!

Have an artful day.

SpirARTuality ideas

Our SpirARTuality group got together for lunch and brainstorming ideas for next year. Our ideas include:

Haiku
Dancing
Creating our own painting class at Root Art Center
Weaving rolled paper


Making clay beads
Doing our own Art Hop
Going to Whatever Works in Granville
Visiting a glass blowing studio
Cooking



Creating african-type painted fabrics
Creative writing
Beading at our local bead store
Retreat day (or several days!)



What are your arty thoughts for the coming year?

Monoprinting with Kids

I helped lead the Children's Program for the Ohio Episcopal Celebration at Kenyon (OEC@K). As we were begin planning our activities for the weekend, I remembered I had extra Versatex screen printing ink from the previously blogged about Fish Printing. So this time, we tried monprinting.

In order to get a smooth, elevated working surface for the children (ages 2-11), we used a food storage bag wrapped tightly around a book, with the excess neatly folded and taped. The kids had to be very careful not to rip the thin plastic, but none of them did.

As I was demonstrating the process to the children and I pulled up my piece, I suddenly realized that these could be prayer flags. So suddenly this became an Prayer Flag activity.

(We also stuck with the original plan, which was about decision-making. Children trying out different designs on the paint was like thinking about what decision to make. But then putting down the fabric was like making a decision--it can't be un-made.)

Here I am, mellowly talking about prayer flags as if it was our intention the whole time:


Children then took a plastic-covered book, a flat work surface (showerboard cut to 2ft squares), and a piece of cotton or muslin and then chose a color to work with. I spread the color on the plastic, then they took off with a teen-aged helper and got to work.

After playing in the paint and deciding on a design, the children would carefully put down their fabric piece and use a brayer to make sure the full design was transfered. Here's Grant braying a neat design:


It was a great gift that the teen program chose this particular session to sit in with the children's program. There were just enough teens and kids that they paired up very nicely, and they loved working together:


Truth be told, I think the teens liked this project as much as the kids did. They were very patient helping the kids, but the moment their "job" was done, they came asking to do their own prints:

Oh! And we had enough left-over shirts from the Fish Prints that each of the children could monoprint a t-shirt, too.

Here are our prayer flags in full glory:

This is quite an easy activity that can be done with any age and be successful, even with confirmed "non-artists." Just don't forget to heat set the images afterwards (press with a hot but not steamy iron for 5 minutes).

Paper Friendship Quilt

On our recent trip back to Kansas, we did an art project with the Reeces. Cydney suggested a friendship quilt, and I loved the idea. I, of course, wanted to do it in fabric. She wanted to do it in paper and had all the supplies. So paper it was!

Step 1: Choose the paper.
First, Cyd and I each chose a group of scrapbooking papers that we liked. (Suggestion: have the whole family choose the papers, not just one person.)
There were 3 piles: Reeces, S-Bs, and shared.

Step 2: Choose the quilt pattern.
You can make any shapes you want to on the quilt, but since we wanted to make it easy enough for a 2-year old to do it, we just cut triangles. Each quilt square was to be 5 inches, so each of the scrap book papers was cut first into 2 1/2 inch squares and then cut on the diagonal to make triangles.
Each pile is kept separate (Reece, S-B, Shared).



Step 3: Everyone makes 2 quilt squares, one for each home.
Here, you can see me, Matthew, and Cydney working on our squares. Each of us used triangles from the "S-B" and "shared" pile for my quilt, and from the "Reece" and "shared" for the Reece quilt.
We used glue stick to stick the squares to a backing of stiffer paper (whatever we had on hand, posterboard, perhaps).
Each person got to choose both the triangles they use and what pattern they wanted to place them in.


Luke's one for us is directly below him. I didn't mind the white showing, but we straightened up the one he made for the other quilt because the wonkyness would have driven them crazy. ;)

Here, you can see the 3 piles we were drawing from, the Reeces are more green/muted, the share is ecclectic, and ours are more pinks and oranges:


And here are our finished quilt squares.
They are now divided by family, and waiting to be mounted and framed using this matte board.
Cyd and I are both pleased with the results:

Birthday (The Big 4-0)

My birthday this year fell on a Wednesday, which made it easy to make it an arty day. SpirARTuality meets on the 1st Wednesday of each month, so we celebrated by making these cute little animals out of pre-plastered gauze. We chose these animals to go along with my birthday theme. My goal was to have all of my friends donate to the Heifer Project so that we could buy 40 animals for folks around the world for my 40th birthday. (We surpassed my goal!). These animals graced the table at my party that evening. Jo's lama is so well-dressed. Susan's lamb is cute as a bug. And my lama is ready to go!


In the evening, it was the last in our church's series, "In the Image of the Creator God." Each week, a different artist came to share a little of their art, how God/spirituality influences their art, and then leads us in an art project (HOW COOL IS THAT?!?). It was a great series. This last week, a woman who paints eggs using wax lead us in painting eggs. It was ridiculously fun, addicticting, and everyone was successful at it from my 2-year old son to my 87-year old mom, and the most creative to the most...reserved. Charlie shows off his favorite two eggs:


My niece Sara surprised me by driving 3 hours for the party (and having to leave again very early the next morning). She and Luke worked on some eggs together:

And here I am watching hubby and a bunch of other folks work on eggs. What a great birthday!

ArtiGras 2009

I spent my Saturday at ArtiGras, a fundraiser for the Spirituality Network in Columbus, OH. It was a wonderful day of taking care of our spiritual selves. Three friends attended with me, and there were over 100 participants.

One of the workshops I took was "Another's Shoes" where we used plaster strips (like they use to cast a broken arm) to make someone else's shoes and to tell a story about them. There were some wonderful shoes: mom's house slippers she put on each day after working 3 jobs, shoes for a child in africa sponsored by the maker, work books, etc.
My shoe is for the Mommy I'm Not. I don't own any high-healed shoes. This greatly disappoints my 5-year old. So here is the shoe I wish was in my closet for him to play with:


I also went to a dance workshop by happy accident. When my friends re-gathered after our first workshop, Penny was glowing from her dance workshop and said we really should go. I weight it in my mind and thought about skipping my assigned painting workshop to go, but the Dutiful Child won out and I went to the painting workshop. When I got there, my name wasn't on the teacher's list, and the class was full. So off I went to the dance workshop.
The leader drew from many different sources from the bible to "What the body wants" and Gabriella Roth and others. Our hour and a half class was mostly active dancing as we danced our ways though the chakras. It was intimidating, freeing, and exhausting. It was also deeply personal even though we were dancing in the same space. I didn't get a picture of this workshop, but wow!

The other workshop I attended was creating Mandelas. It was really fun. Here's what I came up with:



The ostrich in the center of mine started calling to me from another table as soon as I sat down. He's such a funny creature!
After we made our mandalas, we were given time to contemplate them. I almost laughed out loud when I realized that the ostrich wasn't me!
Pieces of 2 songs came to me, "Crown him with many crowns" (see the safety pin with 3 bells on it on his head?) and from "I Want to Walk as a Child of the Light" the phrase, "The star of my life is Jesus." HA HA. Apparently, one of my images for Jesus is now an ostrich. Hmm...

When I got home and showed my kids what I'd done, Charlie (5) was facinated by the mandala and asked several times to do one together. So the boys spent most of the morning creating their own mandals. Here's Lukes:


And Charlie's. See how proud he is!
What a great day at ArtiGras. And what a great day with the kids.

SpirARTuality: Nuno Felting

February's SpirARTuality gathering was to do Nuno Felting. (Full directions and information on kits are in the 2 posts below). We began with 9in by 12in prefelt. Here is one fabulous design before we started felting:


And here we are in the final step of the process, when we dropped our projects into very hot water and squished and squeezed them to get them nice an well-felted.

I was shocked about how small my project got:


And then very interested at the sizes of the three projects we did. Each of these were dipped and squeezed for the same amount of time. Hmmm...do you think perhaps I was dealing with a little bit of stress?


All three projects turned out beautifully. We were all pleased. Nuno felting with a kit is very do-able, and turns out well. I highly recommend it!

Our SpirARTuality question for this project is, "Are you the roving that holds things together, or are you the silk pieces that brighten things up?"