meandering thru January

It's been bitterly cold here lately. It's to be expected, it is January after all and this is Michigan. That means a lot of indoors time. Which either means aimlessly watching tv or procrastinating on projects...

So, I went grocery shopping a couple weeks ago and found myself standing in Hobby Lobby. Don't worry, I don't cook with craft paint. Anyway, I'm a sucker for garden statuary, and low and behold they were setting up that section of the store... so, some critters followed me home. And since this stuff is just mass produced resin - I decided to repaint them to better match my decor and taste...

And then I decided to paint some watercolors. Evidently it's been a while since I had to vacuum salt up off the carpeting. For the uninitiated - you can see my watercolors here. I work with color and salt, and I mix in some gouache for kicks.

I have subsequently named all 22 new paintings, and will eventually get around to scanning them and adding them to the shop... eventually.

At the present moment my stuck-indoors-spree-of-projects has meandered on to working on a series of illustrations. So, I've scanned a bunch of sketches and printed them out as blue pages that I am in the midst of inking...

If you're also stuck indoors, hopefully your time is productive : )

Craft project: painting the birds

We all have our own quirks and proclivities and personal touches. I like weird stuff. Now, everyone has different sensibilities when it comes to weird stuff, myself included. I like to decorate with what I assume people would think of as weird stuff. I like frogs and lizards and turtles and apparently my new thing is birds. I have them all over the studio / office / living room. Most of them are probably supposed to be in a garden or a child's toy box, but, well, I'm not much of a gardener. So, yeah, I have garden statuary and toys standing in as knick knacks in my living room.

Basically, I like kitsch, and I decorate with kitsch.

And since I was done coming home from work and finishing up the holiday calendar — well, I suddenly had free time again! I know, it always seems novel to come home from work and not have to work on something. Leisure, who knew?

Anyway, after catching up on the last 5 episodes of the now cancelled Leverage and probably 7-10 miscellaneous hours of tv watching, well, I had to pry myself away from the facebook and do something (besides sleeping).

As it turns out, I had a little home dec project to finish. My vcr/dvd player died in the beginning of December, so, there was some consternation over hooking up the replacement and having the correct number of cables and looking at diagrams and attaching the right cable to the right slot between the new dvd player, the cable box, and the television. Apparently, in order to watch a dvd you need to have a degree in engineering...

Anyway, one of the cords was too short, and I had to rearrange things, and it was weird looking. So, eventually I was standing there in Target while Christmas shopping and bought myself a little stand for the tv to sit on so that the tv could be in the middle of the spot for the tv again...

Before: the original configuration

 Middle (the new dvd player) (above)

After (below)

So, of course, now there's more space for knick knacks, boo-yah! And by knick knacks I mean the birds, the turtle, the frogs, and the lizards.

I like to buy bird, frog, and reptile decorations that look realistic. Occasionally, I buy things that I think just need a new coat of paint, because I'm crafty like that. So, my post holiday I-did-it-for-the-fun-of-it project was to paint a couple resin birds I had bought that I thought needed a do-over with paint.

So, with some craft paint, a knowledge of bird plumage, and some satin and matte varnish:

 So, now I have 3 yellow warblers (2 females, 1 male) and a chickadee on a pine cone in my menagerie of creatures.

Oh, and the chickadee has a home too : )

Someone needs to make sure the plastic iguanas behave themselves.

I hope everyone had a lovely holiday (and perhaps some post holiday relaxation or maybe a craft project) and have a happy new year!

Oh, so it's September now...

Yes, Mr. Calendar, I see how we're going to be about this. The sun goes down, the sun comes up, days pass... and suddenly it's the middle of September.

So, I've been working on some of those projects that I think about every now and then when I'm at work or doing something. Those thoughts you might have that usually begin with "that'd be cool..." Yes, those.

I've mentioned before that I enjoy kitsch. Yes, I like weird stuff. I decorate with color and silk flowers and have a massive collection of figurines of lizards and frogs and turtles and the occasional snail... I have birds & butterflies from the ceiling in the summer, and winter time is for glitter snowflakes.

Yes, I like kitsch.
So, every year I dress up for Halloween to pass out candy. I wear the same costume every year. It's a long dark robe (it's navy blue that's almost black) and it has lizards sewn onto it. I have lizard and spider barrettes that I made, and I do some gothy makeup.

Anyway, for whatever reason, I thought it'd be fun to make some lizard barrettes. Yeah. No, I don't exactly recall what spurred the desire to embark upon this craft project. I just went out & bought lizards and barrettes and glue, and well...

I sat down on the cement floor in front of the paper cutter last weekend with my acrylic paints and gave all the lizards new paint jobs while watching Haven on Syfy. Yes, that show is awesome. I like shows like that. I used to watch the X Files back in the day (Fox Mulder, whatta cutie) and I also like Fringe and Supernatural. So, yes, watching Haven and painting plastic lizards (and frogs, yes, there were frogs too, I just haven't finished them yet).

After I painted them I coated them with varnish, and then glued the barrettes on, and waited forever and a day for the glue to dry, and then went outside and took "product shots."

Yes, frightful, I know ; )
You can find them here in the Weird Stuff section of my sarahknight shop on etsy.
And yes, those are my green eyes, not contacts.

I finished this at the end of August. I suppose I made it on a whim.

fall fantasia

And now I have to get back to my craft projects... and maybe cleaning, before they have to send a professional organizer and a Hazmat team in here to deal with the after crafting mess.
: )

Here's a little peak at another project I'm working on...

bird brooches

I think about making stuff a lot, I suppose. And sometimes it takes me years to getting around to finally executing an idea, and sometimes something just gets done. So, last weekend was one of those 'just do it' kinds of weekends.

I decided I wanted to make brooches. Now, I'm not exactly sure precisely how I arrived at this conclusion, but I found myself standing in an aisle at the craft store buying a baggy of wooden shapes and then standing in the jewelry findings aisle looking for pin backs...
and well, now I have brooches:

Yes, so, I opened my baggy of wooden pieces and sorted them... and then picked the biggest ones and measured those... and then made a file of that size... and then spent a good hour opening files and copying and pasting and combining until I had at least 30 bird portraits...
And then I printed those out and cut them apart and began the odyssey of production... I painted the fronts and sides of my wooden pieces with black acrylic paint... and then I found my snazzy Elmer's craft bond glue stick (because I have used a lot of glue sticks - and unless it's paper to paper - glue sticks are a nice idea but not a great adhesive) and got to work gluing my printed pictures onto the front of my wooden pieces... and then I pulled out my jar of satin varnish (because, honestly, satin is the most desirable finish — not matte, not high gloss) and gave each tile a good 2 coats of varnish...
Amusingly, okay, so maybe it's really only funny to me - while I was doing all this I was sitting there at my desk watching "The Nine Lives of Chloe King" via the internet.

And then I took them outside on the back porch and proceeded to apply pin backs with a generous helping of E-6000 glue. Oh, yeah, it's industrial strength - and so is it's odor. E-6000 must be used in a well ventilated area and whatever it has been applied to should be left in a well ventilated (or open) area for at least 24 hours for some of that pungent odor to dissipate. Yes, not everything about craft projects is all sunshine and sparkles.

And then, of course, I had to photograph them... Now, as it turns out, I made 30 brooches, since 30 is the number of picture fronts I could fit onto a sheet of paper (and there happened to be at least 30 of the same sized pieces of wood in my little baggy). I mean, when I started I was just going to make like 3 to see if they turned out well enough to be viable... and yeah, by the end of the day I had made all 30.

Apparently, I cannot do things in moderation.

So... I have them listed on Etsy at sarahkdesigns


and on Artfire at "SunshineSight"


So, get some art on that lapel : )

Papermaking

It was a busy week between work and life. Mostly it was a week filled with paper. Technically, given that I draw - most weeks are filled with paper. But this was a week filled with papermaking.

Handmade paper was something I was introduced to in 4-H, which I was involved in as a child.
Anyway, once every couple of years the desire to make something out of paper pulp occurs to me. My renewed activity with this craft happened last summer (as evidenced by this post). And I've been putting the bowls in my etsy shop, and amusingly enough I realized a few weeks ago that my stash of paper bowls was getting really low.

So, like a squirrel with nuts I have been accumulating 'unwanted paper' and tearing it into bits and soaking that in water, so that I can then put it in the blender and make the pulp. And this past week there was a papermaking / bowl moulding extravaganza that took place in Casa Del Knight. And then there were bowls of paper in front of all the heat vents because this is Michigan and it's still cold...

Torn up bits of paper soaking in water.

Pulp!


The bottom of a 'large' bowl.


The unpainted inside.


A stack of unpainted bowls.


And, yes, more bowls.

I have another batch of paper that I need to blend into pulp, but this weekend I think I'm going to try to get some of these painted. Of course, that's the plan, and as one of those free-spirited artsy people — I'm not to spectacular when it comes to staying on plan... so, maybe I'll start or finish some other project, who knows.

To see what bowls look like when they're finished click here.

Have a fun & productive weekend!

paper bowls & painting

Sometimes I'm just exhausted when I come home from work, which, I suppose, is why they call it work and not happy fun time. So, while I'm not entirely sure how my spare time was whittled away last week, I know that a large chunk of it has been spent working on my latest in a series of on-going craft projects: the paper bowls.

I was in 4-H when I was a child, and did papermaking which was taught by the artistic and talented Linda Partridge. And many times during my childhood I took out my mother's Oster blender and filled it with shredded paper and water. Fortunately, Mom didn't really ever make anything food related with that blender. Yeah, my mom sews & tats & crochets & cross-stitches; cooking, meh.

So, anyway, I seem to have been bitten with the papermaking bug again, and I'm not quite sure why or how. But when inspiration for an arts & craft project hits, it's best to just do it, and not remember 3 months later that you came home from work and zonked out on the couch (that it took you 2 months to upholster & assemble) in front of CSI: NY reruns everyday instead of just getting stuff done.

Believe me, there is a five year old project involving designing butterflies and mobiles that surfaces from the back of my mind every now and then... usually when I'm at work.

So, yes, papermaking.
I decided that this was going to be a 'green' project. All the paper that was used to make the pulp had already been used. 99% of the paper I used to make the pulp came from the office, they throw a lot of paperwork away at work. Don't worry, none of it is anything interesting; it isn't personnel files, it's mostly ordering codes. And it was all made into pulp anyway. Go ahead, scan a telzon on one of my bowls, there's no barcode, and nothing is going to happen.

I don't remember why I decided to make bowls, perhaps because it's easy, I've done it before, they're technically functional... who knows. But bowls are what I ended up using to mould my paper pulp. I made more than 20 of them, in varying sizes based on what I had purchased for the project (clearance sales on melamine tupperware at box-stores are always super) and what happened to be in the cupboard. Don't worry, there won't be any paper in the jello salad come Thanksgiving. My favorite imitation tupperware (it's violet colored!) will be thoroughly washed.

Anyway, the summer heat was excellent for this project, as I just left the bowls out on the back patio to dry. Well, there was that one Sunday when I had to jump up from my slumber and retrieve them from the patio because there was a storm. It was a hoot to get them in the garage and realize there was quarter-sized (USD .25¢) hail in my half-dry paper bowls. Yes, it hailed in July in Michigan in the middle of a spell of 90˚F weather.

This is, perhaps, why it never occurs to me to make paper in the middle of winter.

Anyway, once all the forms had dried, it was time to get busy and decorate them. I'm not a handmade paper purist. I knew I was painting them. And so, that's what I have been and should be working on for the past week and into the next week. And then there will come the 2 day period where I hem and haw over whether or not I want to shellac them. Yes, I know, it's called varnish, but the word shellac is more fun. Craft projects are supposed to be fun, not work.

Here are a selection of bowls in progress...

Yes, I have a collection of kitsch garden critters : ) I am apparently particularly fond of frogs, lizards, and turtles; and using them to decorate indoors.
Hopefully your summer is fun & productive, and hail free!