Weekly Challenge # 96 - and a bit of a rant

I finally got back to the weekly challenge after a two week break due to putting a lot of pressure on myself over my market stall. The day went well and I didnt sell as much as certain people in a close proximity to myself had predicted but still covered the cost of the stall.  My boss even turned up and his lady friend bought one of my large tangles!!  YAY!!  I sold several magnets that I had made from my tangles which was cool as well, I only sold one cushion but thats cool, as I was freaking out that I might not have enough stock for next month leaving me in the position of having to create hard out when what I actually want to to is some experimenting.

I just found out that my step-dad has finally gotten out of hospital after 5 weeks.  He had a massive seizure/ stroke and has been laid up ever since.  Its great that he is out finally BUT what really gets me, ok makes me so damn angry is that I find out on facebook!!  How hard is it to email or ring.. I only live one country away!!  I have honestly reached the end of my tether,  I never hear from them unless I ring them.  I am obviously not important to them. Geez I love my family.

Phew that feels better - Thanks for listening to that wee rant.  I think I might go do some tangling in an effort to get some zen-like calm about myself :-)


Here are this weeks weekly challenge pieces, Originally named Zinger 1 and Zinger 2 :-P

Thanks for coming by, see you next week :-)

Massive Antique Button Find..

Gotta love being a Womble!  I love Op-Shops, Second Hand Stores and Recycling/Re-use Centres.  I dont know what it is about it but when you find something you love and its not new its just plain exciting!!  Yesterday Matt and I went into Newcastle, originally for more Rit Liquid Dye but I suggested that we visit the re-use centre because we had never been there before and I needed some props for my market stall this weekend. 

I encountered no resistance from Matt for this idea as he is the original womble.. he will turn the car around to investigate something on the side of the road and he will generally pick it up.. as was the case with the revolting elton john style sunnies at Tocal, never mind it gives me something to give out to him about.

Anyway we duly arrived at the re-use centre which is at Sandgate in Newcastle so we had driven past it heaps of times on our way to the malls or whatever.  OH MY GOD it is Womble Mecca!!  They have a whole room full of antiques and vintage stuff then you walk out the back and its epic with all the gear they have.. we walked out $130 lighter with another $100 dollars worth of stuff on layby (I am finally getting a drill press.. JOY!!)

So I was puddling around looking at old cake tins and Linen and got a beautiful hand embroidered linen table cloth that would have taken someone a long time to complete, it will look great on my table at the market, and a large white sheet for my other table.  I found some funky ethnic musical instruments and was struggling to focus with all the goodies around me when I discovered the buttons...  $15  dollars for about 1.5 kgs of mostly vintage buttons.  I was in raptures of joy.  so many buttons, what a score!  Well after about 4 hours of sorting .. thanks for the help Matt :-)  I got them all sorted and I think there were a few antique buttons in there too...

Heres a picture from at the beginning of sorting

 

 

Of course I had to buy a couple of vintage-y cake tins to keep them in.. its tradition that buttons live in cake tins!  I have so many that I am going to have to start researching them so I can sell them appropriately.  Its going to be a big job but at least they are now in colour order :-0

Inktense meets Nana's Doilies...

Cant you just picture it.. Nana is running around blue rinsed set in tatters looking for a doily to put under her fruit bowl/ roses display/ High Tea cake stand but can she find one?   No, She can not as I have taken all the doilies moohoowaha.... (ok that was supposed to be a maniacal cackle).

Well actually I didn't nick all Nana's stash. I had an Idea a while back about what would happen if I attacked doilies with my inktense and incorperated it into other fabric work.  I don't know how yet, I'll figure that out later.  So I spent a few days buying up all the local Op Shop's stacks of doilies.  Here is the result of the first four:

 

 

Pretty cool huh? So what I will do with them now is leave them in plastic for a day to let all the colour absorb and then hang them out to dry.  Maybe give them a quick rinse to get rid of any excess Inktense.

 

I was also thinking that doilies are a bit zentangly so I might have a go at tangling a doily.. after dinner though!

 

Weekly Challenge 93 - Bunzo!

Weird few days really.  Went out with a couple of friends and Matt yesterday, got horribly drunk and probably made a right ass of myself... Never mind these things happen.  I was feeling a bit celabratory however as I had just gotten a job .. as a restaurant manager at a low key (hopefully low stress) cafe / restaurant in the valley. It came from a job that I applied for about three weeks ago, had a 2.5 hour interveiw for and never heard anything more about.  I'm pleased to say that it will be part time so will not interfere with my art and will give me much needed funds for pouring into afore-mentioned art work..YAY.

My first ever article got published this week as well, all about the joy of scribble drawing.  Its kind of like tangling but in a large scale and less formal.  I find tangling quite formal in the way that the drawings come about.
The article is at all things healing and if you would like to read about it then you can find it here:
 http://www.allthingshealing.com/Arts-Art-Therapy/The-Magic-of-Scibbling/12795#.UJIYE4ak27x

Also I got my stall approved for The Sacred Tree Market.. am so excited its just unbelievable!!  I have so much to do!!  I am really looking forward to it.  I will be selling cushions made from my hand painted fabrics, the fabrics themselves, tangles on canvas, prints of my art work and anything else I can think up!!

Anyway here is my tangle for the challenge and another one I cooked up yesterday before I got involved in a wine bender :-P

Weekly Challenge #92 - stripes

Wow .. I've been busy :-) which is great because I really dont like having nothing to do. Blogging has been neglected in favour of making stuff and collecting stuff for making more stuff! Great Fun.

This week I finally found a place that sells Rit liquid dye, as my inktense blocks are taking a serious hammering from colouring large blocks of fabric and as I'm not actually that keen on playing with dye powder, the liquid is the way forward. Add to that that is stable because it is already in solution.  Dylon will keep for 2-3 weeks in solution but I probably wont be doing that much with it.

Then last night I was organising my music while having a well deserved beer, when I bumped the beer and it tipped all over my laptop keyboard.. after mopping up and holding the keyboard upside down for several minutes I thought all was good.. But then this morning when I was looking for info on the liquid dye, I discovered that my keyboard had a bit of a hang over from the beer it suck up last night and was doing some very random and creative things.. luckily the rest of the computer seems to be unscathed at this point.
So a quick trip to office works for a $10 keyboard with no plans to buy anything else I came out with artline pastel coloured markers, a metal ruler and another set of brushes (I am so weak in the face of art supplies....)

I also bought myself a sewing machine, which will come in handy for making cushions and things from all this material I've been banging out.

Here are this weeks pieces:



Guinea Pigs and Rabbits cushion fronts

Cat fabric after printing

Cat fabric during painting

Fluer D'Lis Fabric - hand coloured and printed.

All these pieces are made with hand cut stencils from my original drawing and then hand coloured etc.  The base colours are also hand painted.  It time consuming but I love it :-).

 

 

Weekly Challenge #92-

 

 

Here is is without further ado and waffle:

 

Oh and while I was fluffing around in Masters (a very cool harware store) waiting for my other half to buy his gear for a car restoration project I found this wall paper .. how tangly is that????

 



 

Have  an Awesome and Creative week every one!!!



 

Completely Distracted...

Has anyone ever noticed how easy it is to get distracted?  I openned a store on Zazzle yesterday and have spent all of today making a banner so I could pretty it up a little.  And I had such great plans to go blob hunting and do some painting and that sort of thing today.. didnt happen. By the time I had found and downloaded appropriate programs, mucked around with colours, fonts, cutting, pasting etc I had lost six or maybe seven hours of my day. 

Here is the banner that took me all day... :-P

Beads of Courage - Weekly Challenge #91

Well here it is.. this is the third challenge I have completed but the first one I've actually had the courage to post.  It was inspired by thinking about Nana's sewing whatnot and some of the random cast off things that live in stash boxes.

 

Also seeing as I'm here and posting I have included a couple of (not great) photos of my first inktense batik t-shirt. I am quite happy with it, its subtle as I expected, The design wraps around the bottom right side to the back.
 I choose this shirt as I bought it when we went home to New Zealand last month and for some reason I bought periwinkle blue, god knows why as I am very unlikely to actually wear it but there you go really.

This afternoon I am going to attack an old white singlet before I set up a new shiny white t-shirt :-) Also another layer onto the Beach Banner.

Front

Back

Grateful-ness

Today was pretty unproductive in a creativity sense,  going to a job interview created "artis interruptus"  aka it all started well and then I had to go this job interview.
I did finish the t-shirt that I waxed yesterday and finished waxing my day at the beach banner, completed this weeks zentangle challenge and posted away my first Etsy sale.

Ok so maybe it wasnt that unproductive at all :-P

I have to say that since I started zentangling my creativity is finding new form and meaning and direction.  I am losing my "It has to be right first time" semi-perfectionist" mentality which is a good thing.

So grateful... to all the wonderful people out there zentangling and having tutorials on their blogs so an I can learn new tricks.

Thank you to Karen Adler for the workshop on the weekend that reminded me that scribbling is valid.

I am also thankful for Carla Sonheim, Marisa Anne and Sandy Steen Bartholomew for showing me that what you are passionate about can be your job, that play is valid and for being inspirational to me at this point.

I am also incredibly, unbelievably grateful for my wonderful partner - BombGuy for encouraging me, believing in me and thinking that everything I do is bloody fantastic.

So the job.. well if I get offered it I will take it because I have to fund the madness somehow, but it doesnt have to be all or nothing.



This an Intro to Marissa Anne's new book which looks wonderful!

Art Laiden Weekend

Wow, a busy (ish) weekend.. All started with the art and depression workshop held at Maitland Art Gallery and facilitated by Karen Adler who is a flamboyant art therapist and councellor. I learned that it doesn't always have to be perfect and that we can learn a lot about who we are and where we are at by what we put on paper.  I also learned that I am not really a story teller :-)  I suppose I can't be good at everything.. shame, because I would so like to be!

A lady at the workshop gave me a great idea, which I am going to test out and see how I go. This means I will have to man up and go out and do some markets (oh heck) to test the waters for this idea.

Actually I had a couple of big ideas on the weekend which means that I will have to get a job so that I can fund them and also that I will have to stop being a hermit if I want them to work.. It means going out and finding like minded people and risking being told i'm nuts and all that stuff that we all fear.. but hey, why not?

Here is a photo of some "scribble drawings"  that I have started this weekend.. yeah the fun non-perfection!

 

 

Also my house is starting to look like an artist lives here.. there are parts of work every where and not to mention the scattered supplies!

No place for warm coffee

A wee trip down to Newcastle today for a visit to Hunter Valley Chicken and Game to buy fancy wild meat sausages also included a trip to Spotlight who are definately not my favourite place this week, due to unhelpful staff with attitude issues and a lack of actual stock that I wanted. Any way we ended up at Eckersleys in Hamilton looking for the item (a pebeo porcelain 150 broad tip in black)  to discover that they didnt have them either BUT the service was astounding and they did have the pentel gel roller pen for fabric and plain calico bags..Sweet!

We stopped at Eurobar on Beaumont St for a takeaway coffee and then rediscovered a major flaw with my less than spotless aged camry.. no coffee cup holder.  So plan was hatched to create one out of ... drum roll please... CHICKEN WIRE!!!  Yep yep yep.. I duly came home and created the cup holder.. then decided to use buttons and beads to jazz it up a little then wove some white (recycled) packing strapping through the floor of it.. It looks kinda cool - as an egg basket! But when I put it in the car in a convenient location for placing coffee cups the effect can only be described as truly revolting hahahaha!  Oh well it'll do for now :-P

Guinea Pigs and a Carp

Is it possible that Guinea Pigs are carbohydrate addicts?  I have 6 free range guinea pigs that live under my house, well, they belong to the neighbour if every one had their own. These furry fellows have chosen to live here however and they love bread, bananas, parnips (in that order) followed by carrots, strawberries, apples and grapes.
I am trying to get them used to me so have been feeding them by hand for the last couple of weeks, but they are so skittery its an exercise in patience, or frustration depending on the day.
 I have managed to pat one of them, Cousin of Sack Barrow, a floppy eared black and tan fellow. Very cute and not quite as scaredy as the others.. is it sad that I have named guinea pig that aren't even my own?

Here is todays feeding:

 

This is Lassie, Cousin of Sack Barrow, Zombie and Mr Pigglesworth on the right

 

Cousin of Sack Barrow and Zombie (the red eye)

 

Anyway enough about the small furry ones.. what have I been up to, apart from feeding the GP's? Well I spent all day on Saturday working on a poster for the Olive Tree Market Christmas poster comp and then I decided that it was tripe..dont you hate that? spend all day on some thing (well two if count drawing) and it turns out utter bollocks, Hmm never mind I felt a little better one I had done this:

its a carp and I'm bloody happy with it... I had never been able to draw fish before but I woke up on saturday morning just knowing how to do this .. weird but hey I'll take it :-) thanks very much to Zentangle for this really.. it has really helped me unstick in a lot of ways.

Zendala no 1

I went out and bought myself a printer today... Its frustrating flicking back and forwards through web pages all the time when you want info and refreshers, and since I found out about Zentangles I seem to spend half my day flicking around on the net finding new patterns that appeal, especially when my brain runs dry, which is reasonable often it seems!
Also the plus of this is that I can now scan my drawings and stuff instead of having to find the camera, take the photos, edit the photos, blah blah blah.

So here is the first zendala that I have created which is a template from the Zendala Dare Blog and this is Dare no 1

Its a wee bit rough around the edges but hey its my first one of these

Here are some other things I've done in the last couple of weeks.

Job Interveiws

I've had three job interveiws in two days.. the result of sending out about 6 applications, I have been offered two jobs out of three at this stage and I have another interview this afternoon which I think I will cancel as it doesnt really interest me. Its been really hectic and its not easy to find a job that isn't going to take away masses of creative energy.

Easy to find a job, "easy" to make art not so easy to find a good balance and stilll have a  life outside of both.

Today I am working on a poster for the Olive Tree Markets Christmas poster cometition,  I have some prayer flags to finish and some "doodlemugs" to make.. I'll tell you about my doodlemugs later on, Oh and then theres the sign that Im going to do a mock up off for the market gardening guy down the road. just a few things to be getting on with :-)

Stash hunting

Today I am off down to East Maitland and Im going to stop at spotlight and a few op shops in hope of some really good stash finds, Spotlight for the new stuff and the op shops for things that I can upcycle or recycle.
Im really not into buying everything new if I can get away with it.  People throw away some perfectly good stuff and I think that we should take every opportunity to repurpose it it we can.

Introduction

Hi and welcome.

My name is Jay and I am an artist.. wow that sound like I'm a member of AA, didn't it?
carrying on  though, I have tried to blog in the past and its gone with a hiss and a roar and well, fallen flat on its face the moment I get distracted (which is quite often).

Recently I became unemployed (mostly by choice) and decided that I was going to go back to what I love - ART. All kinds of art, concrete sculpture, weaving, textiles, painting, drawing, photography.... it goes on.

 I intend this blog to be a journal of this revisited journey.
To give you an idea of what I do here are some photos of my recent work..