Writer's Block: B.Y.O.B. Holidays


I celebrate Hanukkah, because my husband's Jewish, but my heart belongs to Santa.

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The Week as Art


My work is the "Week in Art" at the Create Mixed Media website http://www.createmixedmedia.com/ this week. I had to have these pieces finished by May 27, I have been sitting on the news til yesterday when the week began. This one is my favorite, I used some painted kraft paper as the background instead of just painting a solid background on the canvas like I did for the other six. I also love this little bird image. :)

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Writer's Block: Father nature


Grandaddy patiently sitting on the sofa and letting me "do" his hair with the box of bobby pins my Gran kept in the hall closet. Such a trooper! :)

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My studio has been at high tide
There's this old cartoon called "Eyebeam", I have several of their collections from way back when. One of the characters has a house that gets messy, in retrospect it looks like that single guy's home from the Extreme Hoarders at times, with the stuff piled waist high. His friends come to visit in one strip and the mess is moving. He explains "high tide".

My studio has been at high tide, what with the stacks of painted cardboard and paper and color copies for collage. I have been working each day to get stuff finished. I realize that I need one of those flat units designed for printmaking studios, that have lots of little shelves to dry papers on. But I digress.

I have been making little canvases, larger canvases, mini quilts, and collages. Yesterday I did finishing work on stuff (sewing mini quilts to the canvases, signing the work, etc), and I did a sample set up to see how it could look at the trunk show tomorrow. You read more about the process at my blog http://andibeads.blogspot.com/2010/03/almost-there.html I'm linking to two pictures here.

High tide was definitely worth it this time! :D

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Writer's Block: News development


I remember watching Bobby Kennedy's funeral while sitting under the ironing board in our den. My mom was ironing while she watched. I misunderstood and thought his body was in a "Basket" which I equated with our small wicker laundry basket. I didn't see how they could fit a whole adult into such a small space. I don't know that it affected my worldview, I was too little at the time to understand who he was, and for a time thought I was remembering JFK's funeral.

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Writer's Block: Legend has it ...


Does it have to be someone else's story? Because when I was about 4 I woke up and saw my mother sitting in a chair in my bedroom. She was wearing her brown and white culottes. She had a very angry expression on her face. I asked her what was wrong, and then I realized she was all misty and glowy and I could sort of see through her. I pulled the blanket over my head and started screaming for my mother. Of course whatever it was had disappeared when my parents came running into my bedroom, but they did believe me. Apparently when they'd moved into the house, they'd looked up into their bedroom to see a chair rocking in the window. When they went into the house, they saw that it was a straight leg chair. My Mom-Mom was also full of ghost stories, she saw spirits a lot.

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Writer's Block: Money to burn


I suppose I would travel, so I could see the world, since everything else would disappear. I'd just make sure that I was back home before the money disappeared ;)

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I didn't like some of the questions

Right Brain/ Left Brain Quiz The higher of these two numbers below indicates which side of your brain has dominance in your life. Realising your right brain/left brain tendancy will help you interact with and to understand others. Left Brain Dominance: (15) Right Brain Dominance: (16) Right Brain/ Left Brain Quiz

there was no wiggle room, but I am good at math and making art :)

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Writer's Block: School daze


I was fully confident until 4th grade when my world turned into a Judy Blume novel ("Blubber"), I remember being really happy in 3rd grade and learning a lot of science with my best friends Cathy Cole and Donald Rudeseli, helping Donald collect grasshoppers in the field next to the school and drawing a huge solar system on the classroom blackboard with Cathy. I never liked getting up early, but didn't actively hate going to school until 4th grade and beyond. I learned the lesson of "don't trust other people" really well in school, it has been a lot of hard work to un-learn it.

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It's Here!


500 Art Quilts arrived at the Stern household today. My work is on pages 300 and 410. I am so happy to be included in such a great book. I remember ten years ago and more looking at books like this and wishing/hoping/dreaming of being included in them. Lots of hard work, persistence and paperwork later, and I am! :D As ELO says "Hold on tight to your dreams."

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Year End Chicken
http://andibeads.blogspot.com/2009/12/chicken-for-new-years-cuckoo-for-cocoa.html

Because I had too much to leave in the comments at Havi's blog.

This has been year. Overall I am still glad it is over, but there was a lot more good in it than I gave it credit for.

Best wishes for a better 2010 for all of us!

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Happy Birthday aisling I hope you had a glorious day!

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does anyone remember "TTPO"
Back in the day one of the things I remember doing on the rubberstampers mail list was a "TTPO" swap where we sent odd things through the mail to each other. One of the things I sent was a little plastic child's chair. No box or anything, just a label with the address on it. My friend Beth was annoyed when I mailed her a jumbo spatula, because she had to pick it up at the trailer park office and they were teasing her about it.

My friend Kevinn recently moved to FL (10 miles from my inlaws! go figure) and is looking for mail.

Does anyone here know if we can still do stuff like put labels on spatulas and just send them through the mail? If anyone would appreciate that, I know Kevinn would, esp since he works for the post office. (Yeah, I could ask him, but that would give the element of surprise away).

Thanks!

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Writer's Block: Commercial Appeal

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Writer's Block: Lights Out


Ha ha ha. Which one? The one where I had an infant and it was 105F overnight and we didn't have $ for a hotel, or the one where it was 5F overnight and our town loses water when it loses power for a length of time and we spent two days uptown at the coffee shop and took showers at the homes of friends? I guess I'd have to go with the 5F overnight because that one lasted two days and the trip into town the first night of the outage was so eerie with everything being coated in ice and it being pitch black everywhere because of no power....

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Writer's Block: Fashion Forward


One giant snuggie

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Being Wooed
Ah the siren call of the beads. I think it is the sparkling quality of light this time of year, the many facets of the color and energy as it comes through the humidity in the morning. Every so often I swear me and beads are finished, over with, how can I make a good body of work in a medium that takes me so long? I look at Bead and Button and Beadwork magazine and feel sick to my stomach at the amount of time it would take to make those projects and think "no, not me, I'm sticking to quilting".

Ha.

Ha ha.

Ha ha ha.

Yeah, today I was up in the studio. Picking beads. I did have an agenda this time, unlike the last time I was upstairs to play with beads (which ended highly unsatisfyingly). I want to create something magical, something with shape and texture and which tells a story, and to that end I decided to go with a mermaid theme.

The beads came together quickly, as they often do, once I know what I'm looking for. I have a great pile on the sewing table, and I culled down to the basic beginnings, which include three colors of seed beads and some ceramic faces from Earthenwood Studios, a handfull of seed pearls and a large shell cabochon I bought way back when from Rosalie at Beads, Ltd. in Vienna VA.

It's probably going to be wearable, because I loved having my magic with me when I go out into the world. Other than that I don't know. I'm taking my little pistol case to Donkey and beginning this afternoon.

I'm so excited I can hardly sit here and tell y'all.

I'll upload pictures probably after tonight's festivities (Izzy is doing a car show with his Boy Scout troop and we may stay; I may get some reference photos of the cars for another series in the quilts).

What can I say? I'm bicraftual. :)

Hope y'all have a wonderful holiday weekend!

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Writer's Block: When I Was Young


Summer vacation/road trips with my grandparents in their RV. Sometimes they were spring vacations, as the time we went to Holland MI for the annual tulip festival. We also went to the Upper Peninsula at one point, visiting Tequomenon Falls and Whitefish Bay, and I have happy memories of swinging at a playground in the early morning fog on that trip. We also picked blueberries and went to the Call of the Wild museum in Gaylord MI, we had so much fun.

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Beading Book Giveaway at my other blog
Hi, y'all, some of you may not know that I have 8
designs in the recently published Beading With World Beads available from
Lark Books. They've generously donated a copy for me to give away at my
blog, you can read all about it here
http://andibeads.blogspot.com/2009/06/beading-with-world-beads-giveaway.html
Please pass along to anyone who may be interested. Thanks!

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Writer's Block: Conversion Rate


I was considering it when dating Marty at the beginning (from Christianity to Judaism). Is it really converting if you are already that religion but want to attend a different sect? I love love love the Greek Orthodox cathedral in Columbus and attended vespers during the Greek Festival last fall. I would attend that church if we lived closer.

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