Category: Arty Stuff

For posts mostly about art

List Me, Baby!

Arty Stuff / Bellydance / C4ward March Blogathon / family / MiscellaneousOne Comment

(C4ward March Blogathon Day 4) Five Goals to Achieve Sometime Before I Die Create jewelry items that tribal dancers buy, love, and wear while performing. Perform a solo at a major bellydance event like TribalCon. Travel to New Zealand, and maybe Australia too. DH & I don’t really care that much for travel, but we could make an exception for this. Become an ATS® Sister Studio and/or Gypsy Caravan Collective Soul Certified dancer See the Aurora Borealis (Northern Lights). Just because. Five Goals to Accomplish in the Next Five Years to Move Towards Achieving The Above Goals Keep learning new …

Sharing My Favorite Creative Work

Arty Stuff / Lampworking & Glass / Miscellaneous

(C4ward March Blogathon Day 3 post, a day late because Monday is my insanely long day with no breathing room) What should I show as my favorite creative work? In what area did I DO my favorite creative work? Was it this pair of chainmaille earrings? Or these earrings made from one of my favorite pairs of lampworked beads? Was it this paper I did for my first art class on German artist Käthe Kollwitz? Or perhaps the debut performance of the dance troupe to which I belong at TribalCon last month? I can’t decide!!  

Five Year Plan? What Five Year Plan?

Arty Stuff2 Comments

C4ward March Blogathon: Day 2 Prompt “Where” is your creative work going? Envision yourself and your work five years or more from now. Who are you and what do you see your work as “being”? How is your work “evolving” and “becoming”? What about your work inspires you? Inspires others? Where are you going and what are you doing after this (five-year) point in the future? The truth? I don’t have any kind of a five-year plan, artistic or business. I tend to have Artistic Attention Deficit Disorder (AADD) so what I am creating at any moment is based on …

Knit Project #1 DONE

Arty Stuff / Miscellaneous / NaBloPoMo

Yesterday I bound off my first knitting project, and late in the night I finished weaving in the ends. It’s done!! I have cast-on, knittedknittedknittedknitted endlessly it seemed, bound off, and woven in ends. I do still have to wash it, which I plan to do a bit vigorously to felt it a bit, and I will have a nice broad cowl-type scarf that can be worn with a handmade scarf pin. So for all these years I said I couldn’t knit, now I can. All it took was figuring out that I needed to work on circular needles instead …

This is a Job For the Karma Fairy

Arty Stuff / NaBloPoMo

Last fall at the Atlanta Bead Expo, a customer saw my stainless steel European 4-in-1 chainmaille cuff on my wrist and fell in love with it. I really didn’t want to sell it, because it had been a bugger to make and I knew it would take me a while to make another to replace it. She finally did talk me into selling it to her right off my wrist (for a pretty penny, of course, and it did take me a year to make its replacement). She stopped by our booth this afternoon at the Down the Street Bead …

So I CAN Knit

Arty Stuff / NaBloPoMoOne Comment

For all the years I spent doing textile arts, I never did learn to knit. I tried to in junior high — got a pair of big chunky wooden knitting needles and some kind of god-awful acrylic yarn and tried to learn. It was a mess. I thought about trying to learn several times after that. I had plenty of friends who knit and who would offer to teach me, but I never really got the motivation. I just kept saying, to myself and to them, “oh, I can’t knit. I tried but it was a failure.” I could never …

Sunday Adventures at Chastain

Arty Stuff / Business / NaBloPoMo

I’m really tired out after this weekend’s show, but I do have to share today’s unusual event. Andrea and I were interviewed on camera today by two students from the Holy Innocents’ School media program. They were interviewing some of the artists at the festival for a feature on the school’s closed circuit broadcast channel just before Thanksgiving. I’m not quite sure why they chose us, since I was off visiting the porta-facility when they arrived at our booth, but they did. We did a nice tag-team job of answering their questions and trying to follow their rules, though we …

What Makes an Art Festival Good, or Not

Arty Stuff / Business / NaBloPoMo

This weekend is our last art festival of the year, at Chastain Park. Even though I do find them stressful, I usually enjoy the art festivals (at least when I don’t have four in a row!). Of course, some are better than others. So what makes the good ones good? Easy load-in and load-out. Load-in sets the tone for the whole festival. By load-out I’m worn out and cranky and just want to get done and go HOME. Let me get as close as possible to my space, when I need to get there. Don’t let idiots block the roadway …

So many ideas, so little time…

Arty Stuff

Last night I had an inspired idea for a new experiment to try with my glass. I'm not yet going to say what it is specifically because I don't want to give it away before I have a chance to try it out. When will that be? Well, not this week for sure because I have to finish up grading papers & projects & final exams, yuck. Fortunately, that's about how long it will take me to get the materials I'll need to give this a shot, and to read up on what's likely to be involved. It's galling, though. …

Patience

Arty Stuff / Miscellaneous / NaBloPoMo

I don't consider myself the most patient person in the world — far from it. I want things to get done, and done right, right now. To hell with waiting. I also have no patience with people that aren't willing to try, to put forth their best effort, when they are responsible for doing something.  Oddly enough, when it comes to doing fiddly little art/craft things, I have plenty of patience. I had so many people tell me this past weekend that they didn't see how I could do chainmaille jewelry because they "just wouldn't have the patience." If someone …