Kid ceramics

When I made the bulb ornament, the kids each painted a ceramic or two as well. Ganoush made these for Goof and Aunt Equestrian. I can show them, now that the gifts have been given.


Here is the horse for Aunt Equestrian.


The dolphin for Uncle Goof. On the right are the three ornaments made by our tablemates, whose leftover glaze I used for the bulb ornament.


Goof is a Miami Dolphins fan, so Ganoush was deliberate in adding the orange streaks in the water. Goof noticed.


On Thanksgiving Eve Day, Ganoush asked for colored pencils and paper. I later saw her studying our family portrait from 2005 as she completed portraits for her aunt and uncle.

Ceramic bulb ornament

I thought I had posted the "before" photos, well, before. Perhaps they are only on Flickr.

Here is a ceramic bulb I painted at a local pottery shop. It was spur of the moment at the end of the session, most to use up glazes left be my kids and the other family sharing the table. Before & after, obverse & reverse.

Feedback for knitted ATCs

I've been knitting some ATC-sized swatches. If you want, pop over here and leave me some feedback. At least one will go out in a swap through the Creative Mom Podcast.

Thanks.

Feeling much better - Crafty bread

Ganoush and I slept on separate couches in the living room last night. We both feel much better today. For safety of others, we skipped swimming today, though.

Instead, the kids begrudgingly did math and journaling. They finished in time for an art project that both kids embraced.

We took a loaf of bread that no one liked and had been ignored in the freezer for quite some time, and transformed it into ornaments in progress. Each kid had ten slices of bread to work with. As usual, I got the heels. I brought up my boxes of cookie cutters and we attacked the bread. Ganoush tried many shapes. She learned that intricate thin sections do not work with slices of bread. The profile of a reindeer was unidentifiable. Bolder shapes, like rockets, pine trees, bells, and snowpeople did much better.

Gonzo found two metal cookie cutters in the shape of wee gingerbread folk. He set out to make "my army of doomed minions." From his chatter, I believe that these creations are not destined for a tree but for some battlefield of ultimate destruction. Well, no one was going to eat the bread anyway.

Our (the ladies') intent is to let the pieces air dry for two days and then we will paint them with acrylic paints.

I also had time today, while the kids played LegosTM together, quietly (I know!), to tackle a box or two in the basement. I was able to talk with Margaret (who wants a better pseudonym) and redistribute three boxes worth of stuff into, or at least towards, their new Proper Destinations.

Woozy

From the Creative Mom Podcast's CMP Circle's Haiku Monday:

Midnight "Gastro" girl
Six A M, it found me, too.
Helpful hubby home.

More textures, November 2004

Three more texture shots from the November 2004 folder:




My parents' piano. It was a hand-me-down from our church before I was born. An upright. When the house is ever sold (48 years with its first owner, my dad), the piano will go with the house, as it isn't coming up those basement stairs in a playable condition.




Pipes spotted on a field trip to the water treatment plant, preparing water for human consumption.



Ripple on the stream at yesterday's bridge site.

November 2004 Nature Photos

Again with older photos, yet first time on the Internet. These are all from a nature park in November 2004.


Ringed side of a fallen tree, near the entrance of the park's learning center. It is secured from wiggles and kids are allowed to climb on it.


A fallen tree on the trail.


Milkweed explosion.

Many, many of my photos from this session have the wrong depth of field. My camera just doesn't grasp what I really want to focus on. Trade-off for a less expensive model.


The other good shot from this field, depth-wise.



Some sort of fungus on a fallen branch. Great colors and textures.


Little critter paths on fallen wood.


Intentional self-portrait from the bridge over the stream.

Way-back art

When I was in second grade, every now and then our teacher would select a story for publication. She would discuss with the author where the page breaks should be, then send the story off to a friend, who typed the story on onion paper. Then the author was allowed to *skip* a classroom assignment to do the coloring for each book page. Then the book was sent off again to be bound. The author provided the fabric for the book cover. When it was finished, the author had the option to have the book placed in the school library.

My book was called "My Trip to Marsasip." It started out being to Mars, but that seemed too... ordinary, compared to a fanciful unknown planet.


Here is my book cover. All of the patchwork is factory printed.


Here is the Date Due pocket. It was written in 1975. Many of the reader instances were me or my brother.


Here we see me and Koldy near the end of the book. He has wheels instead of feet and changes his colors and patterns constantly. Not only is that visually interesting, but it tosses continuity out the window. Important stuff to a nine-year-old.


This is towards the beginning of the story, packing in my bedroom.


This is my actual bedroom in 1975. Remember, America's bicentennial was approaching and I fully embraced the red, white, and blue theme.



Going around the room clockwise, there are my bracket shelves of knickknacks, the star-spangled bedspread, the USA curtains. My mom was a straight-line seamstress with her turquoise Viking sewing machine, but she did make these curtains.



Nice big area rug, forty-eight star American flag from my grandmother, antique school desk (my great-grandfather ran an antique shop), Dressy Bessy doll, Waffle Quilt stuffed dogs, fish mobile made from a punch-out fold-together cardstock kit-book.



My antique dresser and vanity set. I still use the dresser. The drawers are quite deep. The vanity is in my parents' basement. It became my computer desk in junior high, holding my TRS-80 Model I, Level 2, with cassette "drive." I still have those lamps, too.


The doll crib was an antique from the shop. The pegboard hold my orange AM radio, some glued-felt-on-masonite art of mine, and two embroidered samplers from my grandma.

Red Hat / Cow sushi plate

A sushi plate I painted/glazed for my mom in 2005. She likes cows and she is a Red Hat Lady.

Zut alors, il neige!

My title comes from my first-year French dialogs, meaning: Oh drat, it's snowing.


Snow on my wreath ($10 from my son and his Boy Scout Troop) at 4:00 this afternoon.


Same wreath at 7:30 this evening.



Another texture, snow on backyard leaves this afternoon.

Textures: Bubbles on blue

Texture Bubbles on blue
Originally uploaded by Heidicrafts.

On my flickr stack, I have added a bunch of texture photos I took in 2004.

Pop on over to have a look.

Fall Photos, 2004

Not much to report today, so I'll pull a couple of fall leaf photos from the archives. These are both from 2004. I liked how the sunlight was highlighting the turned leaves. I'm sure this isn't a mistake. I can't prove it, but observation leads me to believe that the leaves that get the most sunlight turn colors first. As those leaves fall, subsequent leaves not get more sun, on and on until the tree is empty.


This is completely unPhotoshopped ('cause I don't own the program). I was struck by how the sunlight illuminated the leaf. I was pleased that I was able to capture the look on film (i.e. pixels).

Missed Saturday - Explanation Sunday

I was trying to achieve NaBloPoMo (National Blog Posting Month - less intense than writing a 50,000 word novel in November) but fell short. I'll keep posting, however. My DH explains why I missed:

I sent Heidi a link to a story, and clicking it cause three help windows to pop up as well as the site. They couldn't be closed by ordinary means, so I nuked Firefox from the task manager (the desktop box being a Windows installation). After that, we heard the tell-tale clicks of application after application being opened in the background. Turns out that about a hundred little help windows were starting, but not showing up on the desktop. Panic is sometimes appropriate, so I hit the hardware reset and started over. So during blog time, the machine was undergoing a thorough virus scan (which it does regularly anyway), and a scrub from Spybot. All seems well now. You may return to your normal lives.

Now for the more interesting part. Gonzo has latched onto dice stacking. He saw a video of it last night, and has in the intervening 20 hours managed to teach himself to stack three dice reliably, and occasionally four dice. I am impressed, and very happy that he's developed an interest in a juggling trick -- as a juggler, I can actually help him with that.

OCT CMP ATC

My Artist Trading Card for the October Creative Mom Podcast exchange.

The theme was "Tell Me a Story."

Stockings4Soldiers Page 10

Cards made for Stockings4Soldiers, a service project for Iowa National Guard soldiers in Kosovo or Iraq. Most cards are one of a series of 10.

I was asked if I could make another 40 cards. I went ahead and made another 10 more sheets - 100 cards extra. But to save time, I had to craft first, and run them through the toner copier second (to put info on the card backs - my printer is an inkjet and prone to running when wet.)

The art had to be flat, so I went to rubber stamp and direct to paper with my Marvy ink pads.

Cards 1-2: Paint monoprinting, with SPARKLEWORKS added with my 12-letter rubber stamp.

Card 3: Random placement of letters THANKS. Each letter had its own color and each letter in this set was stamped with the negative block font, the serif font, and the ASL fingerspell set. The THANK YOU stamp was added after the cards were cut into singles, for all of these sets.

Card 4: Marvy ink pads direct to paper with a slight twist before lifting, to give little swirls.

Card 5: just random ASL finger letters, more than just the letters in "Thanks," and not really dense enough. My first sheet of that night.

Card 6: Marvy direct to paper without the twist.

Card 7: Marvy direct to paper using just the side of the ink pad. I keep turning the paper as I pounce, to stay random. This style reminds my of the background in the Talk Soup set.

Card 8: Marvy direct to paper with some dragging and swooping.

Card 9: THANKS letters using only the negative block font. I really like these letters.

Unshelved - Pimp My Bookcart 2007

One of the online comics I read is Unshelved. It takes place in a library.

In 2006, they had a series of comics about pimping (or gussying up) a bookcart instead of a car (a la the TV show Pimp My Ride).

It inspired a contest last year and the results are now in for 2007.

And also check out their Sunday Book Club. Good stuff.

Most popular search of the season

With the free version of Site Meter, I am able track the last 100 visits to my site. It lists city/state/country, how long viewers linger, how many pages are read. Interesting, but I don't obsess over it. My next visitor will be 2,222, though. That's cool.

Site Meter also tracks what brought readers to my site. If it was Google or some other search engine, it usually also lists what the search phrase was that snared Heidicrafts.

In the last week, there has been a noticeable increase in seekers of boars heads (a prop for a madrigal dinner, presumably), so I have moved my tutorial link to the upper section of the right sidebar.

Please, any seekers, feel free to ask a question in the comments if you need more information on any of the topics I mention here.

Sleepy Tuesday

Gonzo was still awake at 11:45 last night. I got to bed at 12:20. I made it through the day just fine, but I'm sleepy now. Lingering smoke from our first oven self-cleaning isn't helping.

So no big art or events to report tonight - I need to rest.

Stockings4Soldiers Page 9

Stockings4Soldiers Page 9
Originally uploaded by Heidicrafts.

Cards made for Stockings4Soldiers, a service project for Iowa National Guard soldiers in Kosovo or Iraq. Most cards are one of a series of 10. These, however, are just nine out of ... I think I made 140.

I was inspired by Lucinda pins and from one of the Usbourne Art books since returned to the library.

I started by going though scraps and cutting house squares. I quickly decided, both for aesthetics and for tome and for sanity that perfect squares weren't necessary. I feel the houses are more charming when they are a little bit crooked.

Then I cut doors and window pairs and glued them on. I ended a night of family and TV and crafting with a pile of over one hundred houses.

Next came running the back text though the toner copier and cutting apart the cards. My first batch were printed on blue card stock, but i ran a few green sheets, too.

I trimmed my cards in clusters and glued long strips of grass, then trimmed them into singles. Later, I added a cluster of snow cards. For the green cards, I added a number of sky strips.

I laid out a bunch of cards, decided which houses looked best on which lots, and then started trimming roofs. I really like the opposing goldenrod on a blue sky.

Then glue glue glue some more (Elmer's purple glue sticks) with fingertip washings at intervals.

Card 1: gift wrap windows, ingredient list door. Grass is tissue paper over construction paper.

Card 3: windows are cut from scraps of painted papers done by the kids some time back. Door is from a junk mail envelope.

Card 5: windows are used gift wrap. I like how the torn paper mimics the snow.

Card 6: Window muntins are courtesy of cutting through the blank middles of school graph paper (construction paper quality). Gift wrap door.

Card 7: Junk mail roof, again looking like snow bits. gift wrap windows and door. Tissue paper sky.

Card 8: Windows and door cut from scraps of calendar pages, left after making a batch of envelopes.

Card 9: Greeting card sky.

Stockings4Soldiers Page 8

Cards made for Stockings4Soldiers, a service project for Iowa National Guard soldiers in Kosovo or Iraq. Most cards are one of a series of 10.

After the initial count of 715 cards, the generosity swelled and the finial count was 754 recipients. So I had to make more cards. Well, I didn't *have* to , but I did.

The star card was from a previous batch. The rest were all collaged on November 7th.

Card 1: Paint and Crayola Stamper marker leaf. All Stamper highlights were added after cutting the sheet of cards into singles.

Card 2: Smeared purple paint, leaf stamped with ink, leaf Stamper marker. (I'm still not getting the layered collage look I so admire. More practice...)

Card 3: Just squiggles in wet paint. A Paste Paper look without the paste.

Card 4: Random leaf stamps, variety of ink colors. Little leaf Stamper.

Card 5: Multiple monoprinting transfers among sheets, using paint in red, green, gold glitter, and silver glitter. Text SPARKLESHINE added on singles using the 12-letter stamper from Oriental Trading.

Card 6: Buzz Lightyear foam paint stamps for room decor - bought a while ago at Big Hardware. ZOOM ZOOM GO with my 12-letter stamp.

Card 7: Paper punches from a previous batch

Card 8: Insect foam paint stamps from Pooh and from a generic Michael's collection. Butterfly and ladybug Stampers added on singles.

Card 9: Larger foam paint gecko stamp.

Stockings4Soldiers Stuffing

Today, Ganoush and I went to help with stuffing actual stockings for soldiers.

The stocking already had the I Am Loved pins that Ganoush and I helped attached the week prior. We each jumped into the circle of stuffers and picked up a stocking. The donated items to be stuffed were all set in piles on tables. Lip balm, lotion, shampoo, sunscreen stick, yo-yo, fruit snacks, Twizzlers, toothbrush & toothpaste, music CD, New Testament, deck of cards, can cozies, non-battery flashlight, hard candies gathered by a Brownie Troop, flexible fold-up Frisbee, Christmas PEZ dispenser, peppermints, inspirational scripture magnet, ATC, blank ATC, pen, Salted Nut Roll, cheese crackers with peanut butter, wrist bands, and pretzels. Then we each signed a card, "loving filled by:" and passed the stocking to the Shipping Box Filler Guy.

A local news reporter came by to interview project instigator "Whistle D". This project started when a workmate of his was deployed overseas and Whistle D offered to send something to him and his fellow soldiers. It has grown over the last five years to serving 754 soldiers this year. Many groups and individuals are eager to Do Something and are at a loss on how to help, now that To Any Soldier packages are no longer allowed.

Whistle D receives donations of goods from area businesses, donations of money for postage, ink and paper, and gasoline, and donations of time to write, to pin, to create, to stuff, to haul here or there, to fold, and all the little tasks that keep the operation running smoothly.

What a blessing. I'm proud to be a part of it. And I pleased that they aren't shy to say, "Got a minute? Can you fold this stack here?" whenever there is work to be done.

Stockings4Soldiers from Mrs. Pivec

The only other ATCs that arrived in the mail came from CMP's Mrs. Pivec and her class. Thank you to all of the students for creating and contributing. Your cards have already been sent off to soldiers in either Iraq or Kosovo.

In transit, a few of the sequins fell off, but most stayed on. They were very festive. We put each sequined card into an individual clear envelope; one of the stuffing-helpers had just enough, nearby.

Since my husband and I both juggle, I must say that I like the snowman juggling the sequins.

Stockings4Soldiers Beach

Stockings4Soldiers Beach
Originally uploaded by Heidicrafts.

These cards are all from one 12yo girl who heard about the ATC donation request.

One last batch of ATCs

I started another 100 art cards last night. I rubber stamped designs on 10 sheets of cream colored discount card stock.

This morning, I ran the sheets through the copier (toner, not my own ink jet), numbered them, trimmed them, and stamped a "THANK YOU" stamp on each one in a pleasing position. That wraps up a total of 750 ATCs for Stockings for Soldiers. Whew.

Gonzo and I delivered the last batch and were invited to fold greeting cards for the stockings. Then to help move boxes here and there and there to here. Then the kids wandered off to rake the back yard while I divided and counted batches of 5-art-cards piles so they could be directed to this battalion or another. The last group of stuffers will help on Saturday.

Photos yet to come....

Little Houses

My camera batteries are dying and I can't find the spare, so still no photos.

I completed 130 Little House ATCs this morning, and made 20 more this afternoon. Most were on blue card stock with green grass added at the bottom. Some were on green card stock with blue sky added at the top. One batch of 20 were blue card stock with white snow added at the bottom.

I also made another 90 paint and rubber stamp montage cards this afternoon and all were delivered to the Stockings for Soldiers coordinator. The montages included a variety of fall-colored leaf stamps, some glitter paint monoprints with "SPARKLESHINE" stamped with my 12-letter stamper, a set with Buzz Lightyear wall stamps with "ZOOM ZOOM GO," and a mix of insect paint stamps with Crayola Little Stamper bugs added.

This evening I painted up 60 more to number, cut, and SPARKLESHINE stamp tonight. That makes the 300 cards from 30 sheets that I intended to make for this round. I had intended to do something fancier, but time is now of the essence, so it's paint & stamp montages.

Another small unit has been added to the mix, so instead of 300 more needed in November, it's 340. After I post this entry, I'll rubber stamp 10 more blank sheets, then run them through the copier tomorrow, number them, cut them, and get them all delivered.

More S4S ATCs

I haven't heard from anyone else contributing ATCs for S4S, so I'm challenging myself to make more. I did hear from one in Canada, but we don't have time for them to arrive if she sent them now.


I'm making assembly line collage house scenes, a la the Lucinda pins I like, only more basic. Here. Go look. No photos here yet.

2006 Stepping Stone by CHG

2006 Stepping Stone by CHG
Originally uploaded by Heidicrafts.

We included CHG during our concrete art session. He made a lovely symmetrical display. I have fuzzed out his name at the bottom.

2006 Stepping Stones

In 2006, the kids and I made stepping stones again. his time, we had lots of trinkets from Michael's and we invited the neighbor kids to partake as well.

Ganoush took full advantage of the various glass baubles we had available. She had the mirror tile idea first - I took it from her. As with my creation, the silver backing of the mirror tiles fizzled out over the drying processes of the concrete. If I really tried, I could prolly adhere new tiles to the old with some glass-to-glass adhesive, but neither of us are bothered by this turn of events.

She again put a hand print in the stone, but decorated it much more this time.

Gonzo wanted to do his own thing. He chose only white glass pieces and declared that he was making Pokemon fossils. Specifically, Onmanyte (#138 - a snail-like critter), Articuno (#142 - a large powerful ice bird), and Aerodactyl (#144 - pterodactyl-ish).

So that is what is seen here. I am amazed only in that one never hears of a Pokemon actually dying. In battles they are only stunned or exhausted. Not that I want the pain of death looming over Pokemon, mind you. Just that everything dies sometime. I suspect there is a Pokemon dying ground, like elephants are supposed to have.

2006 Stepping Stone for Forty

To celebrate turning 40, I made this stepping stone in 2006. I made a handprint of my own and added the blue stone where I still wear my class ring.

The three blue dots at the bottom hold stickers with my initials (fuzzed for the Internet).

The four squares in the lower left corner were mirror tiles. They looked fine while the concrete set, over the week or two of hardening, the moisture messed up the silver backing.