creativity

Collectible Isn’t All It’s Cracked Up to Be!

Projects

These past few months being (virtually) around the gals at Gauche Alchemy have really done a number on my creativity.

In the best possible sense of that sentiment!

It’s true, when you surround yourself with creativity in any form–be it people or resources–and are open to it, your own creativity blossoms and blooms all over the place.

Which is why, a little over a month ago, when I heard about the high school student who made her prom dress out of cardboard, I got the idea to challenge the other members of the Gauche Alchemy Design Team (known as Alchemists) to create our own outfits out of supplies from the Gauche Alchemy store.

These didn’t have to be life-size outfits, we settled on dolls for this project, and established a limit of no more than 10% fabric in our creations.

For my doll, I had this “collectible” Bradley doll of Polly Flinders that I got as a young girl.

Little Polly Flinders
Sat among the cinders,
Warming her pretty little toes.

Her mother came and caught her
And whipped her naughty daughter
For spoiling her pretty new clothes.

Cheerful, right?

After many, many moves and a decade or so spent in storage in one garage or another, she was looking a little worse for wear, so I didn’t have much compunction in remaking her as an art doll.

I realize Styrofoam doesn’t easily break down in landfills, but it doesn’t exactly scream collectible to me. When I removed the costume that was pretty much all I found: Styrofoam, glue and a metal armature for the arms. We can do better than that!

Originally I’d planned to make her over as a steampunk dolly, making use of Ouchless Cardboard and lots of aged elements. But I really loved the idea of using this pink-heart punchinella as tights, just for the pop of color. But the pink just wasn’t meshing with the original costume idea and I was debating what else to do when I decided, first, I needed to address the great big crack in her midsection. Filling it with glue helped, but she needed a bit more, so I grabbed some washi tape (a new love) and ended up giving her a pink and black gingham mini-dress in the process.

Steampunk was officially out of the picture, the punchinella tights were in, and suddenly Polly became a circus performer!

Art doll collage

In addition to more punchinella for the tutu (in both pink and orange), pretty much everything in her outfit came from the Pink Parts and Lady Marmalade Orange Mixed Media Color Kits in the Gauche Alchemy store. I added a few things, like the feather in her hair, and a package of little rhinestones that I applied using my new-found knowledge from watching many episodes of My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding.

Her shoes got updated with some leftover paint testers (not from GA, but totally in the spirit of the group) and some pink bows I found in my stash, and her boring wooden base got covered in bits of punchinella, covered in 3 colors of tissue paper and then sealed with Mod Podge. She even has a orange tightrope to walk.

You can see the runway presentation over on the GA Blog and check out the rest of the awesome dolls my teammates (and new friends!) created. They are all spectacular–is it any wonder I’ve been feeling the creativity surge, lately?

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We’ll be getting back to the 64 Arts next week, but don’t be surprise if more random projects pop in and out of the Tuesday posts for the foreseeable future 🙂 After all, exploring the 64 Arts is all about expanding your creativity (and my own), so it only seems natural to deviate from the list from time to time!

The list is our net, it’ll catch us when we fall, but until then we’re free to wander, come and go as we please 🙂

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2 Link-ups in a row?! Yup!
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Why Creativity Matters to Me

Everyday Adventures
A corner of my studio, The Abyss; 3 shelving units stuffed to the gills with supplies.

One corner of my current studio, aka The Abyss; back when this story happened I had only a fraction of this.

Did I ever tell you the story about my second husband?

Without going into too many reasons he’s an ex, there was one moment in particular I wanted to share:

It was early 2005, we’d been married for just over 2 years, and that morning he was in a bad mood. So bad that it sorta permeated the house. And it happened even before I woke up that Saturday.

I admit, I was a bit chicken-shit and went back to bed to read until the storm-clouds passed or he’d had enough coffee or something.

Apparently I didn’t stay out the way quite long enough.

There was a fight. I don’t even remember how it started or what it was about, all told, but of the things I do remember, I remember him telling me I was absolutely forbidden from taking on another hobby or bringing another thing into his house.*

How many things are wrong with that sentence? I’ll let you figure that out.

That fight ended with him storming out. And in a couple months I’d moved out.

Not because of the hobby embargo, but because he’d come very close to hitting me that day, and it was closer than I really wanted to get.

I wish… I wish I was stronger back then. I wish I hadn’t let his idea that to disagree with him (or, heaven forbid, correct him) was a sign of disrespect. I wish a lot of things about me back then, but I also know that I was just trying to keep the peace and not rock the boat.

They say the biggest regrets are the things you don’t do.

So it was with not a little irony that I realized, a couple years later, with an entire second bedroom to house all of my “craft crap,” that I’d increased my income by 25% writing as the Arts & Crafts Expert for eHow.com. And that he who– despite the higher salary and not having to start over from scratch since it was, by god, his house and all–would call up whining about his lack of money, really shot himself in the foot on that one.

That contract ended in 2009, but the lessons I learned from it and the confidence it gave me to work on my own projects that much harder have stuck around.

Creativity, for me, is about exploration. It’s about doing something with my own hands and mind, of seeing ideas come to life because of something *I* did, because of something I dreamed up. It’s part instant gratification, part humiliation (because things don’t always go according to plan) and part further inspiration.

And it’s a way of looking at life, an I-can-do-that! mentality when so often what we hear is “no you can’t,”  “why bother” or, my personal ‘favorite’, “you’re just wasting your time.”

I’m not saying that by being a little creative each day you’re going to land a job at it or find any sort of fame and fortune–but you might. What’s most likely, though, is a better sense of self, of what you can do with your own two hands, and a helluva lot of pride in your own accomplishments.

So try something new, or something old. Dig out that crochet hook or paint-by-numbers set that’s getting dusty in a box somewhere. Pick up a new hobby, or half a dozen if you’ve got the time. Don’t be afraid to try.

Because the things you regret are the things you didn’t do.

Be creative today.

(*And just so you know, when those things were said I worked full time (like I have since graduating high school), paid my share of our bills and used only my own money for craft supplies, etc. And most of it was kept in the garage because the office we shared was already full of his desk, his computer equipment, and his aquarium. And don’t even get me started about how much closet space he had in 2 rooms and I didn’t.)
Swinging pocket-watch

20th Art: Conjuring

64 Arts

Have you ever been hypnotized? Was it in front of a group of people on a stage? To stop a habit like smoking or help you lose weight? Or was it in a clinical setting, to help you recover memories or remember facts for an important reason?

Conjuring (indrajala)
To hypnotize and make people see armies or heavenly dwellings.

Swinging pocket-watch
I’ve never been hypnotized–I don’t think I’m a very good candidate for it since I like to be in control and find it difficult to relax–and it’s only been relatively recently that I’ve been able to meditate with any sort of effectiveness. We’ve talked about meditation in the past, so I won’t rehash that topic, but we can explore some other avenues of conjuring that might be out there.

Like what? The power of positive thinking (or, as my high school band director liked to harp on: Positive Mental Attitude), is one. The Law of Attraction–a version of which was popularized in The Secret–is another. Some might even say karma–though the ‘what goes around, comes around’ idea is a little broad (karma generally refers to repercussions from one life to another, as opposed to moments in a single incarnation).

And then there’s the more whimsical variety of conjuring: stage magic, slight of hand, misdirection and other feats of prestidigitation.

But really, conjuring is–at it’s essence–creating. Whether you’re creating images in other people’s minds (storytellers, I’m looking at you) or spinning a web of ideas that gets others to create something tangible, conjuring is the first step in creativity.

Question of the week: What have you conjured lately?

Going With the Flow

Everyday Adventures

Hello you beautiful, wonderful ladies! (and any handsome gents who may also be joining us, of course!)

Here’s the thing: I finished a Character Cocktail this past weekend and it felt soooo good to be back at my drawing desk that I really feel more in a draw-y mood right now and less in a bloggy one (which is a shame since I have several posts in the works but none ready to hit publish on). Since progress on the cookbook has been slow to nonexistent over the past few weeks, I’m seizing the opportunity and the impetus while it’s here.

In the mean time, I just listened to a fabulous installment (they all are, but this one really spoke volumes to me) of tranquility du jour, the podcast by Kimbery Wilson whom you may recall from my interview about Bed Days. Well, this podcast featured Bronwyn Simmons and, talk about a kindred spirit as far as creativity goes! At first I thought, I want to be her when I grow up… then I realized I’m over halfway there, the more I listened!

I still want to be like her when I grow up, who’m I kidding?

So, today, instead of having fun with pearls, I’m gonna go bang out some pages for the cookbook. I encourage you to check out The Artful Life, Bronwyn’s blog, as well as her interview with Kimberly, if you want to be inspired and encouraged towards daily creativity.

We’ll be back to discussing jewelry, soon–no chance I’d let one of my favorite topics go by for too long!

Sand Art

64 Arts

Here’s a fun project for kids (or just the kids at heart) to use some of that sand we colored yesterday.

In addition to the colored sand you’ll need the following:

  • Disposable spoons
  • Paper Funnels
  • Straws
  • Jars or other containers

To make the paper funnels, just take a square of plain paper and fold the two bottom corners in towards the center, forming a cone. Tape the overlapping edges together, leaving a bit of of an opening at the tip.

Depending on your sand, the funnels may or may not work. My sand was too fine and tended to clump rather than flow. In that case, straws seem to work great for picking up bits of sand and depositing in the vials or just using the spoons to pour it in.

I have these little vials left over from a former project (the Manicure Gift Card–another of my eHow articles) but you could use pretty much anything clear or mostly clear. Empty spice jars, extract bottles, small craft bottles, baby food jars: use your imagination!

Part of the fun of filling the containers is the random combinations of colors and patterns that happen.

A couple of tricks I can think of off-hand include filling the bottle sideways for a sliding layers look and putting in just a bit of colored sand, shaking it about to get it to stick to the sides and then filling it the rest of the way with a contrasting color. The larger the opening the easier it will be to create more artistic patterns.

Of course, then you want to seal up the jars to preserve the neat little works of art. If, however, you’re like me and can’t seem to remember where you placed the cute little stoppers that you ordered to go with the cute little vials (sigh… they’re here somewhere, I know it, I just can’t remember which box they ended up when we moved!) just look around and see what might be available in a pinch.

I used (from left to right) a decorative button (the shank kind, not the kind with holes), a piece of polished hematite, a glass bead (turned on it’s side to prevent sand from escaping through the hole–you could also fill it in with a bit of glue) and a plastic grape pulled off a decorative bunch. The button is my favorite and all were attached with a little bit of tacky glue. You might want to go with a clear glue, if that matters to you, or even a hot glue gun for a wax seal look. In fact, you could just stopper them with globs of hot glue and call it a day, too!

Of course, if you’re a little more put-together than I am and remember where you put the corks or have lids to your containers, you can still decorate them if you want with paint, paper, beads or nothing at all.