A Harajuku Girl of my very own

Here is a fun activity from HP where you can create a Harajuku girl of your very own, as inspired by Gwen Stefani. I loved this. Now I wish I was this thin to wear said fictional outfit, but c'est la vie!

You got Evil in my Cuteness

A week of friends.

Friends whom I lost touch with (Jim P., Chas, and Brian) whose friendship we rekindled, and new friends whom I had a great time with this week as well. Friends from B-more, quilters who are graciously letting me stay in their house later this coming month.

At a dinner ths week, a friend's daughter brought up the subject that evil should not be cute, as often displayed at Hot Topic, with pink skulls or swords with rainbows. I disagreed! While I went through an evily-goth phase, I still love the Hello Kitty induced cute of my yout, and now, they combine! I said that I would take the kokeshi doll idea from a hoodie I bought from Spicy Brown, and make it evil. This was a very fun project.

Did lots of sketching this week, and plan next weekend to be a "quilt-a-thon".

Our basement flooded Thursday night. Luckily we were not putting much down there, and we have cleaned up the water, but the water table has not dropped, and so our sump pump needed to be replaced. We did not lose any property or memories, but somehow this takes the new "shine" off of the new house. It's a bit sad to feel that your house is already "broken". Hopefully staving off mold will be ok. We can feel good knowing that all of the miniatures, comics, and quilts are upstairs!

Watercolors

I made this ATC in my paint-a-thon, and decided it was this week's quilt.
I love how it turned out, and the scan of my quilt is really terrible, and doesn't show the real colors of the hair and shirt. Now this is what I should be doing each week. Glad that I was able to get a more complex work done this week.

Room to grow

My studio is coming along. I have my wire and clip system up, and now just have to put quilts upon the walls of the studio. A few boxes are unopened and I found a few projects I should have been working on, like my round robins... sorry ladies! I will work on them this weekend!
In the meantime, I've cracked out the sketchbooks and watercolors and am giving this another go. This weekend is a personal watercolor "paint-a-thon" for atc's to trade online. This will get some of the cutesy ideas out of my head and into color.
On another note, my work (my real 9-5 job) is ramping up, and my ideas for art are ramping up too. I'm going back to the home office the first week of Sept., so I have to get a weekly idea ready to be done "on the road" again.

Radical art

My attempt at subversive art is shown here. The ghost and the blob are from a sketch made on 8/5/07, inspired by the San Diego Comic Con. Maybe Pac-man influenced too, DH says he sees the ghost and power pellet. I did the hatching embroidery during my sister's play on Sunday. (I had seen it before...and it was outdoors... I was not a bad patron!)

I also attended the Wizard World Chicago show on Thursday and Friday, and met the following artists:
Josh Johnson- great brown art www.spindletons.com
Christopher Uminga- love this subversive style www.cuminga.com
Samantha Kyle- and her funny webcomic www.randomassembly.com
Kei Acedera from www.ImaginismStudios.com - Great art.
Anna Borowiecka- beautiful fantasy stuff www.wingedchime.net
Corwin Gibson Neat stuff at Luchadork
Misty Coats of www.crimsonsonata.com
Erika of www.simplyerika.com who has beautiful work
Doug Kovacs of Planescape DnD fame! www.dougkovacs.com
Katie Cook- how did I miss you at SDCC? www.katiecandraw.com cute!
Cynthia Cummens- also an ACEO artist! Who knew? www.cynthiacummensart.com

It's a blog party!

ArtsyMama is having an Artful Blog Party!

Waiting, the DVR, and no picture.

Waiting for a report to "spool" for work, which sounds way more arty than it really is. No quilt, not yet at least, so no picture for you.

The DVR (digital video recorder) has changed my television viewing habits. I can record shows all day long, and zip through them in mere minutes. This is very effective for the shows I like on HGTV, DIY and the local PBS stations about sewing. I record quite a few shows during the day, and then fast forward through them on the weekend. If they do a project I don't care for? I just zip on by. Missed a step? Rewind. Very convenient.

This week, I ended up doing some sketches for more weeklies. Need to get my round robin project out the door. Did a few trades on ATCards.com. And I'm getting back to my "one hour a day" thing with my artwork. Just one hour a day, and I;m always surprised what I can get done.

The quilt studio is messy right now as I opened more boxes, and DH helped hang some wire and clip systems to hang my stuff from the walls. We realized we needed drywall anchors too late, and now have postponed that project until this weekend.

My mother will be in town, so I need a fast project to complete this week's quilt, but I am looking forward to having some time and getting a really complex one done in the near future.

What's old is new again

What is old is new again this week for my weekly project. I have cracked out this old square, a U.F.O. as it were. (UnFinished Object)

This project was started at a retreat several years ago, out of a Quilts Japan magazine from 2002. It is not squished, like it is shown here in my scan. I did practice my microstipple quilting on this project.

My other weekend accomplishment are some abstract ATCs for a swap online.

I love the fabric here and enjoyed making and beading them.

I bought two new books, one by Stampington And Co called "Artful Blogging", and another called Creative Embellishments by Sherril Kahn. Creative Embellishments is good, and has some neat projects that I would like to try on fabric only. Artful Blogging was light on "content", although there were pretty pictures, and gave me a few more blogs to read each day. I don't think I'll buy this one again.

More shows coming up this this week, Wizard World Chicago. And a visit from my mom. Going to be busy!!