Category: Rearview Fridays

Rearview Fridays: Potato Stamp Wrapping Paper

Ahhhhhhhh (sigh of comfort and decompression) I am back in the saddle — ish. Actually I’m more clinging to the edge of the saddle on the galloping horse that is my life, but none the less, I am here again. Our computer is set up in this new home on a new street in a new city, the internet is connected and it’s time for a Rearview Friday!

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This one I’ve been  saving. Last year when I was home on mat leave with then 3-month-old Gene and 3-year-old Rudi we made potato stamp wrapping paper. We had time in the schedule, space on the table and walls (for drying, this is key!) and had a rip-roarin’ good time. I fully plan to do it next year when we are not moving in the middle of the holiday season, whew.

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If you can believe it, Miss Crafty 5000 herself had never made potato stamps! So it was time. They were easy to carve and I bought lots of potatoes in case of mistakes. The snowflake was my runaway favourite design in print.

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I ended up using the Mala drawing paper roll from Ikea. It’s cheap and maybe tears a bit too easily for wrapping paper, but I liked how soft the texture was, it held the paint well and dried quickly. And I used whatever tempera paint we had around, just spread it thinly on a plate and then stamped away! I ended up drying the paper by taping it to the walls. It looked beautiful, magical.

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This was a great activity for a 3-year-old and also, ahem, for an adult! It felt extra special to clad our gifts in our original paper designs. And the stamps preserved pretty well for about a week. I kept them in a tupperware in the fridge with damp towels over the stamp cut-outs so they wouldn’t wither. Alas, this year it’s a mix of left-over wrapping paper from the drug store and brown paper, but I’ll dig out the fancy ribbon to jazz it up!

 

Rearview Fridays: Felt Pentagon Ball

I am excited about this Rearview Fridays post — it’s a very old project, I made this  felt pentagon ball when I was about 10! Earlier this year I wrote about some toys, balls and animals, that I’d made when I was in grade 4. And this is the ball I couldn’t find to include in that post, it’s the 5th toy I made that year.

This one is really precious to me, I was so proud of it. First I stitched the five-petaled flowers on each of the 12 pentagons and then sewed all 12 pieces together, by hand of course (it was Waldorf school after all)! It’s stuffed with fleece and has a bell in the middle. I’m sure there was a math lesson attached to this creation in addition to the sewing aspect! I do remember thinking I wanted to keep it for when I had kids (I was a planner!) and I managed that — both the having kids part and the keeping the ball bit! Gene and I tossed it around yesterday and he loves the bell.

I’m blowing kisses into the past towards my younger self, planning, stitching, filling a cold day with a delightful project, just as she would be 25 years later.

Rearview Fridays: Double Spine Art Book

Another Friday, another long-ago project to share. About 11 years ago my friend Lindsay Zier-Vogel taught me how to make hardcover books. I’ve made a lot since. It’s surprisingly easy (to make small, carfty, arty books that is, I am definitely not a professional book binder!) and I’ve made diaries, recipe books, poetry books with kids, art books. Lindsay continues to makes gorgeous art/poetry books, you should check them out here.

One of my most ambitious was a book I made in 2005, it’s two books in one with a double spine. A zig-zag book! I was researching Achromatopsia, a condition of the eyes that my mom has where her eyes see in a spectrum of grey, black and white, no colour. I was curious about how her eyes work because it’s hard for me to imagine not seeing colour, and I was working towards a conceptual dance work about seeing in black and white literally and figuratively.

I had read Dr. Oliver Sacks’ book The Island of the Colourblind. I has also written some poems about the content I’d gathered. I’m not particularly a poet, not publically, but writing poems can be a great tool when distilling technical info and autobiographical narrative towards a work of art, in this case the choreography, costumes and soundscore I was working on. I had a bunch of favourite quotes and my modest poems and thought they should have a home, so I made them a book, quotes on one side, poems on the other.

Here are a couple of favourite quotes from Sacks’ book:

What, I wondered, would the world be like for those born totally colour-blind? Would they, perhaps, lacking any sense of something missing, have a world no less dense and vibrant than our own? Might they even have developed heightened perceptions of visual tone and texture and movement and depth, and live in a world of heightened reality – one that we can only glimpse echoes of in the work of the great black-and-white photographers?

He is intrigued by the range of words and images other people use about colour and was arrested by my use of the word ‘azure’. (‘Is it similar to cerulean?’) He wondered whether ‘indigo’ was, for me, a separate, seventh colour of the spectrum, neither blue nor violet but itself, in between. 

And a couple little ditties about my lovely mom:

Her eyes lack cones

(they say)

so she sees in texture

instead of colour,

a world where red is equal to black

and dusk reveals the neighbourhood.

Crayons were responsible for her early reading skills and the betrayal of her eyes. She learned to recognize their names through necessity: red, brown, blue, tangerine, aubergine – whatever that might be.

She generally steered clear of the exotic ones, to avoid being the lone pre-schooler who drew purple palaces sporting taupe moats and devastatingly beautiful green princesses.

She had been informed of the concrete facts by Miss Jamison 3 months into the school year: only dragons are green, dear and a moat is filled with blue water  just like the river, see?      

Rearview Fridays: Baby Silhouettes

Hello Friday! Here you are again, it feels like you were just yesterday. Whew, these fall days are flying by. Here we go: Rearview Fridays is a regular post in which I share an artistic project I completed sometime in the past. However, today I’m going to share someone else’s project, because it’s too darn good to keep to myself! Baby Silhouettes by my friend Lindsay Zier-Vogel.

Three years ago, when Rudi turned one, Lindsay gave me this beautiful piece of art, a silhouette of a sweet baby. And then she revealed that it was a silhouette of my actual baby! SO special! She’d worked from a profile of Rudi after secretly soliciting a photo from my husband. Silhouettes have been gaining popularity in design of late so I feel a little extra hip having this on my wall!

I have to admit that when Gene turned one this month I was hopeful that Lindsay would remember and make one of him. And she did! I love how different their silhouettes are; Gene has way more hair than Rudi did at one, which she’s captured, he’s also a lot more jowly than Rudi, and she’s also got that down perfectly! I love that for these silhouettes Lindsay used white instead of the traditional black. And placing them in shadow boxes makes them chunky and significant. My boys silhouettes sit at the head of the stairs and always produce a smile as I go by.

I had to share this because it’s one of those simple projects that you wish you’d thought of! And anyone can do it, be brave and bold, get a profile photo of your favourite baby, scale it and go for it. And Ikea’s Ribba shadow box frame is perfect for a project like this. And make sure you credit Lindsay, this is such a kick-ass idea and gift. It drew happy tears, I cannot lie. Happy Friday.

 

Rearview Fridays: Loulou Magazine Ripped Us Off

Rearview Fridays is a regular post in which I share an artistic project I completed sometime in the past. This one reaches back 20 years and is a co-pro with my childhood friend Christa Couture. It goes something like this …

Our slogan, settled upon early on in the process, was, “if it’s not a Lu-Lou then its a tacky Bu-Bou.” I’m not kidding. Born marketing geniuses.

Circa 1991 Christa was in the midst of a 3-year battle with cancer (deadly and serious). I was being homeschooled through junior high (socially deadly but not quite as serious). She was often in the hospital or home sick. I was able to visit or hang with her because of my loose schedule, plus she was by best friend, it went without saying that we had to hang whenever possible. We were very crafty (still are) and inevitably a project emerged: Lu-Lou. I have no memory of how Lu-Lou developed, or why we chose a periodical format, but it was an imaginary empire that grew, made us laugh hysterically and filled a lot of awesome, creative hours of companionship. Lu-Lou gripped our early teens.

We had and have very different artistic styles. But we shared a common love for the, ahem, extreme when it came to our designs. That’s my work on the left, Christa’s on the right. I still giggle at the disproportionately long and skinny femurs on my model.

In fact we published, er “published” 14 issues with about eight pages per issue. And this was in the days before computers and desktop publishing were common in the home. We drew each page, wrote every bit of copy by hand. It’s quite a feat, by true magazine publishing standards and in terms of sheer dedication to a purely fantastical, creative project. It represents some serious perseverance.

An assortment of Lu-Lou covers. Note the colour themes. We’d choose five colours to be the focal point of a month’s fashions by the great Lu-Lou (because Lu-Lou was more like Martha Stewart in that everything was “by” her. Yes, she was a living entity to us.)
Bikinis. Wow. We always set the price, as you can see here, this one was $75. Designer pricing in early 90s terms! I love the density of colour on the surf board.

And Loulou Magazine SO ripped us off! I was shocked when, in 2004, a Rogers Media publication showed up on newsstands called Loulou. So blatant. So obvious. Clearly someone had been into our secret Archive of Awesome. They. Ripped. Us. Off. We are currently suing for copyright infringement and various damages. They think they can add an “O” to the first “Lu” and get away with it?!

This “Galactic Hit” piece is a favourite. Back in the day I was jealous I didn’t draw the Jem-esque model or design her spectacular dress. Remember Jem and the Holograms?
Christa laughs, hard, whenever she sees or recalls this gem (gem. Jem. Get it?!). And she’s right. Really, just take a look. I love the librarian-chic of the model and setting that I’ve chosen. I don’t think I entirely understood the connotation of “worldly woman,” oh innocent self! And note how I carefully priced the socks and shoes separately, but the dress, belt and tank top, those are ONLY sold as a package bitches.

Okay, back to reality, I really was shocked when I saw Loulou, had a laughing fit in a Toronto subway station near the newsstand and immediately emailed Christa. What a coincidence! Who would have thought we had had such foresight, that we were so ahead of the curve?

We were so organized that we drew some of the same models from month to month, the ones that we liked. We tracked them on the back of each page with first and last name, age and tracking number. We should have had an agency. These were our faves: Christa’s on the left, Summer St. James, age 16, #15357, and mine on the right, Karen Salmon, age 16 (we weren’t 16 yet so 16 was the coolest age to be), #92007.
I was not joking when I said we tracked our models. Back of each page. Boom.

The funny thing is that, until last year, I worked in magazine publishing for 10 years and for a Canadian fashion designer for four years. I could never have predicted that at 14! And Christa works in electronic media and graphic design with panache and success.

We held a contest. We advertised it a few issues before we announced the winners. It was the “Lu-Lou-ist Girl in America” (modeled on Sassy magazine‘s Sassiest Girl in America, Christa was a dedicated Sassy subscriber, I wished I was). We profiled finalists and the winner. We created interview articles with them, drew head shots and photos.

The other funny thing, though not so surprising, is that we have both turned out to be fiercely, professionally creative. I’ve spent most of my independent career as a dance artist while she works as an independent musician. [Shameless plug: Christa’s got a fantastic new album out this month called The Living Record. You can get it on Bandcamp or iTunes. And you should.]

We created Lu-Lou products. There was a lipstick line, Dr. Zigma’s skin care, and these perfumes. The Essence of Life line. Daily, Funky and Romantic. And here are the slogans, I cannot make this shit up folks: “for any day and every day to feel good and smell great use Essences of Life Daily to put that extra spice in your life” | “For the exciting and fun moments in your life use Essences of Life Funky to put that extra pizazz in your life” | “For that special night or moment use Essences of Life Romantic to put that extra love in your life.” Note also my struggle with the spelling of “essence” yet I doggedly wouldn’t use whiteout, something about the Waldorf-kid in me I think!

I murmur this into the past: oh 13 and 14-year-old selves, you were utterly, absolutely awesome. Cheers to exploding creativity in our genes and excellent friends with whom to share  and cultivate it. You grow to be amazing women if I do say so myself.

Even a mail-in offer for Lu-Lou jewellery for the dedicated subscribers of 1991.
Of course we had a special bridal issue. We were teenage girls after all. And since then we have both gotten married. And if I do say so we were both turned out genuinely stylishly. But neither of us thought to consult our bridal issue for ideas. Maybe a do-over for an anniversary is in order … I could get behind that blue number on the right, and I’ll never tire of Christa’s extravagant head pieces.

Rearview Fridays: Alice in Wonderland Mobile

I was putting Rudi to bed the other night and looking up at his Alice in Wonderland mobile, as I do whenever I lie beside his little quieting self at bedtime. I love it so much (both the lying beside a sleepy little boy part and the mobile!) and realized  that the mobile should have a turn in the Rearview Fridays seat! I am pleased to introduce Alice and her cohort who watch steadfastly over Rudi from high up in the air …

I found the vintage Alice in Wonderland fabric remnant at Lazy Susan’s in Vancouver (a super charming shop, now just in Victoria and online) years before I had kids and tucked it away with the idea that if/when babies came I’d make something from it for them. And I did! In fact I think it was the first thing I made while I was pregnant with the now 4-year-old Rudi.

I was inspired by the simple mobile design I saw in embroidery artist Emily Hamill‘s studio shop and used that as a starting point. I used wooden dowel for the frame and sewed triangular corners onto a square of fabric to tuck them into and presto, strong frame! I cut out the charming characters and weighted each corner with one, choosing a simple white for the background to calm the busy of the art side. A couple of Alices, Humpty Dumpty, and the White Rabbit balancing the Mad Hatter.

I think when Rudi is too big for an arty, retro mobile in his room, I’ll hang this one in my workroom. I never get tired of Sir John Tenniel’s classic illustrations twirling lazily past.

Rearview Fridays: One Year Ago …

It’s time to revive Rearview Friday again, now that the summer is waning. For those of you who are new here, on Fridays I generally do a Rearview Fridays post where I look back at an old project, craft or dance or costume. I think it’s appropriate to share my best creation of all time* since it’s a year ago tomorrow that he began to breathe the air. September 1st, 2011, Gene joined us.

*Save for my other equally “best” creation, a little man who came to light on April 7th, 2008. His name is Rudi and he is awesome.

One year ago I went to sleep and had a restful night, dreaming about the little passenger in my belly. It was just 2 days til my September 2nd due date. I woke up to my waters breaking — just like the movies — and within 7 hours (an a beep-load of work, ahem, thank-you) little Gene-bean was born.

I am, more than ever, more even than at the moment of his safe arrival, overwhelmed with gratitude for this wee person. Our family is infinitely more rich with this addition. We see each other better, we are more harmonious than ever and I think and have more space for the joy — and the madness of course! The 4 of us are corners of out little unit in the world.  I count my blessings, I am profoundly lucky.

And while I had pledged to myself that I won’t show photos of the boys faces here on this blog, I decided I want to share this one today. I was so inspired by the blog and photos of Adele Enersen on her blog Mila’s Daydreams, which I enjoyed while Rudi was a toddler. Enjoy my little postman, the scene is entirely made of baby blankies, hats, socks and washcloths!

Gene the littlest postman. Inspired by the baby scenes of Adele Enersen.

Rearview Fridays: Grade 4 Toy Glory

When I was in grade 4 I was ambitious craft-wise. Herm. I should modify that statement. I have always been very ambitious crafty-wisey. So when I was however old one is in 4th grade, 10-ish I guess, I made some toys. And surprisingly they have lived to tell the tale and play another day!

I stitched this little felt ball, about the size of a generous hacky-sac. Soft and well balanced for throwing at the head of a little brother without dire repercussions! Check out the well-spaced blanket stitching. Pretty good for little pioneer-aspiring hands.

I was in Waldorf and I seem to remember making all of these toys at school. So there’s a good chance the one above involved a lesson on fractions! In fact I remembered these toys when I found a felt ball from the same era made of a bunch of pentagons (like a soccer ball) with little flowers stitched onto each piece. Now I can’t find that ball, go figure. But it reminded me to dig these out of the toy box for a way-retro Rearview Friday post.

This one I crocheted back when I knew how to crochet. Yes, my 10-year-old Waldorf-self had a wider palette of crafty skills than I do now. I think it was referred to as the Brain Ball for obvious reasons.

Then there were the animals. Next up is mister floppy-ear bunny. The detail makes me shake my head, I was fussy. The stitching is tiny, he has a proper pom-pom tail. The rabbit is even weighted with seeds or rice for heaven’s sake. And of course the fibres are all-natural, it was Waldorf after all! I do still loooove me some natural fibres …

I have 3 significantly younger siblings and all the toys in this post made it through their play years and are now being enjoyed by my own boys over 20 years later. It just amazes me to think that I made toys that would be in the hands of my own wee people when I was still a girl.

I had to save the best for last. Check out this donkey! His legs even have shaped joints. His embroidery floss mane has seen better days but what do you expect after almost 25 years?! I was a goody-two-shoes in grade 4, actually for a lot of grade school til I got over myself circa high school, but I think I partly made a donkey so I could say “ass” legitimately but titter behind my serious-face. Ass.

I love that the act of making something leaves a memory in your muscles. I hold these toys and truly remember making them. Cheers to crafting at any age. Cheers to crafts that last.

Have a very happy weekend and raise a glass to Canada on July 1st.

Rearview Fridays: Folk Art Eggs, Pysanka-styles!

I made this pair of folk-arty pysanky for my mom about 17 years ago. And she still has them! They dried, they didn’t rot, amazing. I was super-duper into folky-hippie-arty suns and moons at the time as you can see! I couldn’t believe it when I saw them at her house a couple of months  ago. But I should back up and tell you how I learned this Ukrainian art form in the first place …

When I was almost too old to for summer camp I went to a day camp that blew my mind. We got to be pioneers for 5 whole days at the Ukrainian Cultural Heritage Village! I did it for 2 or 3 years I think, and then I worked as a volunteer ’cause I was too old to be a camper but I really wanted to be a pioneer at least once per summer still. And then I worked as a leader of the program, because I could not get enough of being a pioneer! I still love a good historic site, but the UCHV has never been topped for me. If you’re ever in the Edmonton area, you must go, it’s an unforgettable experience. You will be forever moved by the tenacity of the settlers of Western Canada and the richness of the culture that the Ukrainians carried with them over the brutal miles of untamed Canada.

Here I am at the Ukrainian Cultural Heritage Village on the old ferry, circa 1996. Can you think of a more beautiful place to work and be? The town site is in the background.

Honestly, those were some of the best days of my life. Both campers and program leaders (along with the interperters there) dressed in historically accurate clothing. For the ladies that meant brown cotton stockings held up with penny garters, cotton bloomers and slips and drop-waisted cotton print dresses. And to top it off, hustkas, the colourful, flowered woollen headscarves.

We became members of the families in the farm and town sites, we ground grain, “shopped” at the old store, fed animals, made meals from scratch, fetched water, rode in wagons and old cars, smithed tiny horseshoes, weighed grain at the elevator, dipped candles, packed ice in the ice chest, pumped gas at the hand pump, sent out Morse code messages at the train station, went to school and church (there are 3 varieties on the historic site there!) Can you think of a better way to spend a summer? I cannot. It was the best summer job ever.

And each week we made Pysanky, Ukrainian Easter eggs. Witness Susan in heaven. Beeswax melting, pots of dye waiting, delicate eggs ready for art. We worked from traditional Ukrainian patterns, though none of mine have survived. I did get my own kystka (if you scroll down in the link you’ll see beautiful eggs and then some lovely hands working with a kystka), the tool for drawing with heated beeswax on the eggs.

Each pysanka is made with a process exactly like batik. A layer of beeswax is drawn on the egg to seal in the white of the original surface, then the egg is dyed the lightest colour you want (traditionally yellow).  Next a layer of wax designs over the yellow seal it in, then it’s dyed orange, draw, dye red, draw and so on through to black (or whatever your darkest colour will be). Then all the wax is heated and wiped away and a colourful egg appears, its magic, alchemy really! For these eggs I evidently drew the entire piece on the white egg and then layered the dye colours.

And lastly, you really should check out the Giant Pysanka in Vegreville, Alberta. Happy weekend!

Rearview Fridays: Clothesline (an art book!)

I haven’t posted a Rearview Friday for, whoa, five weeks now! Oh dear. Well, there have been all sort of adventures and emergent situations and I decided it’d be okay to give ’em a rest for a while, just didn’t mean for it to be so many weeks. And I miss my Rearview Fridays! So without further ado, I offer up a project from 2006 that I made with my oft-collaborator Lindsay Zier-Vogel.

It’s a book called “Clothesline.” Lindsay proposed the idea to me, a wordless art book that she’d bind and I’d make little clothes for. Little? I love little! Making my own clothes? Correct. I love that too. I said yes.

I remember having a lot of fun sewing the tiny slip skirts, pants, shirts and dresses. figuring out the scale for the frames, deciding on colour and fussing with the tiny seams. And they all work — tie or clip or snap. Because that is how I roll.

The book looks charming on a shelf, zig-zagging along. I have to find a place for mine (hmmm, maybe the mantle …) Clothesline is bound accordion-style with ribbon seams and each page is a paper-clad frame for the clothing pieces.

Clothesline was displayed at Toronto’s Type Books in its basement gallery during one of Lindsay’s installations of her hand-bound book creations.

There are only three copies of Clothesline in existence! Though I discovered one more set of tiny clothes while cleaning out an old fabric box a few days ago (I must have made four sets), which is what inspired me to dig this beauty out to share here. So if anyone wants to commission one, and Zier-Vogel is in the mood to bind one more …