mosaic

Part of the reason I haven't been posting or writing here is that in early May, I had a miscarriage at twelve weeks. It was a very physical process and I was not up for doing much. But one weekend, while I was still bleeding and sad, I decided to finally do something about this stupid wall in my backyard.

That is my garage. Behind that wall is my husband's workshop. He is a woodworker for fun, and he creates amazing things in there. Actually, part of the reason I wanted to work on that wall was because he was building this.

From scratch. It has a tin roof, and is going to have some swings eventually. We moved our big comfty wicker chairs out there with the fire pit and it is so cozy, but that wall...egads.

So, I designed a mosaic. I have never made a mosaic on a wall before, mind you, but I wanted a project. I laid out some glass I had from our stepping stone projects ( I cannot remember if I posted about those last year. Perhaps on SLWC.) I bought some extra glass. This is what it looked like laid out:

 

I wanted to incorporate water, earth, sun, and air. 

Here is how it developed on the wall all day.

Found that picture. Glad I broke down and moved the bench out to the garden. My back was aching.

This is the temporary final. I ran out of green and blue and besides this is nine hours of work. I plan on expanding it to the entire wall, but for now, the four elements and healing through art. Whenever I bury myself in artwork, I feel better. 

sun catcher

I bought kite paper a while ago. And by a while ago, I mean three years ago. I still have the one book I bought. It lasts a hella long time for our family, and incredibly useful. Think tissue paper that isn't able to be poked through. Right? That's awesome.

So for summer vacation, we created some kite sun catchers for the windows.

There is no special trick for these. I think they are self-explanatory.

You take two pieces of card stock, or one piece folded in half, depending on the size of whatever you are making.

We made some kites before summer vacation. So, we drew a diamond, cut out the middle. Then we glued kite paper in differing cuts and shapes to the inside of the bottom sheet. (Think of it as opening a hotdog bun. Flip the top over next to the bottom sheet. We put glue stick on the bottom black paper. You can use any adhesive--scrapbook tape, modge podge, whatevs. Using glue on the kite paper where the sun will shine through will also make the glue shine through, just a little FYI.

Then you put glue on the top flipped over piece of card stock, flip it back over and place it on top of the bottom sheet. For these kites, I also cut some ribbon for the tail.

For summer solstice, we decided to create a sun and moon combination. This is it's temporary home.

I do think these suncatchers look cooler in person. *sigh*

picture pages

I've been totally MIA on this blog. I'm so sorry. I've been crafting, arting and doing all kinds of luxurious things, but just not blogging about it. One change is that I have set up an Etsy site again that is strictly my artwork. It is called angie y. studios. I will be expanding the work in there, but for now there are some mizuko jizo, some meditating mamas, some of my element and labyrinth prints and even a tarot reading. (I love giving readings! Tell me if it is too expensive.) I realize the common theme of my artwork is the sacred and grasping for the Divine. So, hopefully, that is coming through the artwork. If there is anything you want to see for sale, or think should be for sale, in there, let me know. I have many many greeting cards for sale in there, because I find them incredibly useful. But I think they might be too expensive? I don't know. It is hard to know what to charge. The blank cards cost me 1.50/card. I am also wondering if anyone is interested in an ATC swap. Not sure the theme, but sure would be cool.

ANYWAY, summer is here. Beezus' last day of pre-k was on the 15th. YAY, SCHOOL'S OUT!

I love having Beezus home. Lazy days of artwork and swimming. Popsicles and bathing suits all day long. My mother-in-law has been visiting, so everything has been slightly off schedule. Not in a bad way, just that we aren't in those long dog days of summer yet. We have been going out most days. We had a mini-heat wave last week, which kept us inside. We colored a lot. I love crayons and coloring. I have the tendency to shy away from coloring books, as a rule. I think a blank sheet of paper is a wonderful thing. But answering the questions, "What should I draw, Mama?" all coloring time is annoying too. So, I have a few coloring books. My favorite one, by far, is Taro Gomi's Doodle All Year. In fact, this year, I decided I was going to buy myself one and one for Beezus, so we each have a book to color. And we can color the same thing.

As I was thinking about this future buying spree, I thought about how much Bea loves for me to draw her pictures to color. So, I drew some and she colored them.

I draw pictures of her brother and Bea. Beezus swinging. Beezus baking. Anything they do, I draw. With crayon. On white paper. Then hand it off, and they color them. At Lakeshore, they sell little blank books. I bought a few for Beezus, because she is really into writing books right now. I think they are 1.59 a piece, or something like that. I grabbed one last week and made a coloring book.

None of these pictures are perfect. I made a ton of mistakes drawing, but Beezus LOVED it, because it is all about her. There are something like sixteen spreads. I drew scenes from our life, things they love to do, from summer to autumn to winter.

I basically drew these while the kids were coloring. It took me a week to make the book. Obviously, I wasn't dedicating time to it. Just doing it to color with the kids. Now they have their own coloring book. As you can see, Beezus started coloring it immediately, before I took pictures. The picture pages are great too, because you can do one-offs, copy them, and pull them out anytime you need a coloring page. Kids love to color the same picture over and over again. Or you can draw them as they are coloring and ask them to invent scenes with you. That is how the cupcake one came to be.

I like Beezus' choice to make her and her brother yellow, eating green cupcakes. Yuck.

Hope this gave you some ideas. Many of my drawings are terrible, but my children just love them. Remember that. And all of my drawings are simply fatter stick drawings. Remember that too.

dream catcher

Quite a long time ago now, I mentioned that we made a dream catcher for Beezus. I'm not the kind of person who ever owned a dream catcher. It's not that there is anything wrong with them, but there are certain Native American objects that new age people, I guess I include myself in that category, co-opted as part of their spirituality. Not that there is anything particularly wrong with that. I am a pluralist, and I believe that bringing in many spiritual practices is part of what makes American religion unique, and what works for our family. But I suppose the idea that people played at being Native American by hanging a dream catcher on a rearview mirror made me uncomfortable for a long time. Granted, I also lived in Arizona, which seems to be the place where dream catchers, turquoise, Kokopelli, and El Caminos go to die. And people come to dress up like cowboys and Indians. It is a strange place indeed.

At any rate, when Beezus began having nightmares and ending up in our bed a few months ago, I felt stumped on how to comfort her. Holding her all night was incredibly beautiful the first night. My baby still needs me. And I can give this to her. After that night, perhaps after a week, my numb arm, and bruised thighs needed a break. She needed a break. We both needed our sleep. I was plagued with nightmares and insomnia as a child. Being awake and afraid many nights is a terrible way to grow up. And I can only hold my children so long, they need to soothe themselves, and find their own path of turning their fears over to God, or the universe, or the angels, or the fairies, or whoever and whatever gives them comfort.

I did a little research for a ritual to help her manage her nightmares. I explain, which I always explain, how important sleep is to our health, how vital it is for our body to have its own space to rejuvenate. When I thought  about a dream catcher, I had to stop and wonder if this is reappropriating a Native ritual for something exploitative, but I came to a place of peace. This gift of the Lakota and Ojibwe people is this sacred object. We can use it to pretend we are Lakota, which we are not going to do, or we can use it for its intended purpose--to protect our sleeping children from nightmares. We treat it with deference as a sacred object.

The Ojibwe believed that the dreamcatchers filtered out the bad dreams, allowing only good dreams in through the hole, and slide down the feather into the child's dream. The bad dreams would evaporate in the light of the next day. Another way to see it is that the bad dreams drift up and through the hole, and the net keeps the good dreams around the child. Either way, it is supposed to allow only good dreams.

I made this object from simple instructions on the internet. There are a ton of places to find how-tos. I can't quite remember where I got the one I used. First thing we did was buy an embroidery hoop. Traditionally, dream catchers are made out of willow. The intention is for them to wither as the child grows and outgrows their need for a nightmare catcher. But I thought Beezus might like one that is pink. We also bought some pink, brown and white yarn for the web. The Chippewa think you should use red yarn. My photographs suck, I'm sorry.

To tie the yarn onto the hoop, and begin weaving.

You really need to cut a length of yarn, because you cannot weave your dream catcher with the ball. It is too big. So, first you tie, then you basically go under the hoop, over the top, and through the yarn hoop you just created. Leave some slack, but not too much. Try to leave an even amount of slack in each yarn hoop. Do this all the way around the hoop, when you get back to center, link to the first row.

Then you continue until you have gotten to the center. I used the last string to hang the feather, so it would have some weight. I haven't decided if that works or not.

We cut some other lengths of string to tie beads, and a feather on it. We told the story of the dream catcher to Beezus. We also made a dream pillow with lavender and rosemary.

Anyway, here is the final dream catcher. It hangs above her bed. Beatrice claims it helps her catch her bad dreams. Now, she just comes into bed in the middle of the night because she likes to be with everyone else, she says.

fish

This poor neglected blog. I have been doing some art and crafts in the last few weeks. Not quite sure why I haven't blogged about it. Well, actually, I am. I just had a ton of obligations in the last few weeks, and writing assignments and got tangled up in blue.

SO, I just finished my second blockprint of the elements. First element was air, represented by a gold feather, though I did some other prints of red on sheet music and stuff like that. But my idea is to do a series of the elements to be framed as a four panel piece. This is the element water.

I also printed on a blue sheet, which turned out really cool. Much cooler in person.

And the two together on block printing paper.

I printed most of these as cards, because I love using block prints for cards. I think for fire, I will do a cool lino cut of the sun. And the earth element is the hardest. Perhaps a tree? Any ideas? I also think the sun and the earth are going to be squares, rather than rectangle, so they are balanced when they are all together.


I saw one of those sign/saying things today on Facebook that said the Earth without Art is just Eh, which made me happy. So, Happy Arting!

natural soda

Though I am not a fan of caramel color, diet anything, or soda, in general, I love carbonation. Aqua gaseosa, or rather acqua gassata. I drink Pellegrino every night. Sometimes with lemon. Recently, I started reminiscing about Orangina and other natural sodas I used to sometimes pick up before work. And I started creating my own natural sodas to have with dinner.

The one I have adored recently is grapefruit soda with freshly squeezed grapefruit. My kids love grapefruit, but it is a high maintenance fruit to peel for them. I can't just send them off with a grapefruit. I have to peel it, then unsheath it from its membrane, then my children will eat it out of my hand as though they are farm animals and I have corn.

Because of this, I often have slightly wrinkled grapefruit that are overly juicy and therefore not preferable to feed to the children. So I juice them. I let them build into a substantial pile, then juice them in one fail swoop, keeping it in a jar and creating sodas at night with dinner. This morning, I was creating a grapefruit-mint soda which was amazing!

Our peppermint has come up already, so I just picked some fresh peppermint from the yard, (about four springs) and used two grapefruit. I wanted to save the rest of the juice for tonight/tomorrow. Fresh juice lasts a few days. I try to use it in two to three days. If you are making one soda, you need half a grapefruit and one sprig. You can use a citrus juicer, though I used my Omega, because I wanted to juice the mint with the grapefruit. I imagine without a juicer, you can chop your mint up, muddle it on the bottom of the glass with ice, like a mint julep. And you need a bottle of fizzy, or as I call it, fuzzy water. I use Pellegrino, because I like naturally occurring carbonation. Just make sure it is not tonic water, or club soda. No sugar added. And club soda has a higher sodium content. 

 Anyway, juice the hell out of two grapefruit and the mint.

Fill a glass with ice.

Fill the glass about a third filled with grapefruit-mint juice.

Then to the top with Pellegrino.

You can put a sprig of mint in, though I just chugged it. It was amazing. The mint neutralizes the real tartness of the grapefruit. It is awesome.

I create different natural sodas constantly. I sometimes use berries instead of ice. One of my favorite concoctions is Orange-Mango juice, frozen berries and Pellegrino. AMAZING! (That is what is in the bottom glass!)

grocery bags

My children don't have many chores. They are one and four, almost two and five. Their weekly chore is doing the recycling. Their daily chores are making their beds and clearing the dishes from the table. Thor needs to be supervised. He is, uh, ambitious, yes, rather excited about recycling. My husband supervised last week, and by supervise I mean of course brought the bin from outside to the inside, then walked away. After the children filled the bin, he put it back outside. Apparently, the children threw away all of our canvas bags for food shopping, a dust pan and brush, and the lid for our recycling bin.

That is soooo not the point of bringing your own canvas bags to the market. I even had produce bags in there. Four of our bags were ones that said "Yingst Family Market. Est. 2006." Our family name and the year we married. And the other three were ones that zipped into a convenient little pouch and the money they cost went to feed African children. Those were incredibly convenient too. I found one, being used for books, and a produce bag.

I used the grocery bag as a template for some new ones. I am terrible at sewing, as I am just learning the art of consistently pressure on my sewing pedal. And what all these dang stitches are for. My husband was embarrassed that he wasn't watching the children, so he said, Hey, there is a big piece of canvas in the garage. I found it a few years ago from the previous owners, I will wash it for you.

So, he did. And it was hella large. I didn't measure it, but I did use it for new bags.

There is virtually no overhead for this project. Just thread and manpower. I admit that sewing isn't particularly something I am good at. My seams are crooked, and uneven.  But here were my first two. They are a little too large, I think.

I covered an ugly seam with some fabric, and made it into a courier type bag because I often ride to the farmer's market in the summer, and wanted something that wouldn't open.

Then I made some smaller ones experimenting with stitches and seams.

I was using different seam techniques, and did one with a contrasting thread, but the problem is that I cannot sew straight as a matter of course, so the contrasting thread is very very visible. Or rather, my mistakes are VERY visible. So, I hit the fabric shop yesterday and found this cool native american ribbon and sewed it on top of the crappy seam, and it looks better. Much better. Going to do it on the other one too.

Crappy seam.

Awesome ribbon covering crappy seam.

I still have more than half my canvas left, so I might research how to make the ones with the zipper on them, and create a few of those. I also am going to figure out how to make produce bags, because those are damn useful.