"Magic Yarn"

For once, a break from painting!  In art class we recently spent two evenings in small groups making a stop-motion video. My group consisted of just three of us, and we were all relieved to find that we easily worked well together.  The assignment was "Chaos To Order," to see how adding the component of time affects a 2-dimensional work of art.

It took approximately 7 hours for the three of us to make this video. It is a total of about 515 images!  Special thanks to Cydney and Jaque.  :)

Memory (Game)

Over the weekend, my friend Ambra was in town, visiting from New York!  She appears on this blog from time to time, and in fact you can see our last art collaboration (in 2009) here.  This time, we were inspired by these stamps (I bought them long ago and love them so much they are forever displayed in my studio):

So we thought we would make a set of Memory cards for her daughter Sonia, who is six!  Here is us just finishing the base for the front of the cards. 

Then we flipped it over to make a pretty pattern on the back, one that wouldn't give away what was on the other side. This took a lot of time, but with two people working on it over the course of an afternoon (and with plenty of talk to keep us entertained), it wasn't as tedious as it could have been.

Once it was dry, we glossed it and cut it up into small squares...

... and painted fruit designs on them, two by two.  We even asked Sonia (via Skype) for suggestions on which fruits to paint. That is how we got a tomato and an avocado in there.

Wanna play a round with us?

Portfolio

If you take an art class, at some point you have to turn in your body of work, which is called your portfolio. Of course, to keep it all together, you have to put it in a large folder of some type, also called a portfolio!  This second type of portfolio is something you can buy at the store for too much money and it is usually not very interesting-looking.  Or you can buy the components and make one that is MUCH more attractive!  Thank goodness for sewing skills!!

I bought foam core at the art store, big enough to contain my giant multi-media paper. Then I used three types of fabric for the cover: the green/red stuff is outdoor decorative fabric (like for patio furniture). The black on the external side is canvas. The black on the inside is flannel, which makes for a luxurious, professional backdrop for the artwork one then sees within!

Over a year ago, I ordered $100 worth of black webbing from a wholesaler (for bike bands) and so have enough to last me a lifetime.  There is a tie on each of three sides, made of thinner, non-slippery black webbing.

You'll notice in photo 1 that there are two black bits sticking up on the top. If you look closely, you'll see there are D-rings attached to those. I intend to make a shoulder strap for this to make it easier to carry, but before I can do that I have to go back to Joann Fabrics (for the 27th time in three weeks) to buy clips.

Most of it is machine-stitched to create two big pockets to slide the foam core into, then I used hot glue and some hand-stitching to close up the one long edge.

I was thinking of creating a tutorial for this. What do you think?  I also thought I could make them and sell them on Etsy, but shipping might be troublesome. Opinions?

I think my portfolio will be the most attractive one on the table when we turn our portfolios in next week!