Love Letters

I just have to say something about the holidays and mass shootings...

I know it's the holidays.  

I know I have gifts to wrap and cleaning to do to get ready for guests.

I know I'm supposed to be happy that my kids are going to be home with us (for at least a little bit of time), and I am. Really, I am.

But I can't stop thinking about all the grieving families in Newtown, Connecticut

and Aurora, Colorado

and Oak Creek, Wisconsin

and Minneapolis, Minnesotta

 

and that's just the families affected by mass shootings in the US

THIS YEAR

since the 20th of JULY!

 

The year 2011 brought more grief to more families:

October 14, 9 injured or killed in Seal Beach, California

September 6, 12 injured or killed in Carson City, Nevada

January 8, 19 injured or killed in Tuscon, Arizona (where Congresswoman Gabrielle Gifford was shot in the head... and we all thought that would be the galvanizing moment that would bring about change)! 

 

That doesn't include any of the families from these shootings in the USA:

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/07/mass-shootings-map?page=2

I'm not trying to depress anyone or ruin anyone's fun or joy in this holiday season.  I'm just trying to bring some perspective to a problem that has gone on far too long and as a mom, as a nurse, as a woman, as an American; I have to speak out and also ask "what can I do as one person to bring about change?"

 

After a 1996 Mass Shooting, Australia Enacted Strict Gun Laws. It Hasn't Had a Similar Massacre Since

This article, about the sweeping gun law changes in Australia seems to me to sum it all up perfectly... I don't see the need for further debate... I believe we need to do the exact same things Australia did... we can debate it after stricter gun laws are in place, until the cows come home or until the president of the NRA falls over dead, which ever comes first, I don't care!

 

 I implore our law makers to just DO SOMETHING and DO IT NOW!!!

 Not after Christmas, not after the new session starts in 2013,

 

JUST DO SOMETHING NOW!!!

 

 

PLEASE join me in continuing the conversation... write your representatives, write President Obama, write the NRA, write to anyone and everyone you think will listen and will care and will do something productive to keep this conversation going until we make significant, sweeping changes in our gun laws.  

 

We cannot allow this to happen again.  

No parent should ever have to bury a child. 

 

Crossroads...

I am unwittingly at a major crossroads in my life and I am sending out a request for positive energy from my friends and supporters in the "blogosphere"... I've been interviewing for a new position at the hospital, and I really, really, really want this job... I'm SO hopeful that I've been able to come across well in the interviews, with honesty and integrity and grace... during what can be a very intimidating experience!  

This is the front of the thank you note I made... since yesterday was Valentine's Day, I went out on a limb and used a heart on the front of this card.  I've always sent handwritten thank you notes after an interview, and this time I made my own card to send.  I sure hope the recipient likes it!  

Final Sketchbook Project 2012 covers, etc.

This is the final edition of the front cover of my Sketchbook Project 2012 book... I love the "Choose authenticity" arrow and I love the white strip down the right hand side that is embossed with "MADE WITH LOVE"... it's cut out of a Neenah paper give away piece from last year's XPEDX paper show.  I put a little Golden Titan Buff acrylic paint, mixed with a little bit of iridescent gold over the white so it wasn't quite so stark.

This is the back cover... I love the hand and the heart...

Here's a couple of close up sections of other pages I hadn't posted previously...

So what have you been up to that's fun and different from your usual work?  

More Sketchbook Project 2012 images...

 

Time is drawing nigh (boy, how often do you get to say "nigh"?!?) for me to put the Sketchbook 2012 project in the mail, in time for it to travel with all the other sketchbooks to various locales around the country.  I thought it might be fun to share some of the layouts with you... I hope you like them. (Keep in mind I may end up adding to some of the pages, tweaking them just a bit.) It has been a departure from my traditional "signature" style of collage, and it's really been fun.  

(BTW, clicking on the images will open them up in a larger window).  

A lot of the cut out images came from paper samples from an xpedx paper show, and were very carefully cut out (note Rocky Racoon's whiskers above left).  

Same with this page spread... the flowers on the left were cut out and applied over a very busy page that I made even busier by writing all over it, and on the page on the right.  How cute are the little bumble bee men on the top of the right hand page?

This spread is a little goofy, but it's meant to be humorous... the bike and the wording "slow your roll" were recycled from a bicycle catalog.  I prefer the spread on the right... I love the ampersand and the pink flower to the left of it.  

In this spread I love the porcupine, and trust me, he took forever to cut out!!!  Those quills are sharp! :D  

I absolutely LOVE paper and the quality of the samples from companies like Finch, Appleton, French and Domtar are superb!  Both the paper quality and the image quality are absolutely first rate in my opinion!

I love this spread... the face on the left is just so cool, with the colorful image of the world superimposed...   The flower on the right side was another of those really labor intensive cutting jobs!  

This is a bit of a silly layout... have you picked up on the repeating stripes that appear on a lot of the pages?  The stripes came from a printed catalogue from UofM's School of Public Health that was really nicely done.

more images placed in no particular place... just for fun!

The cougar images that appear here and there are from Domtar's line of papers called, appropriately so, "Cougar".  It is a gorgeous paper that takes ink just beautifully.

I really like the spread on the right page... the colors work really well together. The spread on the left made me think of the movie Babe, which is one of my all time favorites!  Babe... "a little pig goes a long way".

This is one busy spread... the two little old ladies in the bottom left are my great-grandmother and her sister... they reportedly loved nature so I put them outside! :D

next to last pages...

The back cover is on the left and the front cover is on the right. I think the  front cover in particular needs some love! Perhaps I'll have to make some sort of title for the book that mentions how much I love letters!

I hope if the traveling Sketchbook Project 2012 comes to a city near you that you'll take the time to go see the books!  

Sketchbook Project 2012

 

                                    

Is a really neat way of sharing your artwork with the world... here's some more information on the project, hosted by the  Brookly Art Library:

 

Join the community. The Sketchbook Project is a collaboration that unites a unique community of creative people from across the globe. Exchange tips and techniques, share visual inspiration or just make a new friend.

Share your story. The Sketchbook Project is an opportunity to express yourself to a global audience. Participants can upload a bio and share future projects, personal links and stories with other creative people.

The Digital Library travels far and wide. With hundreds of thousands of visitors and climbing, the Digital Library is an amazing platform to share your work with a wider audience. Choose to have your book professionally digitized and we'll give it a home on the Web.

The Brooklyn Art Library is your home. Our storefront exhibition space will archive your sketchbook and make it available to patrons from all over the world. We're open every day, so please come and visit us soon.

After the tour, all sketchbooks will enter into the permanent collection of The Brooklyn Art Library, where they will be barcoded and available for the public to view.

                                       

I thought I'd share preliminary pages from my sketchbook, which still needs a lot of work in order to be completed... (The large expanse of orange on the left is the inside of the cover of the journal)...

 

Here's the first page of my sketchbook... if you click on the image, it will open in a larger format...  This is in someways the most random collage work I've ever done... there really is no rhyme or reason for how it's put together or what images I chose to use... I simply used whatever appealed to me at the moment, given what I had on hand...

 Next spread:

This little book needs to be completed by the end of January, if I want it to go on tour with the rest of the journals, so I have to get busy...

I'll keep you informed of the progress...  It's a really neat project and I'm pretty excited to be a part of it... usually I'm scrambling to finish things two days before the deadline, but not this time! 

Now, go make something!

Are you Pinterested?

Are you familiar with ?

It is my current favorite way to explore the web and find tons of new things to look at and learn about... just what I need, I know... I'm already pretty scattered as far as things I love to do!

This is from my bulletin board "Four-legged friends" and it was originally posted at Gibson King.

How darling is that?!?

This little gem was originally posted at Your Daily Dose.  

Seriously, could this be any cuter?

And this very pretty and unusual advent calendar treatment is from Teresa Collins.

Really nicely done, right?!?

 

So these are just a few of the finds on Pinterest, a virtual bulletin board where you can post or "repin" images you find that you like.  It really is a terrific way to find beautiful images you might not otherwise happen upon, and you know how one thing can lead to another and to another and to another, right?  I just wish I'd been the one to come up with this outstanding idea!  

 

Now, go  something and have fun!

Such a nice visit!

Our son Tim was home this past weekend with his girlfriend, Caitlyn, and we had a blast seeing them! The photo below was taken at the Royal Oak Brewery, Saturday afternoon, during the Michigan vs. Purdue game.  In the background is a man who played the UM fight song after each time Michigan scored, on his BAGPIPES!!!

 Too cool! SUCH a nice visit!!!  

We played three hands of Gin Rummy, & Cait won, it was a tough loss for both Tim & I.

Bagpipe man, circled in red, below...

Fun find in downtown Royal Oak...

While walking Bubba the other evening, we spied this darling chalk drawing on the side of our Credit Union...

This is SO charming!  And I have no idea who did the work or why, but I sure do appreciate the talent! These two "bank customers" definitely brightened up my day!

Is handwriting becoming a lost art?

This past Friday, Detroit News columnist, Marney Rich Keenan, wrote in her column that not only do we not send handwritten letters any longer; but now children are not even being taught handwriting in school. Apparently, learning how to print neatly will be enough, and then students will move on to learn keyboarding. Handwriting will be reduced to rudimentary printing, and cursive writing will be a lost art.  

Ms. Keenan's article, Individuality is lost as art of handwriting dies, brings up a lot of hot issues for me, and it is well worth reading. I hope you'll take the time to read it.  As a calligrapher, it makes me even more concerned than I already was, that ours is an art that may be in peril; and how do we bring calligraphy to today's youth? If they don't even know how to write in cursive, will they have any interest in the tedious work of learning to write with a REALLY old fashioned pen that has to be dipped in ink?  It would be infinitely easier to just find a pleasing font, and layout whatever information needs to be conveyed on the computer, but it would no doubt be lifeless and boring (at least in my opinion).

I think like a lot of things, sending and receiving a hand written letter will become even more cherished, because it is so uncommon and so special.  Recall how sociologists worried that the computer would isolate us even more than we already were at the time? (I'm thinking that was around the time of the Y2K scare).  And now, we seem even more connected than ever, through blogs, emails, text messages and the like. Likewise, the DIY movement has been seen as an antidote to sitting and looking at sterile computer screens all day... we like to use our hands to produce things.  We like to make things.  And some of us like making cards.  

So, in an effort to let Ms. Keenan know the art of letter writing is not dead, I made her a card and made the envelope, and did my best to make it pretty.  It went in Saturday's mail and I hope she gets a kick out of receiving not only a handwritten letter, but a handmade one to boot!  

This is a simple watercolor piece I cut up and glued to the front of a 4x6" vellum cardstock. There's a kind of a shadow on the upper left front of the card, which is a stamp image done with Pearl-Ex Interference Gold, so it doesn't show up well on a scanner.  

This is the back of the envelope which is made out of recycled, painted Tyvek paper.

Here's the front of the envelope, done in an informal Uncial hand, with Keenan written with a silver metallic marker.  There are also tiny little silver dots in between the zip code numbers.

If you like making cards and sending letters, take the time to write to someone you've been thinking about lately, and let them know they've been on your mind.  Maybe you'll be lucky enough to receive a handwritten letter in return.  And if you can't think of anyone to write to, email me and we can be pen pals! 

Here are some links to some mail art sites that you might find interesting:

Mail-Art Across the World

Post Secret

Pushing the Envelopes

EMMA 

Digital Mail Art

Mail Me Art 

Now, GO MAKE SOMETHING!!! :D

These apps are terrific eye candy!!!

Hey there!  Long time, no see... and I apologize!!!  I've been working waaaaaaaay too hard lately, but that's another story for another day.  I came here today to show you my newest favorite iPhone apps... my newest way to waste a ton of time and garner new ideas at the same time!

These are the icons for a set of four apps from gawkerverse, and I am in love with these sites!  I personally enjoy the craftgawker and the dwellinggawker sites the most, but there's plenty of great stuff to look at on all four sites.  An android app is in the works, so hang on my android friends, help is on its way!!! 

I'm thinking there is a great need for graphicdesigngawker (kinda long, gonna have to work on that one), and perhaps calligraphygawker... hmmm... the possibilities are endless!!!  

Have fun and...          GO MAKE SOMETHING!!! :D