Creepy Coraline
As soon as I saw the movie, I decided to go as Coraline for Halloween. As you might remember, I am a big fan of Neil Gaiman, so it seemed appropriate.
Part of the reason for this is that it gave me a great excuse to dye my hair blue. For as long as I can remember, Halloween has been my favorite holiday, and that’s half because I love the spooky and half because I just love costumes. I take my costumes very seriously. When I ordered my yellow rain boots online, Amazon gave me this screen:
So it’s clear I’m not the only one who had the idea to dress as Coraline. But wigs are for the weak!
Anyway, I’ve dyed my hair blue before, and it did not go well. I followed online instructions rather than what was on the bottle, and ended up with crappy looking blue hair for about a day and a half… and seaweed green hair for another 6 months. In spite of past experience I ended up choosing the same dye (Raw Colors’ True Blue from Hot Topic) and this time I followed the instructions on the bottle.
It seems to have worked much better, but the dye gets everywhere.
I have a blue tub and a blue pillow case (inside out fortunately) and the only reason my face is no longer blue is because I scrubbed it off with Gojo. Note: when dying your hair, don’t bother using Vaseline on the outside of your ear, because they’re going to get dyed no matter how much you use. Put the Vaseline INSIDE your ears. This color seems to be fading to a dark teal color, and though I’m sure it will eventually get to that unlovely seaweed hue, I’m a bit more optimistic about the fading. We’ll see.*
Costumes are all about details, so I replayed the movie over and over to figure out what I needed. I was surprised at the lack of dragonfly barrettes (I found only a really crappy one, for $10 and decided it wasn’t worth it), so I thought I’d use the costume as an excuse to try my hand at some wire jewelry. Then I ran out of time.
Instead I dug through some of my old jewelry and found a dragonfly necklace from who knows when, and pinned it over a plain white barrette and called it close enough. I did manage to find a small purple messenger bag like the one Coraline carries when she’s outside. It’s not exactly the same color, and it’s got more to it then the one from the movie, but I liked it, and it looked like something Coraline would pick out if she had the option.
Of course the ultimate Coraline detail would be the spy-doll.
I don’t really sew, but this seemed like a good chance to try. I don’t think the doll appears at all in the book Coraline, but I’m all about costume details, and I thought the Coraline doll would add just the right bit of creepy.
I started off well enough, but once I stuffed it, the whole thing fell apart (not literally). The shape was completely wrong, and when I added in fabric paint it looked creepy… but in entirely the wrong ways. I also just didn’t leave enough time, so finally the night before Halloween I had to call the doll a fail. I left it on the table to dry, where it completely freaked out Matt when he got home from work, so, you know, I got SOME Halloween satisfaction from it.
This year was the first time I’ve been in town to celebrate Halloween with my friends in about five years. While I worked for the Vindicator, I ended up going to a student media conference every year and then last year, I was of course on our honeymoon. I wore my ceramic horns and Matt and I went reverse trick-or-treating on the train (we gave out candy) so that was lots of fun, but it’s not the full-costume Halloween I’ve missed. Overall I think Coraline was probably one of my more successful costumes, probably because it was extremely simple. It was also one of my more economical costumes since most of the elements were either something I could reuse, or things I already owned.
Plus, I still have blue hair, so OBVIOUSLY it’s a costume winner.
*The background in this photo comes from one of the tunnel scenes in Coraline. It is owned by whoever owns it (Henry Selick? Neil Gaiman? Not sure, but certainly not ME) and I have no idea whether it’s legal to use it in this context. If someone from Coraline land (no I don’t mean the OTHER world, I mean author, director, frothing lawyers etc.) wishes me to take it down, I will do so.
Make a Wedding
Today is Matt’s and my 1st anniversary.
Once we got home from the honeymoon last year I did a series of posts on the wedding, and one of the posts I wanted to do was on the crafty aspects. I never got around to it because it would make a long post and I was intimidated at the thought of all the how-to. I’m not going to make this a complete guide, but I thought it was worth at least highlighting all the things we and our friends made for the wedding, and share some of the cool photos I haven’t had a chance to share yet.
1. Flowers
I don’t like flowers. Wait. Let me reword that. I love flowers growing in the ground, or in pots, and I love plants of all kinds, but I’m no gardener, and I don’t really get the point of cutting flowers off their plants to die. I realize some flowers actually grow better if they’re cut, but the whole idea, especially for a wedding, sort of annoys me.
Initially I didn’t want flowers at all, but after thinking about it, I wondered if we could do some kind of steamerpunk-esque flowers, maybe with hinges, or clockwork moving parts, or… I got a little crazy in my imaginings. In fact I sort of let the whole idea go until I mentioned the idea to one of my Kims (we had two Kims and Maid of Honor Amy in the wedding) who said: “Ooh that will be so much fun, let’s do it.” Actually I’m not sure that’s how it happened, but she doesn’t read blogs so I figure I’m safe blaming her.
We took a trip to Pat Catan’s (like a cheaper version of Michaels) and just picked up a bunch of… parts. Cool metal looking buttons and beads, 3 colors of substantial foil, weird clock things, modeling clay, star sequins and all sorts of bits. We had a couple parties (by we, I mean Kim, who hosted everything) with Amy, both Kims, Jack and my brother Brian. After a bit of experimentation we gave up on the clay and mostly on the hinges. We did manage to get LED lights through the center of seven flowers on the bouquet, plus Matt’s button flower thing (whatever those are called, I refuse to try and spell it).
Making the flowers was not that bad, relatively speaking. I say this, because to be totally honest, Kim did most of the work. We rigged the bouquet up with a switch so I could turn the lights off, but the wiring got messed up somewhere and it didn’t work. We managed to “fix” it so that it was permanently on instead. I’m not sure when they eventually burned out, but when we got back from the honeymoon they were still burning bright.
There were three kinds of flowers: the lilies made from gold foil, the- I dunno- flower-flowers in copper foil, and the baby’s breath.
The baby’s breath was the easiest, though most tedious, and this is the only flower I ended up working on. All we did was take some of the thin jewelry wire, twist a couple silver or gold star confetti/sequins on the end, and twist it off. Eventually Kim discovered that it made more sense to do this seven or eight times per strand which saved a lot of time. This was somewhat unsatisfying, since the yield per time was pretty low, but they looked extremely cool. I think real baby’s breath is pretty useless stuff, but this shiny delicate spray was something else altogether. Kim made a more continuous strand of this as well, which she twisted in my hair.
The copper flowers were also pretty simple, and invented by the other Kim.
They cut copper foil into roughly flower shaped bits, folded away the sharp edges, and crinkled, then used the jewelry wire to thread on a textured silver button and twisted the whole thing onto cooking skewers.
The lilies were a bit more complicated as we wanted them to light up. Kim (the first Kim) used the gold and silver foil to cut out shapes the same way you would for paper flowers, but slightly more angular to keep with the metal look. As a plus, they kept their shape much easier than paper.
We wired up some long strands to the LED bulbs, gave them twisty stems from the thicker gauge wire, stuck them in the center of each flower, and sort of… sewed the whole thing together with the jewelry wire.
This was all far more complicated then it sounds, but it turned out amazingly beautiful. The guys got silver foil cala lily button flower things, with confetti/sequin deely-bob centers. These were much easier. Matt got another normal lily with copper foil, a light in the center, and the sole hinge, because we discovered that was just too much of a pain in the neck to do it for all the lilies. The bouquet took a CR2032 watch battery messily taped up in the center (we covered it with leather ribbon to make it pretty, and Matt’s took a very small watch battery (he doesn’t remember the serial number and I never knew it).
I was sort of shocked at how beautiful the flowers ended up; after buying three giant bags of STUFF I suddenly became positive that they were going to look like crappy cheesy foil things made of a bunch of… well, stuff. Instead they looked amazing. The end result of the flowers was AWESOME, in the literal sense, awe inspiring (I can say this since Kim made most of them).
We used the rest of the random craft bits to make charm bracelets for Amy, Kim, Kim and my sister-in-law Jen (just to clarify, she was not my sister-in-law at the time, being Matt’s sister) who was also in the wedding.
Which brings us to
2. Centerpieces
We wanted a non-traditional wedding. We got a priestess to marry us, I had henna (and am clearly not Indian, nor any other ethnicity that can claim it as heritage) Indian food, an Irish-punkrock band, had the ceremony AND reception in a zoo, and metal flowers we made ourselves. Also, I wore a blue dress, not white, and everyone else wore pretty much whatever they wanted.
So we clearly wanted to do things a little differently, and for that matter, not spend hours of our lives struggling with the decorations (we failed there, but oh well).
The wedding favors were just boxes of animal crackers in the old school Barnum boxes, which was possibly the easiest part of whole thing even with hand written labels (it ended up being easier than printing them believe it or not). The centerpieces presented a dilemma though.
There are ton of low cost, simple centerpieces that would have looked great, but I was unsure how much light there would be in the building, and thought local lights might be a good idea. We considered using those stupid dancing animals and creatures that hook up to ipods, hoping they’d light up and dance to the Irish music, but we weren’t sure we could make them work, and honestly they’d be small enough that they probably would have ended up looking kinda dumb in the middle of the table. The simplest (and probably least expensive) solution would have been a bunch of candles. I’ve seen a few arrangements online that are cheap and beautiful, but the zoo was kinda iffy about open flame, even in candles, and we didn’t feel like messing with it.
Soooo… I suggested light up trees. Because THAT’S easy.
Ikea had some cool LED lamps that inspired my idea, only they’re something like $60 which seemed like more than we wanted to pay, and are actually a bit larger then made any sense. So we collected various online guides to LED creations (couldn’t find any of the initial links we used, but guides are pretty easy to find) and got started. The construction was, in theory, simple. Wire frames (gauge about the same as a coat hanger, maybe a bit thicker) twisted together at the trunk, then branching out for the… branches. Long single strands of insulated wire with LEDs soldiered to the end, taped once around the connections, wound around the wire branches then taped again to hold them on the end.
Matt ordered some C battery holders, we got more switches (and these actually worked) we stuck in the batteries, taped the exposed wire with electrical tape, taped the whole battery mess with clear packing tape (to protect any unnoticed exposed parts) then stuck the whole thing in a glass cylinder and filled the whole thing with silver tinsel (which is why we needed to be so careful with the tape… the tinsel is actually made of metal and could cause some problems).
(BTW… worst definition EVER of cylinder: “Geometry. a surface or solid bounded by two parallel planes and generated by a straight line moving parallel to the given planes and tracing a curve bounded by the planes and lying in a plane perpendicular or oblique to the given planes.” from dictionary.com. I knew what a cylinder was before reading it, now I have no idea.)
I will say right off, that they looked fantastic on the tables at the zoo. There turned out to be plenty of light in the room, but they gave great mood lighting and may be the only centerpieces in the history of weddings that disappeared without the desperate couple urging guests, “please, take them!”
Matt and I managed to snag two (the one from our table was a bit different so I wanted one of the normal ones as well) but it took some effort to make sure we got them. I will also say that Jack and Kim once again came through like champs, letting us bury their home under wiring components for what might have been weeks.
The major thing I must say though, is that by the time we were almost finished with the second tree, we all wanted to scream, and if we hadn’t already paid money for all the electrical components (more than planned) and if we hadn’t been weeks away from the wedding, with no time really to come up with something better, we would have abandoned the whole thing to the depths of craft hell.
Oh yeah. Also. Our friends are amazing.
Anyway, Matt and I couldn’t really give up, and our friends were as mentioned, amazing, and stuck with us (possibly because it was the only way to get all the wiring crap out of their house, but still) so we sort of assembly lined it and eventually got all 10 trees finished (doesn’t sound like much, does it? You have NO idea).
I didn’t end up doing any of the wiring on this one either, instead I did all the tree structures (gloves and goggles both very necessary). With all the loose wires, batteries, and tape, the house looked like a bomb factory.
Each tree had 15 bulbs. We soldered all the positive wire ends together in one clump and the negative ends in another, then soldered them in place with the battery holders. As they were being put together, I started to worry that they all looked freakish, then decided I didn’t care, and eventually, realized they looked quite nice even if they didn’t quite look like my initial designs. I suppose the frustration was worth it, but if we’d known, we definitely would have chosen something easier.
Even so, I suppose as wedding work and wedding frustration and wedding decoration and wedding flowers goes, Matt and I got off pretty easy. I say weeks, but actually we got the trees done in just a few LONG sessions. Most of the wedding party chipped in to help with at least a bit, and Kim did most of the bouquet herself (she claims she enjoyed it, so I try not to feel too guilty). If we’d had ten friends (and maybe 5 soldiering irons) helping with the trees, we probably could have done it in a couple hours. As it was, the centerpieces ended up being the biggest headache of the whole wedding, so really, I guess I shouldn’t complain.
3. Other Bits
The flowers and trees were really the only wedding things we made ourselves (well that and our vows) but there were all sorts of other things provided by others.
When we mentioned we needed a broom (to jump over) for the ceremony, Kim (the other Kim) volunteered to make one, using broom grass and other plants from her garden. She tied everything together with cooper wire which sort of connected it with the flowers and centerpieces and all. My brother dug up a staff I’d picked up on a camping trip, left at his house and forgotten all about. The result was lovely, not quite dried, and is now hanging on our bedroom door (dry!) until we figure out where else we can put it. It looks very welcoming there, and we’d love to leave it where it is, but it gets a bit battered with all the opening and closing, so we should really put it somewhere safer soon.
I think I covered most of the other makers in posts last year, but just to re-mention… here goes:
There was the intricate henna for all the girls done by Lisa (also the person who married us) and then the gilding for me on the wedding day. Jeff, a talented local jeweler, custom made our rings from our ideas and his own, giving us something completely unique, and perfect for the two of us. Amy put together a surprisingly fun bridal shower (bridal showers are not my idea of fun) in spite of my inability to give her addresses until the very last minute. Kim (first Kim) helped me turn my dress from something shapeless to a surprisingly pretty roman looking thing (I’ve always said my dream wedding dress was one of the dresses Lucilla wears in Gladiator). The band we found (a month before the wedding!), the Mickey’s, kicked ass Irish rock style. The lady (owner I think) from Create-A-Cake listened patiently to my out there cake ideas, looked politely at unlikely sketches, turned them into something actually possible, and even seemed excited about it, which is always a plus. India Garden catered with super yummy Indian food and ended up taking over ALL the food and service details that Matt and I hadn’t really considered (table cloths, utensils, plates, servers, food warmers… they even provided plates for the cake) AND they gave me roses which was just amazingly sweet. Our family provided support and funding, which gave us the opportunity to have a dream wedding and honeymoon both. Finally, our friends John and Holly TOOK OVER the day-of planning, acting as guides for the guests and participants alike. Their generous intervention is probably all that saved our wedding from our lack of planning, which, I’ll be honest, was vast. They also found us our photographer, their daughter Willow, who did an amazing job.
I think that’s the real reason I wanted to post this today (and to be clear, I absolutely did NOT write it today, I’m busy celebrating with my husband). There are so many amazing people in our lives. I think of people I know with “frenemies” and I can’t imagine why. I read about people who cringe at their in-laws and am extremely grateful that I actually love mine. I guess everyone’s wedding is special to them, but I think ours will stay special to us, because it was about so many more people than just Matt and I. We have wonderful people to love and to love us, and we are both so thankful. Happy Anniversary.
*photos by Willow, Jack, Amy, etc.
Last year’s Wedding Posts:
Wild Wedding – Part 1 (posed photos)
Wild Wedding – Prepare (henna)
Wild Wedding – The Ceremony
Wild Wedding – Party Time
Celebrate (a VERY short honeymoon journal)
The Number is Sand
Nearly everyone’s seen those books, posters, etc: “How many is a million?” Actually, if you search Amazon for books on a million you’ll come up with a whole bunch on the same theme: trying to express the concept of million to children. It’s sort of a brilliant idea, but I’m not sure how possible it is.
In my high school world history class, our teacher stressed the significance of the invention of mathematics. Also the concept of zero. Both are extremely important, and probably represent huge moments in human achievement.
That they are important is inarguable (not true, everything can be debated given enough alcohol time, but never mind), but they’re also sort of inevitable. Simple math, numbers, counting: all came from trade. Business men needed a way to differentiate more from less, to assure that they were getting a reasonably equal worth. The origins of writing can be found in these clerical slips. Symbolic representation does not come from a human need for art or communication. It comes from accounting.
As significant and important as it is, I can’t help but think it must not have taken a huge leap of genius to start counting apples and oranges (or really probably dates and papayas since we are talking about the cradle of civilization here). You don’t really need the deep philosophy behind math to understand that 5 is more than 4. Babies and animals can identify these basic differences, because the concepts of less and more are far simpler than 4 and 5. Much (most?) of math comes down to this idea. Basic algebra is not that difficult, and honestly has more to do with logic than math. All I’m getting at here is that however much we may have pulled out our hair writing calculus proofs, math as an idea is pretty intuitive.
MATH though is more than numbers. Math is about theories, about twisting common sense, about measuring things that cannot be measured (imaginary numbers anyone?). Physics is a practical application of mathematics, and a theoretical physician can tell you exactly how practical physics is. Engineering is the practical application of physics, and even they come up with some whoopers.
The invention of zero falls firmly in the realms of math as a theory, beyond the tangible. If you’ve never heard of zilch, it’s a bit more of a stretch to conceive of it, but I still don’t think it’s particularly miraculous.
“0″ as a number might be hard to understand, but the concept of zero is pretty simple; it is nothing, it is absence, it has existed and been related to in all of human history because it is death. As I said, the application of zero is a bit more than “do not have” just as 5 is more than apples (dates). At some point though, it is not all that surprising that someone said: “I had five apples. Now I do not have them. Ergo: zero.” (All inventers must say ergo. Or possibly thenceforth.)
I say this not to understate the hugeness of inventing zero, is is merely to explain how small the understanding of zero is compared to the understanding of million.
I can have five apples. I can have zero oranges. But I guarantee I will never have a million apples or oranges. Even if I do, if you see what I mean.
To talk about millions is as effective as talking about infinity. No matter how long you look at a book with a million ants, or a million cars, or a million people, your brain, or at least MY brain, is incaple of comprehending any more than the trollish concept of “lots.” If you were to show me a photo with an infinite number of marbles (not possible I know) I would think: lots. A billion=lots. Million=lots. 100,000=lots. To be perfectly honest, 500=lots. I’m not sure what the numerical cuttoff is, but I suspect it’s a much lower number than we think. I certainly understand that a million is more than 500, but it ceases to be a question of “how many” and becomes a question of “how big.” The group of ants with a million is bigger than the group with 500, but as far as my brain’s ability to count is concerned, there is NO OTHER DIFFERENCE. I can know that there are more ants in the million group, but it is impossible for me to see it.
1,000,000 is a number, but it’s not a real number. It is absolutely possible for something to exist and not be real. If you want to count the grains of sand on a beach, the answer is not a number, the answer is: It’s sand. The number is sand. How many stars are there? Lots. The number of stars is stars. That is the nature of stars, that they are uncountable. The fact that there are a finite number of sand grains (or stars, though I have no idea if that number is finite) is completely irrelevant because even if a machine counter told you that there were 94,392,347,778 grains of sand, the answer would still be: It’s sand.*
I would guess that it was far easier to invent the number 1 million than the number 0, but there is such a huge difference between knowing and understanding. In these days of unfathomable deficits, idiotic house prices, and rising world population, million has become common as dirt, and is generally shuffled aside for words like billion and even trillion. Ultimately though, they might as well use the same number, because it’s all the same to me.
*The irony here is that in order to explain the concept of infinity, all you can do is compare it to a really big number, while in reality the closest we come to honestly understanding a really big number is infinity, which is actually not all that difficult to understand, and basically comes down to: +1 etc.
**Photos by me, Srqpix Bruno Girin and Sanyam Studios.
Pattern Recognition
This week’s Illustration Friday is “Pattern,” and I had an old piece that fit too well to resist. I’ve never posted it on this blog, but I posted it last year some time on Living in Space.
The title I gave this at the time was EmpTV. The style is much more simplistic than I usually do, playing more a comic-y effect, and appropriately, experimenting with pattern. I like the result, though I probably won’t repeat it often, since I’m sort of obsessed with line and detail. Another piece that I found a bit more interesting was this one:
The theme for this was “zoo,” can’t remember if it was for IF or something else. I was especially happy with the squiggly patterning in the bushes in the back, and this piece, far more than the TV zombie piece, ended up being a directional piece for my style. The blog logo for example, was absolutely drawn with this piece in mind.
Finally, since both these pieces are old, I figure I’ll give you a sketch I did this week: (don’t have a scanner, so a photo is the best I can do)
This was drawn yesterday at a Caribou in some Chicago suburb. Not exactly sure where we were, but you can rest assured, if there’s a Caribou in the area, Matt and I will find it.
Normally when I sketch in public I concentrate on people, but since I’d like to do more finished drawings involving cityscapes, industrial pieces, and in general, less organic subjects, I took the opportunity to make myself draw the whole room. It took a shift in perspective to say the least. I started with the fireplace, and though it was relatively easy to estimate the size on the page, I was surprised at how small everything was. I’m hoping this will also help my background staging in general illustration since one of the criticisms I’ve received with my artwork is that backgrounds are a bit stiff (I AGREE). You can see what I mean here:
This is part of a comic I created (ignore the implication that I finished it, I only inked 5 pages) called Messenger of the Gods, to show at Wizard World a few years ago. (More Messenger of the Gods pages in my Gallery)
I’m hoping if I keep practicing drawing settings they won’t feel so much like, well, backgrounds.
(Note RE: a couple other crits I got on these pieces – The character looks like a boy because… he is a boy… who happens to have long hair. The character looks like he has a black eye because he… wait for it… has a black eye.)
Day of Drawing
Haven’t had any time to come up with any deep topics to share today, I’ve been working on a project for someone. I thought maybe people might like to take a look at my process, though I don’t think it’s necessarily much different from the process most artists use.
One possible difference is my reliance on hard pencils. Most people sketch with a soft pencil becuase it’s easy to change and intended for dark, loose lines. I use a hard pencil from habit, when I’m being more diligent I use a softer pencil like I’m “supposed to” and I recognize that it actually does work better, but I just like the paler line.
Before I ink I like to put in as much detail with pencil as I can, even though I’m often disappointed at having to get rid of all the graphite lines. I love the look of the graphite lines along with the ink, but leaving the pencil is usually not an option because by the time I get there I’ve managed to smudge and overwork all the pencil.
I guess one option would be to add in the “sketch” lines after it’s been inked and erased, but that seems a little dishonest. Still, I guess art is all about visual tricks.
One of the weirder things about drawing is you end up with all these bizarre photos of yourself in strange poses. I occasionally use Poser, a software program, to give me anatomical dimensions, but sometimes a photo just works better, and often I’m the only model around. At least my current camera makes taking goofy self portraits easier.
I may post the finished drawing here later, I haven’t yet decided. I’d like to share, but this one might be sort of private.
Even if I don’t, there will be more drawings here soon. Once I finish re-writes on my novel, I’ll be spending much more time on sketching and finished artwork for my portfolio. I told my current advisor that I’d have those done by the end of January. When I actually think about that it sounds a little bit INSANE, which is why I try not to think about it. Actually I need to get quite a few things done by the end of January, and I’m really trying not to notice that it’s already the 22nd. Deadlines are necessary but painful. Sometimes I envy my cat.
Bazaar Bizarre – The Strange and the Fine
Just a few more artists I wanted to mention from Bazaar Bizarre last weekend, then I can go back to my normal tangential (as opposed to secant-al) ramblings.
In addition to the energetic collection of colorful crafts, there were many things at the Bazaar that were a bit off the beaten path. Or on the beaten path, as is the case of the beaten metal and wire (and beyond) jewelry of Valerie Tyler Designs, some of the more elegant jewelry I’ve seen. It’s very different from the kind of thing you could expect to find in a mall corner store, but every bit as fitting for a formal occasion.
The jewelry of Oh Melisa is maybe not quite so suited to a black tie event, but the steampunk-esk pieces still have a formal, classic look to them that I love. They were also one of my husband’s favorites of the day. We tried to give our wedding party a steampunk look (photos soon, I swear) so maybe it’s an emotional connection, but the jewelry and presentation have a stand alone beauty beyond any attachment we might give it.
Another favorite of Matt’s was the felted head from I Felt Like It. Actually, all he said was: “Oh wow, can we have a felted head like this for our house?” but I think that means he liked it. I also approve, and agreed that we’d have to find a place for one in the house of our future. Personally I think it would look great hanging below the gargoyle, but we might need to pick of a few other oddities to complete the look.
Somewhere else in our future house, we’ll have to find a place for some of these lamps from Kirkiture. They’ve got that lovely stark Japanese look to them, and the gentle way the light bleeds through them gives me a feeling of calm. I think they’d look great in a bedroom or library, or anywhere that’s meant to seem quiet. I expect we’ll have a bedroom before we have a library, but since we’re intending to turn most of our living space into a library-ish space eventually, we’ll have plenty of opportunities to fit in these cool wooden lamps.
Then we came across some wings made by Faerystone Creations that would make either a great part of a Halloween costume or a neat ceiling hanging.
Ok, honestly I’d buy some and wear them around all the time, but I’d be afraid they’d get broken. They remind me of the wings I saw sold at a Renn Faire this summer, but I don’t think they are made by the same people. These are simpler, and more stylized, and I think a bit more adventurous. Check out the green leaf wings and ice faery wings on their website… very unique and beautiful.
I would also like to mention Psycho Reindeer, the only booth where we actually ended up spending money (I got a kick-ass dead Pac-Man T-shirt and Matt got a shirt with a creepy owl), and Supernova Design which had some awesome pirate-y art, which is, you know, always good, and also lots of other pretty engraved work.
I’m glad I went this year. Even though I knew the disappointing sights last year were caused by our bad timing rather than the Bazaar itself, it put a crimp in the excitement leading up to this one. Now I am cured of that worry and looking forward to next year without reservation. Who knows, by then maybe I’ll have something of my own to contribute? I doubt it, but stranger things have happened.
Bazaar Bizarre – The Clever
Any modern craft show is going to have a huge number of creative people. Even people who stick with traditional crafts, where innovation is not the purpose, are pretty much guaranteed to have some artistic qualities, or else they wouldn’t be so interested in creating. With a show like Bazaar Bizarre though, the room is just packed with people who are pushing the boundaries of their crafts, always trying to be the first to come up the next new thing.
Often I’ll flip through some crafty magazine and come across something interesting, something I’ve never seen done before. Just once. Then two months later it’s suddenly in EVERY craft themed magazine. The same thing happens with new ideas in organizing and storage magazines. So I always love that first new moment, when you see something you’ve never seen before, just before it explodes into popular notice.
These nostalgic bags from ConTrive are a pretty good example of that feeling I think. In spite of the fact that those juice (I use juice in the loosest sense of the word) pouches are extremely durable, so durable they broke the straw half the time, it never would have occurred to me to turn them into an actual bag. If I were going to buy one I’d go with Capri Sun (not pictured) since that’s the kind of juice drink I preferred as a kid. They’re rather cute and definitely attention grabbing, and I suspect over the coming months we’ll see many more repurposed food packages like this, if it hasn’t started already. The only downside is I suspect these bags are no longer water tight.
Then there’s these plastic things from PhilosoPhrets. I love that they’re unusual enough that the creator felt the need to include a “what the heck are these?” sign in his display. The explanation didn’t quite cut it for me, but I suspect anyone musical would get it without any trouble. As I understand it, the boxes go outside of a device that adds weird effects (wammy?) to guitars.
Somehow, I don’t think these will catch on quite as quickly as the KoolAid bags, not because they’re less cool, (though possibly less Kool), but because the potential audience is much smaller. These boxes are beautiful, and actually I can see having them just as decoration, but I think for the most part the niche is limited to people who, you know, play guitar. Musicians who can afford luxuries like art. On the other hand, artistically painted guitars sell for a whole bunch of money, so who knows? Maybe the next Craft Magazine will be full of painted guitar effects enclosures.
Finally, my favorite new idea from the weekend, these bangle style bracelets from Sassyfrass. The bracelets are bent out of knitting needles.
I love the simplicity behind the idea, and the shiny metal finish used for most knitting needles is actually quite pretty and contemporary looking. I’m also impressed with the method used for displaying it, which immediately caught my eye.
It’s been a lot of fun to watch the craft movement over the last couple years: a combination of green attitudes wanting to reuse the old and the desire to create something new and different. Maybe eventually, I’ll move from spectator to participant, but for now I’m really enjoying the view from the sidelines.
Related: Bazaar Bizarre, Bazaar Bizarre – The Cute
Bazaar Bizarre – The Cute
For someone with my taste in “cute” the Bazaar Bizarre was probably the best place I could have looked. If I had children I’d be in trouble, and as it was I had to remind myself that I mostly don’t have room for stuffed animals and that we already did Christmas shopping for the nieces. There were plenty of other cute things around than stuffed critters: cool printed cards and artwork, shirts, fun hats, buttons and bags. Ultimately I was able to keep myself from buying anything for the simple reason that I have no money: less effective than you might imagine thanks to the era of plastic.
There were lots of great stuffed things, but my favorites were probably the ones at Caseybots. These were, for lack of a better word, surprisingly shaped. They aren’t your typical stuffed animals, many looked vaguely like Domo-kun only with more animalistic features. The best were the hats, a twist on the cute kid hats with cat ears and such. These are a bit like this only stranger. And far less embarrassing.
I found another group of stuffed animals I liked over at Chile Con Yarne. These were intriguing because of their cube like bodies and simple annotations. The animal style reminded me a bit of very fine cartooning: absolute minimalism in terms of detail, but still effective at expressing the object or emotion. I thought the crabs were especially effective. I wonder whether the artist spent a lot of time figuring out how best to communicate “crab,” and “zebra” or if the animals came out more or less naturally. Naturally in terms of artistic expression that is, not in terms of unexpected barnyard life lessons.
There was also an awful lot of cute wearable crafts at the Bazaar. I was instantly attracted to the felt accessories at Get Felt Up for example.
Now, I’d like to mention that I am generally suspicious of felt. I think this is the result of years of traumatic Girl Scout activities, but you’d think I’d be over it after seeing how many cool things you can do with felt that don’t, you know, suck. Not so. I think I was only able to get over my prejudice in this case because I was attracted to the art style before I even noticed that it was made of felt. Which just proves that felt is not to be trusted, but that’s a rant for another day. Anyway.
I think of this style of art as “twitter art” because it reminds me of the twitter birds (and whale), but I realize that’s not accurate. I just don’t have a better word for it. At any rate, I love the simplistic representative shapes and unexpected color combinations that characterize this style. A lot of the artwork found at the Bazaar could probably fit into this category, but I think these felt headbands and pins and such were the purest example.
There were also some rather good T-shirts from SquidFire, some of which were done in a similar style only with a tad more detail. I love the T-shirt with all the fish swirling across it and, of course, you can never go wrong with cephalopods. I’m also a fan of the non-twitter style shirts, that are a bit more cartoony or line heavy. Actually the more time I spend on the SquidFire website the more I find that I like, so I’m going to stop looking before I buy something. These shirts remind me of the cool things that can be done within printmaking, and I wish I’d taken a few more classes. At least silk screening is not completely out of the question. While it’s still pretty process heavy, it’s not so bad in the literally heavy sense: meaning it doesn’t necessarily require machines that weigh more than my car. I’ve also seen tutorials on making a mini silk screening studio online and in Craft, so who knows, maybe some day I’ll get around to giving it a try. Honestly though, my artwork probably isn’t all that well suited to T-shirts.
Last but not least in the wearables department were some very sweet rompers from Big Pink Heart. Baby clothes are sort of predetermined to be cute (I think that’s in Calvin’s doctrine somewhere) and the artwork on the rompers was a lovely collage style that reminded me of some of my favorite children’s books, but what really caught my attention was the use of material. Sure, the owls were extremely cute, but seriously, babies don’t care. What babies DO care about though is texture, and these rompers were all about texture. It’s imposible to see the variation just from looking at a photo, but there all sorts of different textile experiences sewn into these garmets, something that would never have occured to me to do. I love the idea of getting a baby something to wear that the baby can actually appreciate as much as Mom.
Finally, being a 2 dimentional aritst myself, it seems fitting to end with a mention of some of the great flat art I saw at Bazaar Bizarre this weekend. Oddball Press is a company I’m pretty sure I’ve seen some of before, and I loved them just as much the second time as the first. I didn’t get a photo because a) there were so many people crowded around their booth I couldn’t get a good shot and b) I knew that style of art wouldn’t show up well on my pathetic Chocolate camera (see rant from yesterday) but it’s well worth checking out. Their designs range from the simple and elegant (if a litter box can be considered elegant) to super high detailed beauty.
The nice thing about this kind of craft show is that “cute” doesn’t really mean the same thing that it does elsewhere. Normally, cute is something I avoid, but here I’m not afraid of it. I even seek it out.
Related: Bazaar Bizarre, Bazaar Bizarre – The Clever
Bazaar Bizarre
For the last couple years, I’ll hear something about the Bazaar Bizarre a couple months before it comes to Cleveland, and I’ll be all excited about it, then promptly forget all about it. This actually works out pretty well because Matt does NOT forget about it, and he gets to surprise me by taking me to there. That’s what we did this Saturday.
The Bazaar Bizarre is a collection of artists and crafters of the modern rather than granny persuasion. You’ll get a lot of knitters, but among the thick striped scarves, a six armed sweater wouldn’t be out of place. These are the awesome sort of crafts you see in Craft Magazine, very creative and surprising.
Last year was a little disappointing, not because of the crafters present, but because we didn’t get there until the last few hours of the show/sale. There were only about ten booths left, and those were mostly out of merchandise, a few were partially packed up. This year, Matt got us there on the second day, early on, while the Bazaar was full in swing.
These are fun people, happy to chat about their artwork. Some of them were making more to sell as they sat there, I even got to see one woman spinning yarn with a drop spindle. By the way, her hair is not actually purple as it appears in the photo, I just got a little bit carried away with Photoshop. She makes handspun yarns (obviously) as well as hats and other knitty things. I think her booth was Cosy Knits Literally, but I’m not positive. I took everyone’s card whose photo I took, but I got them all mixed up.
I’ll probably spend a couple days talking about some of the cool things I saw, and with any luck the photos will do a better job of describing the kind of craft than I am. Today I just want to take a look at some of the more innovative presentations I came across. I included the lady from Cosy Knits because I think one of the best things a visual aritst, whether they be a knitter or a comic book inker, can do to attract buyers is include them in the process (and also because she had some pretty rocking stuff).
Some of the other things I saw in terms of presentation were more conscious. I think my number 1 favorite booth style was the one that used books as jewelry stands. Even if I hadn’t liked the neat vintage style items I would have had to stop and look.
This is especially important for this one where the wares are so small: it’s easy for them to get lost in the sea of brightly colored crafts. Among the books, an old camera and other old items that look like they came either from a flea market or a neo-victorian novel add to this little moment of atmosphere. The dainty little necklaces and such fit perfectly, and the smart layout made me stop and examine them more closely. Personal favorite: the green frame pendant seen above on the left. I think the book booth belonged to Oceanne Jewelry Design & Creative Parties, but, again, I can’t be sure I haven’t mixed up the cards.
Another booth going for a sort of vintage feel was (I’m almost positive about this one) Chleo Dee’s. Her booth didn’t have quite so cohesive a look as the book booth, but it works somehow. It’s half vintage, with merchandise hanging in old trunks laid on their sides. In the center of the table she made little “houses” for her artwork (mostly, as far as I saw, stuffed squid) that looked a bit like the mangers that might come with a nicer nativity set. It’s a combo that has no logical reason to work visually, but somehow it does. This was one of the first booths I noticed when I came into the room, and believe me, that’s a hard feat to accomplish among the chaos.
Some of the other nice booth setups had a more tranquil feel. The second booth I noticed was The Oak Leaves, which was set a ways away from most of the other booths for some reason. This was probably a mixed blessing since on one hand it really stood out against the blank space behind it, but on the other hand, most of the crowd gravitated toward the denser craft space.
I loved the natural zen feel of this booth, which was mostly created by the products themselves, but the use of natural wooden shelving was effective without disrupting the calm. My photo doesn’t do it justice, you should visit her site to see some of the pieces up close. The dolls were the creepy cute kind I love, but the bottled ecosystems were the real curiosity. I don’t see any dolls on her website so I’m not sure she makes them (she could have been lending space to a crafty friend) but the combination is very effective: the handmade organic next to the seemingly free generating organic.
In a more formal style, Valerie Tyler Designs managed a rather elegant booth among the more handmade looking crafts. Again, my photo doesn’t really do it justice (hey, YOU try getting quality photos with the crappy phone camera on the chocolate, and with icky fluorescent lighting no less, plus I have to freaking email myself every photo separately because syncing is a pain in the- oh I so can’t wait to get an iphone). The jewelry is beautiful stuff, which I’ll talk about more later this week. The use of smooth rocks and black cloth gives it an extremely sophisticated feel, I think more so than any other booth I saw.
Clearly, I was far more impressed this year than last year, and I’d like to take the time to point out my favorite artists of the year, so I’ll probably be talking about this for a few days at least. Most of the artists were great, but some were fun, or weird, or just amazing enough to shine.
Related: Bazaar Bizarre – The Cute, Bazaar Bizarre – The Clever
Getting it Together
I think I’ve finally got everything switched over to WordPress book.
Currently I am using the “Emptiness” theme, which I like quite a lot, but I need to tweak it a little to make it work for me. One of the first things I’d like to get done is a good header image. In this theme (as you can probably see) the header image is actually placed below the title and subtitle, but I’d like to have an image that takes up both spaces, and possibly extends to either side. I’m not sure, I’ll have to play with it some to see what works. I’m not even convinced that I want the image to hang down that way. The header image will be hand drawn, pen & ink with possibly some watercolor splashed in.
I also need to figure out how I want to incorporate ads. In all likelihood this will involve adding in an additional sidebar, but I’m worried that this will make the site too crowded. Something to be careful of anyway. As for the stupid pink default icon that WordPress is currently using as my image, I have two options. The easiest would be to just get rid of it: since I’m the only blog author I really don’t need a photo next to every post. The other possibility, and the one I prefer, is to hack it so that instead of displaying an author avitar, the image responds to the category or tag for each post. Not sure whether that is possible, but it’s worth a try.
The biggest challenge, but for the moment the least critical, is figuring out how to best incorporate my blog into my overall website. My website is currently a gallery, but eventually I’d like it to also have some way of displaying my writing, and I’ll probably add on webcomics and other features as I go. Much like my blogging, my life goals seem to be a mess of unconnected ends that I somehow need to weave together. I guess it will be impossible until the day I die to tell whether I’ve achieved that, but fortunately, making a cohesive website is somewhat more conceivable.
