NOT ENOUGH TIME IN THE DAY

September 12th, 2011

Between work and school, I’ve utterly failed at keeping up with crafts and blogging. Been slowly chipping away at that table whenever I have a free afternoon, which has only been twice since school started. As much as I miss my free time, I still am glad to be doing what I’m doing.

I haven’t forgotten to take pictures of the table process, so once it’s done I’ll make a grand post. I will be resigning as a blogger until then, and simultaneously resigning myself to the fact that all of my spare moments will be spent either cleaning a store that sells supplies I wish I had time to use, or reading about long ago, far away lands and churning out papers. Good times!

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UPCOMING CRAFTS

August 16th, 2011

Between July 31 and August 10, I have no excuse for not crafting or posting. I took a break from everything, and during that time I managed to hurt my back. I can’t even tell you what else I did during that week, because it really was absolutely nothing. How do you hurt your back doing nothing?

August 10th through yesterday, I was on another vacation. Went to DC with the boys and limped around. It was a really fun trip, despite a wheelchair ride through the Natural History Museum and rain at the National Zoo. On the last day, I caught a cold. Now I have a hurt back and a cold. Wouldn’t undo any of it though! It was nice to spend some time with Dad and my brothers.

I started a new part-time job today at Michael’s. Hooray for craft supplies! Next week school starts back up. This will be the big test: I know I will still have time to make things, but will I still have time to blog about them too? I’m feeling optimistic.

Check back for upcoming crafts after I get over these back/cold issues, including refinishing a small end table (found in the recently cut bushes beside the house!).

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I’M NOT RESTLESS, I LIKE TO FIX PROBLEMS.

July 31st, 2011

AH! I have three days to account for:

July 28th: I made one pair of earrings. That’s all. Oh well. They’ll be up on Etsy soon.
Earrings
Hey look, I used those spring beads I made.

July 29th: I started the daunting task of recording all of the Robeson County Pittmans in a spreadsheet, rather than just the ones I think I’m related to. I’m attempting to map a web of all of the fathers and sons so that I can see if/where/how my Pittmans are outliers. (Of course my ancestors were the black sheep that aren’t listed on any wills, etc.) I’ve already made a few connections and discoveries that I didn’t realize before, just because it was too much information to look at. Having all of the households and locations side by side is much easier to interpret. I started with 1790 and ended half-way through 1880. It sounds like I’ve gotten a lot done, but the Pittmans increase exponentially in every generation, the censuses online go through 1930, and this is just one county. Yeah, I’ll pick up again another day. Maybe I’ll start on another county, since the earlier years have so fewer people. One day, I’ll know everything about all of the Pittmans.

census
Every red triangle is a comment containing members of the household. Red triangles on the name indicates family relationships (father/mother).

July 30th: I cleaned the house and rearranged furniture. I measured the rooms, windows, and doorways and mapped them to scale on graph paper. Then I measured all of our furniture and made little “paper dolls” so that I could see if what I wanted to do would work without having to go through the trouble of moving stuff if it wouldn’t.
Bedroom

I looked around at the things that have been sightly bugging me: 1. Our “china cabinet” (which is just a bookshelf fitted with wine glass holders in the top) was too close to the dining room table and felt cramped. 2. A tall bookshelf placed in a way that the front door doesn’t fully open. 3. One dresser is too close to the foot of the bed. There are a few more minor things, but those were the big problems.

I fixed problem 1 yesterday.
BEFORE

AFTER

Sooooo much better.

Today I’ll be playing paper dolls and working on problems 2-3.

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THE FALLBACK

July 27th, 2011

Yesterday was a nothing day. I got absorbed into The Kennedys miniseries streaming on Netflix. Whenever Netflix happens, not much else does.

But, while I was watching, I made a bunch of these little spring beads:

springs

Not sure what I’ll do with those yet, but they’re fun to make. You just take a pair of small round needle nosed pliers (sorry, don’t know what to call them. They’re in the beading section of any craft store.), and carefully wrap wire around the tip. Pinch them together at the end, and you get these little things. Something cool will come out of them one day. Just don’t know what yet.

So, yesterday was kind of minimal in regards to crafting.

Today, I went for the old failsafe: zipper pouches. I made another 30′s style embroidered change purse.

moneyman

moneyman open

It’s not as good as the piggy, but I still kind of like it. :)

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KIDS CAN DESIGN STUFF

July 25th, 2011

Oy, today was a lot of running around… DMV, post office, inspection… And back to the DMV tomorrow. And probably back to the post office, too. But it wasn’t so crazy that I couldn’t make anything. :)

My niece recently got her ears pierced. She is also a fashion diva. I was not so fashionable at 7, but everything she has matches and she’s very conscious about it. It’s adorable.

She’s going to be in her mom’s wedding in October (so exciting!) and wanted a pair of custom earrings. I had her draw a picture of what she wants and told her I would make them. Not only is she good at picking out her outfits, she is apparently good at designing jewelry. Here’s her drawing, and she requested pearl:

Drawing

And here they are assembled:

Pearl flower earrings

They’re really cute! I think I could probably make a business solely on making little girls’ jewelry fantasies come true. Anybody: Feel free to e-mail a drawing to joy(at)joysephine(dot)com with the subject “Kid’s Earrings” and I’m sure everyone involved will have a lot of fun.

More… while we were visiting family at the beach, we went to the aquarium. My niece was wearing a cute little watermelon dress and had a watermelon purse and sunglasses. I think her hairbow was even watermelon themed… the only thing missing was the earrings. So, I went out and bought some polymer clay (Half off!! Woo!!) and made up these little things:

Watermelon earrings

Now she can watermelon it up to her heart’s content. I may take them apart and spray them with a shiny coat before mailing them off, but I just haven’t decided yet…

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MORE FRAMING

July 15th, 2011

Did some more framing today, but that’s about all. I’m going to take a craft break because we’re going on vacation. Woohoo! Beach!

So, when I framed some of my ancestors yesterday, I ended up taking down some of the husband’s photography. I didn’t really like that, so I had to find a new place to put them.

For several years, I’ve had a bunch of art from different people hanging up. Most of these were drawn on sketching paper, or even regular computer paper, so this damp little mountain house was starting to wrinkle them. Better to take them down for now…

What did I replace?

My personalized Krusty the Clown that David Silverman offered to draw for me. (I didn’t even ask!)
Krusty

The one Dad used as wrapping paper for Lindel’s cast iron skillet:
Skillet

A couple from my amazingly talented brother:
Jon

The artwork that cartoonist Roy Doty used to wrap my wedding present: (This one’s triple cool because a) he’s one of dad’s favorite cartoonists, b) it’s a neat wedding souvenir, and c) it’s also a caricature of my dad!)
Wedding
(Seriously, all cartoonists must wrap presents with incredible works of art…)

And the rest were various things that I had drawn. Most of them are in the art portfolio link.

One day I’ll reframe those, but I’d rather keep them protected from the cool, wet woodsy air.

So, I moved Lindel’s photography, and it looks so much better than it did before.

framed flowers

Wall

So… That’s all.

Sunday morning I’ll be off to the opposite end of the state for a week. Enjoy your second-to-last week of July!

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FRAMING OLD PHOTOS

July 14th, 2011

I started today with sewing, but quickly found out I wasn’t in the mood for sewing. I got nothing.

Instead, I spent some time looking through old photos. I needed to mail some to my grandmother, so I picked out a bunch for her, a bunch for me, and headed out to get prints. I decided my picture frames at home needed to change out, so for now I’m going with old family photos.

The Pittmans:
Pittman

Grandparents:
Merry and Jack

Smith and Strickland:
Smith Strickland

The Ratcliffes:
Ratcliffe

(Together in a small hallway):
Hallway

Thomas, Cross, and Yarborough:
Thomas Yarborough Avent

Strickland (Plus a stained glass my grandmother did!):
Strickland

Sorrell:
Sorrell

(That whole corner, plus a painting Lindel did!):
Corner

Strickland:
Lillie

I love old pictures.

Update: I forgot to photograph this little corner yesterday:

little antique frames

Floating books and miniature antiques. Cute. :)

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ALTERED BOOK PT 2

July 14th, 2011

This altered book turned out SO MUCH BETTER than the last one. I’m very happy with it…

Ant book

ants

ants

one ant

Now just gotta figure out how you price something like this…. Hmmm…

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ALTERED BOOKS

July 13th, 2011

I took an art class in the spring. It was more fun than I expected, considering it was a very basic class and I was among 19-year-olds who were raised victims of budget cuts to public school arts. For many of them, it was the first art class they’d ever taken. For me, it was the first formal art class I’d had in about 14 years. It was nice to play with new mediums and add a few new techniques to my repertoire.

One project we did in that class was an altered book. Most of the other students just took a book and turned it into some sort of journal or scrapbook, which is okay, but not really the point of the project. The things you can do with a book as a canvas are almost limitless, so why limit yourself to transforming one book into another book? I say make sculpture.

I started one that contained pictures of all of my ancestors. I glued about twenty pages together and cut out the outline of each person on a little window, so that the most recent ancestors were in the foreground and the most distant relatives were in the background, forming a 3-D crowd. In this version, you can turn each “page” (about 20 pages), and find out information about each relative. I found that this one was taking a lot of time and I wouldn’t finish before the project deadline, so I made another. I’ll keep working on the first one just for myself.

The second one was one solid piece. And it blew everyone away. (Including the teacher, because she knew I had already done one. She was so impressed that I made two that she made me tell the whole class and explain why I made two.)

Ancestry altered book

Ancestry altered book depth

Altering a book is a completely zen project. It takes patience and a strong vision of what you want. I get SO EXCITED when I finally realize what I need to do to a certain book. Plus, you can find books for about twenty cents at a thrift store. Way to go, cheap art!

Here’s the one I made today… it was a 1962 book about Chemistry for kids.

Total

angle

Hug!
(HUG)
Hanging

So here’s the big question. If I were to put this on Etsy, how much should I charge?

PS- I already started another book project, and even though I’m not very far along, I can tell it’s going to put these two to shame. Can’t wait to finish and share it!

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OOPS

July 12th, 2011

Oops no pictures for today.

I didn’t do nothing. By that, I mean I did do something, but I have no pictures.

I spent a little while making calendar pages in CorelDRAW for a future book project. And I started said book, but I think two days of bookbinding in a row was a lofty little goal. I’ll put it aside and finish it another time… So. I didn’t do nothing. But no pictures. Sorry!

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