So! Remember that sewing machine I got for my birthday - LAST YEAR!? Well I finally, finally got around to getting it out and learning how to operate it (in the most basic of basic ways!) In the past year there's seriously just been NO time, and even LESS space for me to go about learning to sew on this thing - especially as I am one of those spreader-outter, leave-it-in-place-while-working-on-it-until-it-takes-over-the-kitchen-table/diningroom-kidsplayroom,etcetc type of artist-crafter. But I just finally decided that the only way I was going to learn to use it was to assign myself a project that needed doing, and that had a specific purpose and more importantly, a DEADLINE.
That project turned out to be my volunteering to sew a batch of beanbags to be used during one of the games at our 5th Grade end-of-year class party. (see previous post regarding THAT li'l shindig ...) I bought the supercute fabric from Jeanelle at Charmpacks and a big bagga beans (pintos, if you really need that info), looked up a basic "how to sew a beanbag" tutorial online - and awaayyyyy I went! I did sew a test bag first outta some scrap fabric I had here (the yella one, there on the bottom), which came out well enough that I was comfortable moving on to the good fabric - Oh, precut squares, how I adore thee! So no, they aren't the neatest most perfect beanbags ever (hehem, do NOT look too closely at those top seam edges, thennkyewww.), but I made them my very own self, and completed (one of) my promised projects for the games committee, AND learned how to sew a little bit on my long-lusted after sewing machine. Whatta proud, proud day for me :D
'Cept now of course my kitchen table is filled with piles of fabrics and wads of thread and scissors and a rather nifty appliance that most certainly does NOT belong in the kitchen ... Welp! SEW WHUT! Nobody ever said eating AT a table was the law or nothin'! :D
Later, ya'll - I got about a million things to do still (wanna help me paint some 6' tall saguaro cactuses? Meet me in the garage!)
~ gem ~
a mixedmedia dabbler's artistic escapades
Showing posts with label school. Show all posts
Showing posts with label school. Show all posts
Saturday, May 24, 2008
Monday, February 4, 2008
Ok, Who Hit the Hyperspeed Button
on 2008? As in: How in The Hell is it already February!?
I seriously cannot deal if this is how fast the year is going to go by, and me having not remembered any of it passing. It just doesn't feel right, at all. An' I don' like it, nope!
BUT. I have managed to finish up a few things - I finally! mailed a long overdue care package to a fellow artfriend from Nness who needed cheering up ... My painted BG papers and rubberstamp images for a Yahoo group swap (that were due in Nov. Yeah, I'm a leeeetle behind shedju-uhl) are ready, but I still have to complete some decos that need to mail with them. Sigh.
I still owe a "PIF" from this very blog, that I said would be going out last month - not ready. I have a new series of zetti-inspired creepy eye collages that are totally stalled about a quarter way in since I've had no time to work on them. I need to do a major artroom cleanout, or I will never even find them - or anything else I need to work on. I owe my son a long-promised workday of listing some stuff on eBay, or at least a how-to lesson so he can do it himself. I have not taken and thusly, not uploaded, any new pics to Flick'r in soooo lonnng (and that makes me soooo sad) -and- I have three major family birthdays coming up at the end of the month - all within about a week of each other! plus I'm heading up the ice cream fundraiser at my youngest's school which puts me in the cafeteria every Friday during all lunches. (Yeah, WHAT was I thinking when I signed on for THAT? Answer: I clearly WASN'T.) eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.
In the good news column: I HAVE sold three prints of my collages: two on eBay, one on Etsy (my 1st ever Etsy sale, w00t!) - and intend to get some new ones listed really soon, the plan is to start focusing more on Etsy listings since eBay has disappointed me too often of late.
Thats enough updatey for this month - I meeeean, today ;)
See ya next time, and hopefully sooner rather than later!
~ gem ~
ETA: Almost forgot! My mom got me a Roomba for Christmas and while I used to look at them and smirk thinking "yeah, riiight" - Oh.My.God. if itsn't the best thing ever, I lovvvve it! It's been sweeping up my tile floors the whole time I've been working up this post. All hail ROOMBAAAAA! Shweeeeee!
I seriously cannot deal if this is how fast the year is going to go by, and me having not remembered any of it passing. It just doesn't feel right, at all. An' I don' like it, nope!
BUT. I have managed to finish up a few things - I finally! mailed a long overdue care package to a fellow artfriend from Nness who needed cheering up ... My painted BG papers and rubberstamp images for a Yahoo group swap (that were due in Nov. Yeah, I'm a leeeetle behind shedju-uhl) are ready, but I still have to complete some decos that need to mail with them. Sigh.
I still owe a "PIF" from this very blog, that I said would be going out last month - not ready. I have a new series of zetti-inspired creepy eye collages that are totally stalled about a quarter way in since I've had no time to work on them. I need to do a major artroom cleanout, or I will never even find them - or anything else I need to work on. I owe my son a long-promised workday of listing some stuff on eBay, or at least a how-to lesson so he can do it himself. I have not taken and thusly, not uploaded, any new pics to Flick'r in soooo lonnng (and that makes me soooo sad) -and- I have three major family birthdays coming up at the end of the month - all within about a week of each other! plus I'm heading up the ice cream fundraiser at my youngest's school which puts me in the cafeteria every Friday during all lunches. (Yeah, WHAT was I thinking when I signed on for THAT? Answer: I clearly WASN'T.) eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.
In the good news column: I HAVE sold three prints of my collages: two on eBay, one on Etsy (my 1st ever Etsy sale, w00t!) - and intend to get some new ones listed really soon, the plan is to start focusing more on Etsy listings since eBay has disappointed me too often of late.
Thats enough updatey for this month - I meeeean, today ;)
See ya next time, and hopefully sooner rather than later!
~ gem ~
ETA: Almost forgot! My mom got me a Roomba for Christmas and while I used to look at them and smirk thinking "yeah, riiight" - Oh.My.God. if itsn't the best thing ever, I lovvvve it! It's been sweeping up my tile floors the whole time I've been working up this post. All hail ROOMBAAAAA! Shweeeeee!
Sunday, September 9, 2007
Ibex Ryhton project
Haven't had time to post anything new in the past few weeks since kids went back to school (you'd think I'd have MORE free time with them away all day but it's been back to back appointments and errands with hardly time to breathe in between!) Anyway, here's one I've been meaning to post all summer - since school let OUT at the end of last year in fact.
James had a project to do for reading class that involved them selecting a piece from the permanent collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art online gallery, and writing a report on it, as well as recreating the artwork. He chose this sculpture from the Ancient Near Eastern collection - we thought it was really interesting and didn't look too impossible to sculpt a replica. We worked with some plain white modeling clay and used an empty plastic water bottle as a form since it had almost the exact shape as the ibex's body. He sculpted & painted it and it turned out great (even though parts of the body had to be retouched several times due to cracking, and the legs had to be made a bit shorter & thicker in order to support the piece) but probably the best part was during the weeks we were working on it, there was an episode of Planet Earth that featured a short bit about ibexes, and also one day I noticed a posting by a Flick'r friend of mine - of a sketch she did of a similar Iranian rhyton from a museum she was visiting. Pretty cool to be able to relate these random snatches of info to an actual project we were working on at the time.
All the artwork the kids made was displayed at school the rest of the year and I was bummed to think we wouldn't get it back, but! turns out on the last day of school they did get to take their artwork home. Only problem was - as much as he KNEW I wanted that sculpture back (I'd been asking about it almost daily the last couple weeks of school) what does my son do but shove the thing randomly into his backpack (!!!) and didn't even tell me ... of course the horns were both broken off but luckily were swimming around loose in the bottom of the bag. I set it aside to be repaired and then summer promptly got away from us, so I only tackled it like the week before school started up again. ANYWAY! Here it is, with horns reattached and a fresh coat of paint - and shown compared to the original version from the Met's website photo -
(you maybe can't tell for sure, but - ours is the second one, hehe)
Not too bad for a 4th grade project, I thought! and one of the more interesting ones they've gotten to do - and now it sits proudly on my shelf, my very own piece of ancient sculpture. Take that, Met!
So thats all I have time for today, have a good one ...
~ gem ~
**UPDATE APRIL 2014**
Ok, so as of right now, I am going post-by-post through my blog and fixing all the broken image links (since I deleted & quit my Flickr account, all those pictures went *poof!* here, obviously) LUCKILY I actually still have most of them - but in this case I had to take a new photo. And the fourth grade kid who made this project (that I obviously still have, and still display on a shelf in my art room - even though it has since lost an ear and suffered more horn damage ...) is now nearly a 17 year old high school senior. Whaaaaaaat?! SIGH :*)
James had a project to do for reading class that involved them selecting a piece from the permanent collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art online gallery, and writing a report on it, as well as recreating the artwork. He chose this sculpture from the Ancient Near Eastern collection - we thought it was really interesting and didn't look too impossible to sculpt a replica. We worked with some plain white modeling clay and used an empty plastic water bottle as a form since it had almost the exact shape as the ibex's body. He sculpted & painted it and it turned out great (even though parts of the body had to be retouched several times due to cracking, and the legs had to be made a bit shorter & thicker in order to support the piece) but probably the best part was during the weeks we were working on it, there was an episode of Planet Earth that featured a short bit about ibexes, and also one day I noticed a posting by a Flick'r friend of mine - of a sketch she did of a similar Iranian rhyton from a museum she was visiting. Pretty cool to be able to relate these random snatches of info to an actual project we were working on at the time.
All the artwork the kids made was displayed at school the rest of the year and I was bummed to think we wouldn't get it back, but! turns out on the last day of school they did get to take their artwork home. Only problem was - as much as he KNEW I wanted that sculpture back (I'd been asking about it almost daily the last couple weeks of school) what does my son do but shove the thing randomly into his backpack (!!!) and didn't even tell me ... of course the horns were both broken off but luckily were swimming around loose in the bottom of the bag. I set it aside to be repaired and then summer promptly got away from us, so I only tackled it like the week before school started up again. ANYWAY! Here it is, with horns reattached and a fresh coat of paint - and shown compared to the original version from the Met's website photo -
(you maybe can't tell for sure, but - ours is the second one, hehe)
Not too bad for a 4th grade project, I thought! and one of the more interesting ones they've gotten to do - and now it sits proudly on my shelf, my very own piece of ancient sculpture. Take that, Met!
So thats all I have time for today, have a good one ...
~ gem ~
**UPDATE APRIL 2014**
Ok, so as of right now, I am going post-by-post through my blog and fixing all the broken image links (since I deleted & quit my Flickr account, all those pictures went *poof!* here, obviously) LUCKILY I actually still have most of them - but in this case I had to take a new photo. And the fourth grade kid who made this project (that I obviously still have, and still display on a shelf in my art room - even though it has since lost an ear and suffered more horn damage ...) is now nearly a 17 year old high school senior. Whaaaaaaat?! SIGH :*)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)