Made It: From things I found

Too many things in my brain and at my fingertips...my sculpture background has been barking at me lately and I thought, well...let's try out some stuff.

There are plenty of doodads out at the farm that aren't really sellable (boxes of rusty nails, bolts, washers, etc.) but the idea of just chucking them is painful.  So I thought I'd try to make something using these "trash" items.

Here's my thesis piece:

Piece of wood from my basement.

Page from a French textbook, 1921.  The verb seemed too perfect.

Piece of wood found in the shed, cut up and pieced together.

Found a way for it to fit together without much effort.

Perfect frame!

Turn it over and nail that sucker!  This way no nail heads show.

Proof that the nails worked.  Nothing falling off!

Junk to choose from for added flair.

Funky, rustic tacks.

Laying it out.  I thought about using the washers and nuts but decided against it.

Uh oh, unfinished side!  Naked edges are a no-no.

Cadmium Red Light Nova Color mural paint left over from a former job.

Blue and green mixed with white for a  "folksy" addition to the top layer.

Day two: I sprayed the whole thing (except the paper) with a few
coats of lacquer.  I don't want any more old lead paint flaking off than
 is necessary, plus I like the shiny look.

After adding the tacks.

I rather like the shadow play here.



Super close-up!





I have it now leaning on a shelf above my computer in the studio.

Looks like it fits right in.



For the work I make in this vein going forward, I think I'd A) use glue in addition to the nails, and B) put a hanger on the back in the early stages.  There are many options to hang anything, and if I eventually want to sell these, this is a big consideration.  I had to actually sit and think about my process while making this, which is different from my normal brain activity when making clocks (I did all my thinking about that process years ago).

I'm really excited about going forward with the found objects, but right now I need to focus on my upcoming shows! 





Making It: Dot Clock

Lately multitudes of scraps have been piling up in my studio, so I've gone back to hand cutting some designs.  Using just the bits frees my brain for a while, until I get enough shapes cut out, at which time I have to figure out just what I'm going to do with them. 

Here's a good old dot clock in the making:

Making sure there's a variety of sizes.

Spacing out design.

Stick that stuff down.

Colors sure seem different in natural light...



Throw in a flying pig and we're good to go!

This is a bold color choice, but I've been making a lot of yellow/grey/black/white combo clocks because that is THE COLOR COMBO of THE COOL PEOPLE, and I thought I should change it up a little.  Maybe this will be the next color wave to sweep the country.

This is up on my Etsy site, and I'll have it in my booth (while supplies last!) this fall.  I'll be in Baldwin, Kansas, for the Maple Leaf Festival this weekend.  Undoubtedly I'll see thousands of people I know because this small city is directly between my hometown and my college town, and it's a bit of an event for us country folks.  Three words: APPLE CIDER DONUTS.

Here's a few more hand cut clocks of late:

8 x 8 Black and every-other-color clock

9 x 12 Brown-Black clock with hand cut rectangles

Made It: Frameables

Because I just can't stick to one thing, I started making these 8 x 10 frameable 2D art pieces before my Oklahoma show.  I mean, two days before the show, because I didn't have enough to do.  As with most of what I make, these pieces confuse patrons.  So here I'm going to share with you about how they're made, because if this saves me from explaining it just once, I'm going to call it a victory. 

I found all this cool old fabric!  Tucked safely in a metal garbage can since the '40s (I found it all with a newspaper from June 17th, 1945 and feel pretty confident in its legitimacy) I knew it could be sold via The Retro Ranch and that some talented people could use the material to make something awesome.  So far I've sent yardage off to Michigan, Alaska, and The United Kingdom!  So anyway, I have all this old fabric and thought it would be cool to photocopy it and use as a background for this idea I had during a power nap.  FRAMEABLE!  This way I can make some non-clock items to shake it up a bit and not have to hassle with lugging around heavy work, smudged and/or broken glass, or scratched paint on frames.

POWER NAPS SAVE LIVES, YOU GUYS.

Ok, so...

Found material, including hankies and yardage.

The photocopied fabric...looks like the real thing.

Rubber cement!  So. Much. Rubber. Cement.

Left over matte board sold in large bundles at a "craft" (shutter) store.
Conveniently, they're 8 x 10 inches, which is just a little under the standard
page size of 8 1/2 x 11 inches.  Meant to be.

After letting the cement dry on both surfaces, slap them together!

Flip it over, trim off the excess paper, peel off the cut vinyl decal, make 100 more.



I particularly like this one.  And, no, that actual fabric isn't for sale because
I get to keep whatever I want, and I want that.

 


Remember that application technique from the Union Jack project? 
It makes and appearence here, too!

 

Black cat on cute reproduced vintage fabric.  This piece sold in Iowa City.

Tiny love for my homeland.  This is approx. 4 x 5 inches on a French-to-English
dictionary page from the 1920s (? ish).

Letters!  Spell yer name or something.  On "fabric paper" and found papers/
book pages (you didn't need that math book from 4th grade any more, right?)

The display of smallies in Iowa City.
I found that wooden thing in one of the barns,
of course, and turns out it works perfectly for this!

The size is perfect to just throw in a standard frame, or you can matte it out and get all fancy.  I like the "smallies" because kids love digging through to find their initials or spell their name, and I can use images from magazines and illustrated books as backgrounds and cut my hoarded papers down a little.

I've been doing/will be doing several shows this month, so I've been slacking here.  I've also been slacking on uploading stuff to Etsy and, oh dear, especially my website.  But you can see what I'm up to on Facebook, especially at shows, since I now have a "smartypants" phone and can do the posting and updating and whatnot.

Tell everyone you know to head to the Other Art Show in Des Moines June 29th and 30th!  I'll be there!

Made It: Custom Heart Clock

A customer from the OKC show wanted a custom clock to commemorate a loved one.  Needless to say, I was excited and flattered to work on this piece for her.  First I sent her a mock up based on our conversation at the show.  She wanted brushed aluminum with hearts in different colors, saving a random heart to be red.

Brilliant photoshopping here...that's why I make work with my hands!

Out of a few to choose from, the image above is the one she liked the most, so I got to work sanding down the aluminum to give it a nice brushed texture and cutting out hearts the old fashioned way.

This is how my aluminum comes--industrial flatness.

Left side: unsanded.  Right side: sanded.

I used a circuitus motion to get this look. It makes it a bit softer than
just straight back and forth sanding.  Worth the sore tricep.

Turn over that vinyl and put down a stencil!

Trace it!  Best, most useful thing I learned in first grade, bar none.

Once I cut out all my colorful hearts, I had a nice pile of love to work with.

Ready and waiting.

Then I got to work laying them out, matching as closely as I could the design we agreed on.

Pretty much set.

Stick it!

I was very pleased with the final result:

12 x 12 Brushed Aluminum Custom Heart Clock

I might just have to make some more heart-themed work!  I've probably cut more hearts in my lifetime than any other shape, due to my obsession with homemade Valentines starting all the way back in my elementary school days.  I was so happy to be able to make a special piece for my client (thanks, Angie from OKC!).  Knowing that something I helped bring to life gives another person warm-fuzzies gives ME warm-fuzzies.  Not to get too goopy here, but lately I've been feeling sentimental, and this really made me feel great.

Last weekend I was at the Liberty Arts Squared event in Liberty, Missouri.  It's a young show (only four years old), and the crowds picked up since last year, so maybe we can keep the ball rolling in years to come in that adorable little northeastern suburb of Kansas City. 

This coming weekend I head off to Iowa City for the Iowa Arts Festival.  I've never been there and am looking forward to meeting a whole new group of people and seeing a new town in my dear Midwest.  I'm even going to make some special Iowa themed items just for them!  And I'll keep the corn jokes to a minimum...we all know it's mostly grass up there, anyway, just like Kansas and Missouri.  So, spread the word and get all those Hawkeyes out to downtown!



Made It: Green Egg Clock

Here's another custom clock...an unusual request, which I love. 

"Something off the wall...like a green egg with white & yellow yolk coming out."

I was able to play around with one of my new phone's drawing apps. (A smarty-pants phone!  Hello, 21st century!  It's a big deal for me, I'm still excited about it.)  Thanks to a long stint in a waiting room, I was able to take some time and draw up the first sketch for this idea.  But since I didn't have an egg to break open and my memory bank is full of other things, I worked off this image:

Yeah..that's an egg alright.

Here's what a little screen and a stylus will get you:

I have a Fine Arts degree, people.

I knew I'd have to hand-cut this thing to get it right, but to get a true grip on it I always have to do a little bit of actual pencil-to-paper drawing first.

A bit of an improvement over the digital rendering.

This lead to some free-styling and digging through my smallest scrap box so I could play with both opaque and translucent vinyls. 

The shells have three layers and five different vinyls; the yolk has three, and the
white is a couple layers of the same glittery transparent vinyl.

It turned out so much better than I thought!  I wanted to keep it for myself.
But, if you love something, set if free.  Plus, it's bad business practice to
take someone's money and not give them anything in return.

Add some numbers, and here's a clock that is 100% one of a kind, never to be duplicated exactly the same way, and a great addition to a cool kitchen.  Thanks, Shawna from Oklahoma, for pushing me to use brain muscles I haven't used for a while!

Order up!

Contact me anytime if you want a super weird/awesome piece of home decor made just for you!  Or, if you're cruising Etsy, I'm there, too, as always.