I want my hat back

I have this hat ... yes this is art related. I love the way my hat fits and all that, but I just couldn't deal with the Jimmy Buffet hula girl silly stuff on the front. Not a big fan of Buffet, but even less so since he's trying to build some eyesore, Margaritaville resort, on Hollywood Beach. Because we don't have enough eyesores or people on Hollywood beach now. Ok, sorry, I'm going into a rant... first of all Margaritaville? Is this Mexico? Is it even the West? No, it's Florida. I'm tired of people always trying to turn Florida into something else. Hula girls? Really, do we have those here? Lived here my whole life and pretty sure I've never seen hula girls running around. That's Hawaii.

So I wore the silly hula girl Jimmy Buffet affair to the St. Patrick's day parade and total strangers were yelling "Beachside!" at me, all friendly and stuff. I had no idea at first what the hell that meant but figured it out. It was my silly hula girl hat. Beachside must be a nickname for the coming eyesore. So I thought, oh hell to the no! Then I thought, ... hey, I'm an artist. I can change this. My new and very cool hat.

No coocoo surf company names, because I'm bitter against that crap too. $48 for a pair of flip flops... really? Just body surfing... you, your body the ocean and no marketing. Amazing what a little paper and matt medium can do.


Messy Art!

We made chickens!

This one is amazing!

These are plastic eggs, tissue, feathers and eyes. At first I was thinking about letting them use real eggs and blow the stuff out of the middle. Then I thought, am I nuts? First of all, it's gross. Second it will take them days to blow all that nasty out of there. Pretty sure I remember doing this as a kid and I think I broke a capillary in my face trying to blow all that icky egg out.

I try not to give the kids too much direction. I always tell them to be as creative as they want. Love seeing all the different results.

Spring has sprung

I'm a little behind on posts. This was last week's Messy Art project. Windsocks. We wanted to do something to usher in Springtime.

 I use the larger construction paper so we cut those in half and painted (tempra) designs and pictures on the body of the sock.

Then we added tissue paper streamers.

This little pillow is about the only thing I've gotten to this week. I bought this fabric remnant a while back and did the butterfly silk screen design on there. Then just ran it up on the sewing machine that I'm no longer frightened of, and ta da! A little pillow for the Florida room couch.

Still plugging away on the rug and ran out of cotton yarn for the piece on the inkle so need to go to the store I guess.

I am really jonesin' for a road trip and homesick for N. FL, but just can't get away now, so I made a big old pot of collards and watched a DVD last night instead and it was so awesome. My life as a turkey...filmed in south central Florida. Part of the PBS Nature series. It was just beautiful and so spiritual: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eK8UQ4Z52KQ

Nature...

... see it while you can.

... and here I am with the mixed media quilt. This was good because I learned something with this piece. I'm never using fabric paint again. It really made the edges start to curl and totally destroyed one of my favorite paint brushes. Who knew. After the show I want to fix it... get rid of the nasty fabric paint bits and quilt the sky area. The venue was so nice and met many nice and interesting people. All in all a good show.

And here's a brand new canvas for the next collage. Haven't put brush to canvas since Our Lady of the Desert. I'm thinking... egrets. I'm on a bird kick.

I've gotten about 2 in. of the hand dyed orange woven into the Mirrix piece. Love the way the orange came out actually. It's sort of mottled. I'm hoping that when it's done there will be more of a distinction between the lighter orange and the red-orange under it.

Found this on my desk at work this morning. A thank you mouse from one of the kids.

Happy St. Paddy's

Well, here it is, this weeks kid's craft. Lenny the toilet paper roll Leprachaun. Their name, not mine. I would have called him Beelzibub's kid brother Lenny. This is some real nightmare fuel here folks, but in a sorta funny way, don't-cha think? So it being creepy and all; of course I chose it for our project. Kid's need to be exposed to fear... everything in life can't be hearts and flowers, ya know.

It's pretty self explanatory really. Color in the template, cut and glue to a toilet paper roll. Here is the link if you are interested. I realize this is not one of my more creative projects, but it's been a bad week. Here are the kid's renditions of Lenny:

This one looked a little more Russian than Irish

Turns out the kids loved making these guys. They had a blast. Because their arms are bent in  such a way, they were making them do the Robot

In the Studio...

I finished this little band on the inkle. I love my inkle loom. You can sit on the couch with your feet propped up, sit it in your lap and watch Downton Abbey and weave. Like it so much better than card weaving.

And for Women's History Month.... enjoy :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYQhRCs9IHM