Aggie illustration swag revealed

Per my promise, Blog, here's the cool stuff I got incorporating Anna Rettberg's beautiful illustration of Aggie and her heroes.

I ordered this 30 x 10 print from Bay Photo, mounted on gatorboard with offset (so it "floats" on the wall) and laminated. It looks so amazing here.

And I also ordered a mug from Cafe Press. The illustration's layout is perfect for this. I'm drinking out of it even as I type this!

Aggie fans, if you want to order your own print from Anna's online store, here is the link!

The Magic House art collection

Blog, here are two of the great things about my life:

(1) I get to meet and know a lot of creative, artistic people, and
(2) My husband loves to shop.

The cumulative effect of these two factors is that my home, aka Magic House, has acquired quite a collection of art pieces I really love. Oh, I'll add modestly that I make a lot of stuff of my own, and sometimes it turns out good enough to display proudly as well.

Yesterday I completed a project I'd wanted to do for awhile: inventorying our art collection. We have over 100 pieces of wall art and displayable objects, so many that we sometimes have to rotate them in and out, like a real gallery. It was fun for me to really appreciate and savor each piece by recording it, the artist, the place we got it, and its current location. (And yes, I am a little bit anal-retentive, why do you ask?)

I photographed a sample of things...some that are my favorites, and some that just seem representative of the sorts of things we collect.  And here they are:

Frank Lloyd Wright Bradley Skylight glass panel, and ceramic bowl with "rock heads" by a local artist whose name, alas, I have lost.

One of our prize possessions, the "Time Travel Orb," which is a fused glass ball with a floating boulder opal by James Yaun. The faux metal cat scupture was made by me. Also love this side table, with a concrete top with embedded rocks, one of a kind, by a Wisconsin company.

Also prized: original Route 66 Polaroid photo by our daughter Katie's boyfriend Chris Robleski (yes, we are fortunately to have a slew of his stuff on display), and painting of Santa Monica Pier bought for us at Dan Rice's Rt. 66 to Cali stand.

A total surprise gift from husband Davie, these are actual "etched" leaves in a shadowbox. Artist: Bookey Morey.

Print of a watercolor/ink landscape of Galena, Illinois by one of our favorite artists, Carl Johnson. We have five of his prints hanging in our house--this one is in the powder room.

Pizza house by Heather Goldmine, and Rinconada cat from Uraguay, on the living room window seat.

Centipede etching, #3 of 3, by daughter Katie Nelson, in the bedroom.

Milwaukee River Renaissance by Lynn Casper, in the bedroom.

A few years ago, Katie and I made custom ceramic cats for each family member for Valentine's Day. Each of us also got a photo of all four cats. Quill (for a writer) is mine, and Scrubs is Davie's (for his cleaning business).

I made this dish garden, which is currently on the wine rack under the installation of 12 of Katie's "textures" photographs.

Love this tile frame with a photo I took of Lake Michigan. Small root wood bowl with rocks. And the inimitable "Magic Bowl" which a local artist painstakingly made and now serves as our cats' water dish because they refuse to drink out of anything else.

If you receive/obtain/create beautiful things, it's very important to appreciate them, Blog. I make a point of walking around our home periodically, just looking at what we have. Beauty is one of the things that simply makes life worth living, wouldn't you say?

This year's homemade gifts featuring Business Cat!

Yes, Blog, I am now at liberty to reveal this year's homemade Christmas gifts! Whereas last year I had not one, not two, but three posts on gifts, I apologize for not quite so much volume. But hopefully they will still amuse.

I worked in a couple of new media this year, the first being metal sculpture: this Camera Eye Robot that I made for daughter Katie. It all started with one of those, spot-in-a-shop, declare-"I-can-make-that" situations, Blog. I tracked down the tiny old Japanese camera on eBay, and built the robot from various random parts and scraps I'd amassed. He's a goofy little character with a hook for a hand and buttons from an old calculator, but I think he's pretty lovable. And for sure that itty bitty camera is awesome--it actually works, I guess, and is only 1 1/2" high.

Also new to me, and I think it shows, is the key holder I made for Katie's boyfriend Chris out of wood. These two are fans of retro design as it is especially expressed on Route 66 (see their website and Chris's new book at www.fadingnostalgia.com). So I was going for "Googie" style--e.g., the famous Las Vegas sign--with this key holder. I bought a prefabricated plaque, then cut the parabolas and wedgie things out of balsa wood and glued them on. I stained the wood with watered-down acrylic paint and added edges and starbursts with Sharpie pen. I varnished it all and added screw in hooks. Not bad for a beginner I guess--and it would seem the height of modern to Fred Flintstone.

Time to move into a medium in which I'm more proficient: polymer clay. I also made Katie a Googie-style piece, a switchplate cover. I used a classic 50s palette, and this time threw in that old favorite, the kidney shape. It was fun trying to use a retro font for the lettering--sort of like on a neon sign--and I think it came out fairly well.

Clay-wise, I made a couple of other gifts this year that were really copied directly from other people's work, so I'm not going to show them off, even though they did turn out nicely. And I gave my hopefully-future-step-granddaughter all the stuff she needs to take up claying, so that will be very cool!

On to the needlecrafts....

Last year I made myself a felt camera case, and I'm flattered to say that pro photographer Chris kinda coveted one for his little "casual" camera ever since. So I got the measurements and made him one to fit, and here it is, Blog.

And the final, Really, Really Big Project required not only sewing, but a heck of a lot of Googling, brainstorming with myself, graphic work on the PC, and tedious cutting. In the end it was all worth it to give my husband Davie the gift of his dreams:  his own three-dimensional Business Cat.

Davie has been obsessed with this internet meme for a couple years now, to the point where--and I kid you not--he has been known to suddenly whisper "Business Cat" out loud for no apparent reason. So I simply had to find a way to make him one.

I was not about to try to make my own pattern for a stuffed cat that would look like the classic expressionless, round-eyed, all-black critter that is B.C. So I combed the internet and looked at every single black-furred feline available for purchase in the known world. The closest thing to the right look, sadly, was a tuxedo cat. So I actually had to dye his white parts black with copious amounts of fabric dye.

It wasn't too hard to design and make a white collar of cotton fabric. Even the tie wasn't difficult, although I put the plaid on the yellow fabric with felt-tip pens. No, the killer here was how to display the thing, in order to incorporate the hilarious captions that are Business Cat's claim to fame.  Like these to the right:


You don't even want to know the ideas I came up with and rejected before the ultimate solution came to me. Business Cat is displayed in an acrylic box made to house a mini replica football helmet, but tipped up on one end. The box "bottom" perfectly holds the caption sheets...25 of which I made to include in the B.C. set. Yes, I made 25 designs (did you know the classic font is Impact, which comes installed with Windows?), printed and trimmed them, and cut out all the openings with an Exacto knife while chatting with my visiting mother-in-law. Thanks heavens she was there to keep me sane.

Add printed backdrop and tie on nifty original tag, and MEOW, I mean VOILA: Davie has a pet Business Cat! Sing it to the tune of "I Want a Hippopotamus," people:

I want a 3D Business Cat for Christmas,

Only a 3D Business Cat will do!

Don't want a Honey Badger, or critter by Chuck Testa,

I only want a Business Cat 'cuz that meme is the besta,

And 3D Business Cat, he likes me too!

So, from the land of Christmas Crafting, Blog and I say "Merry Christmas to all and to all a Super Fantasgreat New Year!"

Copycat

Blog, I've talked before about how I am so often inspired by other artists when I craft stuff of my own. It's hard not to be inspired by really cool art and want to try your hand at similar work in your own style. That's definitely the origin of this watercolor I did yesterday which I call "Cat-a-chrome."

The inspiration for this painting was the work of Drew Strouble aka Catman Drew (I love that name...I keep singing it in my head in my Bob Seger voice).  I was introduced to Drew by the awesome Animal Planet Show "Must Love Cats."  A lot of Drew's work is very realistic--truly gorgeous--and way beyond my abilities.  But his "Colorful Cats" were featured on the show and I thought perhaps I could manage doing something like those stylized, psychedelic felines. 

I worked awhile on developing a style of my own for the cartoonized cats.  Then I figured I'd try a classic three-by-three arrangement and sketched them on watercolor paper.  I did final drawing in felt tip pen, then did the painting, then went over the pen a second time.  The painting came out pretty well!  I haven't done any watercolor painting in a long time, and it was really fun to explore the medium again.

And you know me, Blog, I'm always happy to have more cats in the house...even the 2-D kind!  Thanks, Catman Drew, for the inspiration.  I hope this post will send some cat art lovers your way!



My new craft gallery revealed!

Well, Blog, I'm just as pleased as planter's punch to be able to announce the Sorta Secret Project I've been slaving over for a couple of weeks. It's my new, spiffy online craft gallery, and I am unveiling it officially today. It's a wonderful place for me to share my polymer clay, needlecraft, beadwork, and graphic arts projects.

www.dianasgallery.com is the nifty URL!

You see, since one of my Christmas presents was a professional photoshoot of my crafts by the inimitable Chris Robleski, I decided I needed a nice venue to properly display the resulting images. So I created this new gallery, and I think it turned out mighty nice.

What I was striving for with this gallery was:

• a clean look that would show off the stuff
• easy navigation
• a quick way to view the items in a decent size
• only enough text to provide key information
• just a little bit of whiz-bangi-ness

It's amazingly difficult to find a balance between all the elements that can make for a good art/craft gallery. For example, I wanted quick and easy viewing of decent-sized images, which kind of required the use of Flash. However, that means you can't view the gallery on smartphones. Oh well!

I wanted clear enough detail, but not huge images that would take a long time to load. That meant having to put high-resolution images of everything also on Flickr, with links there from the gallery for those who want to be able to see more detail.

On my old gallery, I provided lots of textual information, which also meant a fairly ugly layout and probably more text than most visitors would want to wade through. Now, of course, I don't tell as much...but hopefully the photos are worth a few thousand words.

The photos are of course what makes the gallery. Sadly, Blog, I don't personally have all the neat jazz required to take this quality of pictures. As you can see from this picture of the photoshoot, Chris and assistant Katie were working with some seriously fancy equipment (not to mention some seriously fancy talent). They have given me the light box you see here, so I can do better with my own photos going forward, but I still will fall a bit short. I have made some items that I wanted to share but I no longer have in my possession, and it's easy to tell which they are by my WAY less cool photos. Fortunately, going forward I may be able to have the occasional "catch-up" session, at least for any really primo stuff I make in the future.

So, for those wanting to know some of the details of the process, I designed this site using the tools on Wix. I upgraded to a "Combo" plan which is $9.90 per month and makes the site ads-free. I blew an additional $11.95 for a year of having my own domain (via GoDaddy). Wix has all the tools I needed to create and manage the site, with the exception of course of photo editing. For that I use Photoshop Elements. (Katie did the the photoshopping on the new shots, and she has the full version of Photoshop.)

I'd love to hear feedback from artists and non-artists out there. With the vagaries of web browsers and monitor settings, no two people will experience the gallery exactly the same (another drawback of the world of web sites!). I'd also love if you have an online gallery if you'd share the URL, or let me know any gallery sites you've found that really impress you.

Huge thanks again to Chris and Katie for making my gallery possible! Now I am inspired to MAKE MORE STUFF!!!

Homemade Gifts Reveal Part 2: Graphics Stuff

Hey Blog, welcome to Part 2 of my big reveal of the gifts I made for my beloved family for our First Annual Creative Christmas. For three of the presents, I made use of the countless nifty ways in which we can use modern graphics technology to make neat stuff.

CHRIS'S PERSONALIZED SIGN

So, while on our fall shopping trip to Cedarburg, I saw those photography alphabet letters you can buy to make personalized signs. (Later, I learned they also offer this sort of thing at Michael's: their "Sticks and Stones" line.) Their use of black and white photos to suggest letters was really attractive to me, and reminded me of Katie's boyfriend Chris, who is a professional photographer. However, the ones I saw cost $7 a letter! Oy, who could afford to say more than "YOU ROCK" with our spending limit?

Later, I had the brainstorm to make my own sign in a crafty fashion, and the first step was to get photographs of letters.  It suddenly dawned on me that Chris himself has taken photographs of a bizillion signs over the years. I went to his Flickr pages and, over the course of a VERY long time, found all the letters for my sign message.  I then had to crop and resize them to precisely equal dimensions, convert them to black and white, and fix the brightness and contrast for consistency and visibility. Thank you, Photoshop!

I bought a balsa wood board at Michael's; one of the hardest parts of the project was sawing it evenly with our lame saw (could have used my new Dremel tool that day!). Then I sanded the cut edge and painted the board black.

Printing, very precise cutting, and very even mounting of the letters followed. And after that, I put approximately 37582075 layers of Mod Podge on the board. The whole project took about 12 hours. The final result:

The coolness of this sign is in direct proportion to the coolness of the original images (some of which, you'll note, are not letters but rather things that mimic letters). When Chris opened the present, I pretty quickly pointed out that all the photos were his, and that was awesome! He started identifying the locations of the various shots...super fun! (Some of you can recognize the second "R" was from an Iron Maiden poster he photographed.)

And best of all, no copyright infringement! Well, technically it was, but Chris didn't mind. Here he is with Katie happily studying his new sign:

NATE'S "MAD MEN" COCKTAIL BOOK

The brilliant illustrator Dyna Moe has been creating awesome Mad Men art for some time now. She's offered tons of cool images for free download for fans of the show, with plenty of support from the AMC cable channel. She's not allowed to sell her stuff, nor are those of us who privately enjoy it and/or give it to their daughter Amanda's boyfriend for Christmas.

Dyna's illustrations were the source I used to create a set of cocktail recipe cards. Once again Photoshop came to the rescue as I had to do quite a lot of design of my own, rearranging Dyna's graphics for this format.

I printed out the cards on light card stock in my computer printer, then laminated them back to back with my Xyron® laminating machine. I punched a hole in the corner of each card and put them all together with a key ring-type ring. The results:

There you have it, 18 classic cocktail recipes to keep in the bar area, impervious to spills of gin, grenadine, olive juice and the like! This was a speedy project to complete, at only about four hours. Nevertheless, Nate was thrilled, and therefore I was UBERthrilled:

MANZI'S HITCHCOCK ORNAMENT

My daughter Amanda aka Manzi (or Manzy, as she spells it, or Mandsi, as her sister spells it) is a film buff, and her favorite director is Alfred Hitchcock. In fact, she is working on a huge book that will encyclopedically analyze every one of his films. So, when in my daily blog reading I ran into some mini-Hitch-posters, I thought of her. I wish I could remember who did them, but I since deleted the link, my bad. At any rate, once again I fall back on the "I'm not stealing if I didn't make any money" excuse here. I saved the four posters to my computer and began trying to think of how to use them in a mini-gift.

My best idea was some sort of four-sided Christmas ornament that could incorporate the images. The internet, for once, yielded nothing when I search on "photo cube ornament" and such like. So I went to Michael's in a last-ditch effort to find something appropriate.

Sure enough, I found the perfect thing! I sized the posters appropriately (they are about 3/4" x 3/4") and put them in the ornament ball, and voila:

Count the searching, and this project only took me an hour and a half or so. The actual project itself was done in like 20 minutes!

For such little effort I got a fab reaction from Manzi and Nate:

You may note here that graphic design is not exactly my forte, hence the liberal use of images created by others much more talented than me. Obviously most of the credit for these items goes to the actual artists, and I'm grateful to them for sharing their work on the internet.

Next time I will go more original, Blog, as I venture into an area that is more my expertise... Part 3: Polymer Clay Stuff!