Unusual Girl Studios

This was from two Halloweens ago- but, I thought, worth reading again. One wonders, is the mean girl still lurking just outside the dressing room? The mean 20 year old at the dressing rooms told me there was no flash photography allowed. So I promised not to use my flash. She said "no pictures at all!" I said "Seriously?" You have go to be kidding!" Really, does she think I was going to run home and copy the super girl outfit on my sewing machine? Couldn't she tell by merely looking at me- that I am almost 40, that life has been very hard recently as I rush around trying to get two little girls off to different classrooms with different schedules and different events going on every freakin' day with different homework every freakin' night and that not only am I getting grey hairs and wrinkles but also still enjoying the fun of acne due to my raging hormones? And that the only thing on my ever rotating roster of things to do that has brought me any j...

This is what big little lady will be holding. What is it? Why a bird of course! The bling? Well, had to do something with the back of the cavity! A ballerina stolen from (yes, Kayla might get it from me...) Brooke's jewelry box will circle around inside her new little world. She's attached to the music box which will be part of the bird. If all goes well a person should be able to turn the key and hear a pretty little song while the ballerina twirls a pretty little dance. Cool, right? Wish me luck. Oh, yeah- the bling- After shopping blissfully childless and alone at Michael's I purchased 56.00 worth of stuff . I was on a quest to provide a suitable back drop for the tiny dancer. I bought spray paint to re-silver mirrors- $12.00, and $17.00 worth of glass beads from Martha Stewart. Crushed glass in white, mauve and silver. Foil in case I changed my mind about the paint- $7.00 And then walking out the door I changed my mind on how I wanted to make all this happen. I decided ...

So I just picked up this little book in the Kendall Library. Wabi-Sabi for Artists, Designers, Poets and Philosophers. I was struck by the introduction and had to immediately share it with you. Wabi-sabi is a beauty of things imperfect, impermanent and incomplete. It is a beauty of things modest and humble. It is a beauty of things unconventional. So...on the quest of discovering my 'style' I continue to learn and define myself- loosely, that is, remember...I don't like rules. I understand the concept of rules- just no how they apply to me. I am imperfect, aesthetically and ethically. I am impermanent- I will not be here, in this state of being, forever. I am incomplete and happy about it. I enjoy the beauty of things that are what they are. A loaf of bread fresh out of the oven with that beautiful brown crust. A stack of lumber, precise and machined, yet organic of origin. Things unconventional? Hello? Are they watching me on a hidden camera? So, more about Wabi- S...

First- I should have mentioned this at the beginning of the month but why be timely? Willowing and Friends is featuring artists from the group every month. I'm one of the first five to be featured. Am I just that good? At begging probably! Scroll down and to the side to see my badge and go visit them- they are right, they are a fun and friendly group! Two- washer= broken. Sounds like there might be a few pet shop pieces, some rocks and loose change wandering around in there. Hate, hate, loathe (which is worse than hate according to Webster's) laundromats. So thought I'd take a stab at washing clothes in my bathtub in my house with my own familiar dirt. Yep, betting that washers do a much better job than me or Brooke, who I tried to con into swishing the clothes around. Chinamommy made a correlation about me 'agitating' the clothes a bit better but I'm not sure I did it right. I made a few comments like "ya know, if you jeans were all your cracked ...

As promised- the paper clay recipe from the website passed along to me- http://ultimatepapermache.com/paper-mache-clay This was the most fun I've had at 'cooking' in awhile. My family thought I was insane! The first batch I did strictly by the recipe. If you can't read this - I don't know how to link to websites and all that fancy stuff- Chinamommy is supposed to come and help me with that and help me set up an Etsy store but she's as hard to pin down as a wisp of smoke- or maybe that's me and yes, I am the queen of the run on sentence- then go to the website which has tons of other great info. I thought it was a bit lumpy and I have a problem with thinking I know everything so I added a bit more of this and a bit more of that. This is usually where my cooking goes wrong. I wanted the paper fibers to be shorter or finer? I guess I was looking for it to be exactly like creative paper clay and it wasn't. So next I tried dissolving the toilet paper in a bi...

After pouring over and bookmarking all the pages from those Art Nouveau books that appealed to me I made copies of all. Then I poured over the copies. I thought and I thought- how do I make this work for my current project? How do I create some sense of order? Do I make a pattern? I wanted her to have some mixed up melodious story woven in and out.....I wanted complex- like we women are- yet with some sense of a simple overall statement- "I'm just a girl" is what she seems to say to me over and over. So I cut up all the pieces that I thought incorporated my intentions and laid them out on my living room floor. I moved them around until a picture came to mind and then out came my sketch book. I soon realized that I would never be able to execute this complex pattern on my girls wavy gown. So I adapted. I intend to use wire to outline these shapes and fill in with 'frit' which I just learned about. Its crushed up glass. How cool is that? Texture and refle...

Many times I have said I wish I had a "style" I don't know how to do that- have a signature 'style.' Am I contemporary? Maybe. But not stark contemporary or crazy contemporary- no I definetely have paremeters. Certainly I am not traditional- all the traditional people assure me of this and then politely ask me to move along. I might be alittle bit folksy which should really fight with the contemporary- oh hell, I like it all- but...what defines me and this elusive 'style' I covet? I like contemporary because it explores relationships of color and texture and shape. Beauty occurs in moments, I believe. Sunlight coming through the back of a leaf creating a color somewhere between pink and orange- a color I would have thought impossible to create and more impossible to define with a name. When the wind blows across the tall grass in the field behind my house I'm reminded that texture is three dimensional shapes fighting for space to exist within. I think ...

Do you remember the story of Emmaline? She's a great, great, grand daughter of Thumbelina. Thumbelina was made from magic and all of her female decendants have some magic within them. When Emmaline is tall she's a very sweet girl. But when she is small she so much more. She loves the outdoors and quickly makes friends of all kinds. Her very best friend is Pernella who is magical and clever and utterly wise. Oh the fun adventures these two have. Wherever they go they are sure to leave goodness behind. Sometimes they leave behind a little magic as well. Have a fabulous day.

Wow. That was hard, folks. A lot harder than I ever imagined. I was just a few minutes early for the meeting and as the principal ushered me through a hallway to his office my stomach leapt into my throat and I think its still there. It took a few minutes to gather everyone together. Our DARE officer tried to make a run for it but we called his dispatch and they made him come back to the school. Kayla's teacher had to get someone settled in her classroom while she participated in the court marshal and Kayla had to be called in off the playground. She was hard to find at first- she was obscured by the crowd of onlookers as she operated a shell game with a few pebbles and used yogurt cups back in a dark corner behind the monkey bars. When she was ushered in to the office she looked every inch of the young, skinny nine year old third grader that she was. She was pale and hesitant and when she saw me there she knew it wasn't good. My heart died just a little around the edges- she d...