Hi, it’s me, Christine. I’m feeling lucky today. Lucky that I have a job that can be really, really cool. And inspiring. Today, I get to read Kelly Rae Robert’s book Taking Flight before it heads to the printer in a few weeks. Just sitting here, reading. Soaking in the goodness of her art and her very inspiring words. A lucky day indeed.
And as I’m sitting here reading about diving into new creative experiences, I couldn’t help but find it fitting that one of Kelly Rae’s featured artists is Laurie Mika, a mixed media artist that incorporates a lot of polymer clay in her work. Whenever someone asks me what crafts I do, I say, “Pretty much everything except polymer clay.” No good reason for that, especially in light of Kelly Rae’s book. What’s stopping me from trying it? What do I fear about this medium?
Do you use polymer clay in your mixed media art? What got you to try it in the first place? What sorts of things have you made? I’d love to be inspired by your experiences.
And to get inspired by some of Laurie Mika's polymer clay mosaic creations, check out her book Mixed-Media Mosaics.
Lately I've been loving more and more my daily doses of Design*Sponge, a fabulous blog where design and craft intersect more often than you might expect. (You can read more about my take on this here.) A favorite recent post featured graphic designer Katie Kulper and her store window installation of paper airplanes made from ordinary recycled binder paper. I love seeing such a simple repurposing of materials featured so prominently in an upscale place; to me this is just one more sign of a cultural shift toward the handmade--and, of course, toward sustainable art, however unlikely it might be.
Recycling paper in your mixed-media art might seem like the easiest way to incorporate an environmental awareness into your work, but we all know that sometimes what seems the simplest at first flush is often just the opposite. How do you use and reuse paper in your art? Share your ideas in a comment below, or enter a piece in our April challenge!
Did
you know April is national poetry month? With popular art retreats like Artfest
hosting increasingly popular poetry workshops, it’s only natural to be seeing
more and more artwork incorporating the art of words. Poets.org offers up a fun
list of 30 Ways to Celebrate National Poetry Month. Why not add #31 to the list and celebrate with a piece of artwork inspired by a
poem, or a piece of artwork incorporating a few poetic words of your own, or
borrowed from a favorite verse? If you’re a nature lover or a fan of poets
inspired by the natural world, it may just tie in beautifully to this month’s
challenge.
With the focus this month being on repurposed and found objects, I couldn't help but think of artist Kevin Titzer, whose work I greatly admire (and always get a wicked chuckle from). Kevin starts his sculptures with driftwood from the Ohio River and then frequently adds other salvaged materials such as metal from scrapped rain gutters, candy tins and just about anything else. His style is dark and whimsical at the same time and I'm grateful to artists like him that can truly transform trash into something this amazing.
Don't forget to check out this week's free project while it's still available and watch for a brand new project on Monday.
It’s
universally understood that flea markets, thrift stores, antiques stores and
garage sales are a mixed-media artist’s gold mine. If you’re like me, you often
leave each aisle with a sense of reluctance, worrying that some gem in the rough
has gone unnoticed, that you’re passing by the one found object that would lead
to a revelation in your work. I have an annoying habit of buying nothing, going
home, having an idea for something I could have used, and returning only to
find it gone—and nothing is more frustrating than that.
How
many vintage cameras have you passed by in these excursions? This tutorial from
Photojojo teaches you how to resurrect a vintage camera to take compelling,
stylized digital photographs (like the one above) through the viewfinder—even if the camera itself
is out of film or even broken! Don’t you just love it when someone points out
the gems in the rough for you?
