Craft sale bonanza

This week has escaped me, recovering from the sunburn I got at Sidewalk Sales last weekend and preparing for my upcoming vacation.  Here are some pictures from the sale:

Our setup for Friday.

Please buy my products!  Little stuffed birds, necklaces, decorative plates and felt flowers, some of Erica's knitted masterpieces.

Our hanging scarves display - very fun to walk through!

More knitted wares.

My crocheted hats!  And a few knitted baby sweaters, so cute!

Our setup on Saturday.  Notice the cool papier-mache animal heads out front - very cool pieces!

A little more spread out this time.

We all made a little money, but heard a lot of people mentioning that they couldn't even think about yarn wearables with the heat.  My friends and I talked about coming up with more seasonally appropriate stuff to sell next time.  All in all, I had a blast - I mean, what can be better than hanging around outside with your friends in the summer for 2 days straight?  I made enough money to cover my portion of the booth cost, plus food for the weekend and a little more on top. 

I am leaving tonight and won't be back home for 8 days!  I am heading to Michigan's beautiful upper peninsula for a few days, then off to Northern Wisconsin.  I hope to do some creative things while there, but also plan on doing a lot of relaxing and probably not very much blog posting.  I want to take lots of pictures while I'm away, documenting all the inspiration of the great north.

Inspiration: Andrew Wyeth

I visited the Flint Institute of Arts last week to check out the Andrew Wyeth show running through August 7^th. The quality of his work really stops me in my tracks. I enjoy his color palette, the realistic yet sometimes grainy texture to his paintings, his technique with drybrush, and am glad to see that he doesn’t seem to paint right out of the tube too much (one of my biggest pet peeves). His paintings evoke a sense of calm country to me – very soothing and environmental. 

I was familiar with his painting Braids, and most of the other works in his Helga series, but was so wonderfully surprised to see his landscapes and a lot of letters written to friends on display. Here are a couple of the highlights for me:

Here are a few more works by Wyeth that I really enjoy:

To be honest, there aren’t many artists that I truly enjoy in the full scope of their work. It helps to know something personal about the artist that I identify with. Andrew Wyeth’s connection to the lands he loved and being one of five children, gives me a greater feeling of connection to his work. That’s how I am with artists, wanting to get a sense of knowing how they were feeling, some way to identify.

Also featured at the exhibition are works by Edmund Lewandowski, which I was lukewarm about but ended up really enjoying, especially the mosaic housed permanently at the FIA, The Industrialization of Flint.

All in all, I was pleasantly surprised and had a fabulous time. A lot of the time anymore, I get easily bored in museums and galleries. It’s not that I don’t understand craftsmanship and the kind of skill and dedication it takes to make works of art, not to mention to historical importance of different movements, I just don’t often find myself too curious about works that don’t hold my interest off the get go. I find that people can get really snobby about art too, and I dislike the whole elitism that is often associated with the arts.

I’m glad I had the opportunity to see this show and would love to see more of Wyeth’s works at some of the museums in New England.

Craft sale goods

Most of my creative energy has been spent lately on projects for a craft sale that some friends and I are participating in next weekend.  I want to share pictures of my goods for sale.

Decorative wall plates:

Hanging wall vases:

Love birds!  Little stuffed bird toys, that can also be strung on ribbon as a hanging ornament:

Necklace pendants:

And, of course, crocheted hats!

Can't wait for the sale!  I did a craft sale with friends last year but it was on the coldest day I've ever experienced in October.  I'm hoping for a warm summer weekend with a light breeze.  I'm always curious to see what other booths have for sale and hope to gain some information from fellow craftspeople.  Wish me luck!

Always, sometimes, never

I like to inspire myself to think creatively with different exercises.  Also, I just enjoy taking a few minutes to think about myself, my habits and interests, and I found this "Always, sometimes, never" exercise on a blog I read, Dove Tree Design.  I thought it would be pretty fun to do for myself.  Here goes:

I always:

• Dream.  Right now, mostly about a house, garden, studio space, and a simple life.
• Drink water everyday.  
• Spend a few hours a week thinking about better ways to organize and repurpose furniture and household items.
• Enjoy looking at trees, I really like 'em.
• Wish my curtains worked better than they do - pretty AND functional would be super:

I sometimes:

• Like eating meringue.  It's a weird substance for me to consider.
• Forget that I often talk and laugh loudly.  I think I have hearing damage from concerts and playing loud music in my car.
• Stop to realize that my job is pretty great.
• Hate cable television.  We have a small cable package and DVR, yet we don't get the channel with Gilmore Girls, Clean House, and right now there is a Harry Potter marathon I'm missing because we don't get that channel either.  We do, however, get two different channels that play Laverne and Shirley pretty often every week.  Still, I'm thinking of cancelling since it's pretty expensive and there are other options out there that are more customizable.
• Think about moving to Canada.
• Think about the best way to be a happy, mature, and capable grown up while remaining imaginative and keeping some of my childlike interests.
• Don't know what color my hair is at any given moment.
• Remember that we all have star dust in us and flip out because that is so cool (I love the song behind that link, check it out!)

I never:

• Go the speed limit.  Always over or under, mostly over.
• Adapt right away to new technology trends.  I just can't jump on board with the newfangled stuff until it's been out a while and the bugs are all worked out.  Even then, I'm usually wary.  I don't like how distracted so many people are these days with their gadgets.
• Go more than a few days without balancing my checkbook.
• Write enough down.  I used to journal, but gave it up a while ago and would like to get into the habit again.  I'm always forgetting things and am glad to have awesome friends and family to job my memory.
• Eat meat.  Anymore.  I've been vegetarian for over a year now with one small exception, a bite of venison salami over the holidays from a deer my brother shot last fall.
• Read every book I have checked out from the library.

Honestly, I've started reading at least 5 of those books and will hopefully get through at least 4 from the whole pile - and that's stretching it!

What's on your always/sometimes/never list?

41

I've taken a bit of a break from blogging to think about other things.  I actually sat down and got organized last week, taking inventory of all the projects I wanted to accomplish, both creatively and otherwise.  I've been reading more, and working on enjoying life - and to be perfectly honest, sometimes that means NOT blogging.  I spend a lot of time at work in front of a computer, and some of these 365 projects have actually taken hours to create and blog about in the past, which is more time than I have to devote to any one thing on a consecutive daily basis.  So that's my story for what's happening these days.  It's so beautiful outside too, I just have to get out in it!  Being a happier person overall helps me work better creatively, too.

But I still enjoy doing the projects.  I completed project 41 last night: Think big.  Create a large version of something that would normally be much smaller.

I scanned my apartment, and considered making the a lot of different things giant.  I decided on a AA battery, since it seemed like a simple idea with few supplies.  I cut and attached two plastic bottles, saving the cap for the little bump on one end of a battery.  I covered the bottles in paper, wrote "battery" on the side, and covered one end with electrical tape.  Here is the result:

It was kind of fun to play with the whole idea of being much smaller.  I'd love to visit a place where everything was bigger than normal, but still proportional, and see if it made me feel like a little kid again.