Common ...

I am on a few forums and groups that are for cardmaking. Mostly because they also have some scrapbooking forums and stamp stuff. They all have galleries where people can post pictures of the things they make. There is some really lovely stuff out there.

But so much of it looks as though it was made to a formula and had premade bits just glued to it. With the sketches that people offer, the dies and punches they use, basically it is made to a formula. Admittedly a handmade item, but a formula non the less. To me this is manufacturing and I am guilty of using it as the next person. Except for one thing. To me there has to be that edge of chaos somewhere. Where you expect a straight line, there is a ripped line; where you expect pearls or brads there are eyelets with string dangling from it. I cannot stand my work to look completely manufactured.

A couple of years ago when I was talking to my sister about making cards for Christmas and renewing our interest in scrapbooking, she made a comment along the lines of she wouldn't invest in stamps because they are like colouring book pages for adults. I had thought the same thing myself years ago. And stamps sure are the stallwart art of the manufacturer type card makers. And their Copic markers. Colour in the stamp with the Copic marker and no one can tell it isn't a real flower, right?

It may sound critical, but seriously card making should be individualised and a bit artistic. Rip up paper, use bottle caps and washers. Don't make your cards look like everyone else's. Since there are several million of that stamp anyhow. Don't follow fashion. You take pride in dressing as you like, having your house as you like, why should your card making be any different?

Take the stuff you have been taught by good teachers and expand on it. I love to get my embossing powders onto a washer, mixing colours and textures and then drizzle stuff into them.

Experiment. You don't have to sell/give away your experiments. Put them into a folder to remember what you did that you loved or hated. Be daring. Get out your brayer and give it a good workout, rip up some Post-its and do some masking. Look for stamps that come from little known manufacturers that no one else you know has heard of. Use their stamps.

The thing that also amuses me is the die mentality. All those shapes. For what? So your work looks the same as your neighbours? You like her stuff, borrow it and expand on it.

One thing I love is my Bind it All, yeah the pink one. I like to punch the holes into things and then tie some of it together and use maybe one wire spine on it somewhere to make it look different. Go and buy some real locks and keys and use them to make something useful, very useful. Make polymer clay feet so your box has something to stand on, or use those dice bits for feet.

People will love your work even more if they see some evidence of YOU in your work.

Taking the time ...

When you see something like the Wedding Album below, or other finished pieces of work, you have to realise that there has been much time spent in doing the item. I am talking years. You cannot just sit down one morning and say "I am going to make xxx". I cannot make a saddle, nor for that matter a bridle - I understand the concepts behind making them and as a horselover I would love to be able to - but apart from not having the tools to do so, I do not have the skills either. And it is the gaining of the skills in the first place that you require in order to make anything worthwhile.

The Album came about because I spent almost one or two nights per week for a year going to classes at a scrapbook shop learning the basics. I have books and magazines that I have used articles from, to experiment with various products to suppliment what I learnt at the scrapbooking shop. I have taken the money and invested it in the finest tools so that I have both the tools and skill to do this. But having said that, one of the skills that an artist has to have is a sense of colour.

When I first came up with the idea of the Album, knowing Kylie's dress was going to be blue, I had thought of matching the colour and using plain blue paper and stamping it and embellishing it in other ways, but still with the pieces torn and placed on each side of the pages. It was my daughter (who has also done much as I have with scrapbooking and paper arts) who suggested the yellow for the matting. Again it too is a different yellow from the frangipani flower centres too. But these colours work. They work because they are a whole. They go with the pictures, they are very modern and they are very beautiful. They are whole.

Each page is made from a single piece of card stock, cut to 12 inches by 11 1/2 inches. The extra half inch on the edge of the page is for the binding combs. So each page had to be moved in by this half inch. The back of this half inch border is re-inforced by another strip of cardstock so that when the album is open, there is enough strength at the hole for it not to tear. So in effect what has happened is that I have designed the pages for 11 1/2 inches by 11 1/2 inches.

I took the time to have the pictures developed in a lab rather than print them out on photo stock paper myself. My printing skills in this area are not the best, and as I know this, to do the album justice, the extra money I spent doing this has resulted in beautiful pictures.

Overall, it has been a fairly expensive project - it was a gift to the bride as a wedding present. Kylie is a lovely lady and she has married her dream beau, I thought she deserved something special to remember her special day. I could offer to make this album because I knew I had the skills, knowledge and tools to do it justice. Serendipity helps too, because I was looking for other papers when I discovered those lovely papers that I ended up using.

A little to share ...

Well, I did promise to share some photos of the Wedding Album I am making for the lady at work as her wedding gift. I am not the best photographer nor am I the best scrapbooker, but she is pleased with it. It is by no means finished. I put it together so that she could see the theme that I had used throughout.

I thought going off to Vanuatu to get married extremely romantic, so I have tried to keep the basic theme going. But I tried to keep in mind that they are a bit older couple who have been living together for a while and didn't want the expense or stress of a big wedding with a million guests.

I found the papers in my local scrapbook shop and the cardstock is Bazzil (?sp).

the Cover - a small metal frame with a cutsie dimensional sticker in it.

The first page - I laminated a little map I downloaded.

Detail of the cross stitch palm tree - the slippers were also cross stitched. There is another tree later in the Album as well.

His Page - it needs something

Her Page - the shiny things are little rhinestones in a spiral with rays coming off them. I liked the effect it gave. But this also needs a little more.

A joint page. When you see the next picture, it demonstrates that the two individual photos open so that some journalling can be added.




The Wedding Ceremony page. I used stamps and cutouts to highlight it. The facing page also has the cutouts.



A dimensional paper frame for the Certificate.


The inside back cover has a holder for the disc with all the photos on it. I used two punches to make the hearts and ran them through the sticker machine.

There are 16 pages in all back and front. Each page was started with a 1.25cm (0.5") margin so that I could use the Bind-it-All. The covers are chipboard. I glued a thin strip of paper over each outer edge, the used a sheet of the paper as the cover. Inside I glued a sheet of the card stock. I am hoping to maybe make a box for it.

I am pleased with the colours. I wasn't sure when I first saw them but DD suggested using the creamy yellow matts and lettering which has set it off nicely. I think I will look around for some gold or copper coloured metal embellishments and see how they will look. I felt it best not to get too arty farty with it.

At least it isn't Cheech and Chong ...

Slow Cloth

Related to my recent topic on Slow Art, is the ongoing topic of Slow Cloth. This topic is still around and still creating interest from much of the Craft/Art section of the internet. I have found it popping up in places that are not related to the usual blogs I read.

However, on Red Threads, Lainie was again talking about it - it is part of blog mission. Sharonb has been talking about it on her blog as well too. Talking about slowing down, talking about the traditions of slow cloth, of creation and community. How can there be creation without community. Part of my response to Lainie's blog are as follows:

I am really enjoying following the exploration of this topic. When I lived in PNG many years ago, the making of bilums (native bags) was done in this sort of community environment. Rather like the quilting bee. I suppose now that we have more transient societies/communities, we try to form this sort of community through our online contacts. If I am honest, it is part of the reason I signed up for Sharonb's challenge for this year.

Many people may try to justify their crafts as art, in which case, they seem to be loosing the plot.

The traditions which come with slow cloth allow us to draw from the past in order to create the future in what we do now. In some respects, too, it is making our own traditions. Those of us who have no family tradition in this respect must draw on the traditions of others. I feel a great respect and gratitude towards those others that they feel enough care about their work to share it so that people like me can learn and incorporate it.

Now I have to teach my children and grandchildren, so that somewhere it becomes "my" family tradition as well. And maybe one day we can spread it out to the world as well.

I think the time it takes to do anything, not as a measure of hours and days, but that we do not pace ourselves against a clock is always relevant. It is like the magazine that offers to let us create things in 10 minutes. Mostly by using precut things, pre glued, as like stickers, and pre written. When you make "art" like this, I always wonder why you don't just go out and buy a commercially available equivalent. Not only is it not really hand made, no one appreciates it truly as handmade, and therefore is much of a waste of time. Whereas if you cut the original yourself, even using a pattern, take time to fossick in your various embellishment containers, use glue, or better still, a needle and thread, and using an actual pen to write with. Or failing that take the time to use stamps and embossing powder. Make it look as though some actual time, effort and the biggie, THOUGHT, went into it. In paper craft, nothing says time taken, thought and care like punching holes and using a needle and thread.

And I guess while I am on this train of thinking. Perhaps one vital omission has been made by everybody. How much care and of your heart goes into anything?

I breed horses. Every foal I have bred I have become attached to, I think foals are the most wonderous babies of all. I handle them from birth and teach them things so that they are able to live comfortably with humans. However, I become very attached to those babies, and when it comes time to sell them, I really cry and grieve for that baby. Needless to say, I do not breed many horses. It is too emotionally draining for me.

In the same way, when I make anything, my sewing, my embroidery, my cross stitching and my paper arts, there is alot of me and my emotions in the end product. Thusly, I do not make many that are for sale. I do give away things, and I am happy to trade item for item, but selling is a different kettle of fish. It is not the money that is the problem, but knowing or not knowing if it has a "forever" home. Which is why I cry and grieve for my foals.

My things that I produce are a part of me.

Maybe that is the intrinsic meaning of slow cloth and slow art.

Slow Art ...

Sharonb has been bloggin about the concept of "Slow Art", and what it probably is and how it applies to what people do in the Arts. She came across the idea from this site here. Some of the other crafters are blogging about it, so I thought I would add a few thoughts of my own.

To me, Slow Art, is the time taken to make art. Any art. All the planning, designing, researching, putting the materials together and finally the making of the piece, with the thoughts and feelings that occur during the making.

I guess it is the total opposite of making something really quickly, gluing a few shapes to the front of a ready cut card, stamping a kitch saying inside and claiming it is "handmade". Okay, I have been guilty of doing that myself, on occassion, when something has come up, and someone has asked me to "make" a card quickly.

However, on my "real" art pieces, I agonise for ages to try and get it to look how I visualise in my head. People who keep art journals or any sort of journals to plan and poke in are so organised. I just keep a picture in my head. Probably why some of my work ends up as UFO's and some of those end up "recycled". I guess from that you can guess "organisation" is not even close to being my forte. Hey, I try and work on it.
(Note to self: The road to Hell is paved with good intentions).

Funnily enough, when I design clothing, I always start off with a crocqui and sketch onto that what I think the finished garment should look like, and I use that to check out fabrics. Then I go and buy the fabric, the matching threads and accessories for it. I decide whether to hand hem or machine hem the edges and all the stuff. Then and only then do I work out the pattern. Sounds abit arse around, but that is just how I do it. Maybe if I do a commission work, I might do the pattern so I do not get too much fabric or not enough. Commissions, alas, are far and few between (read: non existent right now).

The real thing I love about my art is that it is so relaxing. Seriously, if I have a stressful day at work, a stress headache or stuff, just spending a little time either doing my art or going through Spotlight or Lincraft just relaxes me. My partner always tries to encourage the doing art rather than shop, but I'm not fussy. lol. Relaxation to me is really the loosening of all my muscles and switching my brain to a slower "mode" and just chilling. Sewing is the best, but any of the others work as well.

****

Since the goal of joining the Take it Further Challenge is for me to get organised, not only will I be doing it, blogging it, I have decided I will make a genuine attempt to keep a journal as well. Plan what I am going to do with each month's challenge. Maybe if I commit to blogging that as well, it will help me. I have a moleskin I bought this year just for that, and except for one sketch I did of a thing I want to make, it is virgin. haha. No points for guessing why.

If this works, I shall certainly owe Sharon a debt of gratitude.