Another collage, this one exploring eye movement within the piece and color. The initial collage was from three magazine pages, then a good amount of PhotoShop tweaking followed. The sky, is from Mt Rogers.

Some points of inspiration for photo/collages:

• Sabrina Ward Harrison and her book, Spilling Open
• Dan Eldon and his journals: The Journey Is the Destination and The Art of Life
• Peter Quinnell

I have long wondered how textile designs are selected for production. How does Amy Butler become the current phenomenon – besides being extremely talented, of course? Talent will only take you so far; what is the rest?

Design Sponge does a three day review of Surtex, the “International fair for the sale and license of design and artwork for textile fabrics, apparel and contract textiles, wall and floor coverings, …” Who knew there was such a thing? And it looks so cool!

Stationery show 2007: part one and Stationery show 2007: part two begins at the related National Stationery Show, which is filled with pattern and stitchery. There are some cool stitched wallets, stenciled tee-shirts, and of course, lots of pattern.

Day Two, entitled so, about surtex… covers the work of Julie Rothman and some terrific embroideries by anonymous Savannah College of Art and Design students. The concept of surtex appears to be similar to the local craft fair, except instead of having families stroll by to see your work, you get to have agents and licensers stroll by. These are the folks who will transform your designs into objects for sale in stores.

Day Three, covers the related icff show (International Contemporary Furniture Fair). Lots of home furnishings, rugs and a few quilts. Denyse Schmidt is smiling from her booth. Dang! Even the stars have to stand on their feet all day!

How hard is it to sell your work to the world, Susie Lee Jin offers her experiences in her blog post: May 14-22, 2007: Surtex Journal, or Musings of a Newbie Art Licensor.

“I’ve decided that the most draining part of manning a booth is what I will term “anxiety of anticipation.” It’s like the Pavlov’s dog experiment. People walk by, your heart races and you salivate. Well, it’s something like that. You wait for companies to pass, and when throngs walk by, you are on the edge of your seat to see if they will stop and consider your work. You see a fair share of smiles as well as stone faces. You get nice comments now and then, but that validation is mostly from friends/family and artists who want to get into licensing. But what you truly crave is for a company to walk by, see your stuff, love it, and want to work with you for a zillion dollars for the rest of your life. What this boils down to is that in the down times, you may experience low self-esteem. You then ask yourself, “What am I doing here? Can I make this business work?!”

The good news, by the end Susie writes, “By four o’clock, I had several more leads and new artist-friends. Very cool.” Her conclusions?

- Licensing is a long term endeavor. It’s true- you have to be in it to win it. And then you have to practice the fine art of following up….
-Salesmanship has nothing to do with it. I’m all about smiling at people from my booth and saying hello, but the truth is, even that much salesmanship isn’t necessary to drum up business. Your primary job as an artist exhibitor is to create amazing artwork and show it. As long as you do that, I’m pretty sure you could frown at all the passersby, and it wouldn’t matter. Your work is your best representative. If it’s a good fit for a company product, that company will stop and talk to you about working together.

Visit Design*Sponge and browse Susie Lee Jin’s site. There is probably enough inspiration in those two places to keep you riding high all summer!
parkhaus berlin feltworks to the right!

Being an adjunct professor gives me holidays at funny times. I am in the midst of a month off, my ’summer vacation’.

First thing that I did this summer was to take my consulting-fee savings and buy a real sewing machine. Real, in this case means new and wonderful quality. Up until now, I have always sewn on really old or really cheap (or really old AND cheap) machines. The good side of old is that the machines are sturdy and can handle wild, frenetic free-motion stitching sessions. The bad side is that they are temperamental and a tad unpredictable.

To the left is an image of the old and new machines, side by side. They are friends. The Pfaff 1035 Tipmatic will remain my partner in free-motion. But my new baby is a Janome 7061NX! It is so exciting to have features (like automatic buttonhole) that work! And a bobbin winder that doesn’t require handholding (yes, I have thread-burned fingers from manually regulating the winding tension.) Most amazing, the Janome is the first machine that I have ever used that the tension is perfect: the stitches lock exactly in the middle!

To celebrate, I have begun the first bed quilt that I have made since I was 20! I was inspired by a tutorial at Happy Things. But, being foolish, I did not start with a baby size quilt. I am making the queen size (96″ X 105″)! I think that I am about 3/4 of the way through the piecing. The new machine allows me to get into the Zen of sewing, as opposed to the challenge of machine repair.

My advice to you, gentle reader is to not delay gratification. Go buy the new machine, if you are sewing on the vintage model. There is a time an place for everything – and I am not getting rid of my Pfaff. But last night I replaced the broken zipper on the dog bed with buttons & buttonholes – and it was fun! We all need to treat ourselves more!

Silvina Romero’s jewels seem to be getting press in Green Design ‘zines and blogs. Treehugger posted an article, and Inhabit has more images, but the slightly less information. For Treehugger, Paula Alvarado wrote:

“These pieces of “textile jewelery” are made by Argentinean clothing designer Silvina Romero out of discarded textiles, recycled pieces of fabric and threads. Silvina started out three years ago by picking up leftovers in Once, a Buenos Aires neighbourhood where all the fabrics dealers concentrate. That was the worst time for the Argentinean crisis, and this was a way for the designer to continue producing and making a living out of design. But soon, her work became recognized for its uniqueness. “I love that my pieces are built with another person’s trash, to make jewelery, usually associated to luxury and ostentation, with waste”, says the designer.”

The designer has a blog with more images and a few additional words, humorously translated by Google to read:

“Pieces of jewelry shop that are born from the harvesting and reusability of all type of textile remainders that, by means of different treatments like dyeing, plisar, to surround, to enroscar, to weave, to unravel, are transformed into diverse textures to be dressed.”

Have I mentioned that I am cheap? My son claims that I once took he and his sisters to the dollar store and gave them 50 cents. This is only partially true. They got 50 cents each. It was a consensus building exercise (and it was cheap).

My daughters are now reaching their late teens/early twenties and I am getting terrified about possible approaching weddings. Some of the weddings that we have attended cost more than a college education; more than the down payment on my first house; more than any car I will ever own. Today’s Craftzine entry has a solution: the Toilet Paper Wedding Dress

Sponsored by cheap-chic-weddings.com, the competition features some fabulous dresses made from the common toilet paper. There could be some issues if the bride spills her punch, or someone steps on her train. The fashion potential is fantastic though!

The 2007 contest has just opened. “The wedding contest is here so get out your toilet paper and let the good times roll! The 2007 Annual Toilet Paper Wedding Dress Contest is officially underway. It runs from May 1 to June 15, 2007.

Grab your friends, your toilet paper and a digital camera and get creative. You can use tape or glue as well. See the official rules for all of the details.”

Too bad my youngest has already bought her prom dress…. she might have looked wonderful in white!

gapingvoid: has published a short list on how to be creative
“So you want to be more creative, in art, in business, whatever. Here are some tips that have worked for me over the years:

1. Ignore everybody.

2. The idea doesn’t have to be big. It just has to change the world.

3. Put the hours in.

4. If your biz plan depends on you suddenly being “discovered” by some big shot, your plan will probably fail.

5. You are responsible for your own experience.

6. Everyone is born creative; everyone is given a box of crayons in kindergarten.

7. Keep your day job….”

There are more, plus a couple paragraphs explaining each part of the manifesto. I like it. It’s good to keep focused on the journey, not just the prize.

Embroidery, animation and history, all in one: the animated Bayeux tapestry. Actually, it is just the final half with the battle of Hastings. Still, at the end of 4 minutes and 15 seconds you will be smarter and amused. If you go on and read some of the history pages, you can even discover the naked man and the sex scandal (sadly, the Victorians gave him some baggy shorts). Be sure to watch the text in the animation as it transforms from Middle to modern English.
Bayeux Tapestry at youtube

“The tapestry was commissioned by William the Conqueror’s half-brother, Bishop Odo of Bayeux, depicting the events surrounding the conquest. It details events leading up to the invasion and shows the key aspects of the conquest itself, not least the Battle of Hastings.
The tapestry is not a tapestry in the normal sense. It is actually an embroidery of at least eight coloured wools, worked into pieces of linen. It is divided into a series of connected panels, approximately half a metre wide and 70 metres long. It is probably incomplete.
It is thought likely to have been created by English embroiderers, probably in the then famous embroidery works of Winchester; though some French historians maintain it was made in Normandy. Even the name is disagreed over, depending on which country you are in: to the French it is La Tapisserie de la reine Mathilde, or Queen Matilda’s Tapestry (Matilda was the Conqueror’s wife).” bbc history

From the March archives of the Self Portrait Challenge comes a list of clever (and free!) online image manipulation tools:

1. queeky – drawing tool
2. offtype – drawing tool
3. artpad – painting tool
4. scribbler – fun tool – can’t save image but can do a screen save
5. flashface – make a face using many variables
6. typedrawing – draw an image with letters
7. websketch – sketch and save and crop and alter your image online
8. mr picasso head – fun make a face tool
9. textorizer – turn your photo into a text image
10. face transformer – upload an image to be morphed
11. polaroid-o-nizer – turn your photos into polaroids
12. typeorganism – turn your photo into type
13. pikipimp – change your photos
14. movie poster flickr tools
15. hockney-izer – flickr tools
16. image mosaic generator
17. cartoon magic
18. magick image
19. wanted poster

There is, of course, the granddaddy of all: fd’s Flickr toys. Lots and lots of options on this page alone. Go make art! Now!