this is creative: fiep westendorp

i love the illustrations of the 60s. seriously. the whimsy and the "chicken scratch" aspect of the composition. LOVE IT.

one of my favorites is fiep westendorp, a dutch illustrator (1916-2004) who did a lot of work with annie m.g. schmidt.

speak dutch? (not the jump rope game double, of which i failed miserably, but the language...) here's a great fiep westendrop site.

Art School in Session (Lots of Faces in One Week)

I've spent so much time taking writing classes and attending writing conferences that I forget that I used to love art nearly as much as I loved writing.

I stumbled across Carla Sonheim's website by chance and saw that she hosted regular online classes that use a blog, Flikr, and videos and when I saw the average price (for the week-longs) was about $35, I couldn't help myself. My biggest problem was deciding which one to start with.

Dom and I decided we wanted to start with the Faces 101 (as in, 101 different faces in a week) because it was a live class with feedback from Carla.

Today was day one and we dabbled with our watercolors and blobs and created faces.

Here are a couple of mine:

 Henry. 

I was channeling a little Led Zeppelin with this one. I wanted to make him older but couldn't quite pull it off. Still, I dig his goatee.

Kit.

Doesn't she look like Kenna a wee bit? I love the purple hair and it just so happened my hair was pulled into a long braid today, too. Hooray for purple braids.

Georgette.

I read a lot of Jane Austen and Georgette Heyer. What can I say? Guilty.

Milton.

I've never known a Milton in real life, but I'd sure like to. I bet he'd look like this guy and tell bawdy jokes and put skim milk in his coffee. Good ol' Milt.

More later in the week!

...happy...happy...happy...

stuff of life: toy portraiture

Do you ever wonder about the secret life of toys?

I spend about two-thirds of my days picking up, sorting, tossing, picking up,sorting, and tossing the amassed mountain of toys our kids have and I often wonder what their backstory is.

I took my new camera out for a testride today and I couldn't get my kids to sit still for a some pictures for the life of me. But I needed the practice, so I dumped out every figurine I could find and I took portraits of them. They were more than happy to tell me their woes.

toy portraits, session one
january 24, 2014

1. Randall dreams about being a concert pianist and growing organic turnips. But mostly he hates having his ears chewed on by the baby.

2. Gertie's big moment, her very own portrait, was ruined by Construction Carl's immature photobomb.

3. After a decade together, Caillou and Leo find themselves in couple's therapy.

4. Marine Corps Moe (the dollar store's answer to GI Joe) really loves a good cup of coffee in the morning. And some guerilla urban warfare for lunch.

5. Bernard lost his pride in that last battle. He lost his arm in Tijuana a few years back while on leave.

6. Saul and Paul never could see eye-to-eye.

7. Dusty remembers the good old days when pirating was considered an honest trade. He'd give all the legos in Houston to be chasing the fair winds again.

Beginnings

I was really tempted to name this post "Beginnings and Endings" but, honestly, I don't have any endings loaded in the hopper around here...so, well, yeah.

Boo started school this week alongside his big brother. It's only part day, but he's adjusting well after four and a half years of being home with one of us. I think I had a much harder time than he did. I'm not ashamed to admit there was a tear or 30 as I was packing up the boys' backpacks on Sunday night.

I had such a great summer with all four kids that I just wasn't ready for it to end. I'm not so great at change, it seems.

Boy Wonder is all hunkered down in fourth grade and came home with a math homework sheet all FULL of division. "Ha," I say. Looks like Dad is going to be on duty after the first couple of weeks. I avoid that stuff with all my might.

The girls and I have a few hours at the house and we really just sort of stare at the walls and talk about what the boys are doing. No. That's not true. Mostly we do what we normally do, just minus the fighting over train tracks and hot wheels. Boo comes home, the girls take a nap. Not a ton has changed, and yet so much has.

Watching him get on the bus about blew me away on Tuesday. I walked away and marveled at how much faith we have to put in other people to watch over our children from the moment we say goodbye in the morning until the moment we can smother them with hugs and homework when school lets out. A little mind boggling.

I made a few more designs for the Etsy shop. I can't get over how popular hedgehogs still are. They are so much fun. I gave special nod to my fellow bloggers, too.

Stuff of Life: Art and Vikings We Have Known

So, about a week ago, baby number Four (we call her Ninja), swallowed a penny. It was a nightmare and I'll relive it here another day. But not today.

Today, I just want to talk about my viking obsession and how all I seem to be able to do (creatively) is embroidery. I love it. It's freeing and loosey goosey and right up my alley. And soon I'm going to experiment combing what I doodle sketch with some mixed media sewing. But for now, I do a lot of doodle sketching. Here's a viking I finished this weekend based on an old housewares design that I revamped a tad.

From there, I created a couple of mugs based on those old designs. I know, I know....I swore off the Etsy shop after the Christmas insanity, but I missed it. And I missed making new designs.

Here are the two new fellas. You can find the listings to the Etsy shop here: Coffee Mug: Olaf the Viking of Love and Coffee Mug: Sven the Musical Viking.

The girls are growing. I mean, they're ALL growing, but the girls are growing in badness it seems. One is swallowing pennies and the other is dumping out all of the boys' new school supplies and making it rain shredded facial tissue in their room when no one is looking. Nightmare, folks.

The only way I get a moment of peace to stab my fingers with an embroidery needle is when I have them preoccupied. They like art lately. Along with that other stuff I said...

Have a great week!

 

Norwegian Inspiration: Figgjo Flint

I've been getting a little wild in my embroidery designs lately and have been scouring the interwebs for inspiration. If I stitch one more bunny or kitty for the girls, I might just implode from too much sweet cuteness.

I love sweet cuteness as much as anybody. But seriously.

Still love Scandinavian design and as I fell down the rabbit hole on Etsy (my favorite place to spend all of our money and dream about how creative I might have been born if only....)

I found a porcelain company called Figgjo Flint. Just a humble manufacturing company founded in 1941...it's like Ikea, only less American.

All of their stuff has the straight lines and edges of the minimalist Scandinavian look I love, but the thing that hooked me was the people illustrations. Like jolly, round people I want to have hot chocolate with. Even their vikings!

Check out Etsy's Figgjo Flint collection of finds.

The Linus Blankie and the Life of a Fighter

I've made three other quilts in my life.

One for Aoife (owls and dark blue blocks), one for Kyra (penguins, I believe) and one for Riley (an applique Little Red Riding Hood that now has a suspect stain on it. Darn.)

This fourth quilt I made was so simple I should probably be ashamed. I ordered a layer cake (42 precut squares that are 10" each) and couldn't decide what to do. I also knew that one of my "birthday sisters" (I have TWO of them--girls who share the same birthday as I do. One is a sorority sister from my days at A&M and the other is Lauren Taylor, a sister in the jiu jitsu fraternity and all-around badass in women's MMA).

Anyhoo. LT turns 30 this month, whereas I will celebrate the 6th anniversary of turning 29. (Hush, ya'll.)

The quilt had two purposes. First, it was her birthday.

Everybody needs a handmade quilt or blanket given to them at least ONCE in their lives.

Seriously.

It's important to know that somebody in the world worries that you'll be warm enough to the extent that they poke the bejeezus out of their fingers with straight pins or crochet hooks or knitting needles. (My aunt Cheryl made a gorgeous white blanket for my mom many years ago that she loved to pieces. I remember. I just can't remember whether it was knit or crochet and where it is today. Hopefully she'll chime in and let me know.)

Now, Lauren is the type of person that doesn't really need reassurance of how much she is loved. People adore her and her new fan base is taking off as her MMA career is skyrocketing. And she's got an amazing partner who loves her to the moon and back, a mama who is crazy about her, an adorable son,  along with a couple best friends who would probably take a bullet for her (and I wouldn't be surprised if they have stories like that between them).

But still...

My MMA career was short-lived all those years ago and I only had to travel once (to Las Vegas). But what I remember the most (aside, you know, from the news they'd found a brain aneurysm in the obligatory MRI), was how lonely I was in the hotel room waiting for the fight to happen. Hours of nothing to do but wander around by yourself in a crowd of strangers or lay on an unfamiliar bed and watch god-awful daytime TV...missing your loved ones and worrying about the madness to come.

The second reason for the blanket is that the life of a fighter, when you get down to it, can be pretty painful and lonely.

Honestly. Fans love you. Your family and friends are proud of you. But the nature of the business is you are alone a lot and waiting more time than anyone can imagine.

Waiting for the gym to open. Waiting for medicals. Waiting for weigh ins. Waiting for the tape and wrap guy. Waiting for your fight to be up. Waiting for your flight to board. Waiting for the shuttle to come get you and take you to the hotel.

Waiting waiting waiting.

And Lauren? Well, despite her ginormous pythons and the fact that she makes people bleed for a living...she's pretty sensitive. She gets emotional under the Godzilla-sized stress she carries and she misses her mama and her Joe and her son and her friends and the pressure of the life of a fighter bears on her every now and again and, as her friend, I can see it in her eyes.

This is not an easy life for those who are fortunate enough to be successful. 

So when I thought about what I needed to do with that pile of fabric, I thought about LT and her fight next week and how her life is going to be full of traveling and fighting for the foreseeable future. And how she'll spend plenty of lonely hours waiting when Joe or Aurora or Patrick or Alex can't be there. And then the Boy Wonder and I had the idea to make her a Linus Blankie.

And, well, here it is. A noble, poorly bound quilt for LT to drag around hotels and planes and wherever else this journey is going to take her. Hopefully it will serve her well.

And hopefully, she won't need to suck her thumb like Linus. (Ha! I has jokes.)

A side note. Lauren (6-0) fights next weekend on the Invicta FC 6 card. It's available online and on PPV television. You should watch. Really really.

A Felted Love Story: Work in Progress Wednesday

Pretty Little Life

A year ago TODAY we got off the plane at 6:34 a.m. in Houston, Texas. 

Happy anniversary to us!

It's summertime here. I don't care if it's not officially June 21 or whatever the official first day of summer is. It's HOT and HUMID and we're all drinking lemonade. SUMMER!

Happy Memorial Day Weekend, friends!

I have too many baby food jars around. So I stick stuff in them. Paintbrushes. Pencils. Toothbrushes. Stolen moss. It's pretty.

High-rise apartments in Downtown Houston. None of my kids wanted to dream about living there because none of my kids care for elevators. It's true.

These clouds turned into thunderstorms 20 minutes later. At least they started out really pretty, right?

A little mint garden on the porch.

What I'm Working On: May 8, 2013

Little Mouse, Little Moo, and a Hedgie. Stupid Moo refuses to have a nice, round head and keeps squishing to one side. Which forces me to stab at him more and more with the torture implement And that expalains the bloody fingertips right now. Stupid Moo.

The new guy, Mason. He loves me. Loves all the kids. Not sure about P. Not sure if Mason will make the cut if he doesn't stop with the scaredy cat routine around Dad. I hope he makes it...he sure is a sweetheart!!

A matryoshka softie that I sketched and cut a pattern for. Too bad I forgot her adorable bear ears. And how to sew. I gave up near the finish line because her lumpy head was too distracting. I'll finish her sometime this week, I hope.

Then there's always this guy. He loves the dog's kennel more than the dog does.


...happy happy happy...