Miniature Books

For my first entry at Artwords: The Online Art Journal I made two books for the current challenge "Miniature". Both hardcover books are cloth covered, have one sewn signature and patterned endpapers. One of the covers incorporates the latest craze: 1 inch collage. I don't what it is about little things. Full size these two books would be nothing special but reduce them down to an inch or less and they are some how take on a magical quality. I have always loved miniatures. I had the pleasure of seeing Colleen Moore's Dollhouse at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago. The Library has little gold stamped leather bound volumes by famous authors. The site features a Tarzan story hand written by Edgar Rice Burroughs. Other miniature books I'd love to see are the ones by the Bronte sisters. The Miniature Book Society has some amazing books in their Competition Exhibition Catalogs. Click on the above image for a larger view, it's much bigger, clearer and more detailed.

Tags: miniature books, colleen moore, colleen moore's dollhouse, bronte, bronte sisters, miniature book society, kindredspirit, mischievousmary, Mischievous Mary

EDM Challenge #84: Bread

I haven't done a Everyday Matters Challenge in a long time. This week it's Bread so I bought a roll to draw. It did smell wonderful while I was drawing it so I was of two minds: keep drawing or give up and eat it! I finished the drawing but still haven't eaten it. The roll that is... Anyways... I put the roll on the bakery tissue right on the table with a strong light coming from the upper right. The hardest thing to try and capture was the bright edge of the tissue that caught the light between the roll and the dark shadow on the table. I was somewhat successful. Click image for a larger view.

Tags: EDM, Everyday Matters, Bread, Roll, Drawing, Pencil, mischievousmary, Mischievous Mary

I'm in Love!

I just did my first Artist Trading Cards (ATC's)! There are three in the series and they were made for a trade at Swap-bot. Read more about what ATC's are and then join in the fun! I like them because they they are small, like my "studio" in the corner of my bedroom. If you mess it up no big deal, you've wasted a few pennies, just start over. (Well... of course if you've invested in a lot of pre-printed collage images and do-dads this may not be the case...) These were done over old playing cards. I got an old dictionary from Goodwill then tea and coffee stained a few pages. I glued those on the cards and pressed them dry for awhile. Then I flipped them over and cut away the excess paper. I dragged the edges and a bit of the front of the cards across a black permanent ink stamp pad. Then I measured pencil lines for the calligraphy. I left them for that old drafting look. I did the calligraphy with waterproof ink, making sure I cleaned my dip pen afterwards! I think the owl stamp will be sort of my little signature mark. (Not that anyone will go out of their way to collect my "art".) The only thing I was a bit disappointed in was the drawing. I bought a pack of fine pointed colored Sharpies but they are really too wide. I should have waited and bought the ultra fine somewhere else. Not really a waste, the colors will match and I can use the broader ones for color fill. So far I have signed up for swaps two weeks apart at two different sites. Inbetween swaps I will make cards for one-on-one swaps. I think that is good spread. Some people sign up for way too many, get stressed out and it shows in the quality of their work. Click image for a larger view.

Tags: ATC's, Artist Trading Cards, Swapbot, Swap-bot, Goodwill, tea staining, Sharpie, Sharpies, mischievousmary, Mischievous Mary

Geeking Out

I worked full time all summer. I don't know if I'll do that again, everything got so neglected from my house to my artwork and blog! I'm doing the fall cleaning, better than spring cleaning around here because of the long winters. Spending some time on the computer I recently joined MyBlogLog and some of their communities. Through them I found a great blog called Playing With Beads. Through a post there I found CraftMemo, a craft record keeping and management system. Somehow along the way I found Swicki, a geeky web search tool that uses a tag cloud. See it in action in the sidebar. I also see that Yahoo! Photos has updated and added some cool stuff. My public albums. I need to add more of my pictures. I also got accepted at Artist Trading Card Forums! Whew!

Tags: geeky, mybloglog, craftmemo, swicki, yahoo! photos, artist trading cards, , mischievousmary, Mischievous Mary