Gelli printing

Today I took a monoprinting workshop.  Monoprinting on a gelli block.  I took only the gelli block to class, and other than admiring Colette Copeland's work, I stayed away from watching any videos or tutorials online.  I wanted to form my first impressions by doing the work, not by watching how it's done.
I was happy to have a wonderful teacher, MaryJo McGraw.  She was patient and full of good advice.  
Painting and drawing are the techniques that I am most afraid of, I feel the most uncomfortable because I am not sure what to do with it, or how to control it.  But here I am, challenging myself and it's OK.
Here is a peak of what I made in class.

Pumpkin fields

Tomorrow is an exciting day for me.  I signed up for a gelli printing workshop.  I don't get to take workshops too often, but when I do it's because I want to learn a technique that I can use in my art.  Drawing and painting don't come naturally to me, so I always look for something along those lines, but without the complexity of things looking realistic. 
In the mean time, I wanted to start something new, but I am sort of at a roadblock and wasn't sure what to start.  I needed to finish at least one or two more embroidery hoops-shrinky dink scenes, and I struggled with pulling all the elements together.
This is what I finished at last:

Tonto Natural Bridge

The hot heat is here and is around to stay for the next few months. I am not looking forward to it, although I admit I prefer it in lieu of shoveling snow and being cold.  To break the long summer and escape the heat, we occasionally take a day trip, going north to places like Payson, Prescott, Sedona, Flagstaff, Jerome etc.  They are charming towns.  I sometime wished I lived there, but then I remind myself of the conveniences I am accustomed to by living in a large city (such as many craft stores to choose from).
This past weekend we took a day trip to Payson, and visited the Tonto Natural Bridge.
Before we had kids, David and I went there and hiked up, under and across the bridge, carrying a big old 4x5 camera.  I don't know if he ever got any good pictures of it back then.  This time, he sort of had a project in mind for a submission to a magazine.  The photographs I am sharing here are not his, they are by the amateur me, and my two generations old Android phone camera. Enjoy!

 

Poppy fields and desert blooms

Because it's summer break and there is no school, the day is filled with entertaining two little people.  And then work, the one that pays me every two weeks.  It's all good, I am not complaining.  I am explaining why I haven't really been crafting and creating as many new things as I would like.
But I work well under pressure.  There is a few deadlines approaching for some submissions I'd like to send off so I've made it a priority that I take an hour or two in a day to come up with something new.
Here are the results:

The colorful things are zentangle designs on shrinky dink, that I colored, baked and then stitched on layers of fabric.  I used a few embroidery stitches for added texture.  I finished two (the ones above), and I have a  head full of ideas for two more.  So I am back in my craft room. 

Crafting with kids

The school in my neighborhood where my kids go has a summer program that provides school kids with free breakfast and lunch for the entire summer break.  In between breakfast and lunch there are activities, crafts, games etc.  The last two summers I took the kids every once in a while,  but this time around I offered to teach some crafts.
Yesterday was my first day, and with Father's Day approaching the program already had it on their schedule to make cards.  I was helping them make envelopes.



With cell phones in their hands the handful of 10-11 years old kids who decided to craft were amazed that a person can make an envelope.  And that you can use an old road map to make them.  They had fun.

Embroidery inspiration

Yesterday I was inspired to do some embroidery by a post a saw on Etsy How to Tuesdays.  And with Father's Day approaching I needed to make something quick for my husband. 
And so I made a little badge.

And although inspiration for me can come from many places, I think I always end up being influenced by experiences in my life.  I don't always realize this until I am well into the project, or I am done.  So after I finished the father's day badge, I couldn't help myself and started another one.  I was embroidering poppies.  Poppies under the stars.

I didn't think much of poppies until recently when I realized that as a young child they used to bring me peace.  I used to watch a field of poppies making waves under the wind from the fourth floor of an apartment where I grew up.  I learned that the field is not there anymore.  It made me a little sad to learn this.  But they still grow wild elsewhere in Macedonia.  A friend that I grew up with shared this picture taken by the river Vardar that runs through the capitol.

Crafting with paper bags

It's an in-between project time.  Supplies that I ordered a couple of days ago should be on their way, so in the meantime I've been just blog hopping, looking to see if anything in particular strikes me.  And that's when I discovered an exciting news!!
I submitted some work to GreenCraft, place mats that I made out of brown paper bags from stores that I shop for food: Sprouts, Whole foods, Trader Joes.  And I was sooooo excited and happy to see them on their pre-order add. Very cool!

I am not sure what other projects made it in, but the publication just went quaterly (instead of bi-annual).  There must be a tons of cool projects that you can make with things that you already have on hand.  Grab a copy.  It's out in August, or you can pre-order. 

The heat has arrived

Summer is here, it's been over a 100F for the last few days.  We try to go out earlier in the day, to a pool, the water park in the neighborhood, the zoo, or any place with some shade and water.  Then we hide inside in the middle of the heat. 
It works out one way or the other, and perhaps even more so since my work schedule changed and now I don't start until 2pm.  It gives me the entire morning with the kids.
I just ordered some really cool supplies from Stampington and can't wait for their arrival so we can make some new art.  In the mean time I've been sewing.  I found an easy pattern for a clutch.  It came in two sizes, but for practice I tried the smaller one first.  The finished size it's about a wallet size, big enough to put a small wallet and a cell phone.  It works well for me, although I will give the larger size a try too.
Here are the first few I made. 

An odd week

It was an odd week.  At work we learned that a co-worker was found dead in his house.  He's been dead for a couple of days before they found him.  This bothered me a lot.  It bothered me because where I grew up, it would be rare for someone to be dead in their own home for a few days and no one knowing.  But in the US this would not be uncommon as people live alone, no family to check on them daily.  So it's that isolation that bothers me.  So many people around, yet we are alone.
Then just as I came home from attending a memorial service for my co-worker, I learned from an email that another dear friend from folkdancing has passed away as well.  A sweet, energetic 94 year old lady named Alice.  Alice amazed me what she did at her age.  Danced every day.  A few years ago, after she lost her husband, and her own health was deteriorating she moved to Nevada to be close to family.  At that time, she gave away hundreds of costumes she accumulated over the years, to her folkdancing friends.  I have about a handful of them myself.
My fondest memory of Alice is dancing with her at a lawn behind the Scottsdale library for some type of event.  I had a very limited knowledge of folkdancing at the time, and desperately tried to follow her dancing Ali Pasha, a Turkish dance.  Her friends here in Phoenix will dance this Tuesday night in her memory, and I am going to try to attend if I can get the night off from work.
Sooo...anyway, just an odd week.

LA

There was a time when moving to LA would not even be a choice I consider.  But the more we visit the city the more I like it.  Off course, I realize to visit and to live in LA are two different things.  If the opportunity to move there comes along, I still have to consider a few things: a good neighborhood, one that I can afford to live in, with a good public school for my kids, and with a relatively good commute to the airport so I can go to work.  Is that a lot to ask?

The last few times we went to LA the kids always ask to go to the beach.  They love the beach.  I never thought much about the beach, but I love the beach too.  Growing up in Eastern Europe we went to Greece almost every year.  So the beach experience is not new to me, I just never realized that I missed it in all the 17 years living in the US.

So this past weekend when I had an opportunity to go to LA with my husband, I didn't think twice. In addition to spending time at the beach with the kids, I also got to see my college friend Isabel, who has never met my kids before.  And since the job my husband had was close to the fashion district I found myself walking though this row of street market where pinatas, Hispanic foods and candy were everywhere.  Walking along, holding a kid in each hand, I fit right in.  After all, I grew up in a developing country, where the atmosphere, street vendors, street food and all that goes along with it, is a common thing.







So who knows, maybe I will end up in LA one day.

Tornado

It's on a day like today when a tornado wipes a town in Oklahoma and many die, children included, that I squeeze my kids a little tighter, I hold them a little longer and I am thankful that my family is ok.  We live another day.

I think of the pain, grief and confusion that the families affected are going through right now and how their lives are changed forever and their healing process has not even begun.  I think of the families that only a few months ago lost their children and loved ones in the school shooting in Connecticut, or the ones in the Boston Marathon bombing just last month.  How are they doing?  And if I kept up with the news a little better there are probably many more tragic happenings that are too much, too many or too overwhelming to remember.
And there is nothing that I can say that is profound, that would make a difference.  Inside I hurt a little, and I wished that somehow that was enough to take a little of the hurt away from those who suffer right now.

SEW Somerset again

I got the new issue of SEW Somerset in the mail and I have to admit the first thing I did is list through to find the pages with my work.  This is the second time my work is in SEW Somerset, and I've also been so blessed to have my work in other Stampington publications, but each time I feel just as excited as the very first time I got published.
I spent my afternoon yesterday listing through, reading the articles and admiring the work of many talented people whose work was selected to be in this issue.

And here is the two page spread with my fabric rings.

Zentangle turned into Zen-shrinkies

I've been preoccupied with a new skill I learned from a workshop I took last week: Zentangle.  Zentangle is a drawing technique of repeating patterns.  It seemed easy enough, so I gave it a try.  It was a success!  I have been seeing patterns everywhere since the class.  I've been drawing and experimenting with the technique.  And it is how I got addicted to what I like to call Zen-shrinkies.
You know I like to use shrinky dinks in many of my projects.  So I tried to see what will happen if I draw zentangle desings on shrinky dink plastic and bake it.  I added color using pencils.  And I've been totally consumed in zen-shrinkies.

 

I turned them into rings too.

 

I added my original practice drawings I did in class, to my craft only blog: Stitch Play

 

Vacation

I've been busy, but not with working, instead with taking vacation.  I took vacation twice in April: the first week and the last week of it.  I didn't have big plans, and had a great time still.  I did some travel, visited family and some friends, spent time with my kids, enjoyed the beach in California and Virginia and did some crafting.

 

      

 

 

 

Soleri Bells

Sometime about a decade ago, during our first year or two in Arizona, David and I had a chance to meet Paolo Soleri.  Paolo Soleri was an architect, who in his early days in America lived with Frank Loyd Wright's family.  He was a great thinker and the very person that created arcology - a happy marriage of architecture and ecology.

Soleri used to hold lecture talks/conversations on arcology every week either in his residence known as Cosanti, or in the city he built just outside of Prescott, AZ known as Arcosanti.  David and I attended one of these talks and bought one of Soleri's books: The Urban Ideal (a compilation of conversations with Soleri from the past 30 years).


Here are some of my favorite quotes and paragraphs from his book:

1. "I think our gravest problem is the technological rage, the rage to do whatever is possible.  There is a difference between desirable and feasible.  We create a catastrophic avalanche of junk because it is feasible, when we should be paying attention to what is desirable.  I call that 'a better quality of wrongness.'  We are getting very skilled - skilled at doing the wrong thing in better and better ways.'

2.  "It is necessity to make the city package small enough so that both the man-made and the natural are at your disposal.  There is a limit to the size of any organism, whether biological or para-biological.  The city is no exception to this imperative."

The pictures I added here are pictures of bells hanging on my front porch.  I bought them during one of the visits to Arcosanti.  These bells are one of the ways Soleri was able to raise funds to build his experimental city Arcosanti, which is still a work in progress.

If you are around Phoenix area, the Scottsdale Art Museum currently has models and sketches of Soleri's buildings and designs.  You can also visit in person his residence in Cosanti, or you can visit his marvelous city of Arcosanti.
Paolo Soleri died on April 9th this year.  He was 93.

Keeping busy

I've been quiet, but busy.  And sad, I've been quite sad and avoiding the news.   Even though there is no working TV in our home, news of bombings, explosions, darn politics and debates find their way to my ears.  I mostly listen to NPR, that's how I get the news.  And then once a week a visit to the office at my work lets me hear the TV in the breakroom blasting the news over and over and over.  Maddening!  I really don't have any right words to even begin describing my emotions, even though no one in my family has been directly affected or lost their lives in any of the sad news in the world.  Sadness fills me in for the people directly affected, and for my kids for having to grow in a world that is in such unrest.

So I've been keeping busy with work, the job that pays me every two weeks.  And with craft/hand work that makes me feel good.
Here's what I've been making:

34

It was my birthday last Sunday.  I turned 34.  I took the week off as vacation to spend time with my family and also catch up on some craft work and sleep. It was a good week off.   We spent a day on the beach in California, we had cake with my uncle in Palm Springs, and I was going to take a class this morning at a local craft shop but it got canceled.  It was a drawing class and I was looking forward to it.  But it's OK, I should learn to draw from Maggie.  She actually gave me the best birthday gift; a drawing of our family.

Moving

A little over a year ago, an apron I made out of an old skirt appeared on the pages of Belle Armoire.  Perhaps it was beginner's luck, but it was enough to encourage me to submit my work to different publications.  Almost every time I've sent something out, it has been accepted and published.  And as it goes with things like this, one is usually asked to share an email, a web, or a blog page, so readers who like to see more of your work can do so.  Without too much hesitation I usually give my blog site (that is this blog).  I don't mind sharing my work, showing off what I've made, what has inspired me etc.
But I've come to realize that my blog is not only about the things I create.  I started blogging to keep in touch with many friends I've made over the years who live around the world.  I read their blogs, they read mine.  This way I don't have to write the same letter a dozen of times.  I often share personal stories, good times and bad times, joys and frustrations.  And it was ok for my friends to read all of that.  But strangers who land on my blog by following a magazine article, shouldn't have to read about what I do with my children, or about my latest vacation, or things that went wrong and I was upset about it and needed to vent.  It's not right, nor it is professional to take innocent magazine readers into all of that.  And also my blog name Becha4779 says nothing at all about my work.  Those who know me, know that Becha is nothing more than my name spelled in cyrilics, followed by my birthday.  Pretty boring, and not very creative.
So because I plan to keep on creating and submitting, I felt it was necessary to create a blog where I can post my creative work only.  That site is Stitch Play and you can visit it here.
This doesn't mean that I won't update this blog.  I will continue to share what I am up to with my kids and family, as well as post about what I am working on. 
See you soon!