New Adventures

I have a few new adventures:

I started selling the hats that I make. I also opened a shop on Etsy, http://www.etsy.com/shop/WorkingDuck. Please come check out the new stuff.

Imagination Crochet

Here is a brief sample of what I have managed to bring from my imagination to the real world.

At this point there is a hand written pattern that needs some translation. I am hopeful that I maybe able to write out the pattern in such a way that others may beable to create bags similar to this for themselves.

the tree

Here finally are pictures of the tree i made as the final in my artist books class. The tree has so far been in two exhibitions and has been well recieved at both. Maybe this making art thing was a good idea after all.
The whole thing minus a stick is from book materials, I consider it recycled books. the roots and the grass are all individual strings colored and glued, the leaves, trunk and butterfly are all from pages of a book. I will post more pictures of other views if I can get it back :)

Follow Me

Here is my most recent creation for my artist book class. The title is "Follow Me". Which is also to title of the freeform poem I wrote in order to have a framework of text to illustrate. The poem is an expression of my having left a career in retail management (and it's 60+ hour work weeks that seemed to have consumed my life) to go to graduate school and earn my MFA. The key to walking away from one path in life to follow another, was my mother and dearest friend telling me to listen to my heart, this is the right thing to do. To Mom and Lynns I love you both.

The Poem reads:

So Dark, So Cold, So Lost

The Butterfly whispers “Follow Me.”

Hope in a ghost of a voice
Clinging, Climbing


A glow in the distance
The Butterfly whispers “Follow Me.”
Belief in the touch of a sound
Holding, Running


Trees, red filtered light shifting to soft green
The Butterfly whispers “Follow Me.”
Faith in the beating of wings
Accepting, Walking


Golden Light, Flowers, Warmth
The Butterfly whispers “Welcome Back.”
Trust in words of air
Embracing, Relaxing

slinky take two

Here are some pictures of the snowflakes that I sort of got to work. It is better to see it in action but I have yet to workout the kinks in getting videos posted. Never the less, here is what I spent more hours than I should admit to, experimenting with somewhere around 16 different adhesives to create.

slinky books

So I had this crazy idea to make a slinky out of paper after I saw one in the collection of a bookseller, who came to visit my artists' books class. Little did I know what I was getting into. The basic form is simple enough, a series of rings that are attached end to end to make a slinky. However, the covers and then the decorations complicated things. I had actually very little trouble with my first attempt, once I figured out the leaves I wanted to use. (Thank you to Martha Stewart for making such cool toys.) "Falling Leaves" works like a slinky when you hold it in your hands and let the "pages" turn themselves.
I was excited by the way this turned out and set out to do one with a transparent/translucent set of rings and snowflakes on them. Yeah Right! Vellum is not as durable as the drawing paper I had and the snowflakes out of paper are in a word, a nightmare. One inch paper snowflakes are extremely delicate and don't glue well with any glue I have found. But I have yet to give up on finding a way to get what I want. So far there are two versions of the snowflake slinky. Version one is vellum as a base and colored drawing paper for the snowflakes. The look is right but the snowflakes tangle and tear the minute you try to work the slinky action. I only had half the flakes on when the tangles started so I let it alone and went in search of new materials that would be more durable.

Hello overhead transparency film. Plastic does not glue to it's self with any clear glue, but there is this great stuff called double stick tape, so cool. However snowflakes out of even heavyweight paper tear easily and don't adhere well to plastic. After considerable trial and error (lots of errors) I have a semi working snowflake slinky version two. I will post pictures of the version two soon.

beware the wet paint