Calendar girl on CreateMixedMedia.com

Every day this week... I've got a calendar girl up at CreateMixedMedia.com!

I'd been thinking of contributing to The Week As Art for a while; themed art is a great way to get the inspiration flowing. But my life has been, um, "eventful" for the last four months. Then I got the online equivalent of an engraved invitation to submit, so I had to get moving and look for inspiration in earnest. So first I took camera phone photos of address numbers in the oldest part of downtown Seattle.

Harder than I thought to find numbers 22 through 28 in a row, or even within walking distance. Then I looked down... and found the parking stall numbers you see painted on concrete.

But that didn't really go anywhere either. Finally, as I headed to TwoBoo's day care center one afternoon, I drove past a Washington state highway sign. The numbers are set within a silhouette of George Washington's head.

And then I realized, hey... I live within reach of all the signs I need for The Week As Art!

So I combined the George silhouettes with my most recently-painted over image.

My little Calendar Girl plays peekaboo for the whole week.

Each calendar "day" measures roughly 7" square, and is available for $40 each. Email me if you're interested in one of them, or in the original wall piece -- "Impenetrable" -- from which The Week as Art pieces are derived.


And enjoy yourself on the Create Mixed Media site -- it's bursting with mixed media resources, profiles and even a Craft Wars-style contest this week. I'd highly recommend sitting down with a cuppa and allowing yourself to explore!

Mocked Etsy members? Time to mock Pinterest

You've heard of Regretsy, right? It's the blog that mocks Etsy projects gone (horribly) awry.

from Regretsy.com

Etsy's enough of a phenom for its vendors to have inspired ridicule from the internet satirists to mock it. Now there's a blog mocking the new cuteness -- Pinterest -- called Pinstrosity. First they show the original pin:

From Pinstrosity.blogspot.com

Then they show a photo from someone who tried the tutorial and didn't have quite so much luck.

Pinstrosity.blogspot.com

Similar idea -- "send us your photos of 'ohmyGod what is that THING?!' " but Pinstrosity also tests out DIY pins themselves to offer suggestions of how to correct whatever went wrong. Also, the vibe of Pinstrosity, despite the name, is not as venomous as Regretsy. More of an "oh, dear" tone than a "what the hell is WRONG with you?!" Entertaining... check it out.

"Impenetrable"

When I was gearing up for the Artists' Garage Sale a while ago...

I thought maybe I needed more new inventory for the occasion, something more dimensional than a print. So I turned to some Library of Congress images to paint over, and found this woman.

Courtesy Library of Congress

(Dang, that collar and dress together is just... whoa. Anyway.) Although she's in a fairly standard studio pose, she seems to radiate an emotional distance. An iciness that can't be completely cracked open.

Which made me think, hmmm... an ice queen... surrounded by wintry whiteness... I have lots of textured white papers. Hey... "pure as the driven snow." So I incorporated a page of old text containing the words "purity" under her cheekbone, and "purification" at her chin.

Of course an ice queen would need a castle, preferably with a good lookout tower.

Castles need walls... Walls, walls, what do I have that looks like walls or -- BRICKS! I built bricks from wooden squares I never used for another project, and layered them with extra-coarse pumice gel I bought with my Golden Award (thanks, Tracy Fraker and Lynn Scott!).

But castle gates have to open at some point, even just once.

And even impenetrable fortress walls crumble.

The barricading of the inner person, the illusion of purity and perfection... that's how the original image struck me. In that spirit, I'm calling my painted-over version "Impenetrable." The piece stands 12" x 24",  and incorporates paper, old text, metal findings, acrylics and pumice gel.

I'm not yet certain where I'm going to offer this piece for sale. But I have a few ideas, and some layouts for a couple more dimensional wall pieces.