Posted in Everyday Life on November 27, 2008 | 3 Comments »
I want to thank Divinity today, though there’s no Thanksgiving in Spain, the present is always a good time to say thank you. I want to say thank you for music, as neither me or my husband could live without it.
Here are some moments of perfection in Rock.
Danzig – I Don’t Mind The Pain
Paradise Lost – Embers Fire
Type O Negative – Love You To Death
Posted in Embroidery And Sewing, Everyday Life, News and Updates on November 26, 2008 | 1 Comment »
With so much going on in my life, it may seem that I’m going crazy with work, but the truth is that I’m not. Proof of it is that I found time to make this embroidered ornament (15 cms. wide, bigger than a cd) for a friend’s birthday yesterday. I wanted to make something special for her as she, who is a professional masseur, has been doing wonders on my cervical lesion and I’m feeling an awesome improvement in my health since she has been giving me massages. When my cervical lesion strikes (it originated with the vibration and the weight of the tattoo machine) the worst is not the pain, but the vertigo associated with it. I can barely walk around the house and standing up is really a nightmare. So, she deserved a very special gift – and she loved it!
Posted in Mixed Media on November 18, 2008 | 3 Comments »
Made two weeks ago, but I couldn’t show it until it arrived to its recipient in Estonia. Originally a cigar catalogue (handmade cigars are one of the Canary Islands specialties), completely altered on the theme of vintage roses. About thirty pages, plus fabric-covered covers. Can’t wait to find more books to alter, it was such an amazing experience!
Posted in Uncategorized on November 16, 2008 | 4 Comments »
As Victorian reproduction artists, we all love roses, tea cups and chatelaines. They’re probably the most beautiful, dainty, tiny things we have ever seen. Me, I have rose prints on almost every room at my home, and quite a few printed reproductions of more roses, pretty ladies and lovely things scattered around.
But Victorianism (saying it as a very wide term) is not only that! The wideness of this era, the contradictions of this time and its complexity created multi-themed artists… and in my opinion, we tend to forget this side. While I look at victorian styled crafts on the web, I am almost intoxicated with the amount of pinks and pastels that I find. I am not against pink and pastels, but there is so much more, and SO interesting! Today I want to show you a few paintings that show a little of that.
Gustave Courbet, Self-Portrait (also called The Desperate Man)
(Gustave, come back from the grave and marry me!!!)
Jean Leon Gerome, Black Bashi Bazouk
(Orientalism – probably one of the most interesting and sensual parts of Victorian Art)
John Singer Sargent, Portrait Of Edouard And Marie Louise Pailleron
(I love that evil kids and the red background – redrum!)
Jules Lefevre, Vittoria Colona
(This looks like Lefevre channeling Rafael)
Jean August Dominique Ingres, Portrait Of Louis Francois Bertin
(Look at the power of the model’s hands)
Felicien Rops, Illustration for Des Diaboliques
(Rops was the best erotic illustrator of his time)
Can we see a little more of this among the roses and the pretty girls PLEASE?
Posted in Embroidery And Sewing on November 13, 2008 | 7 Comments »
Printable fabric is very hard to find here in Tenerife, and/or very expensive. I don’t like the plastic look of fabric transfer paper, and it’s not easy to sew beads (or anything) to it because of that plastic texture. These last months I have been making more crazy quilting and sewing than ever in my life, and adding images to my work had become a problem as I couldn’t find a solution that was affordable and beautiful at the same time. But yesterday I found my way into fabric printing! I thought many of you, starving artists like me, could make use of this solution too, so I’m sharing this info today.
Materials needed:
A printer of course :) .
Cotton fabric – this time I used unused (but washed) pillowcase white fabric, but any cotton fabric will do, and I think silk and other natural materials can do too.
A sticker sheet, full page size. I love this paper and use it a lot, I truly recommend you buy a whole box, but here you can buy a few sheets too – I think it’s really worth to make a little expense on it as it has so many uses. I use it for collage, business cards, decoupage…a box of 100 sheets costed 12 Euros (that’s about 17 dollars) so it’s not a big investment and goes a long way. Mine is from the brand Q Connect, but I’ve used other brands too.
How To:
Prepare the sheet of images you want to print and adjust the printer at your desire – I have a pro printer so the “normal” feature was used here, but if you are using everyday printers you can adjust the print settings to the best available.
Iron the fabric well.
Peel off the protective paper, stick the sheet to the fabric and cut carefully around it. You can use a roller to put out all air bubbles and wrinkles – I used a big glue stick and it worked perfectly.
Put the sheet carefully in the printer – only one at a time! Remember to take off any other papers you may have in the printer tray to make sure it holds the sheet well.
Print your images!
Remember:
The printer does not print white! If you are using coloured fabric, the white areas in the pics will show the fabric colour.
After printing, peel off the sticker paper and iron without steam to heat set the inks. Protect the sheet with a towel and iron the towel, not directly on the sheet.
It is very likely that the printer inks will fade when machine washed, so use this method only on artwork, not on pieces you will add to clothes.
Don’t throw away the sticker sheet! It can be reused several times, so prepare your images in batches beforehand.
Leave space between images for sewing!
Here’s what I’m making with the first image: a crazy quilting bag for my mother-in-law.
Posted in Uncategorized on November 12, 2008 | 11 Comments »
Empress, The Seed – OOAK work by Lorianne Jantti.
This is the first time I write bad words about anyone on the blogosphere, but I couldn’t let this pass unnoticed. This morning I got an email from Amy Sperry Faldet, a flickr friend who owns a group on fairy-themed jewelry. She was worried about some pics she had received for approval from a member, as she found they were blatant copies of another member’s work. The unfortunately copied member is my beloved friend Lorianne Jantti.
I won’t say my personal opinion because at this moment I’m quite pissed and do not want to say anything I would regret in the future, but I’ll let you judge for yourself. Please click on this link to see Lorianne’s work and click on this one to see I Tesori della Luna’s photostream. I know Lorianne’s work very well and I was going to show some compared works, but that person has uploaded her pics in gif format and I don’t know how to upload them here, so you’ll have to go and see for yourself. On the very first page, you can see four pieces she has copied directly from Lorianne.
We have all been inspired by someone, all we all share influences, but from that to simple STEALING DESIGNS there is a long distance!
Unihorn Vial – OOAK work by Lorianne Jantti.
The saddest thing is that probably there is little we can do legally to avoid this, and we are all under the threat of being copied by people who have no respect at all neither for talent not for the hard work than having your own business means. Even though there is nothing we can do legally, we can still brag about it on our blogs!
Please show your support leaving a message for Lorianne on her blog, or you can leave it here and I’m sure she will read it. Forget about the copycat and support the true original artist! Let’s not waste our time with those who should be forgotten, but admiring real art, real talent and real hard work.
My dear Lorianne, your talent and originality is so awesome that will put all your copycats to shame! Never forget that – you are always a hundred steps ahead! I love you very much!!!!
Posted in Embroidery And Sewing on November 11, 2008 |
Embroidered cards with vintage playing cards as backing. I like to make this little colour/contrast exercises, as if they were miniature paintings. It is always inspiring and stretches my view. To my shame I have to admit I am completely stuck with the Pink Christmas challenge at ECS, so instead of letting frustration grow, I am working on my Christmas inventory, adding small projects until a bigger one comes up. I have a box half-filled with tags, small embroideries, atcs and such, all waiting to be made into christmas gifts for family and friends – when I’m not following my inspirations, I’m adding bits to the box.
Creativity is a habit, not a gift. We have to keep it working and not wait for ideas to come, because they won’t! Picasso said “Creativity exists, but it has to find you working” – what a truth! When I started crafting as my full-time job, I was sloppy and worked in a hurry. With time, I have learnt to choose the slow pace always – when readers ask me how do I get so much done in a week I have to laugh, because from my perception I walk this path like a turtle :). There isn’t such thing as a “creative type” of personality, but there is a training in creativity that can only be acquired by practise, practise and a little more practise. And of course, TONS of love for what you’re doing, be it big or small. It is all in the details, they say!
Love and patience are the keys to self-improvement in any area of our lives – may sound naive, and maybe it is, but who cares. I don’t.
Posted in Embroidery And Sewing on November 10, 2008 | 6 Comments »
If there is a satisfying task for me, it is making something beautiful out of something ugly. I always forget to take pics of the “before” item, and my best friends always scolds on me saying that people wouldn’t believe the way things looked before :) .
Along this weekend, in the middle of the ATC challenges, I’ve been making a complete makeover to a bag I’ve been keeping for a while. Sorry if the pics look different, but as I said I’ve been making it in different times of the day (and the night), so the light was not always the best. This is not a tutorial, but I thought it would be inspiring to see the whole process!
The original, ugly, shapeless cheap bag, a find donated by a friend, probably from the chinese dollar store. I liked the size, the apple green colour and the sturdy fabric – so off to a makeover we go!
The first task (after a thorough wash of course) was taking off handles and lining.
Then I prepared the main piece for embellishing the front of the bag. To be completely accurate, this looks like crazy quilting but it is more “crazy aplique” as the pieces of fabric are apliqued onto a cotton base because I didn’t have interfacing.
I took off the lining and added a cardboard covered square at the botton to give the bag a little more shape and two pockets – all pieces were taken from a vintage girl’s dress – the pockets were cut off and apliqued as they were. Here the lining is pinned back in place to see if everything fitted.
The front piece was embellished and then sewn to the bag; after that I sewn the lining back in place. I kept the handles until the last moment, but I didn’t like the way they looked so I ended taking them off.
The handles, much longer than the original (I really dislike "armpit bags" LOL), were made with this beautiful burgundy silk cord.
I added some lace to the upper border et voilá! Finished piece. Pretty, functional and fun!
Just a detail: to keep the sides in a better shape, I added one safety pin to each side with dangles of beads. That way I can take them off easily if I need more space.
Aaah, the joys of makeover! Now, off to look for inspiration for another project!
Posted in Mixed Media on November 9, 2008 | 1 Comment »
Today Kim’s Newberg’s collage group is hosting and ATC workshop – I couldn’t help jumping in! Workshops are fun, you learn a lot and get the chance to see amazing artwork from other members. Kim made an excellent tutorial on the basic process of making an ATC and invited all the members to make one (or several) as well; the theme given was One/The First One, since it’s the first workshop hosted there.
Here are the pieces I made. I worked around the concept of Unity, something we all long for!
Posted in Everyday Life, Mixed Media on November 3, 2008 | 1 Comment »
I’ve been working on a big project this weekend – as it is a gift for someone who reads this blog I can’t show any pics until it’s sent and received! I’ll show you some “this and that” instead.
Halloween was such fun – we had dinner with friends and went to bed almost in the morning :), listening to old cds we have collected over the years from a spanish radio show dedicated to the occult – listening to EVP (Electronic Voice Phenomena) at 4 AM in the morning is super creepy LOL!
This year I made the ancestor’s place at my work table – it is a sacred space for me!
From the weekend’s craft work, I can only show you this decoupage watch box I’ve made for my best friend’s upcoming birthday. Her father, who is a watch collector, gave me a lot of boxes last year for my jewelry, and this was one of them.
Today I think I will start a new doll – I’ve been talking with my dear Krista about dollhouses and I think I’ve caught a Miniature Infection :D !
(EDITED LATER)
I was doodling some ideas for future dolls and ended up with this Mucha-style medallion. It’s free!
You can print it on fabric, embroider it, woodburn it, colour it, collage it, tattoo it, etc… the possibilities are endless!
If you do anything with it, I’d love to know, please contact me!
