Mood:
cheekyTopic: The Kreative Kat
I forgot to mention that on Saturday we moved Rachel the Tarantula to her new terrarium. My brother said they just scoot her into a container, place the container in the new tank and open it. When I tried that -the second she saw the container she began to panic. Her front legs began waving wildly and her back legs flung hairs everywhere. We removed the container and she calmed down. Dave and I noodled out approach number two. We took her old tank, which fit in the new tank quite nicely, and placed in on it;s side. She gradually crawled out and explored her new place. She ate a cricket, drank some water and crawled on top of her spider hider house. She proclaimed herself queen of her domain and she's been happy ever since. Except she's not pleased with her substrate as it's fresh and new and doesn't smell like her. Here's a picture of her on her throne.
Isn't she adorable? I don't know if I posted a picture of my necklace inspired by Van Gogh's Starry Night painting when it was finished. I think I have a picture of the wire wrapped heart. Here's the finished piece:
The necklace is made with lots of preciosa and swarovski crystals from "the Bead Bazaar" store in Waterloo. The heart itself is from "the Weather" in Waterloo Square. Here's a close up of the wire wrapped heart of stars. I tried to make the spiral of the wires echo Van Gogh's swirls around the stars.
And that's my heart. As we can see, it is filled with stars. This is my very first attempt at complex bail construction and wire wrapping. It's a little rough, but I am more than pleased with the results. It's exactly what I wanted. The heart is enhanced, it echos its inspiration and it is truly unique. It is a very heavy necklace and when I wear it I wear nothing else.
One more finished project: The ammolite earrings. Ammolite, as previously mentioned is the opalized fossil remains of a snail that lived millions of years ago. This one was cut in half and thought it would make a wonderful pair of earrings. Here they are!
The holes were drilled with something I found at a Michael's craft store in the "science nerd toys" beside the rock tumblers. A "rock driller" it took a while but it drilled the holes quite nicely. Only problem? They are almost too heavy to wear as earrings. And these are the very lightest ammolite I have ever found. Interesting story, the guy at the store remembered me and remembered I wanted to make ammolite earrings so he pointed these out to me. Cool or what?
I can't recall if I posted the completed butterfly bag. Here it is with trumpet flowers and leaves. The leaves were mottled by sprinkling salt on the dye. The dye was held in place by a thick line of Jones Tones glitter pearl paint. All the airbrush effects were done with float medium added to standard acrylic paint. the sparkles were done by adding transparent glaze medium to basic white based sparkle fabric paint. This piece is all about combing dyes, paints, and various additives to both to achieve the effects that I wanted. To work this I made a play-list of a whole bunch of 1960's hippy music (inna gadda da vida bay bee) (going up the country) (and lots of Melanie) and listed on my headphones as I drew out the wings and mixed the colours. It helped me channel some of the acid-dropping head trip colours of the era...without any of the -you know -acid dropping.
Speaking of authentic retro: Later I am going to Schreiter's furniture downtown Kitchener. It has lots of modern and mid-century modern furniture. This is NOT ikea modern, this is flying saucer end table modern. They don't sell boxes and squares, they sell circles and truncated spheres organic undulating shapes and nested moons and bifurcated non euclidean solids. I want to do the basement in modern loft style, one wall open storage, one wall home office, and one section seating options. I want the seating to be adaptable and changeable. loft furniture offers the most options for changeable seating. One of these tables is going to find a place in my room: http://www.schreitershome.ca/fjords3.html I also like the Gus collection, I think the picture rails are quite thoughtful and perfect for people with eclectic collections: http://www.schreitershome.ca/gusdesign5.html according to the store, these have a very shallow profile and can be installed at any height in a room. They are a welcome contrast to the frilly fussy wood picture rails sold at most stores. The cabinets store an amazing amount of stuff and several are designed for "projects" meaning arts: http://www.schreitershome.ca/gusdesign7.html And how can you not love this "modulicious" unit from BluDot? http://www.schreitershome.ca/bluDotConsoleShelves.html
So that's all for today. Still working on a couple of sewing patterns for posting here and there.
