Canvas to the Imagination

I’ve been dying to replace the very tacky chandelier that hangs over our dining room table. It’s a brass and glass monstrosity that dates from the seventies, and is a bit of an eye-sore. Because we’re renting I’ve been hesitant to spend money to replace it, so I started looking for ways to make something to replace it.

Here are a few ideas that I’ve found so far:

Zipper8Lighting on Etsy

nellianna on Etsy

TetraBox Light by Ed Chew

This last one comes with a step-by-step how-to, and is made from reclaimed TetraBox packages. I really like the idea of making a new chandelier from recycled materials.

Just in time for the Eastside Culture Crawl and Got Craft, I have a new set of postcards available for sale. I selected six images from the Imaginary Girl series of portraits I felt went well together as a small set and threw in one of my self portraits. It’s wonderful to see more of the images from this series in print.

There were more Imaginary Girl portraits I wanted to have as postcards but many of the photos didn’t crop well into the required dimensions, and it would’ve meant quite a bit of reworking to make them fit.

The set of six postcards will be available for sale at my studio next weekend during the Eastside Culture Crawl, and then at Got Craft on Sunday December 4th. I’ll also be listing them in my Etsy shop soon.

If you’re an artist like me who loves to experiment with different ideas and processes, you may have a whole bunch of unsuccessful pieces of not-so-great art taking up space in your studio. Last week I pulled out three of these, all on wooden cradle frames I wanted to reuse. Two of the pieces had heat transfer images printed on the surface, and one was a collage I never felt was “quite right”.

This one is my favorite of the three because I was able to retain some of the previous work with simple additions of Japanese paper and leaves. The face is a statue I photographed in the Egyptian museum in Berlin combined with a photo of lily pads. It’s a style of digital collage I haven’t done in ages (and no longer like).

With this second collage I decided to give it a simple tweak by adding clouds made from book pages and security envelopes. I’ve always like some part of this collage but felt it was more of an experiment than something representative of my “style”. Now I like it much better.

It also ties in nicely with the larger collage I made a few weeks ago with airships (which is sold now, by the way).

The collages are made on wooden cradle frames ready to hang, and are both available for sale through Etsy (and in person).