I started a project that’s been on my mind ever since I received the book Artist Trading Card Workshop. I want to make my ATCs out of fiber and recycled materials when possible. The section that appealed to me most made nests of fibers on the card and melted them together with embossing powders and fusible webbing tape.

So I have been weaving tapestries from thrums and discarded warps and dyeing mistakes, and now I have a way to re-use the thrums from the thrums. It feels like, I don’t know, like I just found the last piece to a jigsaw puzzle. Ahhhh. It drove me crazy to throw those thrums away. Usually I give them to the birds or toss them in the compost heap when there gets to be too many.

Anyway, here’s what I came up with. Backgrounds for four sets of two cards each.

I had no freakin idee whut I wuz doing. I just played. If you were around in September when I began to have my meltdown, you know that this was a major goal for me. I’m a planner. It’s my personality. Weavers generally have to be. I needed to learn how to play. Squirt had a lot to teach me about that in his last year. He became more playful than he ever had been in his middle age.

I was so afraid that I had lost my mojo for good. Now I’m in the middle of four projects! Whee!

3.5 x 2.5″
cotton yarn, cardboard, brown paper, shipping label, ink

See this post for the story behind it.

I jammed up my printer playing with this brown paper and I think that I killed it! But I do like the effect it made on the words. The “prettier” side is actually the back of the card. It is supposed to have my contact information on it and I have to figure that out. I have a blue gel pen at work that might do the trick.

This is my first artist trading card. There are only two rules for ATCs - they must be 2.5 x 3.5 inches (baseball card size) and they must be traded or given away, never sold.

This was a lot of fun and I think that I’ll keep it up. Hopefully I’ll have plenty to trade when I go to Art & Soul in early May.

The Take It Further Challenge for February had two options: a color combination and/or a concept prompt of “What are you old enough to remember?”

I wanted to do both, but blanked out on how to do it until yesterday. My concept had more to do with technology - the phone system, mimeographs instead of copiers, etc. I thought about collage and I might still work with this idea, since I have a great secretary’s manual from the 1930s to work with. (By the way, I’m a secretary, and I’m the daughter of a secretary.) But I ached to do some more with tapestry, so I began by pulling out yarns that were a close match to the color challenge.

I couldn’t find the shade of brown, and it irked me because I felt that it was so familiar that I must have it somewhere. I stopped and took a few moments to straighten up my studio, and there it was - my cardboard box that I used as a loom for the tapestry bag. I decided to incorporate a small cardboard loom into my project for the brown color, and I cut the box into small pieces. One piece had the UPS shipping sticker on it, and I thought, I remember when there wasn’t a bar code or number on every single thing that was sold or shipped, and you didn’t have a different password or ID number for every different purpose, and the technology that is supposed to make our lives more efficient has complicated our lives in many ways.

Then I realized that this was the piece that I would use for my loom.

The bar code is meant to look like the weft on that side, but I am so tempted to weave the whole thing. I’ll upload the finished object when it’s done.

(Later that evening…)

I wove a frame around the bar code. I’ll finish this tomorrow night. The weaving is done. And it was fun.

I swear, this was not my intention of what to do with my unhatched chickens from the guvmint. But I couldn’t help myself. I was sucked in by forces way beyond my control. I am hypnotised. My jaw has dropped, and I am drooling. I feel quite faint.

This is the danger of the combination of the Internet, a paid off credit card, and a long period of denial.

I’ve been bopping around some fantastic web sites lately. Quite frankly, the only reason I haven’t spent more time on the art internet is because I find it completely overwhelming, as if I am looking into infinity. One of my earliest toddler memories is a cup with a picture of a cow drinking from the same cup with a picture of a cow drinking from the same cup with a picture of a cow drinking from the same cup… This has brought that feeling back to me.

Yesterday, I was farting around with my Sitemeter referrals when I found a blog called Joyce Makes Art by way of a Google search page in Russian for images of “Squirt.” Turns out that Joyce also has a cat named Squirt, and it turns out that she is a multimedia collage and fiber artist. So I was looking through her site when I clicked on this button and fell down the rabbit hole:

It didn’t take much to convince me to register for Keith Lo Bue’s Precious Little: the Poetics of Found Object Jewelry two-day workshop. Then I meandered my way to his virtual gallery and web site.

Holy crap. I feel like a stray dog and someone has offered me a cheeseburger and a warm place to stay.

So that I don’t follow Keith home wagging my tail, I am taking Sandy with me and he’ll explore the nearby museums while I am in class all day Saturday and Sunday. We’ll stay in a very nice hotel and enjoy Friday and our two evenings together.

I’m going to learn how to use tools and make art out of all the junk I have trash-picked, picked up off the pavement, cut out of magazines, and stored in little jars and bowls all over the house, all in the anticipation that one day, this time would come.

Not only that, it’s already February 1 in Australia, and so the February Take It Further Challenge has begun. Next post.