Day Seventeen (and Sixteen?)

This morning I just about had a heart attack when I realized I didn't do any art yesterday. I spent the first half of yesterday packing for my five days living with my cousins while their parents are out of town, and the last half of yesterday receiving mountains of instructions for keeping them alive. I completely spaced (and had zero time even if I'd remembered) doing something creative. I did however pack a bunch of supplies for art-making while I'm here. It's a TOTAL cop-out, but I'm going to count it. And even if I did fail yesterday, I'm not going to let that stop me from continuing like nothing happened. (If I let myself think I failed even one day, I'm a lot more likely to give up on the whole thing. It's happened to me many times).

Today I started something I'm pretty excited about: a rug! For my dining room/kitchen!
I found this great tutorial for cute little coiled baskets [click here], and just adapted it by never coiling upward to make it into a rug. You could also make hot pad/trivet things with this method.

I gathered all the damaged or never worn clothing I could find in my house and brought it here (my aunt and uncle's house) with me. My aunt has five huge trash bags full of yarn that she gave me permission to use - hooray! As soon as the kids were off to school this morning I got to cutting and coiling and looping yarn.

It's only about a foot in diameter after a looong time working on it today. This is something that will take me awhile. Hopefully I can also get a couple small projects in while I work on this so that you don't have to see a slowly progressing project five+ days in a row like you did with the shoe drawing.

And last but not least, please forgive the horrendous photo. Usually I take my pictures with my husband's iPhone, which is not ideal, but still preferable to this... my computer's webcam. AWFUL! Next time I see the hubs (he may come visit me tomorrow or the day after) I will take a better photo.
EDIT: A much better photo can be seen on Day Eighteen

I tried standing on it to get a glimpse of what it will be like in my house, and I love it! It's surprisingly soft. I'm excited!

Day Eight

I finally finished the project I started on day four! (I showed you my mess from this project, but it hadn't dried yet so I made a melodramatic drawing instead).

I can never decide if stuff like this can really be called art, or if it's more just crafts... personally I want to call it crafts. On a larger, more sculptural scale I would call it art. This is could turn into a huge debate centered on the definition of the word "art," but for now I'm just going to say that it's a craft but it's still creative, so I will include things like this in my art a day quest.

My other problem with this project is that it's unoriginal - I saw it on pinterest. Really, very few of the artsy things I do are original at this point. I found a video that taught me how to make the plastic fabric stuff, I saw poetry done on book pages on deviantart a long time ago, and I drew a picture straight from a TV show. I don't know, I'm just having real issues coming up with any ideas of my own. I'm hoping that this blog will help me to be more original along the way, and that researcing other artists will help me to see what I like, and turn that into my own style. I'm reading this great book called How to Steal Like an Artist, by Austin Kleon, that gives great advice on finding inspiration and gradually building your voice as an artist. I'll write a blog post about the book one of these days. I really recommend it.

ANYWAY. My lovely, unoriginal craft for today:

These bowls are made from paper mache using both magazine and dictionary pages, one kind on each side of each of the bowls to create contrast. I put plastic wrap inside bowls I already had and used them as molds for the paper mache. The bowls were completely dry today and I just finished them by cleaning them up a little then applying a coat of mod podge to give them shine!

Day Five

Today (since it's after midnight, technically yesterday) I finished my sister's belated Christmas present... I know. I'm terrible. I definitely bit off more than I could chew this year. It probably wasn't very smart of me to decide to sew seven full sized bags and three small bags as gifts a week before Christmas, and then set about learning how to use a sewing machine in order to do so. And I couldn't just go out and buy fabric, I had to use a material that I pretty much have to make myself. That's how I roll- making everything as hard as possible, and with as little time to do it as possible. I really am stunned by my own intelligence sometimes.

Rather than using plastic grocery bags as I did with the bag for my mom (day two), this time I just used plain trash bags: black bags for the strap and the black panels, and white bags that I designed with Sharpies before ironing to fuse the layers of plastic together (if you try this, make sure to turn the bag inside out if there is any ink, or it will be ruined).  This bag goes over the shoulder and has a cute little flap. I half used a free pattern I found online and half winged it, and I think it turned out quite satisfactory! Probably the most time consuming part of the whole thing was drawing/coloring in (inking? saying "coloring in" feels so... elementary school) the different designs, which I did before Christmas, I just needed to sew everything together.

If anyone wants to try my method for making trash bag fabric, I can post a more detailed step-by-step process with photos. On day two I posted the link to the video I learned this from, but after lots of trial and error I've figured out a few tricks they don't mention that help it go more smoothly. I can also post a link to the pattern I based this bag on (which came from a site with a huge list of links to free purse patterns).

And again, this was a gift so I can't sell it, but I could do a commission. If someone commissioned me to make a bag for them out of this material, I could do the designs in a color scheme of their choice! It's rather time consuming though, so it would be a bit pricey.

Day Two

Today's piece is one that I've worked on in bursts over the last week, and it's a belated Christmas gift for my mother (I made these things for my family and couldn't get them all done in time). Since this is a gift I obviously will not put it on etsy, but I can do commissions. I've made one using mostly Target bags that was very cool, and one with brown plastic bags that was a different look.

It is a reusable grocery bag. Glamorous I know!
The cool part is that it's made from used plastic grocery bags, melted together into thicker pieces and sewn together. To add some color and interest I scribbled some Sharpie on there before ironing them- my mom likes blue best.

I learned how to do this from this great video.
I can answer any specific questions in the comments!