Collections and Other Stuff I Like

I decided to go big with the living/dining room window decorations again this year.

I learned how to make these Nordic Stars from Erin of the Francois et Moi blog. She makes it look easy but I found them pretty challenging. Each point is made separately and I never did figure out how to do the last fold so they became a collaborative effort. I could put all the points together though and I like the way they turned out but I wish they didn’t have a tendency to hang a little sideways.

They look great from the street though.

I decided to hang the garland over the kitchen sink again and filled it with gnomes inspired by those on Tauni Everett’s blog.

We found some new ornaments for the kitchen when we went to the Andersonville sidewalk sales. The coffee pot and pan aren’t actually made of metal like the colander or the pan we bought last year but they do add some sparkle.

Sam Taylor, a Massachusetts potter, once told me that people think he will be upset when they tell him that a mug they bought from him has broken. He explained he wasn’t upset at all because it meant that people would be ready to buy a new one – a plus for him!

I got to remember that again this morning when I broke my current water cup. Instead of being upset I thought, with a toast to Sam, now I get to use the one pictured above that I bought at the Evanston sidewalk sales this Spring.

Last year I bought a unicorn matroyska doll set from stocking stuffer display at Michael’s. I had thought about giving it to my oldest granddaughter but never did so I decided to keep it. When I opened it I fully expected another unicorn but instead there was a mermaid!

Oh okay I thought, magical creatures. But when I opened that one I found a sloth. Not really magical!

And when I opened that one I found a polar bear.

I didn’t think it made any sense at all so I decided I should make them all magical using some stickers from a Dover Emerald Isle sticker book and Mod Podge. I’d never used Mod Podge before so that was a new experience! Since it dries as a clear coating I thought that’s what would happen on the wood surface as well as the sticker surface. But it turns out it is a glue as well as coating so it was all a kind of gluey mess. But I was able to get that off.

Here’s the new set. Now the third one is a Brownie and the littlest one an angel or fairy. The littlest one worked better because the border around the angel/fairy is the same color as the wood. But I kind of like the Brownie even though he doesn’t work as well. There weren’t any characters that would cover the sloth entirely so there is a thatched house on the back of the Brownie one.

A pretty strange matroyska!

We made our nature folk this Saturday.

My oldest granddaughter made the one in the middle with the beautiful wings facing forward, mine is the one with a crooked smile on the right, and my youngest granddaughter made the one on the left with the cute flower hat

I couldn’t find the non toxic heavy gel medium that Sally Haughey recommends in her ebook Guide to Art Materials so I bought the Golden brand she featured. It was not non toxic and the jar recommends “avoiding ingestion, excessive skin contact, and inhalation of spraying mists, sanding dusts and concentrated vapors”. I didn’t think we were going to eat it or inhale it and I planned to use popsicle sticks to apply it as Sally recommends in her book so I didn’t think we had to worry about excessive skin contact so we went ahead and “gave it a go”.

They came out really well and the gel did dry well but it was difficult to get some things to set initially so we did end up getting it on our fingers. It peeled off like Elmer’s glue and we washed our hands as well so it probably wasn’t excessive skin contact but it does make me a bit leery about using the gel at the museum or a child care center.

Update: I emailed Sally Haughey with my concern and she sent me the Amazon link to a non toxic brand – US Art Supply Impasto Clear Gel Acrylic Medium. The Amazon listing says it’s non toxic, dried clear, and can be used as a strong adhesive. If I order a jar, I’ll update again.

Since I didn’t know that “spill the tea” meant to tell the truth or share some gossip or know that T stands for the word truth in drag culture, I had no idea what the latest Shimmy billboard meant. My oldest daughter knew what spill the tea meant and some googling revealed that T for truth was popularized by the drag queen Lady Chablis in “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil”.

Roger Brown, a Chicago Imagist, left his home with his collections to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and I was lucky enough to get to see it (visits need to be arranged) last year as part of the Intuit summit. He collected the work of other Imagists, outsider artists, folk and indigenous art, popular culture objects, costumes, textiles, furniture, souvenirs and more! He lived above his studio/gallery in a small apartment and it has been preserved with all his collections intact. It was amazing to see works by Howard Finster, Henry Darger, and other artists whom I’m used to seeing in museums casually displayed in a home.

There was much much more – to much to photograph everything but I couldn’t resist taking a picture of this egg carton cross.

An amazing collection- I’m going to have to arrange another visit.

I had already taken a picture of these little guys I bought many years ago at a Waldorf fair to post when my preordered copy of “Wonder Art Workshop” by Sally Haughey of Fairy Dust Teaching arrived yesterday. It is a beautiful book with many wonderful ideas for creating with young children. I was especially drawn to “Workshop 7 – Nature Folks” which suggests using peg body forms, beads, pinecones and other items from nature to create nature fairies and people. According to Sally a product called heavy matte gel medium is strong enough to glue things together so that children can make things that adults usually use glue guns to make. I can’t wait to try it with my grandchildren. In addition to materials from nature I plan to offer some other materials. I think the characters above are wrapped in the fiber I use for felting and they have pipe cleaner arms. My favorite thing about them is that the acorn tops they are holding are filled with tiny sparkly beads. The flower fairies I’ve made are dressed in fabric flowers and have pipe cleaner arms and legs.

I originally made their wings with wire and old pantyhose but then I started using craft store butterfly wings and I still have some of them to offer. I can’t wait to see what my grandchildren create when they come for their first overnight the weekend after next.

I have been intrigued by a series of billboards in my neighborhood since I moved here. The latest one’s tagline is “A loan officer and a gentleman”. The last one was “Don’t drag out your mortgage” and like this one featured the same man with drag queen.

It turns out the man is Shimmy Braun a mortgage lender at Guaranteed Rate. He grew up an an orthodox Jewish community in Brooklyn that was “so religious that he was engaged to his Chicago-born bride to be after knowing her for only 12 days.” They moved to Chicago and he built up a business as a mortgage lender in the orthodox Jewish community of Rogers Park. But when he came out as gay and got divorced at 40 he lost that clientele and needed to build up a new one. Hence the drag queen ads in the Boystown neighborhood!

Remembering Vegas and Dwyn on the last Day of the Dead with this remarkable picture of them not only in the same room but on the same bed right next to each other – a once in their lifetime occasion.

I hadn’t had any ideas for this years treats when Halloween decorations began appearing in stores. A Fortune Teller’s sign with a large eye image caught my eye (ha!) at Michael’s and that was my inspiration. I created my signs in Word using “shapes”, “word art” and copyright free images I found on the internet. Then I started looking for eye candy (ha!) preferably chocolate. I found some that tasted like Nestle’s crunch bars at the Dollar Tree. One is peeking out (ha again!) in the photo. The phrase “I see you” seemed to go with the eye and the fortune telling theme since when I googled it “I know you” or “I get you” came up as the definition.