SUH-REAL!

Making art from your subconscious! Getting all SURREAL up in here...

The Surrealists believed that the ORDINARY world could be EXTRAORDINARY. How great is that? Your pillow, your glass of wine, your boyfriend/girlfriend...all have the potential to be extraordinary when combined with something totally unexpected. BUT we spend so much time in a world of SHOULD, thinking about what things SHOULD look like. How can we think of what things COULD look like?

Try...

Automatic Drawing 

Take a pencil and literally scribble (slowly) on a page. 

Or splash paint.

Or make ink blots.

And look for familiar images. Did you make a boat? A bird? What do the weird doodles in your image add up to?

Joan Miro used this technique to develop his fun, bright images filled with bizarre and fun creatures. 

Exquisite Corpse Drawing 

Make a small drawing. Cut 1/2 inch of one side off and give it to a friend. Have your friend make a drawing that starts from this piece. Keep going until you have a whole fun image. 

Verbal Inspiration

Take 5 books. Choose a page number and a sentence number. Write out the sentence from each of these books in a string. Get all inspired. 

Just some ways to make anything NOT ordinary. 

Gifts for Geeks...

Maybe a business idea for next year?

lift coefficient. why not?

Victory! Organizing my craft room...

I share a craft room with a computer fortress, so space is CRUCIAL. Today I took a salvaged table (leftover from a business that moved and didn't think this table was important...PSH!) and added two flaps to it so it could be an amazing table of awesomeness! I may fold out BOTH of the flaps or only ONE flap according to my needs. I'm very pleased. It was relatively easy, though I might have burnt out the wimpy underpowered circle saw (don't tell Chad). 

The orange kitty is "Angel Cat." A student from last year made Angel Cat for his pinta project. After making up a song for Angel Cat and telling EVERYONE about him, I was pleasantly pleased when the student chose not to take Angel Cat home. 

Update on Thursday, August 5, 2010 at 12:18AM by sonja

I painted it, too. Ahhhh craft room white.

Oh How Cute - Decorative Pom Poms

These turned out great! And they only took two nights. Thanks to Once Wed for the idea...

 I should note that instead of using the lanterns as demonstrated in the tutorial, I used the plastic ornament balls one can find at Michael's. They were only $1.59 and have a loop to hang with on top. I had fun playing with the fabric circle sizes. If you use smaller circles, you get a super concentrated ball of fabric. The larger circles make a ball that is more wavy and flowy.