curbside treasure

new art journal pages

2009-11-14T11:53:00.000-08:00

right now my favorite art supply to work with is acrylic inks. i use the FW inks they basically give a watercolor effect & the colors are nice and vibrant. a drop or two is all you need really and then i like splashing some water on and spilling the color around. easy and fun. this spread is the one i used acrylic inks, the 2nd and 3rd spreads i just use acrylics. after the ink dries i added marks with oil pastels. i also want to give credit to alisa golden's book: Painted Paper which is how i started using FW acrylic inks. she illustrates lots of fun techniques that are really easy and beautiful to make wonderful papers.

in this spread, i used black india ink + a dip pen to make random marks on the page.

i stamped painted bubble wrap on these pages, then i doodled with a pen to outline the circles

art making and messes in the east bay

2009-10-09T21:52:00.000-07:00

do you ever feel like you have friends who don't quite get what you do, in terms of art? sometimes i feel like that about some (not all) of my friends. so it's really refreshing to meet new people who love art journaling and making messy collages and appreciate scraps and all sorts of the same things i love in real life.

i first met sparkleface on flickr and i had been admiring her art journals for awhile and it turned out she lives in the east bay. so she invited me to hang out with her and her friend rachel, who is also does wonderful art journals. thats why i have so much love for flickr, because i've 'met' so many talented artists on the site.

it was a windy day but still beautiful. i loved using their supplies, and they had fun using what i brought with me.

somehow it's so refreshing to use someone else's ephemera and rubberstamps and paints. it makes for a change i guess. and it's just so much fun to share. that's what i love about art, is that it's about sharing and learning and mutual admiration and community and new friends coming together.

goals

2009-10-02T13:36:00.000-07:00

there are things in the back of mind that i have to do and sometimes i've been putting them off because i don't have enough confidence or enough time or whatever. sometimes i feel like i don't put myself out there enough.

things i want to do:
1. apply to a juried show that's coming up
2. apply to be a student artist in residence at the SF dump
3. work on more graphic design stuff
4. find time to meet other creative people and have art/crafternoons
5. expand my itty bitty etsy shop

what are your creative goals? or just your goals in general?

bits & pieces

2009-08-15T11:33:00.000-07:00

i don't think i've posted this before, but a book by Carolee Gilligan Wheeler and Jennie Hinchcliff called Good Mail Day is newly released! Please check out the book, i loved the sneak peeks of it, the styling, photography and layout looks wonderful and charming. if any of you are in the bay area, they are also having a book release party at the SF Center for the Book

i am thrilled that the cover features a part of a mail art envelope i sent them - it's on the top left corner of the cover, where the forever stamps are.

i made the envelope from bits of chinese ephemera i had lying around the house, tea wrappers and calendars and peruvian ephemera i had collected after my trip to peru - bus tickets and tea bags and museum brochures and all sorts of bits of paper.

on another note, school is starting up again, the last week of august. i've transferred to San Francisco State University and i'm majoring in graphic design. it's too bad with impacted classes i didn't get any required classes for my major. that is so disappointing to me, but i'm going to see if anyone drops and try to sign up for the classes.

On Monday i went to a free screening of Hayao Miyazaki's movie Ponyo! i loved it, it's about a little fish-girl who meets a little human boy and decides she wants to be human forever. check out the trailer here

letterpress class

2009-07-31T22:29:00.001-07:00

these past six weeks, on tuesday and thursday evenings i've been going to the letterpress shop at city college. i love seeing fonts you think only exist on the computer, but they exist as metal type. tiny things that you can cradle in your hands. there's something special about it. we have to carefully set the type - so it doesn't fall apart or be spelled wrong or placed upside down.

my messy tray of type, mini shipping tags i printed on to be my business cards...

i love it when printing onto paper - once the ink has dried you can feel the physical impression of each letter.

i realized you need patience, tolerance for ink and soot smudged hands, that each space between each letter matters and there's such beauty in letters and numbers and symbols you forget about because now they mostly exist on a computer.

edit: all photos are by Jack Edwards
Jack was a great guy to go to for help in the letterpress shop. he took many wonderful photos of the work the class produced so this is just a sampling of what i could fit in my usb thumb drive.

new prints in my etsy shop!

2009-07-06T18:53:00.000-07:00

just listed these three new prints onto my etsy shop :)

Map of My Life poetry chapbook

2009-07-02T23:41:00.000-07:00

Map of My Life is 8 poems & 2 stories, it's about my favorite fruit. a childhood memory. living in san francisco and riding muni. it's about everyday things, it's exploring who i am.

i've been writing poems since i was thirteen, now i'm twenty, so it's long overdue i suppose on publishing my first collection of poems & there are two short stories as well. and i do mean really short stories. i took a short story class during the spring semester and every story i wrote was 500 words or less. but i don't mind that, because it's the words that matter.

sprinkled around the words are some photos i took while walking around the city. the skeleton piano photo is one i took when i toured the san francisco dump.

check it out in my etsy shop :)

vintage paper fair

2009-05-24T16:59:00.000-07:00

i look forward to going to the vintage paper fair in san francisco, it comes three times a year now, for 2 days each in january, may and august.

i love digging through the $1 or less table. the typical stuff i find is usually old letters, a mishmash of old booklets, maps, and it's a place where people carefully sift though boxes and boxes of postcards in various themes. i don't collect anything that seems too precious, though i covet tiny french dictionaries and beautiful storybooks like frank baum's oz books and scrapbooks from the 1800s. there's so much eye candy but i go for the cheap stuff - the used vintage envelopes, old photos and letters, cabinet cards and cigar labels.

most of my 'finds' yesterday were old airmail envelopes. i love the handwriting and the dash of postmarks, the assortment of stamps and some of them came with letters. most of them didn't but the decorated envelopes were enough of a treasure.

some of them are so lovely, i'm not sure if i can tear them apart for my art, maybe i will frame a few of my favorites.

easter egg dyes

2009-04-29T20:23:00.000-07:00

it's pretty obvious i am a paper junkie. every time i go to Flax, a local art store with an amazing selection of handmade papers, i never leave without at least a few sheets of handmade papers. i often get them on sale, for a dollar or two. but sometimes my papers just sit there and i don't use them much.

in the the current issue of somerset life spring 09, connie govea stuart has a beautiful article on a simple idea: dying ribbon and papers with easter egg dyes.

so i had a fun time dipping my handmade papers into the dyes. i dyed paper that had strings embedded in it, lace with beading, coffee filters and anything else i could get my hands on. i liked seeing how the colors varied depending on which kind of paper/surface was being dyed.

next year, i will definitely stock up on easter egg dyes after easter is over!

making art in cafes

2009-04-27T12:46:00.000-07:00

a few weeks ago, i had a fun time meeting up with another atcsforall friend, Sunny. we both live in san francisco and i thought it would be fun to meet in a cafe and make some art. we ended up staying there for nearly 3 hours! and our table of course was the messiest one compared to everyone else's. they were doing homework or on their laptops. i don't think they were having as much fun as sunny and i were.

we both brought supplies, sunny shared her distress ink pads and pastels which were fun to use. i brought silky crayons and lots of magazine papers and other ephemera for us to play with. I loved seeing her art journal in person.

Making art outside my attic room is definitely interesting. i am often limited in terms of supplies, but being out of the studio sometimes makes me see the stuff i use in a different way, or i improvise. i use ONLY the things around me instead of shuffling the piles of papers in my room.

and making art with a new friend is great too because there's instant feedback and ideas. it's this back and forth thing as we encourage one another and if we're stuck i like that another person can see view the piece with a different perspective.

meeting up with dana

2009-03-17T22:28:00.000-07:00

dana is a friend i met though atcsforall, which is the amazing website she owns and runs. i had a fantastic time with dana (adriayna) - we went to have lunch in chinatown, then it was onto Flax - an art store with a fabulous selection of decorative papers. you should have seen dana - she ended up buying a ton of papers, all of which were priced from $1-$2 a sheet. there were italian marble papers that were only a dollar, blue net papers, wrapping paper with blue hot air balloons, delicate silvery white papers. at one point dana had so many papers in her hands, they kept falling!

this is dana working on a page in my journal!

the beginnings of a collage i did in dana's journal.

then it was onto scrap! a warehouse full of junk companies and people donated that was great for all kinds of artists and crafters. because the bus was so late, we ended up getting there by 4:30 and had only half an hour to shop but i think we found some good things - i got some children's alphabet blocks, rubber stamps and some paper. dana got some amazing translucent paper that had been typewritten on, which gave lovely effects on the collages we did.

dana's watercolor pallette

we finally got to my place and made art for a few hours in my attic room. dana taught me the wonders of using vibrant bold shin han watercolors! how to layer colors on top of another, it was so fun to splatter the colors onto the page. i had always wondered about how to use watercolors and now i know how to do vibrant backgrounds...

i had an idea on doing collaborative artwork together, so we worked on two canvases and both came out really well. this is the one i kept and dana has the other one.

the beautiful journal page dana made for me in my journal.

work in progress: frida kahlo paper dolls

2009-03-07T21:19:00.001-08:00

i had fun making these frida paper dolls. they are a mix of fabrics and paper and the butterflies are laser cut wood by porkchopshow.

i was inspired mainly by the painting Two Fridas

but i was also inspired by the vibrant colors she uses and i always love seeing her in photos with the flowers in her hair.

inspiration from fairy tales

2009-03-06T19:00:00.000-08:00

fairy tales have always inspired me, ever since i was a child like many other children i read fairy tales. of course the classic ones are lovely: cinderella, sleeping beauty, rapunzel, snow white, the little mermaid. but as i grew older i began to seek out the slightly more obscure- tales that have a more darker edge to them like donkeyskin and bluebeard.

and then there are stories that sound like fairy tales themselves like the little princess by frances hodgson burnett and the ordinary princess by m.m kaye i remember reading both of those books many many times...and the best website i have found regarding fairy tales is SurLaLune Fairy Tales which has a great selection of fairy tales that are annotated and include classic illustrations.

i am almost done with the book of lost things, a fantasy novel with a boy who loves reading stories - especially fairy tales and then enters a dangerous world where all those fairy tales exist.

found poetry

2009-02-28T11:07:00.000-08:00

i've been working on a japanese moleskine round robin, which is a group i am facilitating at atcsforall.com . i've probably mentioned atcsforall.com a bunch of times, and i pretty much trade exclusively there. you can find me there as, surprise surprise, curbsidetreasure. and it's not just atcs that we trade - theres chunky pages and paper dolls and a great variety of themed atc swaps as well as trading one on one and it's just a fun and extremely friendly, active community. so if you're not a member yet, go there and sign up, join some swaps, etc!

so here are the pages i made in rachel's accordion journal:

created with water soluble crayon, lots of chunky textured handmade paper, doilies and the cut out words and phrases are from an anthropologie catalog. cutting the words out from a catalog makes me realize how someone had to put a lot of time and care describing the items - using words like indigo and frost grey and lovelace. perfect for a beautifully mysterious poem.

exploring this theme has inspired me to host a found poetry chunky book swap: and perhaps i might have to get another accordion moleskine journal to start a found poetry journal...i have so many ideas sometimes, but not enough time for them all.

studio inspiration

2009-02-06T18:43:00.000-08:00

1. OY @ home! Finally! My new studio wall, 2. My New Studio, 3. Untitled, 4. Nature Collection

monday night is my indesign class. it's about 2 and a half hours sitting in front of a mac at the compuer lab in my community college. we were having technical difficulties - people couldn't log in, indesign wouldn't open, someone's computer was messed up and it was just confusing! class didnt really start because of all this mess, so what do i do? of course i browse through flickr and catch up reading blogs and i especially enjoy looking at modish handmade spaces which is a running feature on modish, an indie art/craft blog

1. Artists' Studio-9, 2. pedro in my studio, 3. Picture 003, 4. The Posie studio, repainted and reorganized at last!

one thing i love about reading art/craft indie design blogs and through my flickr contacts is looking at other people's studio spaces. whether they call it an art studio or craft room, or you sew clothes or make jewelry or make art, studios are often filled to the brim with supplies and things strewn about. i know i can't keep my room tidy! to me, studios tell me a lot about the person who works in that room. from their love for certain colors and clutter (or lack thereof)....what they make. i also love studios that are small because they are realistic since i work from my bedroom but i also love large open studios with wonderful light - it's something i dream of.

to find more pictures of studios, i like these flickr groups: craft rooms, modish handmade spaces, art studio and workspaces

just recently i have bought myself a copy of cloth paper scissor's Studios magazines. what i like about this magazine is the different types of artists and how varied their spaces were. a lot of them were small and realistic for many people, but there were also aspirational studios to drool over. i also went to borders to look at Where Women Create magazine, published by somerset studio. I think what differs this magazine from Studios is there are less so called 'ordinary' spaces and more of highlighting the polished pretty spaces. but both magazines are great, they just approach the subject a little bit differently.

blue

2009-01-31T22:05:00.000-08:00

finding all sorts of beautiful blues on flickr. see them up close at my flickr favs page

poetry & collage

2009-01-29T20:24:00.000-08:00

i hardly ever mention that i'm a poet on this blog, and i'm not sure why. i think poetry and collage are not that far apart from one another. for me, poetry and collage both take images from the world around us. i'm always observing the stuff around me, i think i am a collector not only in ephemera, but in words and sounds and snippets of conversation. i often create alone in my attic room, but i am always pulling inspiration from the world outside.

for me collage is blending imagery and patterns into gesso and crayon and paint. and poems work with word and rhythm and sound and images. sometimes i incorporate words into my collages and i always have images in my poems.

so i wrote this poem yesterday & i like it because it reminds me of my collages.
it's untitled so far.

My name is a book of lives
I press leaves inside
Scraps of the city – one crumbled bus ticket, a newspaper washed from rain,
a torn photograph of two little girls

Look inside a red suitcase: You’ll find letters to no one

My name is the map of the world
A body of continents and stars

On the airplane
Look at the map: flights intersect
Travel miles & seas & hours & clouds

A window bird trills by my bed
Power lines crisscross streets
Like threads in the sky

A book of lives is a month of Saturdays
A seahorse from Peru
Perfume at my neck
All the threads in my body connect
The heart beats

Found & lost, inbetween, unexpected
These are all my names
Contradictory, jade-green, city grids
The last bite of an ice cream cone
These are all my names

A book of lives
Lives in my right hand
I clutch a pen in the other

A bird in a cage
Left handed
A piece of me is in everyone else
We are breathing in everyone else’s breath

All the rivers flower into the sea

computer broke but now it's fixed!

2009-01-25T19:52:00.000-08:00

my computer went kaplooey a few days ago so it was sad, i missed the internet. it reminds me of what did we do before the internet?? who knows? :P
well, besides my computer being a butt, i've been going to school, working on art at night and its chinese new year tomorrow! that snuck up on me...you can't sweep the floor on the new year (sweeps your good luck away) and you can't wash your hair either (i'm not sure why) and the fun part is getting lai see (red envelopes w/ money) from relatives and going out to eat with them.

atcs made for a swap

so many art journals, so little time!

2009-01-11T19:18:00.000-08:00

lately, i have been working on several different journals - a little moleskine cahier for the sketchbook project, my current personal art journal, a japanese accordion moleskine that is part of a round robin i am organizing, i will post scans and photos of these projects later.

i made a few spreads for a traveling journal: journal 3311 - a journal started by aprile of notpaper blog which highlights many different collage artists - she even did a feature of me a few months ago.

i was the first one to receive the journal so obviously it was mostly blank pages inside. i did 3 spreads i am pretty happy with:

i've been having a lot of fun with doing tissue paper backgrounds. i love the texture the tissue paper makes with its wrinkles and if you lightly apply some paint, you can still see the layer of text underneath.

i also used some crayons around the edges of the pages, i've been using these silky crayons which you can smudge around and are water soluble. i also like mine because several of the crayons are metallic so it gives the page a subtle shimmery touch.

i'm not sure if this spread is finished yet...

make your photos into polaroids!

2009-01-08T12:54:00.000-08:00

because photos just look cuter as a polaroid, there is a free software to download called poladroid, where you click and drag your photos into the 'polaroid camera' and out will come your photo in polaroid form! it's easy peasy and the 'camera' will even make that classic sound you hear when the polaroid shoots out of the camera. it's free and easy to use, find it here.

i'm published!

2008-12-30T17:21:00.000-08:00

i'm proud to announce that i am published in one of stampington's newest publications, Art Journaling! look for a 2 page spread, pgs 126-127 of my journal pages in the gallery section of the magazine.

for sneak peeks of the magazine, click here

endless inspiration: my flickr favorites

2008-12-28T18:08:00.000-08:00

see them here for endless inspiration: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tealights/favorites/

gothic arch chunky book pages

2008-12-25T15:24:00.000-08:00

chunky book pages made for a swap, i used watered down acrylic paint to create a sheer watercolor etheral look to them.

day 6 of 12 days of xmas swap

2008-12-22T18:22:00.000-08:00

beautifully made paper turned into sturdy chunky book covers by corrie04 :) it's 4x4", perfect for the chunky books i have collected.

a holiday crafternoon

2008-12-21T11:52:00.000-08:00

wrenay invited several ladies to her place for a fun holiday crafternoon with a grand assortment of supplies, including a little xyron machine which i haven't used before. i had forgotten to bring my camera, but we had a great time and made a big mess on the table!

i made a few gift tags, but my favorite things i made were these decorated airmail envelopes embellished with various scrap papers, fabrics and glued on gift tags which are from a freebie by emily of the black apple. now it's time to figure out what to put inside the envelopes....