Lampshade

I have this clear plastic carton. I found it on the landing several months ago. My neighbor is a college girl who has a few peculiar habits, one of them being that she occasionally sets things out on the landing that she considers 'trash'. One day it was this huge empty box of ferraro rochets, believe me when I say...I was green with envy. *grins*
Anyway...I went out one day to get the mail and here sits this clear plastic carton. I immediately coveted it. Then I swooped it up and took it inside. After all...it was heading for certain death. I have had this silly carton sitting around for months and done nothing with it. At first I thought "candle holder" and then mulled the ideas around in my head of what I would put on said candle holder. Nothing came to me. Then one day out of the clear blue sky zapped this great idea. I would make a light shade out of it. I have this awful bare bulb hanging down in my living room. I had bought some material to make a fabric shade for it similar to the one in the bedroom but something had held me back. It just wasnt what I wanted for that room. So instead I am making this....

Metamorphis

I have been going through lots of changes this last year. I got married. Moved to a new country. Closed my business of ten years. Am without my children. It has been quite an experience and at times I feel very lonely for it all. I am happy though and still trying to find myself.
My artistic self is waking up again. She has been asleep for so long. Before I was so busy all the time. OR sick. I think back to all those years in my shop surrounded by everything I needed to create. I had shelves to the ceiling with tins filled with buttons, lace, beads, findings and anything else you could imagine. Piles of fabric of every sort shape and size. Boxes of scraps of silks and satins, taffetas and velvets and all those in between. Brushes, paints, pencils, canvases, easels, pastels, etc etc etc. Did I create? very little. There was always someone who needed me. There was so much to do. It carried with it a special feeling, it felt good to be so needed and satisfying to help so many people but in doing and being that person I lost a part of myself. In fact I lost a big part of myself. I have never really been happy unless I was creating.
Now I am here. IN France. I have much time on my hands and a very loving caring husband. I have found myself waking up. I am creating again. The more I create the more alivve I feel and the more ideas run into my head. I cant keep up with their demands. My biggest problem these days, which I find so ironic, is my severe lack of supplies. I have no tins of buttons and lace, no stacks of fabrics, no paints or brushes, AND since I married a hard working student, no stack of money to buy them with. I cant tell you how many times I have thought of something that was sitting on one of those shelves and wish I had it with me right now. I did two smart things when I came here though. I packed all of my gallery glass paints and my complete collection of DMC threads and kreiniks including the mill hill seed beads and findings. I was so thankful in the early months that I had SOMETHING to create with. Since then I have slowly bought a few other things. Some trims and material and finally a pack of paint brushes.
YOu know what though? I think that the lack of all of it in some way is sparking my drive even more. Maybe so much stuff was suffocating me? Maybe I thrive on the difficult. As in "What can I do with what I have here?" I dont know for sure what the answer is but I do know one thing...whatever it is, I dont want it to stop!
This is a window I recently painted. It completes my three part series. I hate it but my husband loves it, so I will keep it there bringing color into our little living room. After all we learn from it all correct?

Recycle!

Have you ever watched this video http://www.storyofstuff.com/? I ran across it on a blog I read awhile back and it really shook me up. I think I already knew a lot of what it said already but really liked the way she put it all together in one great big scary story.
And if it doesnt scare you then it should. We people as a whole are big wasteful creatures and we should all wake up and do what we can about it. I have slowly over the years tried to change my habits. Now I tend to save everything. D makes fun of me sometimes by holding up some part of a food package and asking "Do you want to save this?" Nine times out of ten I do. Its amazing how many things you can reuse if you just put your mind to it.
One of my latest projects involved ten old holey stained t-shirts and a piece of latchhook canvas. Upon moving here I really felt the need for a nice bath mat. Sure you can fold a towel and set it on the floor but I prefer a nice thick mat to set my toes upon after leaving the bath. So I set to work making myself one. First I cut a piece of canvas to the size I wanted with a little excess going each way. THen I counted my squares down one side and across the bottom, multiplying to get the whole number of squares in my piece. I felt this was an important step as I was using a mix of colors. I wanted to make sure I had enough strips cut before I started so I could mix them well and have a nice color balance. After determining the number of strips I needed (appr 5,000) I started cutting my t-shirts into tiny strips (about 1/2 inch by 4 inches) This took me three days. And yes, I know I'm crazy. After the strips were cut I just hooked them onto the canvas in the same way you would make a normal latch hook rug. I think it is so much nicer than those yarn latch hook rugs. It comes out nice and thick and very heavy. Its made from pure cotton (depending on the tshirts you use) and it just looks really good. Now I do have to admit I wasnt sold on the mix of colors I used. Granted they do match the colors of my bathroom to a point but I would have prefered a darker mix. I might just throw it into the next dark red dye bath I have going and see how it turns out. Until then I think it will do as is. What do you think?

Too busy to think!

Again I must extend my most sincere! apologies about how lax I have been with this blog. I have had so many things to post about and just never seem to have the time to sit down and actually make a post. Well...actually I do have the time but I am chosing to use that time to create instead. I have a million ideas whirling around in my head and I just have to get them out. Now.
FIrst off, I had a pile of clothes that I had set aside for repairs or alterations or some special need they had. The problem was that I came with quite the depleted wardrobe when I moved here to France. I cringe to think of all the wonderful clothes that I simply left behind when I came here. SO...I got out my HUGE bag of needy clothes and I set to work with a passion...and decided to throw some of that creative burn into my mending.
My first project was this beautiful long stick straight dress. Me...with a stick straight dress. If ever there was a mistaken notion flying in the wind..it was the day I bought that. I couldn't resist the material though. One of my favorite colors and a nice crinkle cotton that I really like the look of. SO..I chopped into it with a vengeance and recut it into a nice flared top. I took the pattern off of one of my favorite tops and had just enough material to make it work. It was a long slow process since my sewing machine broke and I had to do all of the seams by hand. After finishing it I decided it needed a little something. Not wanting to detract too much from the material I gave it a nice subtle embroidery on the front. It came out just perfect and I love it!

My second project was an old India top that I bought in Seattle about ten years ago. It is one of my absolute all-time favorite tops and I just wore it completely out. The side seams were fraying and under the arms was completely worn away. I really wasn't sure what I could do to save it but...it had an interesting bit of patch type work going down the back so I decided to play on that. the bottom of the back was the same material as the sides so I just took the whole piece off , chopped it in two and replaced the worn sides with that piece. then I took the small scrap I had left and reset it in the middle of the back and put a piece of satin under it turned inside out. I sewed tiny little pleats in the satin all the way down in a fan shape and then embroidered the little scrap above it. It came out really nice and I think I managed to save my top for a little bit longer!



I have been doing a lot more projects and will try to take the time to take some photos of them and post about them also. Hopefully you wont be waiting forever for that either :p

Dancing in the Sun

I have been meaning to post about the festival for over a week but I seem to be famous for my procrastination these days. I was SO looking forward to this! Two bands that I LOVE were playing there and another that I wanted to see.


I went to this festival last year but it was right after I had arrived here in France and I was still very worn out from all the hubbub surrounding said trip. Needless to say I spent most of that festival feeling like I was going to pass out from the heat. Well...this year the heat decided to pass us by, and so did the sun. It was basically overcast for the entire festival and the second day we had sporadic rain.

Dams and I the first night. I'm still sunburned from our trip to the beach.

Athough the weather wasn't great, it didn't stop the music from being great. I had a blast! We arrived in good time the first day and went directly to the spot we had camped at last year. There were a few tents set up there but it was quiet and no one really bothered us except one strange man who came up and asked us if we had any hash LOL! We decided not to set up the tent before we went to the festival. Why we decided this, I dont know...I later wished we had made a different decision.


I was quite sneaky with my camera on entering the grounds. Last year they took my batteries and I didnt get to take any pictures. On top of that I had to go buy new ones when I got home >.<

The band I really wanted to see was Dub Inc. D introduced them to me a few years back and I immediately fell in love with them. Well I guess everyone else is in love with their music too, because of all the bands I saw this one had the biggest and most enthusiastic draw. Dorian pulled me into the middle of the crowd as they started playing and kept going closer and closer. They got so crazy though that I started getting hurt. People were going up in the air and being passed back and forth. Lots of elbows and feet going in all directions. It was a lot of fun but a little too rough for me so I stepped back all the way to the sound tent and stayed there till the end of the concert. They were fantastic just like I knew they would be.

By the end of the night I was exhausted and ready to go back to the camp...only I had a slight problem, my dear husband had WAY too much fun and was more than a little tipsy. SO we set off into the night heading in the right direction. Unfortunately I wasnt quite sure of the way back... and D wasn't all there. We made a wrong turn. I knew it was wrong as soon as the road started curving to the right, but he was sure it would still end up where we were going. NOT. After walking for what seemed like forever we ended up at the end of someones driveway. GRRRR! I was so tired. So we turned around and headed back in the direction we had come from and had to walk all the way back to the festival grounds. Seems we turned one road too soon. By the time we arrived at the campsite neither of us was in a very good mood and Dams was already there snoozing away in the back of his van. So we proceeded to set up our tent in the dark. This is something I dont EVER plan on doing again. For one thing the rods are color coded. Not a big deal WHEN ITS DAYLIGHT! And I know they are two different lengths and so it really shouldnt be hard to do, right? It was one interesting looking tent when we finished! Fortunately it stayed upright and by that time that was all I cared about.


The second day was rainy and we spent the morning laying around the campsite taking it easy. I fixed the tent and we moved things around. I was really bumming out about the idea of spending the day in the fest in the rain but luckily right before we were planning on heading up there it started clearing up.


Everyone was lounging and taking it easy. It was a nice afternoon and the music was good.


I was waiting for Le Peuple de l'herbe to come on and luckily they played in early evening. This was a good thing because by the time they finished I was finished. I guess I'm just not as young as I used to be. Sitting on the cold ground makes my body hurt too much and this poor soul just wanted to be home in her comfie bed. So we left the fest about 11. I missed Max Romeo, who I have heard is great, but I guess there is always next year *grin*

This is a short clip of a band called Hilight Tribe. I LOVED THEM! They are a purely instrumental band that play transe music with guitar, bass, didgeridoos, rock drum and a lot of ethnical percussions. The part with the didgeridoo was fantastic. I found their performance amazing and I was really impressed. Trance is not my favorite type of music but I thoroughly enjoyed them. So I guess I found a new fav band ^__^