All Dressed Up and Nowhere to Go

 

The skeleton head is a stamp I carved. Lack of inspiration for new stamps recently has led me back to blending ones I have into collage. Not entirely a bad thing.

Tomorrow, a visit to the pumpkin patch and perhaps some seasonal stamping inspiration. 

Sticks and Stones

Can break your bones…

This is the skull I carved tonight to open the “Bones” chapter of the “vitality guide” I’m working on called “Organ-ize Your Health.” Bones are fun because they’re creepy and beautiful at the same time. There’s something mesmerizing and impossible about the fact that we are all walking around with skeletons inside of us. Everyone hides something a little scary.

The Elegant One

Organ-ize Your Health!

I’ve long been interested in nutrition for healing and health and am continually frustrated with how to best approach and present information so people’s eyes don’t glaze over. A few years ago I thought of breaking it down by organ and systems, with a week devoted to each. In this way people would not be overwhelmed by it and could hopefully integrate it in a more meaningful way into their lives. “Organ-ize Your Health!”

(O  bviously I have to print the rest of the word closer to the “O”, but you get the idea.)

Eggplant

The voluptuous, sensuous lines of an eggplant. The rich aubergine color that is darker than the night sky. Everything about the eggplant is seductive. It’s hard to capture the sheen of the skin in a two-tone stamp, but here it is.

Seeing in Reverse

In grappling with making a stamped white cat there was the obvious option of carving the image in reverse so that the lines remain and the rest is carved away. It is not how I usually carve, so thinking this way is a challenge. Lines tend to become wider because extremely fine lines become unstable. That’s not entirely true. They have to be carved at an angle leaving a wider base for stability, which can be done more easily for straight lines and open areas. And some of it comes down to comfort and skill. I’ve seen plenty of negative carving, much of it Japanese, that is exquisitely done in miniature. It tends to be done with an X-acto blade. It baffles me.

I think she loses some of the delicacy and subtlety. Regardless, this was an interesting exercise. I feel a little more confident now using this technique. Practice, practice, practice. Especially those things that we fear.

Cat in a Forest

In my friend’s story Goya cat goes into the forest. It is described as a cathedral of leaves. I am intrigued by unexpected perspectives and was excited to do the forest from the cat’s point of view, sort of. At least from under the cat looking up with her.

Little Pink Houses (and green and red and purple and…)

I can’t stop carving houses! It seems to be a problem – maybe a crutch to keep me from doing anything else. They are fun and satisfying and I keep finding *just* one more that want to add to the line up.

Of course, to the outsider’s eye it looks like a gaggle of kids where you loose track of their ages and mix them up on the annual Christmas card. But to me they are all individuals with different qualities. For instance, tonight’s addition isn’t even Victorian architecture and would never be found on the same row as the rest. I enjoy geeky anachronistic inside references only a nerd would catch.

I have one or two more houses in the queue that are calling my name. After that I vow to mix and match them with some of my animals to create a neighborhood. That should be fun!

The Rainbow Always Leads Home

I’m not highly political. But as soon as I made my little row house stamps I knew there was one card I had to make with them.

Marriage equality interests me because it is such an obvious right and one that falls into my pro-choice beliefs. You live as you wish. I’ll live as I wish. It is the newest frontier in civil rights. My belief and fervent hope is that my son will think it odd when he grows up that marriage equality was ever an issue, much as going to school with different races was an assumed for me, but a complete shift from just a generation before.

I wanted to make something joyful instead of heavy. There is no reason a couple has to be married or gay to give or receive this card. It’s just fun. But I am also aware of what the rainbow has come to represent and I used these colors with intention.

Welcome home EVERYONE!

Right at Home

This is the second in my house series (That’s right, I’m boldly proclaiming a series.)

Is the appeal of small houses that we feel we could shrink our lives to fit in them, and thereby have more control? Is it comforting to loom large over something that ordinarily surrounds us? Obviously, I had plenty of time to think about this while carving these tiny abodes. I didn’t come up with any answers. Maybe I will in a few more houses down the row…