Be Inspired to Morph Your Work into Something New

While you always hear about people creating art with old items or recycling items to make new art, you don't hear as much about turning older art pieces into new art.  If you create art regularly, you probably have a lot of finished pieces around.  Have you ever taken a finished piece and added to it or even turned it into a completely new piece of art?  That's just what my son did. I'm borrowing from his blog today in hopes of inspiring you to do something with those old pieces of art.  Here's a space helmet he made from a paper mache globe that he made in school:



I love the fact that he can see something new in something he's made and be able to bring that new idea to life.  While I tend to be very attached to my finished pieces, Kyle is constantly reworking his and often transforming them into something new.  It's the ultimate in art recycling. It's bonus that he just used things we had around the house.

Take a little time this week to look at some of your older pieces.  Can you turn them into something new?  Can you take a piece of them and use it in a newer piece? Or perhaps just looking at them will inspire you to evolve a past design or concept or inspire you finish a series or start a new one. As artists we are always evolving with each new piece we create, so why shouldn't our finished pieces evolve over time too.  Follow my son's blog, Kyle's Kreations, to see more of art pieces.  Who knows, next week his space helmet might become pinata or a planter.

Be Inspired by My Son

My 9 year old son Kyle is relaunching his blog , Kyle's Kreations, now that school is almost out for summer.  He creates things daily and wanted to share them on the internet.  Please follow his blog or leave him a comment.  He'd love to hear from you and who knows, you just might get inspired.  Here's a sample of what you'll find on his blog:

Happy Earth Day! Be inspired to recycle, reuse and repurpose!

While polymer clay is not the most environmentally conscious craft, I do make an effort to do use recycled materials in some of my other crafts. I like being able to show my kids how you can make something new from materials you have around the house. I use cardboard from Caprisun boxes as a painting surface for some of my paintings.  It's a nice sturdy surface to paint on and it gives an interesting texture and sometimes the lines of the corrugated cardboard show through which I love.  Plus it's basically free!  Here are some examples:

I also like to use product packaging, catalogs and magazines to make my "Full Circle Trees". Here's one I made from a couple decks of playing cards:

Here's one made from a popsicle box:

And here are 2 from my new candy box series:

Here's a little treasury featuring some other great re-purposed items:

Take a little time this week to think about what you have around your house that you could re-purpose into some amazing art! Pay close attention to how you can transform different materials. Look at the different shapes of things that you throw in the recycling bin. Pay close attention to the colors and graphics in product packaging. All of these things can also spark inspiration without having to re-purpose, but it's a great feeling knowing you're saving something from the landfill and turning it into a masterpiece!

Be Inspired by the Texture of Wood

 Be inspired by the many textures of wood.  Take a walk in the woods this weekend.  Gather some sticks and bark and be inspired.

 



  Bug trails leave the most incredible textures.  My boys say it looks like alien writing.



 The small middle branch has had the bark removed by an animal and the teeth marks left a lovely texture.

Be Inspired to Leave Your Comfort Zone

I've been super busy and I haven't had time for taking pics lately (or posting), but I thought I'd share something new I've been working on. Over the last couple of months I've left my clay comfort zone and I've been creating some new paintings and mixed media pieces. I've found that it affords me a lot more freedom of expression than creating jewelry, as I don't have to worry about if something is too much for someone to wear out in public. As I started, there was no rhyme or reason to my paintings as I flitted from one subject to another (some will be very familiar as they were inspired by my jewelry pieces), but lately I have been focusing on crafty related themes. I haven't quite found my style just yet, but I'm enjoying the journey, which is the most important thing. Here's a collage of the process of a recent mixed media piece:





Prints are available in my print shop and eventually I hope to get the originals listed too. Hopefully someone will like them because I have about 20 more that I need to scan and list. Stay tuned!

As with all photos and artwork on this blog, please do not copy or use the photos without permission. Thanks!

Be Inspired to Doodle

My almost 8 year old (in 2 days) loves to draw so we often sit down for Mother/Son "doodling" sessions. Sometimes we both draw and other times he tells me what to draw. Often times we end up with a page of random things that have no real relation to each other. I love those because they give me a little snapshot of what he's thinking about on that day. I've been dating and collecting them and hope to make a small book for him in a few years. It might be a sweet gift to give him when he leaves for college.



These doodles also inspired a recent project. Etsy announced a new @Etsy Twitter feature. Each month the @Etsy Twitter profile will be re-designed by an emerging, new artist and the design will be made available as a free wallpaper download on your mobile device. I was feeling a bit uninspired when I saw the blog post about the Artist Series, but I wanted to put in an entry. I sat down with some paper and a pen and started thinking about what I think of when I think of Etsy. The first thing I drew was a log and as soon as I finished drawing it, I was reminded of our Mother/son doodle pages and I started drawing random Etsy "trends" that I've noticed over the last 4 years. You know, foxes, birds, skulls, hedgehogs,diamonds, mix tapes and of course a mustache. I also added some crafting items like a ball of yarn, spool of thread, pencil and paintbrush to cover the handmade aspect that makes Etsy unique. Lastly to tie it all together I added the Etsy name (as it's required) and stars and hearts which represent the excitement and love most people feel when the "find" Etsy.



Since they may not choose my doodles for the series, I thought I'd at least share it and it's inspiration with you. Take a little time this week to doodle. Make a page of random items that are in your head. Even better doodle with a partner (sorry that sounds all kinds of wrong). Have them dictate to you what you should draw. It'll give you a little insight into what they're thinking about and you can just draw without having to worry about the inspiration. You may find that you have lots of inspiration after you see your completed doodles.

**Check out the RikRakStudio Blog as she's having a HUGE handmade giveaway. You can win one of my "Smitten" necklaces too!

Putt-Putt Part 2 - Be Inspired to Lomo

After I loaded up the Putt-putt pics I started thinking how old fashioned they looked, so I decided to "lomofy" (yes, I made that up) them with Dumpr's Lomo effects.

Lomography is photos taken with LOMO cameras. Lomo's are Russian cameras which make color-intensive and blurry lenses. It makes the photos darker and the colors more vivid and in my case makes them look a older. I loved how they turned out so I thought I'd share.



















You can Lomo your own photos here. You can even link to your Flickr account to make it even easier. Here are a couple of Flickr groups featuring the results of Dumpr's Lomo effect:

Dumpr Lomography
Faux Lomo

Here's my personal Faux Lomo Flickr set. Feel free to link to any faux lomo pics you create in the comments! Have fun lomofying :P

Be Inspired to Play with Light - Part 2

Here's part two of my marble and light exploration. All of these photos were taken in direct sunlight instead of utilizing a lamp which creates a totally different color and some fantastic shadows. After adding all the photos, I realized this post could also be called "Be inspired by grouping subjects". The lighting is a prime feature, but the different groupings create a lot of the interest too. I went from more organic groupings to much more structured ones.























So utilize that summer sun, get grouping and see what you find!

Be Inspired to Play with Light

A few posts ago, I talked about looking at things from different angles in order to see new inspiring shapes and colors. Another way to make things look different is to adjust the lighting. Adjusting lighting can create interesting shadows and colors. Depending on your subject, it can look totally different in the sunlight than it does under a lamp. As usual, I'll use some of my photos to better express what I am trying to get across to you.

I started a new reward system for the boys that involved using a large quantity of marbles.I had them all stored in a plastic container and set them on my desk under my lamp. What I saw excited me. The reflection of the lamp created a great "eye" effect. Suddenly a bunch of marbles with eyes were staring back at me. I was intrigued. I started moving the lamp around to see how different the marbles would look with the light shining from different angles. Here's what I saw:















Notice how the colors changed as the light source moved. As you can imagine, I took a ton of pics of these marbles as I continued to experiment with light, so this will have to be a 2 part post. Next we'll look at how they look in bright sunlight.

Now find a subject, grab a light source and get experimenting. As always, feel free to share your results. I'm afraid most of my readers are very shy (I know you're out there, I see you in my stats), but don't be afraid to link to your photos or artwork. I'd love to be able to share some of your ideas, photos and creations too!

Be Inspired to Remove the Color

If you're like me, color effects you in a strong way. I am easily distracted by color and can sometimes miss interesting features because I'm so consumed with the emotions and senses that color stirs in me. That's one reason I like taking photos. I take photos of things that appear interesting and then purposely review them later that day or the next. I often find things that I wouldn't have seen while just standing there and looking at my subject. Photos are also great because you can manipulate them to create even more interest and inspiration. Sometimes I like to remove the distraction of color by making the photo black and white or sepia. The absence of color allows my brain to better process the actual form of my subject. Which is really helpful when I'm trying to come up with a line drawing of a design for my jewelry.



So give it a try and remove the color from some of your photos and see if you too become less distracted by the color and more able to focus on the details of the subject.

Be Inspired to Look at all the Angles continued

I was going through some old photos and found a series that I thought illustrated yesterday's point pretty well. The photos are of a section of sidewalk with a dirty plastic "traction pad" on them. Here's how it looks when just looking down on the pad:

Not all that interesting, but change the angle, closeness and perspective and here's what you get:














































































Much more interesting in my opinion. Have a series of photos that further illustrates my point? Link to it in the comments and I'll post them with your permission.