It was my friend Gabby’s birthday early in November. I don’t know what exactly sparked me to partake in getting into the mode of making her birthday present pretty.
Well, I kinda do know. I took a trip to a stationery store in Montclair, New Jersey called Parcel and it got me hyped. Their embellishment packs, stamps, vintage paper, and all the variety of goods really made me feel like I needed to step up my gift wrapping game. This was my first attempt at it and it makes me all ready to go wild and crazy for wrapping Christmas presents.
Back in high school, I was obsessed with my agenda books. I decorated the covers, doodled all in the insides, and made note of everything I needed to keep track of. I was organized. College brought the opposite. I got lazy. Had no planner. Honestly I don’t remember how I kept track of things. Last year was the first year since high school that I bought a planner. But I couldn’t get into the swing of things and I rarely used it. Organization means a lot to me, but sometimes I really do find it hard to get into the swing of things.
Organization is important. It’s so easy to get messy, making it hard to find what you’re looking for in your own home sometimes. I’ve been buying the occasional plastic container to store things, but truth is I haven’t been paying much attention to keeping the kitchen organized.
I was in the kitchen the other day and noticed the lack of free magnets on the fridge which made me realize we just had too many restaurant menus on the fridge. If they weren’t there, we’d have so many free magnets.
So, with that thought, I figured if i just constructed something quick with cardboard, I can use command strips to hang it on the wall. Luckily there was a cereal box in our recycling bin which made things so much easier.
Last weekend, I took a crash course in riso printing. I like taking the occasional class, be it a crash course, or semester-long class. Besides learning something new, it gives me something to do and something to look forward to after a long day at work. Trying something new was also a goal for this year, so I’m feeling pretty accomplished so far.
There’s this local studio, actually a few blocks away from my job that offers classes and a membership in which you can use their facilities. My plan was to take the risograph class and hopefully after feeling comfortable enough to use it, I’d sign up for a membership.
So the risograph is a Japanese duplicator machine. It’s kinda living in the underground right now because there’s not much information about it out there. It’s intended for just making copies, not making art. But there’s something about it that gives artist a creative freedom to print in bulk. It’s not like your standard copy machine where it prints colors all at once. You have to manually take out the one ink drum and put in another one. It mimics a lot of qualities of screenprinting but it’s strictly for paper. You kinda should make sure you’re educated in the color wheel before taking on riso, especially when colors overlap. It’s pretty darn cool in that sense.
You know, I didn’t realize how much into photography I’ve been getting into lately. Being one who grew up learning the ins and outs of arts and crafts, and graduating with a degree in illustration, photography never was something I was into. That said, I’ve been really getting into taking photos and having the option to print them. The physical copies allow me to get crafty with bookmaking and scrapbooking, which is something I’ve been wanting to dive into more than when I started teaching myself book binding.
While on the topic of developing photos that I meant to develop a while ago, I’ve had this idea of using my bookbinding skills by making fun little photo albums.
I’m still old school in the way that I like physical copies of all kinds of things, and photography is included. I always forget about much I appreciate film. I don’t consider myself a photographer, but there’s something about the surprise when you get photos developed because it’s not instant and controllable like digital cameras.
I could talk about it all day, so I digress. This past weekend, I figured I’d finally get a start on my handmade binded photo albums. During my last semester of college, I had taken a bookbinding class and we learned a specific binding method that I thought would be perfect for photos. I wrote up a post about the project two years ago on my old blog.
First off, happy August! Can’t believe how far into the year we are already. This also means that I will be in Greece for three more weeks. I can’t believe I’ve been here two months already. Boy does time REALLY fly.
Onto the topic of the post…so, my aunt owns a textile shop here in Athens, but is not only limited to working with textiles. She does murals, displays, portraits, etc. I may or may not have gotten my artistic genes from her. Anyway, my aunt recently took a job with a client to make her curtains and pillows but along the way, the conversation became about art and all of a sudden I was assigned a job to do portraits by the client’s brother. He wanted a portrait of his daughters. This discussion was weeks ago, but because of the economic crisis here, the project was delayed.
I think I’ve mentioned before that I’ve getting into paper crafts more because of the limited crafty supplies and projects I have here.
We’ve come across rolls and rolls of tracing paper. So I thought to draw figures/people and create shapes on the people to create color blocks on said tracing paper.
You can call me a bit of a collector (the kinder word for hoarder). I “collect” things that can be used for art projects. One thing I will rarely throw out is paper. I have like three large drawers in my desk dedicated to scrap paper.
