Going around in circles

Happy New Year! I hope the new year finds everyone happy and healthy. I’ve been recovering from a cold that has kicked my butt, but other than that all is well.

I’ve made a goal list for this year of things I want to do. But first, as I promised, a little more about Evie’s toddler Spirograph© or Spin n’ Spiral Doodler as Fisher Price calls it.

This is the box as I saw it at my local Target for $19.99.

If you use it as it is set up this is the type or art it makes. The youngster can just watch it create while fun music plays.

But, my Evie wanted a more hands-on experience. So, she lets it spin with or without markers in the holder and draws on the paper. I resisted this at first, but soon realized that she was being creative. So, I helped on some of the pieces.

It comes with a template so you can cut more paper, which is a good thing because we quickly blew through all the paper that came with it in a couple days.

I used my circle cutter to cut out more paper, then used scissors to cut the two notches that hold the paper on the spinner. The old drawing paper was a better quality paper than what came with the toy. The markers tended to bleed on the original paper. Unfortunately, the markers are now just about done, and I found some other markers to use that I had in the studio, but soon found they were not as washable as the originals.

This reminded me....A few years ago I got a spiral ruler from Paper and Ink Arts and I had a blast creating calligraphy in circles. This is a piece I created. Three sets of lowercase alphabets and combines Italic in a circle, folded ruling pen inside the circle and script lettering going across and through the circle. All done on a piece of Twinrocker Handmade paper and is framed in a shadowbox type of frame.

Our guild will be bringing Jane Farr, a calligrapher from Indianapolis, to one of our upcoming meetings and I look forward to working on more circles or Mandala's with her.

Until next time.

Jen

Happy Holidays and a cool new toy

Happy Holidays! I hope you and your family and friends are enjoying some down time and togetherness.

Well, I fell way off the blogging band wagon for a while. Sorry about that, life just got too busy.

So, I’m going to tell you about my holiday cards. Yes, I got busy with my Etsy shop, but this year I was a little better prepared, and worked on the cards in a brief slow period sometime in Nov.

The design was swiped from an Archiver’s flyer that I got in the mail, but with my own twist. I rarely ever use the traditional red and green colors for my holiday cards. Mostly because by the time I get around to doing them, all those colors are sold out, so I get something else. I really like kraft paper too, and for several years my cards have had kraft paper used, one way or another. I should do a series on that. Anyway, I found the nice plaid paper and really liked it, and guess what, it was on clearance too.

I’d wanted some sort of gingerbread man image for the tag, but couldn’t find a stamp, sticker or anything else that worked, so, I opted for the star. It was a stencil that I had and I just used an ink pad to ‘stamp’ the star. I experimented with pastels, but this worked best for what I wanted.

All the years that I’ve been doing calligraphy, I’ve been pretty anal about drawing or having guidelines so that I’m sure the lettering is straight. The kraft paper was too thick and dark for me to use on my lightbox, and I didn’t have time to rule each card, so, gulp, I did the lettering freehand.

The lettering is a bit difficult to see what with the pink on the kraft paper, so I’ve tried to lighten it at bit. Some of them look really straight, but some of them went a little crooked. Oh well, that’s life, and I need to practice without lines a lot more, for better results next time.

Evie is almost 3, where did the years go? One of her presents from Santa this Christmas was a toddler version on the Spirograph®. My parents brought me my old Spirograph a few years ago, and I actually used it to create my Holiday cards that year, it’s a fun drawing tool, I wonder if they still make it? Anyway, Evie’s is battery operated and spins for you. She liked the spirals that it made, but then moved onto freehand, letting it spin while she drew. I resisted this, but realized she was being creative and I was having fun with it too. She blew through the 12 sheets of paper that came with it in 2 days, and I’ve been cutting new sheets from some very old, slightly yellowed, drawing paper that my Grandmother had. We’re gonna need new markers soon too, I think.

I don’t have a great photo of it, but I’ll get one to post soon. In the meantime, here’s a little of the Christmas aftermath....

I’ll post some of her artwork soon too. I promise.

Until next time.

Jen