Melanie Testa

Soft Light

I am back from teaching at The Great American Scrapbook Convention and oh my goodness gracious. Those scrapbookers? They know how to play right into my obsession for neat, orderly and functioning workspaces. Scrapbookers seem to really like efficiency. And they have some toys, inks and supplies. They use punches, gadgets, embossers, and the inks! I felt overwhelmed. I am going to have to see how all I saw and experienced in the vendors center integrates. I wonder how I would use their tools! I am not one to step in feet first. I like to research and walk around back and kick the tire. I need to understand before I can proceed, so I will be looking into one of the things I saw.

I am preparing a post for CreateMixedMedia. I have to say, I really like what they are doing at that site. I think it offers real content and is colorful and open minded in exploring its themes. I am an author of theirs, just for your reference. But they have not asked me, nor are they paying me to say so. I am just putting my two cents in.

AnYway. I am preparing a post for them and it involves a Rumi quote and a certain collar.

In the meantime, I show you one of the latest purses. Leslie Tucker Jennison named it The Bellybutton. Will discuss soon. I have been bitten by the fever to create many of these purses. I want them as accessories. Maybe I need one for my iPod. Hm.

Sew-plies Polka

I am off to teach at the GASC in Arlington Texas. I have my hand sewing and embroidery work all packed and ready to go. I, of course, am bringing all 3 Sew-plies purses. I am attached to them right now, I love them-they have become tiny backpacks with specific intention-to help me sew. I love the idea of them. I will have a 4 hour flight and I am have my Fuxion erasable pen.

I will have internet access. I will not be doing Flash Card Friday, that will resume next week.

Exponential Sew-plies

This weekend I became obsessed with making a Gather your Sew-plies purse for each day of the week. You can see, I am well on my way. I have been settling into a new form of textile art, which isn’t clearly defined yet but it seems to have something to do with cloth, dressing myself, and embroidering and embellishing the clothing I wear, make and use. All of the sudden, I feel as though my clothing can become a journal. I can trace off a drawing from my journal, embroider it onto my clothing, I can say things, verbally and visually on the clothing I wear, it if it were my journal.

I have been playing with the idea of labels. We like to categorize things, people, visual impressions, items. When working with clothing we have lots of physical labels, actual labels that tell us about size, fiber content, washing instructions and the like. I have been having fun inserting and using found labels in new ways. Here you see my latest Gather your Sew-plies purse is a size 14, or is 14th in some unspecified order. I have been daydreaming of removing and redistributing the labels that are sewn onto my clothing.

This latest Sew-plies purse goes with a t-shirt blouse I bought at H&M. I started embroidering it just this morning. This is part of my new approach. I am going to work on and wear the clothing I choose to embellish all summer long. This is an active project. I don’t yet have a blouse to pair with the pink Gather your Sew-plies purse…but I have been thinking about how to remedy that.

I will be teaching in Arlington Texas this week and will be away from home for almost 4 days. Luckily, I now have an iPad (A.K.A iMelly) and can keep up with you guys wherever I am.

Making!

Boy am I having fun over here. This purse is coming out really well. I want one for every occasion, I want to wear this or one like it everyday. My next creative path has opened up to me and this feels like a very formative and expansive time creatively. Last fall, I stood with Deborah Boschert in a great hall in Houston looking at embroidery work. I wish I could find my notes because there were two people’s work that really stood out to me and I can’t remember their names.

I kept walking the halls looking at quilts and artwork and thinking, what will I do next. How will I move into art making post cancer? Do I want to use dye?

I think I will still be using dye. But my focus is changing and I like where it is headed.

V2

Today my man and I celebrate his Birthday by going to a Mets game. I, of course, need a project. I have decided to reinterpret the Gather your Sew-plies purse. I am now perfecting and expanding this pattern!

I would love it if you would make one and show me how you put it together.

I pulled this linen and silk out of a bin and they looked so interesting together. It isn’t what I would have thought to be drawn to. I am daydreaming a new neckstrap. I am having fun building.

Positively Flash Card Friday

Here is another contribution to Flash Card Friday. Last week we talked about Negative Space, this week we talk about Positive Space. Positive space is object itself. Positive space is the person, place or thing that you are drawing. In the last post, I painted the negative space around the chair, in this one, I painted the chair itself.

As I have said before, negative space stymied and alluded me for years. I didn’t get it, so I created these two images to have relationship to one another so that you will not get confused like I did.

Have you considered making a set of Flash Cards for yourself? These can be used to challenge yourself to a throw down, as Chapter 5 in Dreaming from the Journal Page suggests. This will help you to start layering and building innovative and interesting journal pages all while trying out each technique in the book.

Embracing Ambiguity.

Two weeks ago, David and I went to Kripalu, a yoga retreat center that we visit regularly. Of course I packed up my travel kit, journal and special treats and I took the time to find a flower to two to draw and paint.

While drawing the orange flower I was bit by a nasty bug and am still healing from it!

The next day, I returned to that ~~bug infested place for more torture, ops, I mean,~~ same spot to color the drawing. This is the third drawing I have done at Kripalu. If you have Dreaming From the Journal Page check out pages 118 and 122 for the other two Kripalu flower drawings and a piece of art inspired by them.

When I came home, I continued to work the page using stencils to help ‘pattern up the page’ (this page is featured in video content from the Stencil Magic class (please sign up, I would love to work with you). I want the frenetic energy of the wildflower patch to really shine through and don’t feel as if I have captured that yet. I like the page a lot, it is moving into the right place but is not quite there. Almost, just about, but not quite. Oh the ambiguity.

When I first started working in my journal pages over time like this, it felt quite uncomfortable. I felt as if I needed to return to the page as soon as possible and complete the image. But, I find when I would do that, I often make impulsive and ill defined decisions that leave me regretting and wishing I had taken the time to truly decide what my next step should be. For me, taking this sort of time is tantamount to creating the beautiful pages I want to see realized in my journals.

So, I wonder, how do you deal with creative ambiguity? Do you embrace it, struggle and push against it? Do you not experience ambiguity? Talk to me!

Sew-plies updates

The cinch sack pictured was the trial cinch sack, I think it pretty but ultimately, too small and a bit clunky. The cotton lining is stiff and the lil thing does’t close well. Resultant to which, I lined a new larger cinch sack circle with an old silk habotai and found this to be just the right amount of drape. Thimble Cinch Pattern here.

I do like the lil premature Cinch though. I keep playing with it and trying to improve or use it somehow.

Then I get to wanting to give it to Matthew to see what he would do with it. Matthew makes assemblages, is a friend of ours, we hang at dinner parties intermittently but I/we don’t know his last name and can’t check to see if he has a web site. But Matthew would paint it green and leave it to sit on something for years. He would do something unexpected.

I sewed a loop onto the back of the Gather your Sew-plies purse, and am embellishing a 38″ belt to thread through it and use while sewing on the go. Last night we traveled home over the 6 subway for a while. I sewed the purse while standing on the platform and on the train. It was the Saturday young kids come from the burbs to party for a night. Ill chosen stilettos in a city where you must walk. It is an interesting way to experience the city.

Would it be overbuilt to encase and sew some magnets strategically to help hold the pin book securely against the purse? Hm.

I love the addition of the belt. I love to walk and having the purse bang against me could have been a deal breaker. So, form is meeting function again.

I am sewing baby buttons onto the belt with white seed beads. There is something magical about buttons. Some of the buttons I am using are humble shell buttons that seem quite old. Pictures to come.

I am creatively floating on the waves over here. I am introducing exercise into my daily routine, walking, and being active. I experience much change and I know that my energy levels are not what they used to be. They are getting better and there is no rushing it, but this is different.

Whirlwinds

This should be Flash Card Friday, but it is not. I called a fun day. I went to my monthly appointment, my Man accompanied, very helpful-the lad.

A memory of the day, not fully explained:

X-ray box, perforated paper, square head man face, front top quadrant of the page-drawn by David. Me: Flipped, vertebrae, ribs, hips, femurs; his pen, mine pencil. RN comes in to find, then….Very fast walk uptown, stopped at Merrimeko…dreamy…. Then to Mood to paw through and daydream effectively. Rich!

I am fixated on getting this Gather your Sew-plies (chatelaine pattern) right. I felt buoyed by a comment to this post and started to think about this purse as Sewing Jewelry, personal adornment, how would an artist with my skill dress herself? I began designing this small purse because I want to sew -on –the —-go, embroider wherever I am. Although I merely keep the essentials (Thread, Thread Heaven, Thimble, Scissors, needles), the bag is heavy and it moves around with momentum as I walk. Form isn’t meeting intended function.

So it needs an anchor. But I want it to be removable, because, well, who doesn’t like a convertible thing? A toy, a puzzle, deeply stitched object. It’s satisfying.

I think I am just addicted to cataloging, collecting, collating, and jotting. This is an image of an idea book. I think it is different than an art journal, it supports and documents. They help me remember.

So I am creating a belt and loop scenario. I keep wondering about changing the texture of cloth by stitching it. I would like to explore this some.

I think the hand stencil needs to be embroidered on the purse, somewhere. That stencil has been asking to be used all week.

Anyone in the Dallas area going to the Great American Scrapbook Conference, I will be teaching surface design techniques for paper. Come join me?

Of palettes, paint and refills.

Sticking to the theme of maintaining a watercolor/travel palette, I created the video above. The watercolor box you will see in the video was originally a Cotman Watercolor Compact Set set, that I reclaimed, replacing their palette with colors I know and love.

Cotman is Winsor Newtons’s student grade paint set. Empty travel palettes can be quite pricey, so purchasing a student grade set can be a good entry level start to maintaining your own groupings of color, and the paints in them are decent, so you might choose to stick with these paints while you journey into painting with watercolor. Once those paints are used, you can begin purchasing tubes of paint to refill your half pans or pans, or, like me, you might purchase a cheapo palette of student grade paints and replace each half pan with professional grade watercolor paints that you already know and love.

To remove the student grade paint, I took each half pan, dipped it in water for just a moment and allowed the cake to soften some. When the cake appeared softer, I dug down into the side of the cake, between the plastic and the cake and pried the pigment cake out. I set those cakes aside and allowed them to dry (I just gave them to a budding young artist). Once I cleaned each half pan, I refilled them with my favorite M. Graham watercolor paints from tubes.