Gotta Share this Beading site and Link!

Robin Atkins is an incredibly productive beadworker and her blog is a delight!

She's also incredibly generous: When she "retired" her first book, One Bead At A Time, she set it free. By which I mean she made it available as a free download. Rather than loading the book with a multitude of projects, she walks you through her process and frees you to create original pieces for yourself that reflect you, rather than the author. A few pages in the back with techniques and you're ready to set out on your own exploration of beading creativity.

Robin's other books are also available on her site, as well as hard-to-find resources that she uses in her work (beading needles, specialty beads, specialty cords).

Go Robin!

(and thank you Virginia for telling me about the chord/cords boo-boo!)

Steampunk for April

I'm ready to finally start on my Steampunk outfit for an April 14th library play date.

First up: Foam Falls a la the Anachronaut. He's not making them anymore (all his stuff in dA is from the early Oughts and his old sales website just went dark, like, YESTERDAY!). He's got his Masters and has moved on to bigger things, so I had to scour the 'Net to find any detailed pics of his work. There's LOTS of bad copies out there! *Gawd but he's a sexy boi!* He was in his mid 20's in the photos...

Mine are going to be a cool brown foam with bronzy squares painted on it, and black foam accents. Using blue painters tape I masked off the sheet of foam in 1" stripes and lightly slapped on the paint so that it would look patchy and worn. May still go back and sand/distress it a bit before I cut the strips apart. Don't have any tubing so I think I'll cut some of the strips in skinnier widths for variation. I like his hole punched strips, one of those things the knockoff peeps don't bother to do, as well as his wrapped 'bundles' and the eyelets and rivets that accent them - adds a bit of steamy flash.

http://anachronaut.deviantart.com/

Photoshop Content-Aware Hoodoo

This is going to stomp the crap out of the photo illustration/advertising/design community. If you don't buy the new version when it's released, you might as well close up shop...

Some favorite sites I’ve visited over the weekend…

It’s been a great weekend for textile eye-candy! I’ve discovered some wonderful blogs, artists, and websites; hope you enjoy them too!

http://srithreads.com/ - From their site: Sri is a by-appointment textile gallery specializing in antique Japanese folk textiles, highlighting the indigo-dyed cotton utilitarian fabrics and boro--or patched and mended--textiles of old Japan.

They also have a wonderful blog with even MORE links to textile goodness. I love the current appreciation of Japanese boro fabrics.

I reached Sri from another wonderful blog, Art Found Out. From their site: his blog is committed to artists who are informed by the world around them or driven by a highly personal artistic vision. Many respond to and reinterpret traditional culture. Others create works from an internal world. These are artists who do not look to New York or other art capitals for inspiration and direction. At times, this blog will also examine lesser-known non-western art forms, both contemporary and historic that will enhance the understanding of the artists presented.

I got THERE from Hand Eye Magazine’s article on the Nui Project, an embroidery workshop for the mentally disabled. Do click on the slideshow to see some of this awesome work. I tried to imagine the thought processes of each artist as they worked on each piece.

I also followed their link to the blog Yoshiko Iwamoto Wada, where I was able to purchase the companion book to the 2003 Oakland, CA exhibit of these textiles (Hint, there’s only 10 copies left). I also tried to purchase their DVD “Arimatsu Narumi Shibori”, but the PayPal link was bad. Will have to email them next week about that one. They included a link to Wada-san's short video with Andrew Galli on Boro fabrics, which I really enjoyed (see below).

Wada on Boro: Japanese Rag Textiles Go from Shabby to Chic from Andrew Galli on Vimeo.

Have a great day!

A good song to start the year with...

I love lastFM! This little gem popped up almost a year ago, and I find I look forward to it coming up in the queue...

http://www.jonathancoulton.com/songd...0with%20George

About the song:
Thing a Week 23 – A Talk with George

Chapter 23 in which you are visited by the ghost of George Plimpton and he relays to you an important message about life.
It was Jim Hanas who told about the song contest going on at The Plimpton Project, an organization dedicated to getting a statue of the man erected somewhere in the city. George was a hell of a guy, and he deserves about 10 or 15 statues, but I guess one would be a good start. I met him at a Paris Review party once, and he was pretty charming for a Harvard man. The song: A Talk with George

Happy New Year!

Hoping that 2010 brings EVERYBODY better times!