Dancing Crow Designs

Feb TIF background

Feb TIF background
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

Hey Rocky, watch while I pull a rabbit background out of my hat workshop stash.

Oh Bullwinkle, that trick never works...

In other news, a baking spree. Starting with cupcakes:

followed by a couple hundred cookies for the big girl's band rehearsal

and two dozen blueberry muffins for the little girl's bake sale

just so nobody thinks I've been lounging around eating bon bons...

procrastination

I keep to checking to see if I have written anything new, and I haven't.

Lazy.

Week 7 blue hippos

Week 7 blue hippos
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

A hand carved rubber stamp of the Ancient Aegyptian blue hippo, on several shades of blue and light purple silk, appliqued to a patchy silk background.

I guess I have mostly finished with transfer paints. I should declare a new Media of the Moment. The stuff I have least experience with is the foil, but I can't see any romance with that lasting more than a week or two - maybe if i add metallic paints and stamps to the equation I can fill it out some.

week 6 rhino and gold bars

week 6 rhino and gold
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

This was done yesterday but we had a keyboard disaster...

The girls were experimenting with non-Newtonian fluids, of which the easiest to construct is cornstarch and water. The fluids were corralled in zip-lock bags, which were only too temporary and there was a containment failure all over the keyboard. We let it dry out overnight, and it seems to be fine. If you search for non-Newtonian on youtoobe, you get these two (among others) that begin to demonstrate the fascination. I love the little shmooey fingers growing up from the first one - it looks like a tiny, tame, almost cute Blob. Oh - you should really watch this one too.

So this is last week's postcard, drawing fully on the obsessions of the moment. I am hoping that the straight-up gnarliness of rhinos will begin to offset the sparkliness of the background and produce a nice mental contrast. The foil is a new experiment. I lack control but remain extremely amused.

The postcard for this week is almost done, I should be able to post it later.

Things I am old enough to remember

Sharon's challenge for this month is this palette of blues and golds, and the question "What are you old enough to remember?" Well, OK, technically it is blues and tans, but I think I can (with a little latitude) interpret that dark tan as a deep gold.

I like the colors (even though at the moment I am totally drawn into the whole pink/orange/gold/sparkly thing.[as a separate aside, if one is drawn to pink/orange/sparkly {however temporarily} and does not like to think of channeling one's inner barbie, what other options are there?]) 

I am old enough to remember elm trees lining the streets - big, tall, elegant and shady. Nothing has replaced them on American streets. I found a picture of the town I went to college, and the anti-war protesters coming down Main St, and what captured my attention was not the signs or the faces or even the youth of the marchers, but the glory of the trees behind them. Main St was lined with elms, before the Dutch Elm blight got them all, one by one. And I can remember them shading the roads my mother drove us over, and slowly sickening and dying and being cut down.

My mother is old enough to remember chestnut trees. Not horse chestnuts, with the spiky green golf balls that plummet from the skies in the fall and split open to reveal gorgeous glossy nuts that make me think (always) of horses' flanks, even though horses the color of chestnuts are called bay. Conkers they are called, in other places. But real chestnuts, with edible nuts and astoundingly tough wood. I read a theory that the decline and fall of the passenger pigeon was due in part to the chestnut blight - it removed the food source, making them more vulnerable to the extreme predations by humans, and they all died. I have never seen a chestnut tree big enough to seed. There are tiny saplings in the woods all the time, but they never make it past shoulder height on me. I have never seen a passenger pigeon either.

ice day

Snow last night changed to rain and freezing rain. Everything is coated in ice. No school. We are home and warm, the electricity is going, and I am trying to work on something. Anything. Drop the mouse and step away from the keyboard...

backgrounds as backstory

postcard backgrounds
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

So the thing about building these backgrounds is that they take time, but the time spent is worth it. Like a well written story, the author has constructed a great deal of it that she frequently doesn't tell you - it simply informs the characters' actions. In the same way, the underpinnings of the design is created and present, and informs the object even when it is obscured by the next (several) layers.

I do love the way the silks glow.

I am so sick of transfer paints. I did my last one Jan 31 and I may be finished with them. Although they are not gone.

cold thoughts equals...

Alice and I were agreeing that the extreme cold made it hard to think. She says it squeezes the ideas out of your head, and then they freeze. "That would be thoughtsicles, wouldn't it?"

probably. think sweet thoughts guys, because sour thoughts yields nasty thoughtsicles...

um, yeah

Alice has been kind of wrapped up

working on her science fair project. She has taken on Molecules as a topic, and it goes on FOREVER.

Aerin has been going batty

with studying for (and passing with flying colors thank you) midterms. She has also been at the receiving end of a series of talks about what to expect in high school. And started signing up for classes.

Yikes.

I've been hanging out

trying to remain calm, and mostly failing. I have been knitting a lot, the happy socks are almost done, but the rest of the creative endeavors have taken a back seat.

I continue to collect and wear objects of a very specific set of colors. I am continuing to roll with it, because it is still kind of fun and exciting, and it doesn't feel dangerous yet. Out of character definitely. Unexpected, yeah, that too.

Which is why I went into the store full of brightly colored sparkly stuff from India and exited with these chinking on my arm.

bangles
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

I figure if I can make myself laugh, it is a fine place to be. Plus I gave away one of my rhino shirts. Just peeled it off and handed it to Janet, which made her crack up, especially when she saw the new rhino on the shirt underneath...

The thing of the week is late again. These are the beginnings of it

mixed silks
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

by now, you know I'm good for it.

obsessions - orange, pink, rhinos

obsessions - orange, pink, rhinos
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

Like I said - orange, pink, rhinoceri (Wikipedia says I have 4[!] choices for the plural; rhinoceros, rhinoceroses, rhinoceri, rhinoceroi or a bunch of them form a crash)

The pink mother and child is for Alice who requested her own. I have managed to make and wear two of the three of mine today. I have materials for a bunch more thoughts.

And in the further happiness division, there used to be Wooly Rhinoceri. There is a museum quality life size model of one here, for sale for the relatively reasonable price of $110,000.00 Go - it is a great image. Then come back.

I was thinking about this, and decided we could make it in tickets, with extra income from t-shirt and stuffed toy sales but Al says no.