09.13.08
Afternoon fun at the Scrap Exchange…
Today, I visited with some of the girls from the Carolina Mixed Media Art Guild. They have a monthly meet up and a quarterly art outing… this quarter, it was at the Scrap Exchange in Durham, which was totally cool and like nothing I have ever been to before! (To Alicia’s credit… she’s been dying to take me there and we never made it… of course I get over there when she’s in L.A!!!)
They had bins and bins of just odds and ends. Little tiny bottles, plastic flowers, test tubes, fabric bits, bolts of fabric, stickers, wallpaper, wallpaper sample books… with every turn there were strange new treasures! Oh, and each item was totally cheap…
Random old mailboxes, rolls of sticky plastic contact paper, butcher paper… mirror, glass and wood scraps… old 16mm films for like, 75 cents. All in neat little buckets and on shelves all in a row.
The guild rented a crafting room for the day. Some people browsed the Scrap Exchange, others visited and many others made Artist Trading Cards. And did you know that Strathmore now makes Artist Trading Card Blanks (Hey, Babs, these would be AWESOME traveling mini-canvases!)?!? Canvas, bristol, illustration board, watercolor paper, all in trading card/baseball card size… wow. I got 2 free packs courtesy of Jerry’s Artarama in Raleigh, which I must totally check out immediately. From what I understand, you can make ATC’s, submit them via the Carolina MM Art Guild and your card(s) could possibly be chosen to participate in a gallery show. The pressure :) hehe. I know that Sue T. has had her ATC’s travel the country… and it’s oh so very exciting!
Speaking of Sue T., she’s been sending me some carefully picked antique jewelry care packages which are chock-full o’ inspiration. I hope to breathe some new life into those clustered clip-on earrings and other shiny goodies everyone’s grandma had piled in a box and forgotten somewhere. It’s a touch of creativity and engineering because you need to find out how these puppies will attach to each other securely, yet beautifully. Because, you know, I would like to say…”nice to meet you, I’m a jewelry structural engineer”.
I met so many nice and creative people today… as I get acquainted with the guild (just joined over a week ago), I’ll post blogs and info… yay!
Otherwise, just doing art, loving that the weather is cooling down and I cleaned all evening. Holly understands the pain of cleaning ;) (Check out her blog because… it’s quite nifty).
Oh, and I want to do what Sandy just did. Wow!
Okay so now my “to do” list is just really shorter than it was:
1. Buy house
2. Open cute little store (again), only a few miles from said house
3. Plant random wings (see Sandy’s blog) every 3 miles… or put them in every Starbucks, (same thing).
hehe :)
