Art – Page 21 – Elliebelly Knit & Dye Works

What are ATC’s?

Posted on January 23, 2007 by Joyce Makes Art

In the comments, Rita asked:

Question for you… what makes something an ATC? Can you give us non-collager/paper artists a little lesson? I’m curious.

Rita is one of my oldest online friends, and an amazing knitter. (I need to take out the sweaters she knit for Ellie & Ollie a couple of years ago and photograph them for you to see how amazing she is, and I promise to do that later.) The answer to the question is pretty simple: ATCs are tiny 2 1/2" by 3 1/2" pieces of art, created by artists to trade (never sell) amongst each other. They can be portrait (vertical) or horizontal (landscape) in orientation, although vertical is more traditional. The can be painted, drawn, collaged, graphic, or any combination of these media and can be done on paper, fabric, metal — there are no limits. Think Pokeman or baseball cards for artists, and you have the idea.

ATCs are meant to be fun and are a great way to experiment with art. One of my all time favorites is a very simple card with a small iris painted in watercolor. Some cards are like miniature jewels. I’m especially partial to Linda Koch’s beautiful work. Belinda Schneider‘s work is really wonderful too. And you could get absolutely lost in Karen Owen’s soft, delicate artwork. The joy of these little cards is to have fun, enjoy yourself, make art, and make friends. They are meant to trade, and if you are interested in starting out, I know you will find lots of artists in our swap who would be happy to trade with you and help you on your way!

One of my favorite artists, Bernie Berlin, has a brand new book out on ATCs. It’s a fantastic book full of inspiration and techniques. Bernie also runs a wonderful shelter for lost & abused animals, so if you purchase the book, you help her with a wonderful cause!

A final note, Claudine Hellmuth did a collage portrait of my children. I adore it and I have to share it with you. Claudine posted it on her blog and I encourage you to go take a look! She even included some of our pets.

What can I do with one little skein?

Posted on January 22, 2007 by Joyce Makes Art

It’s the age old knitter’s quandry: one can you do with just one skein? Yes, I have all the books. I’ve had this dilemna before. I’ve knit socks, hats, scarves. But I’m there again. I have one skein of this Alpaca.

It’s pretty! But it’s different from what I thought it would look like when I ordered it. I was expecting bright vivid colors, but it has more of a brown tone in each of the shades. It won’t work for the purpose I had in mind, but it is soft and lovely and I feel certain it can’t wait to be knit into something wonderful.

I have been wanting to knit Fetching from Knitty and briefly flirted with that idea, but I think the cables in Fetching would be lost in the multi-colored hues of my Alpaca (which comes from Irish Baby Knits by the way. Go there and drool!) So I’m at an impasse here and would really appreciate any suggestions for this beautiful yarn. It is labeled as 270 yards of merino/alpaca blend for needle sizes 5-8.

This:

is in my dyepots right now. I’m not sure if you can tell, but I’m getting beautiful varigated colors on this yarn, due to the use of different base singles that have been spun together. To say I’m overjoyed by this simple pleasure would be an understatement. I guess I’m easily amused, but really. It’s wonderful.

Because I have crafter’s ADHD, I’m going to switch from knitting to art without benefit of a transition. Today’s mail contained this beautiful Artist’s Trading Card from Svenja.

I can’t begin to say how much I have enjoyed coming home to daily art in the mail as a result of the Informal ATC Swap. The swap is still continuing and you can join us by using the link for details, posting your own ATCs, and emailing the link to your cards to me, so I can include you in the list of swapping artists on the left-hand column. My daily dose of art in the mail has kept me inspired all month long!

Wednesday Stamper

Posted on January 20, 2007 by Joyce Makes Art

One of my new year’s thoughts was to use my collection of rubber stamps more in my art. For a while, I looked down on them as not-art, or even as too much like a coloring book. But I seem to have come full circle and am incorporating them into a lot of art lately. Then, I stumbled upon the Wednesday Stamper, a site that encourage artists to use rubber stamps and post their work.

This weeks theme is time. My piece is an ATC with a tiny picture of my Mother-in-law as a wee time traveler.

I need to update my list of ATCs for the swap, and will do that tomorrow morning to include Time Traveler, the ATC below, and a few others I have made this week.

One last thing (and it’s about yarn). I’ve been playing with mixtures of celadon and turquoise all week and was delighted to come up with this sweet little yarn. I know it isn’t modest to say this, but aren’t the colors beautiful? It just makes you want to go forth and knit something!

Bits & Pieces

Posted on January 18, 2007 by Joyce Makes Art

This is sure to be a fairly disjointed entry as my littlest one has a nasty bug that involved Mommy watching his every labored breath and listening to his feverish hallucinations until 4 am this morning. Two and a half hours of sleep was followed by a full day at work. You might think that this would turn me into a ~~walking zombie~~ sleepier than usual version of myself, but I managed to survive the day, which included a hurried lunch hour visit to the pediatrician (who turned out to be sick with the flu herself, so we saw her partner) and several meetings.

I survived, but I’m not claiming to have survived with any particular grace. Dinner in my house tonight is chocolate croissants from our neighborhood bakery and if anyone really insists on food, I’ll round them out with cheese omelettes. Then it’s going to be straight to bed for everyone around 8:00 in hopes that we can get a good night’s sleep.

The cats were disturbed that I abandoned my usual early morning post in the kitchen — they love leftovers from breakfast. Hermione even tried to blog for me, but all she succeeded in doing was buggering up my internet connection.

I had planned on showing off my finished silk scarf, the one knit in a feather and fan pattern from my own handpainted silk, but photography hasn’t really made my list today. I do have this picture of Ellie modeling the scarf right after I cast off, and promise to snap one that shows the lace pattern in better detail when the plague leaves my house. The petulant look is because I gently reminded her it was mine, not hers.

Right before Christmas, my friend Sally and I had lunch and decided to ask our husbands for painting lessons for Christmas. The Judge can actually follow directions when I give him a roadmap, so I ended up with a gift certificate in my stocking. We took our first class with Jennifer last night and had a blast. It was very low key — a good thing for me because I don’t paint. Sally claimed she had never painted, but I think she was a total ringer. Her trees were fantastic! We were supposed to paint trees — I sort of didn’t, but I pretended it was on purpose. And it was very liberating to slap pretty colors on canvas. Did I mention that it was lots of fun and there was wine?

I am off to shamelessly serve my small fry chocolate for dinner.

The end of the day…

Posted on January 15, 2007 by Joyce Makes Art

All is well in my house.

There is large black cat snuggled in at my feet while I type. A happy dog, having successfully jumped up on the dining room table in one elegant, silent leap and snatched a tidy bit of meatloaf, is roaming up and down the stairs on her nightly mission to defend us from any invaders. Babies — even teenaged children are referred to as babies in our house — are laughing with their father upstairs (hopefully they are reading children’s books rather than watching The Simpsons or worse).

And my evil migraine is gone! This means we had a successful trip to Atlanta (involving a visit with an educational consultant for one of the aforementioned babies — if you are reading my blog because you have a child with the DiGeorge Anomally, at some point I’m going to talk about nonverbal learning disorder, which seems to accompany DiGeorge, and some of the coping strategies we’ve learned in 14 years of struggling with this) and I got in some knitting time!

My Clapotis now looks like this.

I’m a little bit sorry I didn’t use a handpainted yarn, but the texture of this silk alpaca blend is luxurious and now that I’ve started into the straight rows and am dropping stitches, I am completely enamoured with the simple brilliance of the pattern.

I also started swatching for the vest my youngest child has been ~~badgering me to knit~~ asking for. It is the basic Peace Fleece vest pattern and I’m hoping to finish it relatively quickly because he is a persistent little guy.

We spent the afternoon with his best friend, whose mom, the sadly blogless Jennifer, brought over some wonderful collages she is doing using a picture of her grandmother holding her absolutely beautiful daughter. After seeing her transfers, I had to go back and work on a few more ATCs for the informal ATC swap (info in the column at left) and finished this one, using one of the cool watch pieces I got from a wonderful guy in London last year. I have added several new artists to the ATC swap today and hope to add more of my own ATCs tomorrow, because I’m enjoying the swapping, which brings new ATCs in the mail every day. If you are thinking about joining us, but haven’t yet, please join us!

Wednesday Stamper

Posted on January 13, 2007 by Joyce Makes Art

I have been wanting to participate in Belinda’s Wednesday Stamper challenge for a while now. For Wednesday Stamper, you make a piece of art, using the theme suggested on the site for that week, and incorporating at least one rubber stamp. I love rubber stamps and one of my art resolutions for the year is to go back to using them more, so this is going to be a great weekly challenge for me to participate in. This week’s theme is faux postage and I made an ATC for it, using some of the earliest rubber stamps I purchased.

More Artist’s Trading Cards

Posted on January 10, 2007 by Joyce Makes Art

It’s been a regular frenzy of artist’s trading cards in my studio for the past week or so. I hadn’t made any in almost a year before this, so it has been almost like trying something new. The informal ATC swap is ongoing. You can find the link to all the artist’s who are swapping in the left column — anyone who would like to join us is welcome. The details are in earlier posts about the swap or you can email me for information.

I have also been working on a page for the book being put together for Vicki of b-muse (my favorite place to buy embossing powders). Vicki had a sudden illness over the holidays and a fatbook to help her through her recovery is in the works. This is my page.