I’ve been remiss in blogging, but it’s not been on purpose. My apologies. There’s been a TON of stuff going on these past couple of weeks, and it’s been hard to keep up with the daily life let alone blogging about it. I have photos, and I want to share them, but it’s going to take some time to get them together.

HOWEVER, part of what has been keeping me from blogging has been making more stuff, and I was quick enough last night to get the latest project on pixel, and still more amazed with myself for getting it formatted to stick up here. But I did, and I am.

Here’s a little foreward. The band played at a private party for some folks a week ago. Said folks have been responsible for my employment on more than one occasion, so they’re responsible for me owning things, even if it’s just gasoline to get through the week and maybe some low fat vanilla yogurt and Bear Naked Granola (mmm….yogurt and granola!). Oh, so anyway, I wanted to thank them for being such great hosts and all, because there have been occasions where I’ve played for someone and hoped I would never see said employer ever again in my life. This folks are cool. They deserved a little thanks.

I figured I’d send a thank you, only I’d sent them one before. I only have one kind of thank you card, so that seemed rather perfunctory of me. Somehow I got it in my head that I’d cut up a bunch of magazines and make them one. Now that I think about it, I can’t recall how I came to this conclusion, but I did. I know, it’s no big wow of an idea, but it is fun, and it beats the hell out of a regular card.

The short of it is that I spent WAY too much time on this, but had a great time doing it. All told, with consideration for gathering the materials and sticking them all together, I think I have about five or six hours in this thing. Really. I seem to get carried away. You may have noticed this. I don’t seem to be able to do anything “just good enough” when it comes to creative projects. (Wait until you see the RBS that Tina helped me with!) I will eventually pick up some more skills with scheduling and timing and whatnot, but I still go overboard.

Witness the front:

Front of card is the bottom half.

I showed this to my coworker, and she said, “Wow…there’s a LOT going on here!” I apparently did like I did with my early marker-and-Crayola projects, and just threw the book (the magazines?) at the thing. It’s a bit busy, but it’s fun.

Flipped over, so you can see the back easier:

Back of card is bottom half here.

Inside of card.

My coworker said, “It’s like a fun little ransom note!” Yeah, the cutout letters on the front reminded me of that as well. I had fun sticking all these wacky images together. The search was half the fun. The gluing was…not so fun, but I worked it out with minimal mess. I hope they enjoy this.

My sculpture stuff, the rolling ball sculpture, that’s kind of tough. I try to really put some serious effort into it and make it look nice. This was all about fun and goofiness. I could have gone really over the top with it, and, believe me, the thought occurred several times that “if I only had some stamps…and some paint…and some spray-tack…maybe some cloth.” It’s sick, I tell you, but I managed to resist all that.

I return again to that admonishing thought, that self-damaging thought which is always, “That’s not real art. That’s not serious stuff. That’s not good enough. That’s just kid’s play stuff.” This project is yet another way of giving the stiff-arm to that negative voice and pursuing some simple creative play. It’s good for your head and your heart. We all have old print media lying around. Get yourself some and have fun with it.

The spinoff of this project is likely one that I’ll make for mom for Mother’s Day. I think I’ll scan and print some old family photos for her and collage them together with other found media from various sources. I’ll put a little more effort into it (may take another trip to Mulitmedia to get some supplies), and we’ll see how it turns out.

Stay creative, kids!