Love to Sew Tote Bags

Do you love to sew?

I'm just learning to sew, and I spent the day drawing sewing machines in my sketchbook. This was the sketch I liked best, so I drew a heart around it and turned it into a screenprint!

Hand screenprinted.
Black ink.
Heat set so the image will not fade.



My goal is to eventually learn how to sew clothes, but I think that is a long way off... I'll stick to simple projects for now until I get better at it!

These sewing bags are new to the shop tonight, and tomorrow I hope to list some new screenprinted horse bags too. I've also got plans to make some deer tote bags, so I'm excited to print those. Tonight will be full of screenprinting, and maybe I'll do some sketching too. I love the weekends. I miss doing creative stuff full time.

I finally got my own silkscreen exposure unit, so I can now make bigger prints, hooray! Before, I used a lightbulb to expose my screens and could only make images that were about 8.5" x 11" or smaller, and even those would not always turn out perfectly, and I'd have to burn the images again and again to get it right... Now my images turn out perfect the first time, every time, with this new machine! It's such a big improvement, and I've been getting images ready to blow up and turn into screens.

What else is new? I've just been working a whole lot, draining as that may be. I watched the movie "Elegy" the other day, which got really bad reviews when it came out, but I really liked it. I also am loving the new show "Modern Family;" it reminds me of "Arrested Development." Almost. And I am not above admitting that I am really thrilled about the new season of "The Hills." Ha!

New Shop Goodies and Gift Guide Feature!

I've been working hard this weekend to put some of my newest creations up in my Etsy shop, How To Use Art. Up above is a little deer purse I screenprinted with bubblegum pink ink, and below are some Moleskine sketchbooks hand printed with my Girly Crest images. I kept one of these for myself, and I can't wait to start drawing in it!
Below is the front of my new "Craft is Love" t-shirt, which features a girl hugging her sewing machine.
The back of the shirt has a heart with the words "Craft is Love" inside of it on the lower right hand side of the shirt.
I've also got some exciting news: I'm in an Etsy Gift Guide right now for the Perfect T-shirt. Check it out here! Hooray!

I had so much fun making and listing stuff this weekend, and I am REALLY not looking forward to going back to work on Monday, especially since I have to go an hour earlier in to my day job and teach late at my night job, sigh. I really hope the economy continues to get better soon so I can think about working for myself again....that is the eventual goal of all this, and I hope that dream comes true soon.

Images of September

Just some things I've been working on lately. Planning to update my Etsy shop a whole lot in the upcoming weeks with some fun new goodies I have been working on...bags, sketchbooks, t-shirts galore... I'm pretty excited about the new products, and I can't wait to share.

Working and teaching have been keeping me busy, but I think I'm finally getting to the point where those two things aren't exhausting me, so I have time to play and create in my spare time. That's definitely a good thing; making things is what keeps me happy. Came home today and screenprinted a small fleet of zippered purses and some t-shirts. It feels good to be productive and creative all at once!

Read a great article about author Zadie Smith today. I love her writing style and have read everything but "The Autograph Man." I'm saving it for a rainy day. Re-watched "Before Sunset" and "Junebug" last week... I love those two movies to pieces.

LADY LADY Zine Comic Diary Journal Thing

lady lady zine, originally uploaded by howtouseart.

For me, the three day weekend meant lots of art making and a new Blackberry that is a whole lot like my old Blackberry...and it meant finishing my mini zine project! "Lady Lady" is a 40 page half size zine full of my original drawings, bits of journal entries, and bits of poetry. It is available for just three dollars by going right here.

It is comprised of forty of the page that are going in my BIG book project that I mentioned in the previous post. Sometimes I think I am almost done with that project; sometimes I think it will be ages before I finish it. I am resigning myself to the fact that it is the type of project that will dictate when it is done, and I will "just know" when to start wrapping it up. Right now, it's about 200+ pages and growing!

I hope you had a great Labor Day weekend. What did you do during your three days of fun?

Page 58

page 58, originally uploaded by howtouseart.

This weekend was my first weekend totally free of work and responsibility in quite some time, and I am absolutely loving it. It's amazing how being creative and making things can make all the other worries and problems just melt away...

The drawing is part of a zine/book project thing that I am working on - excerpts from my sketchbooks and journals, collages, found photos, and fragments. It's something that I have been working on for a while, and I can (almost) see the end in sight. I wish I didn't have to work at a job and could stay home and work on this all the time... I'd be so happy, but I'd also be broke.

Love and Hate

Living Room: Spinning wheel and Massage chair, originally uploaded by howtouseart.

I have a new job.

I don't know...

It is a cool job, in theory, and I love being able to go to sleep without worrying about money constantly. I love being able to buy a new book for $20 without batting an eye. I love being able to get my overpriced coffee with too much milk in it and being able to afford going to the movies. I love opening my checkbook and seeing the numbers instead of feeling the stress. I love that my job is at least a little bit creative and that is utilizes some skills I learned in college.

I hate the alarm going off, the rushing mornings, and the driving across town hoping I get a parking spot. I hate the way my mind and body are too worn out to be creative at the end of the day. I hate being away from my dog all day and thinking of her at home and lonesome. I hate that the paint under my fingernails at the end of the day is a result of toiling over someone else's creative vision and not my own. I hate that my job utilizes some of the skills I used in college, but feeling like I am using them for all the wrong purposes.

So that's why I haven't been blogging, why I haven't been painting, why I miss my cute little living room, and why I have been struggling with this thing called "being a grown up" when all I wanna do is draw pictures in the grass and run through the sprinklers because it's summertime.

Of Birthdays and Blythe Dolls

I just uploaded the baby's birthday photos from last week, and look how sweet this one is:

She just looks ABSOLUTELY thrilled that it is her birthday, as she should be! It was a fun day spent eating just treats, no regular dog food. That's how a birthday should be, right?!

I dug some old goodies out of storage at my parents' house the other day, including three Blythes that I got for about $5 each (!!!) back in the early 90's when I was around 10 or 11. Blythes weren't popular then, but as soon as I saw one at a flea market, I had to had her. Here are some photos of one of them; I made the outfit for her around the same time as when I bought her out of some vintage barbie pants and trims.


What's interesting is how my paintings now have lots of big eyed girls that look like these and other dolls I collected when I was little. My parents used to drag me to flea markets when I was younger, and I hated every second of it until I started to see big eyed dolls from the 60's and began to collect them, then flea markets became hugely fun treasure hunts! From time to time I like to draw these dolls; their faces are just so expressive and kitschy! I'll post more photos of dolls I uncover at their house in the next few days. It's so funny that my childhood toys were really not from my childhood in the 80's at all, but from that of the 1960's...

I'm trying to get a handle on the little "displays" of cute stuff that are all around the apartment, and this one is going to get a facelift today:

It's a mix of antique dolls, dolls made by Etsy friends and artists, and dolls I've made myself. I'm thinking of rearranging lots of little things in my house to give it a bit of a new look. I should really take some before and after photos! Change is good...

I've been working on a new multi-layered screenprint of a big-eyed girl with bear ears, but I need to figure out how to connect my old scanner/copier to my new computer. I think I will need to search my "random computer crap" drawer to find the software, sigh. Pictures soon, I hope!

I'll leave you with one last photo of a doll I found online a while ago. She, of course, has big eyes but is a lot older than the Blythe dolls. She is a composition doll from around the 1920's or so, and I got her on eBay for under $10 including shipping a few years ago! They didn't mention any dimensions in the auction description, so I assumed she would be about 8" tall - she came in the mail in a huge box and turned out to be 2 feet tall! Awesome! She also arrived in this hand embroidered outfit, cutest thing ever.