Here there be dragons :)

These are kind of silly, but I like them: dragon eggs!! They need to be clicked on so that they'll hatch, and then after they hatch they need to be clicked to grow up. Here are the ones I have so far:

Crafting 365

I saw this fun-looking group on Flickr and decided to join. Members post a photo a day showing their creative endeavors. I noticed it because some of my contacts had photos in the group's photo pool. So far I've done 8 days - it's fun!

This week I've been working on house-shaped chunky pages for a swap on ATCsforAll - lots of fun! I started with cardboard pages, then gessoed and smeared on acrylic paint. then I stenciled with ink pads through punchinello and glued on paper accents. I used some of my favorite paper: brightly colored memos from work that I paint, draw, and stamp on while I'm working on other projects. I love how it kind of preserves some history about me, and I really like the crazy color combinations that end up on this paper. I made a door and window on each house. I colored a phonebook page green and cut out leaves. I glued those on, then used my sewing machine to put on some stems and grass. Then I used markers and gel pens to put quotes about home on the pages. I did eight pages -- seven to swap and one to keep. Here's the page I'm keeping. The words say, "Home is where the dirty dishes are." That sure is true for me!!

Inchie Display

I've been collecting inchies from swaps and one-on-one trades, and have had a few different storage methods. At first, they were shoved into a teeny drawer in an organizer on my art table. When they outgrew that spot, I moved them to a plastic box that I got with some Ferrero Rocher candies (mmmm....). I figured that once I had a box full I'd be ready to put them on display. Well, that box got full after I hosted the word inchie swap!

At first my plan was to get a HUGE canvas to glue the inchies on. Then I started thinking about how much a gigantic canvas would cost, and how difficult it would be to find a good place to hang it (keeping in mind that our apartment has concrete walls that you can't hammer into). Last weekend I spotted a great deal on 16 x 20 canvases -- 2 for $6! I bought two packs, and figured that a three panel display would be ideal.

This week I painted the first canvas and glued my teeny inchies onto it while watching the Olympics (go Michael Phelps!!). I hadn't calculated how many inchies would fit on one canvas, so I was surprised to see nearly my whole collection fit! 180 inchies fit on the canvas -- I could have squeezed in one more row on top if I had started a smidgen lower on the last row -- hmmmpf!! I've still got about 50 left for the next canvas -- will need to get swapping to get enough!

Inspiring Video

A while back, Zhenia recommended some Ira Glass videos on her blog. In them he talks about creativity and taste - really interesting stuff, and very inspirational. He says that we're bound to make crap when we're trying to be creative, and that we just need to keep on making lots of things and eventually something good will come out of our efforts - when you've got good taste you can recognize the good from the crap :)

After I watched those videos, I remembered how much I used to love listening to This American Life when I used to drive from the university to my parents' place on the weekends. I listened to some old episodes on their archive and cut out ATC blanks from cereal boxes. Good times.

I'm a bad blogger

I haven't been posting regularly, and I missed two whole months! Does this make me a bad blogger? I'm a blogger that doesn't blog.

I got a blog because I enjoyed looking at other people's blogs. It started when I read a few blogs by people that I know, then I got a copy of Artful Blogging. I really wanted to have a blog like that -- like the beautiful blogs featured in the magazine where they featured beautiful artwork, like the blogs my friends had where I got to know them better than I did before. So I got a blog. And don't know what to do with it.

It turned out that getting a blog was super easy -- all but the picking your name thing. I wanted something to do with mixed media, since that's what I've been playing with lately, but all the addresses with that were taken. So I got mixing-katie and named the blog Mixed Up, and figured that it was pretty appropriate: I'm messing around in mixed media but don't really know what I'm doing. Also, I'm at a place where I need to decide where my "career" is going, and I'm not sure about that. We're going to move relatively soon and don't know where we'll go. I want to take my "art" more seriously, but don't know if it's worth it. So many decisions, and I'm not sure about any of them. So Mixed Up seems like a good name for me.

Inchies : )

I'm hosting an inchie swap on ATCsforAll.com, and finally got around to making my own inchies for it. I cut out images from an American history textbook, put them on some inchie blanks that I had made when cutting out something else, and then stuck on inked up words and did the edges with a silver marker.

While I was doing them, I spread out the finished ones and noticed that some of the words kinda made interesting phrases. Maybe that will turn into an idea for another swap -- sentence inchies :)

Chunky Madness

Just what I needed -- another addiction! As if ATCs and inchies and rolos weren't enough, now I've got myself hooked on chunky pages, too! They're 4 inches by 4 inches and super fun! Here are a few a made for trades on ATCSforAll with nursery rhyme themes:



And here is a bound book. I got these pages from different trades, then made covers and bound them on metal rings. I love how all the fibers and charms and beads and whatnot look when they stick out all over the place. My kind of madness :)