A Stitch In Time For Yeppoon Australia

The 7th Great Big Stitched Postcard Swap is on!

Here's the plan:

Make a Post Card using the theme Create.

Use any materials you want, but put some stitching somewhere.

Then send it to someone you've never met, from another country from where you live.

This is all orchestrated by Beth Nicholls of Do What You Love.

She is an amazing person

who inspires literally thousands of artists around the world on a daily basis.

Include stitching?

Not a problem - I have MULTIPLE sewing machines scattered around.

(Some have collected dust while I dance with the MATS Assignment Bootcamp)

Finding stuff to use is also not a problem...

I have A LOT of fabric, paper, and fringe drops.

Like most artists do.

The decisions of where to put what got harder and harder to make.

I had SO MUCH STUFF I wanted to put on my card

for my new friend in Yeppoon, Queensland, Australia.

I finally decided to use it all.

What the heck.  The theme is CREATE, for crying out loud!!

You can't hold back when in CREATE mode.

When she opens the card, she'll see these instructions:

And now, I'm going to go create something while my card is flying to Australia.

And stick it on my refrigerator door.

Off to the studio!

When Tiny is Really Huge

Sometimes, a very tiny thing is actually quite large.  Powerful.  Eye-grabbing.

It's a tough act to pull off, but Lady Bugs and Wild Mushrooms in the forest 

manage it with a classy aplomb that I envy.

My Iphone Case, "Hello Hello".

What's all this tiny talk about?
I'm taking another Lilla Rogers class online - this time it is called Assignment Boot Camp.

All of us who have taken her previous two classes have an edge, because we've already had truck loads of information about the Surface Design Market shoveled into our psyche.

And one of those things is this:  
When you submit your artwork to a company you are simply dying to be with,  
a very good test is to shrink your submission to about the size of a postage stamp. 
Leave the room and then come back and see it grabs you.
If it reads at postage stamp size, you've cleared the first hurdle.

Sounds simple, but with all the 10 million other industry secrets that Lilla has tossed our way, it gets hard to remember.  Especially when you are in creative throes.

For our first assignment, Lilla teased us with a mini-brief.
Draw Cuckoo Clocks.
Lots and lots of them.

For a solid week, cuckoo clocks poured into our online classroom.
Some clocks looked like engineering marvels, with stag heads on top, woodmen and their wives standing on a deck in the middle, and the utterly necessary cuckoo bird screaming from the loft doorway.  It was amazing.

 I started to wonder how on earth something as detailed as a traditional Cuckoo Clock could be translated into a powerful, instant-read icon.
For the Market, remember.  For the broad Masses, you know?

Then Lilla pulled one of her famous tricks.
Take all those very detailed drawings that we had made for a week
and arrange them on an Iphone case.

You know how big/small an Iphone is, right??

She said we didn't REALLY have to put our presentation on an Iphone template, but it would be just fine if we did.  By the time the deadline arrived, I had decided not to - I couldn't choose from the icons I had and didn't want to ditch any of them.  

On Tuesday of last week, Lilla presented to the world the gallery of submissions.  And most of them were on Iphone templates...

We had been drilled to the wall with Lilla's lesson about the importance of a tiny read.
And I won't forget it again.

If you want to have access to over 400 artist's interpretations of Cuckoo Clocks, with quick links to their studios and websites, Lilla Rogers and Beth Kempton have made the class gallery accessible to the public - an amazing gift, both to us and to the public.

Here is the link:  Boot Camp February Gallery

Go take a look - I'm on Page 7!

Back To School - With A New Tool Box!

Wow.  I can't believe it is time to Go Back To School already.

Monday morning at about 5:00 AM my time, Lilla Rogers, working in concert with Beth Kempton of Do What You Love for Life, will post the first mini brief in the classroom, and it will be Game On for five very intense weeks.

Just like the class that took place in June and July, the roster of students is as impressive as it is, well, intimidating - artists from all over the world will be slinging paint and brandishing Wacom Pens at all hours of the day and night as we race the deadline to submit our assignments every Sunday at 5:00 PM.  A few hours to breathe, then 

it starts all over again on Monday morning at 5:00.

It is utterly Exhilarating,

 and a Powerful Blooming Time

 for every single student in this class.

I have new tools to use in this segment: for starters, a new Wacom Intuos4 wireless pen tablet that I am besotted with. 

LOVE.  LOVE.  LOVE!

And a new understanding of Adobe Illustrator CS5,

and a subscription to Lynda.com to answer any questions I might have at any hour of the day (or night) about how to do something in Photoshop or Illustrator.

Because Lilla and Beth are all about business -the name of the course is Make Art That Sells after all - I also have a brand new website :

And a new Facebook Business Page:

and a start on building my profile on the new 
Moyo Directory of Surface and Pattern designers:

Hard to believe how much I had NOT done to market myself before taking this class, and I have to say I've still not submitted to Art Directors, because I want all those websites finished before I do...what if they were to take a peek and say,
 "Well.  She simply doesn't have her act together.  Next, please."

The tools that I gained from the first segment in June/July would fill several tool boxes and are almost overwhelming - Lilla Rogers and Beth Kempton have packed these classes so full  that I'm still trying to absorb and put it all to use...and now, a new class begins!

Wowzer.  Time to go Get Cracking.
With my New Tool Box!!