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Make This: Quick + Easy Matte Medium Transfer

Photos + Tutorial by Bonnie Kaye Whitfield

Here’s a quick and simple image transfer for using matte medium and a photocopy of an image. It’s a helpful trick for adding layers of imagery to mix media works of art. On the other hand, it can also be a beautiful way to create a piece for your home or a friend that encapsulates a memory or person.

You will need:

photocopy of image to transfer / copy in reverse if it matters to the image
thick paper, canvas, or wood to use as background
matte medium
foam brush or wide brush
old plastic card or brayer
container for water
sponge (optional)
hair dryer (optional)

Gather your materials. Make a photocopy or laser print of your image that you want to transfer. You need the toner in the paper, so an ink jet print will not work. I recommend starting with a small image the first time you try this process.

Depending on your design or what you want to make, if you want a background to your image then you’ll want to do that first. Go crazy, if you like, with painting a simple background using paint or ink washes. Let the background dry completely.

Cut out the image that you want to transfer, removing any excess paper. Using a foam brush, brush on matte medium on the frontside of the entire image, using a smooth and thick coat. Foam brushes are ideal since they don’t leave many streaks, but any brush can work.

Flip the image over onto your background. Use a brayer or old plastic card to smooth out the image and make sure that it has solid contact to the background. Any air bubbles may result in small areas of the image not being transferred. Let dry completely. Feel free to use a hairdryer to speed up the process.

Once the image dries (the paper will turn opaque again), grab your water container and sponge. Slowly use a damp sponge (or your finger) and work in a small circular motion to begin to remove the paper backing. This might take a while so put on a good podcast or your favorite Netflix show.

Try to work slowly, but if some of the transfer rubs off, it will just add to the rustic quality of the image. You’ll likely need to repeat this process a few times. As the image dries, any fibers that are not rubbed off will continue to cloud the image. Once you get the image to your satisfaction, give the image a top coat of matte medium to seal it.

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Bonnie Kaye Whitfield designs and screen prints home textiles + paper goods under the name, Bonnie Kaye Studio. Products are created to inspire memories at home and around the table. A donation is made with every purchase to help feed hungry Americans.

www.BonnieKayeStudio.com

June 26, 2015
Meet New ASCB Vendor sPACYcLOUD!

sPACYcLOUd was born in DC, from the mind of designer Tatiana Kolina (AKA Tati) with a focus towards the sui generis spirit that lives in all of us. The ethical core of sPACYcLOUd is built on self expression, love, and positivity. Its visual aesthetic breathes from the world of break dancers, hip hop artists, street artists, skaters, and motorcycle riders. Those whose wardrobe exists in a state of counter-culture, carving through life to the rhythm of their own choosing. sPACYcLOUd reflects political and social currents though clothing, artwork, and attitude.

sPACYcLOUd ‘s jackets are made of custom printed fabric using Tati’s and other artists’ art work. From the choice of commonly overlooked fabrics to the colorfully designed prints displayed on each garment, sPACYcLOUd is a social rebellion of creativity. sPACYcLOUd life and street styles are imbued with movement: biking, skating, evolving, but also creative, rebellious, musical and artistic lifestyles.

Leftover jacket fabrics are used for patches on T-Shirts, string bags, hoodies patches, skirts, and other apparel. No fabric is being wasted. Tati is also using a screen printing technique to design her own collection of skateboards and mini cruisers.

Tati’s journey is a testament to her spirit. Born in the Soviet Union, she was without a mother and father after age 7, she grew up with her grandmother, often times taking care of herself. While a teenager, she joined a number of tusovkas (street groups) to survive. The group which affected her life the most was “farsovshiki.” It was a group of kids, the first wave of black marketers in Soviet Union, who ran around big cities (Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Kiev, Tallinn, etc.) and traded Levi’s jeans, t-shirts, gum, etc. for matreshkas, black caviar, and KGB paraphernalia with American tourists. Doing her best to avoid the attention of undercover militia and the street mafia, Tati spent time in Russian jail several times for possession of foreign currency and talking to foreigners.

In the Summer of 1990, her life changed dramatically. Meeting an American family in St. Petersburg, she sold them two lacquer boxes with Russian fairy tales depicted on them. Touched, they took her contact information, later sending her an invitation to come to the US. It took some time and convincing before she made one of the biggest decisions of her life.

In January of 1991, she landed in San Francisco with no money, a tiny backpack, and a present for her new family, a cuckoo clock. More important than the room and board she received was the love and support, that echoes in her spirit to this day. One day Tati was moved to ask her host father, “How can I ever pay back for all you have done for me?” His answer was simple, “You pay back by helping others when you have an opportunity.”

The sPACYcLOUd family has been proud to have organized and participated in a number of events and groups that share a spirit of creativity and alacrity. Always with an eye to the future, sPACYcLOUd moves to involve and inspire the younger generation through surf and snowboarding camps, longboarding rides, internships, and skate events. From celebrating local heroes like Maryland Stunt Rider Alonzo and local DC Skater Angelina to BBoy Atomic Goofball, sPACYcLOUd moves to reflect what’s happening now.

Tati launched Skate Girls Tribe after being inspired by Skatistan, realizing that skateboarding, and action sports overall, can be used to build communities and help building confidence in girls, free from the limitations society tries to hinder them with.

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Thank you Tati for sharing your incredible story with us! Shop her collection online here and visit her in booth #50 at this weekend’s Art Star Craft Bazaar at Penn’s Landing Great Plaza!

May 6, 2015
Meet The Maker: Lital Gold

Hello! My name is Lital. I’m a print designer and illustrator. I was born and raised in Israel. As a kid, I used to spend time at my dad’s studio (he is a graphic designer). I was always drawn to the art books, catalogs and design magazines that he had in his library. He had exciting things in his studio, like a Pantone fan and boxes filled with colors, paints and different kinds of papers; it was like heaven for me. I used to sit there all day during summer break and draw with him. This is where my love for painting came from. Watching my dad really inspired me to have a design studio when I grow up and that’s exactly what happened.

My trip to India before college inspired me to study textile design and major in print. I was looking to study something creative that contains a little bit of everything – art, fashion, graphic design and pattern design. I wanted to keep painting, but put the skill into something more practical and this is how I found textile design. After graduating, I had two different options. I got accepted to an internship at DVF in NYC but was also offered a job at the Free People studio in Philadelphia. I chose Philly and this is how I came to the USA. I worked at the FP studio for two years, creating original artworks and patterns.

These days I work from my studio, collaborating with different brands and working as a print/cad designer. I also work on my own line of clothing that will be launched in spring 2016.

My work is inspired from the organic motif of nature, animals and different cultural patterns from around the world.

My favorite mediums to work with are ink and watercolors and I paint all of my patterns and artworks by hand, with an intuitive and tactile approach. I love it when colors look happy and vibrant and I always make sure to have this in my work. I usually start from collecting some inspiration according to the subject I’m exploring. After I have a good amount of reference (pictures, prints, fabric swatches) I start to paint. I also work with books and nature magazines, when I paint animals, especially birds!

Hope to see you at the Fall Art Star Craft Bazaar, I will be selling holiday goods, wall art prints, greeting cards and more! Come say hi!

and Visit Lital Gold’s Website year round!

October 29, 2015
Meet ASCB Vendor Sammi Nguyen of Group Hug Quilts

I’m Sammi Nguyen, the hands and brains of a little operation called Group Hug Quilts. My working process is not always the most photogenic, what with piles of fabric scraps towering ever higher around me and loose threads always getting caught in my hair and stuck to my socks, but I’ve cleaned up my act for a few photos to show you how I make a baby quilt.

For my baby quilts, I most often take my inspiration from animals. I sketch critters in my sketchbook, until I alight on one in just the right attitude for the quilt of the moment. (The rest of this post shows me making an elephant quilt, but this cat sketch was nicer than the elephant sketch.)

My studio is filled with overflowing shelves of fabric, which I source from all four corners of the earth, but especially from New York’s fabric district, which is a short trip by subway from where I live and work in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Fabrics are an additional source of inspiration, whether they are solid or patterned, new or vintage. I work almost exclusively with natural fibers like linen, silk, denim, and cotton, with the exception of the occasional too-intriguing-to-pass-up piece of vintage polyester.

After I have chosen a charming member of the animal kingdom, I comb through my fabrics until I settle on a basic color scheme and textures. For this elephant quilt, I chose a muted orange linen for the quilt top and an oatmeal linen for the back and border, feeling that they suggested a dusty savannah environment that would be a suitable home for a leathery pachyderm.

The subtlety of an animal’s shape makes a huge difference to the finished piece, and it often takes a while to get the drawing of the quilt’s subject just right, even if it is a fairly simple silhouette. From the finished drawing, I make pattern pieces out of tracing paper and trace and cut each piece individually, which leads to a lot of subtle variation from quilt to quilt.

While I usually start with a picture in my head and a small thumbnail sketch on paper, each piece really takes shape directly in fabric. This allows me to experiment with the composition of the quilt top and see things closer to how they will look in finished form. During this part of the process, there is a lot of cutting, arranging, pinning, adding bits that don’t work to the scrap bin, resizing, shifting, and more cutting, rearranging, and pinning. It always creates a glorious mess on my studio floor.

Once the composition of the quilt top is finalized, it’s time to sew all the pieces together. I still do all of my sewing on the Viking sewing machine my parents so generously gave to their wannabe fashion designer daughter on her twelfth birthday. This machine is a workhorse, and hasn’t let me down yet, despite all the weird, bulky piles of fabric I send under its needle.

For all of my pictorial pieces, I use a satin stitch, a heavy back and forth stitch that traps and sews down the raw edges of each piece of fabric and adds an important design element in the form of colored outlines. When I first started sewing this way, my work was painfully slow and pretty clunky, with lots of missed stitches and bunched fabrics, but after many years of practice, my stitch work has gotten finer and finer. The technique allows me to forego traditional piecing and applique styles for a more spontaneous collage-like approach to image-making.

When a quilt top is finished, I sandwich it with cotton batting and a solid piece of fabric for backing. To join all three layers together, I quilt freehand on my industrial quilting machine, which lets me move fabric freely underneath the needle, kind of like drawing but in reverse. Being a free-spirited lady, I don’t draw my quilting patterns beforehand; I choose a simple motif, like a flower or a star, and just start sewing, creating a satisfying but not too uniform quilted texture. After quilting, I finish the edges, trim off extra threads, and hand-stitch my initials in the corner.

I know you can’t see the finished quilt very well in this picture, but you can see my beautiful baby nephew enjoying it, and I figured including it in this post wouldn’t hurt my chances of luring you to come see me at Booth #17 at the Bazaar.

April 24, 2015
Make This: Striped Screen Printed Clipboards

Photos + Tutorial by Bonnie Kaye Whitfield

Sometimes things just needs a little sprucing up. This time of year, when many of us try to focus on spring cleaning and organizing, I find that I need a bit of motivation. Here’s a speedy screen printing method to jazz up old clipboards, but could also be used on other flat office supplies, such as binders, folders, box lids, etc.

You will need:

clipboards
screen printing frame
screen printing ink
spatula or plastic spoon
squeegee
packaging or blue tape
a friend to hold down your screen / or a hinge clamp board

Gather your materials. I had a few old clipboards lying around my studio that definitely needed a facelift, but you can always purchase plain ones at Staples or Target. The screen printing frame that I am using is from Blick. It’s pretty amazing what you can do without fancy screen printing equipment. With screen printing, you are masking, or blocking, parts of the open screen to create a stencil. Whatever is “open” will print, whatever is “blocked” – in our case with tape – won’t print. I find that you can create fun geometric designs by simply using tape. If you’re looking for something more complex, try cutting a stencil out of contact paper. Same idea.

When you screen print, the screen needs to be directly flush and in contact with whatever you are printing on, with the frame facing upwards. Place your clipboard underneath your screen, as you’ll be printing, to get a sense of size. Your screen should be larger than your clipboard, and needs at least a 2” border buffer, as printing too closely to the edge of the screen is tricky and just doesn’t print well.

Flip your screen over. You’ll now block parts of the screen using tape. Begin with the sides and bottom of the screen so that you get closer to the actual size of the clipboard. Then have fun with creating open stripes or geometric patterns with your tape. Just keep in mind that you’ll eventually have to flip your screen over again, so remember that your print will come out in reverse of what you are taping.

Before printing, flip your screen over to get a better sense as to what will print. I’m going to print off the edges of my clipboard, which is why the open area is larger than my clipboard, but feel free to keep the printing contained within the printing surface. It’s definitely less messy that way.

To print, you’ll need the frame to be held in place, either by a handy friend or in my case, a hinge-clamp board. Gather your ink + squeegee.

Position the clipboard directly under the screen where you want to print. Using a spatula or spoon, spread ink to the top of your screen in a line.

Before printing, you need to “flood” your screen. Using your squeegee, which should be a little wider than your design, in your dominant hand and holding the frame up in your other hand, pull the ink towards you at a 45 degree angle. This is filling the open screen with ink prior to printing. (Since I was taking a picture, I just rested my frame on my tape roll.)

Once the screen is full of ink, place the screen down directly on the clipboard. With the screen firmly in place, pull the squeegee down again at a 45 degree angle. Don’t be afraid of really applying some pressure here. In fact, you may want to do 2 or 3 pulls, as wood will absorb some of the ink.

Gently pull up the frame and you should have a new, fancy updated clipboard. If you are printing on various size clipboards, as I did, be sure to print in order from large to small. And with printing, the time is in the setup not the printing, so why not line up a pile of flat items to print on while you’re at it!

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Bonnie Kaye Whitfield designs and screen prints home textiles + paper goods under the name, Bonnie Kaye Studio. Products are created to inspire memories at home and around the table. A donation is made with every purchase to help feed hungry Americans.

www.BonnieKayeStudio.com

April 9, 2015
Upcoming Exhibition: Same Same by Keith + Rita Greiman

We are pleased to present an exhibition with Philadelphia based husband + wife artists, Keith and Rita Greiman. The duo will be exhibiting their own individual works as well as collaborative pieces. The exhibition will be on view from April 18^th – June 21^st, 2015. There will be an opening reception with the artists on Saturday, April 18^th from 6-8pm. The reception is free and open to the public and will include light refreshments.

Keith and Rita Greiman will present an all new body of playful and vibrant works, drawing inspiration from the humor and absurdity of life’s everyday objects and events. The show will include Keith’s acrylic on wood paintings and 3D wood figures, which feature a cast of quirky and animated characters that are brightly colored and evoke a childlike quality. Set against flatly painted patterned backgrounds, the floating figures and objects populating the pieces appear anything but innocent though. Rita’s mixed media dioramas mirror the childlike, yet twisted quality of Keith’s work, containing glitter coated army men, food, and animals. In addition to their individual pieces, they will be exhibiting new works together which combine their shared vision and include patterns, floating objects and characters, real and supernatural. The couple will also be painting a large mural together on one of the exhibition walls. This will be their first time showing at Art Star.

Keith Warren Greiman lives and works in Philadelphia, PA. His bright and animated images of real and supernatural beings depict life, captured in experience, being ascendant, melancholic and at all times wild. Keith’s work has been shown in various galleries and publications from all over and everywhere. Some clients include LA Times, Village Voice, Newsweek, the Fader, Ace Hotels, Fantagraphics, the Utne Reader, and Willamete Week. His work has been recognized by American Illustration, The Society of Illustrators and Graphis.

Originally from Irvine, California, Rita Greiman currently resides in Philadelphia where she has been for thirteen years. Through the years, Rita has done various works as a seamstress, illustrator, upholsterer, and designer. She studied in the School of Visual Arts at Pennsylvania State University as well as the College of Communications. She has worked in several media and currently combines painting, sculpture, and found objects to create playful dioramas that are often centered around animals, glitter army men, and food.

April 4, 2015
Meet Art Star Craft Bazaar Vendor Jamie Langhoff of Seeing in Fabric!

What, at first, appear to be paintings, are actually sewn fabric art.

Self-taught artist, Jamie Langhoff, creates vibrant urban scenes with just fabric, thread, scissors, and a 1968 Singer sewing machine. Finished artwork is mounted onto ready-to-hang canvas panels.

Each scene features many dozens of tiny hand-cut fabric pieces. Creating these scenes requires a slow and careful building of many pieces of fabrics, and many layers. All of the fabrics she uses in her artwork are recycled–scrap, remnants and re-purposed clothing. Many of the fabrics Jamie uses are donated to her by her lovely fans.

Threadwork and stitching techniques are central to the realism and painterly aspects of Seeing in Fabric. Eschewing the dazzling digital age of newer sewing machines, Jamie enjoys the reliability and rustic sturdiness of her vintage 1968 Singer.

By using a color palette of thread in over 200 different colors, but just 2 basic stitch types–straight stitch and zigzag–Jamie creates a multitude of “shading”, “brushstroke” and “drawing” effects. Her stitching technique involves a free-flowing and rapid style, requiring an extreme amount of concentration and skill, but also trust and confidence in her sewing machine.

As a self-taught artist, Jamie constantly pushes herself to experiment with her techniques. Through her artwork she shows the world how to “see in fabric” in order to see the vibrant and strange beauty in our modern urban world.

Jamie will be be traveling from Washington, DC to join us at our 12th Annual Spring Art Star Craft Bazaar at Penn’s Landing Great Plaza on May 9th + 10th. Make sure to stop by her booth #101 to see these incredible pieces in person. These photos are so beautiful but the pieces are even better in person. Visit her Etsy Page for more!

April 3, 2015
MAKE THIS: Printed Pinwheels for Spring!
Photos + Tutorial by Bonnie Kaye Whitfield

Ever since I was a kid, I’ve loved pinwheels. This printed version of pinwheels is a perfect way to lift your spirits after months and months of winter. Make as festive decor for your next party or create with your kiddo on a rainy day.

You will need:
- square cardstock, ideally different colors on each side
- scissors or x-acto
- ink for printing, either water-based block printing or stamp pads
- ink tray + brayer if using block printing ink
- circular tools for printing – pencil eraser, wine cork, empty cardboard tape ring
- dowel rods
- small tacks/pins
- scrap piece of cardboard
Gather your materials. Try to work with colored cardstock. You can test out other papers to see if they hold up to lots of blowing and twirling. If you have colored ink pads (I didn’t…) then I would use those before turning towards block printing ink, as the prints will take less time to dry.

If you can find paper that is different colors on each side, it will add to the colorful pop of the pinwheels. If not, no biggie. Just work with whatcha got.

Before you begin printing, go ahead and draw two lines of the backside of your printing side. Use a ruler and a pen to line up opposite corners and draw a line, making a big X across the paper.

Now for printing fun! Roll out some ink in a tray. Dip your pencil eraser in the ink and go to town. Pencil erasers make the perfect tiny dot.

Feel free to just use a pencil eraser for all your printing, or grab some other circular items to print with. Here, I’m using a wine cork for a larger circle blob.

I also had an empty tape roll on hand. I recommended scouting out other circular items in your recycling bin, like a toilet paper roll or yogurt container.

After the prints have thoroughly dried, grab your scissors and begin to cut on the lines that you drew at the beginning. Cut on each line until you get about an inch away from the center point – then stop!

Now for the only tricky part … pinning them all together. First, unless these are going to be purely decorative and you don’t want them to spin, you’re going to want to cut out a few dime-sized circles out of cardboard. This will help the pinwheels spin. Set the cardboard circles aside.

Begin by folding down every other corner of the pinwheel and hold in one hand. Grab the pin with your other hand and push through the center, making sure you are going through all 4 corners that you are holding down. Grab one of your cardboard circles and press it in between the paper pinwheel and the wooden dowel rod. I find that a couple long presses in the dowel does the trick for me, but then again, I don’t have a 4-year-old that’s going to run around with it. So if you do, you might want to add a dab of glue before jamming into the dowel.

Lastly, if you really want some good spin action, you’ll need to play around with moving the paper around so that it it doesn’t hit the dowel rod when you try to spin it.

So there you have it – springtime pinwheels + insta mood lifter!

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Bonnie Kaye Whitfield designs and screen prints home textiles + paper goods under the name, Bonnie Kaye Studio. Products are created to inspire memories at home and around the table. A donation is made with every purchase to help feed hungry Americans.

www.BonnieKayeStudio.com
March 26, 2015
Meet ASCB Vendor Bethany Rusen of Stanley Chester & Albert

being a potter in an urban area has its challenges. every so often, i envy my friends who are ceramic artists in far flung, beautiful places like the mountains of North Carolina or the plains of Montana and Nebraska. i love the beauty of where they live and most of all, the abundance of space. but i grew up in rural Pennsylvania, so by age 18 i had had enough of the country life. i have lived in Philly for almost 12 years and i think i am a permanent condition in this fair city. besides, i would miss the vibrant urban environment and the amazing community of makers that Philadelphia has to offer.

when i was looking to buy a house a year and a half ago, i told my realtor that my number one need was a work space. because Philly’s housing stock in almost entirely rowhomes, i knew my studio would be in the basement. so i needed a large, open, airy, high ceilinged basement, which was a challenge, especially in older homes. my house is almost a hundred years old, but it has an ideal basement. so this has been my studio home since then.

when i started making pots under Stanley Chester & Albert about two and a half years ago, i had almost 15 years working as a ceramic artist under my belt, including a BFA and an MFA in ceramic sculpture. i started SC&A with a very simple premise: to produce well made vessels that would be accessible to a diverse audience and appeal to a population of people who normally didn’t buy handmade pots. with that in mind, i decided to stick to simple forms like bowls and cups – things that could be used in a variety of ways and be at home in any domestic environment.

i’ve always been in love with vintage imagery, pop culture and snark, and the unexpected ways they can be combined. as for putting them on pots, it all started about seven years ago when i was still in grad school. i made a vase for a friend’s birthday: on one side was a dead flower, and the other said “BITCH PLS”. no one around me really got why it was funny, but i thought it was hilarious at the time (and still do). ceramics sometimes has a tendency to be overly formal and serious, so i love to disrupt that expectation.

most everything i make starts on the potters’ wheel, thrown by yours truly. i favor simple, elemental forms. everything is thrown generously and has a solid weight and heft to it. i want these pieces to stand up to daily use in your home, not put on a shelf only to be admired.

after the pots are trimmed and dried, they are bisque fired to 1860 degrees, and then glazed and fired again to 2232 degrees. almost everything i make is dipped in a clear glaze to allow the clay body (which is a really delicious speckled while stoneware) to shine through. i try to keep glazing very simple, mostly because i really hate glazing, but also because i’m more interested in using the vessel as a blank canvas for the images i apply.

i was introduced to the waterslide decal process by my colleague and friend, Sharon Bartmann. i immediately saw the possibility of decals and ended up running with it like mad. i source my images from copyright free and vintage websites and books, in particular the Dover series of illustration books, which compiles a huge variety of images in one place. after scanning or downloading, i play with the images in Photoshop a bit, adjusting contrast, brightness, proportion and orientation. because of the way the printer works, high contrast images without a lot of shades of gray work best.

once i have the image the way i want it in Photoshop, i print it out using a special printer and special decal paper. from there, i cut out the image, put it in water, and then affix the cellophane image to the vessel. it’s fired once more to permanently bond the image to the glaze. although the images are printed with black ink, once they are fired they turn a lovely reddish brown sepia color. with that aesthetic in mind, i gravitated toward imagery from the Victorian and Edwardian eras. i love anatomy and so skulls, hearts, bones and brains frequently find their way onto my work.

looking forward to the first Craft Bazaar at Asbury Park. come find me, i will be sure to have some Fucking Coffee in my hand.

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Bethany Rusen is the creative force behind Stanley Chester & Albert. when she is not making pots, she is the Ceramics Technician at Main Line Art Center in Haverford, PA. she teaches kids, teens and adults at MLAC and Delaware Art Museum in Wilmington. she likes to go through other people’s trash, is obsessed with Richard Nixon and is dogmom to her two greyhounds, Calvin and Pearl. follow SC&A on Instagram (@stanleychesteralbert) and for more info, check out stanleychesteralbert.com

Photo credit: Bethany Rusen and Ananda Connolly

July 16, 2015
Meet the Maker: Marisa Krol of Interstellar Love Craft

by Marisa Krol, Interstellar Love Craft

I never planned on being a jewelry designer. They say, the thing we most enjoy doing as a child is incredibly valuable in identifying what would make us happiest as adults. Looking back now, I feel that is true for me. The beauty and mystery of life process, is how it has shown up in the most unexpectedly brilliant way.

I firmly believe we are all gracing this plane of existence to connect with and learn from one another. In our own unique ways, we connect through infinite forms of expression. It is my intention to create a platform in which expression is free to be what it wants to be in any given moment. Interstellar Love Craft was created 6 years ago (almost exactly as I write this), to communicate the intention of connecting with and serving others though creative expression. Months after its inception, I began the process of learning my craft through volunteering my time studio assisting an artist in my local community. During this time; the past, present and future felt as if they were intersecting, and ILC found its home in the practice of jewelry metal smithing. I share this with you because openness has been, and continues to be, a significant component in the success and growth of this endeavor. An openness expressed in process as well as outcomes, interactions and direction. No matter what path one takes, it will always be a roller coaster of experiences and feelings about those experiences. So long as we adhere to our values and inner truth, pay attention, and not take anything that isn’t constructive personally, I firmly believe we will be taken care in this world.

For me, expressing and sharing this inner light and truth is what inspires my line of work. My hope is that it is felt by, and experienced through the wearer. By utilizing open forms inspired by sacred places and sites of reverence, pieces take shape and become apart of a greater collection. There are tangents along the way that result in micro collections and one of a kind pieces. This keeps the work engaging for me, and hopefully for those who follow its development and support its growth. I often feel like I am making something for someone in particular, which is unique to them. It brings me joy beyond compare when each piece unites with its person. For this reason, I enjoy traveling as well as building relationships that are both customer and community based. For example, the Art Star Craft Bazaar in Philadelphia not only has become one of my favorite destinations, but it has also been a source of inspiration and collaboration in a way that facilitates growth. In no other place, that I have had the good fortune to spend time in, has the maker scene felt so supportive, healthy and fun. You all rock!

In closing, words cannot express the gratitude I feel for being able to participate in the creation of what I want my life to look like, and the good fortune of meeting others along the way who are invested in doing the same. It is a power we all possess, and one that requires the conquering of certain fears and trusting that the universe strives with us towards fulfillment. I hope that whatever it is that moves you, it is something you are able to practice with regularity. Discovering purpose in ones work, and feeling like we are a part of a larger network of life supporting beings seems to me to be most valuable.

Thank you for taking the time to read my musings on life, work, and creativity. I hope you are living (at least part of the time) in a place of childlike joy and peace. And if not, make the time to search and discover. Humanity might depend on it.

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You can find Interstellar Love Craft at our November 7th + 8th Fall Art Star Craft Bazaar or visit her website year round!

October 15, 2015

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