Zen Garden Halloween Costume

Yay Halloween! For the last 3 or 4 years one of my best friends and her husband have their annual awesome Halloween parties that I have always missed because I lived a thousand miles away and since I moved back I actually get to attend this year! In past years I offered to send a life sized photo of myself as a stand in at the party. I always pictured other friends taking pictures with my stand in! But that never happened. I never actually blew up a life size photo of myself, instead I just longed for the coolest party in Des Moines. So, now that I'm back, i'm going all out...in wierdness that is. I tried to come up with something no one else would think of. One year I went to a Halloween party as Mary Katherine Gallager from SNL and the freaking amazing movie "Superstar" which was fun but not that innovative. I thought this year I would either go as the Redbox movie rental aparatus or a zen garden. The decision was held at bay for a while and made at the very last minute and you guessed it zen garden won! I'm basically hanging a foamcore board around my neck with velcroed rocks, glued down sandpaper, a mini Chinese pagoda and my very own handmade sand rake. That's right, i'm interactive! My guess is that i'll get some best costume award votes. Either that or the lamest costume in the room and who is that person who's never been to these parties before votes. Either way, a vote's a vote : )

Mini Flowered Bowl!

I started The Mini Line flowered bowls for smaller objects like paper clips, candy, and other chatchkis. As you can see, I put the bowl on stilts. It stands about 6 inches off the ground and is about 5 inches at its widest point, about 3 inches less than the regular line of bowls and wall hangings. The runner underneath it is just a piece of paper to create some fun textures and give the photo interest, hope it's not too busy. I use two types of special varnishes (environmentally friendly) that keep the bowl pretty sturdy and easy to wipe clean with a dry towel. I am down with the mini bowls, I must say. They are smaller and can fit on an office or computer desk standing above papers and other objects looking pretty while serving a function. Good stuff!

I Want That

AsbestosPress.etsy.com has some really cool silk screened prints. I want them! Each one is hand printed and really reasonably priced. The posters are made for various concert promotions and inspired by vintage graphics. I love this one called 60 Watt Kid that is a band in San Francisco that commissioned the artist to make the posters. I can't wait to see what else Asbestos Press will come up with. I'm thinking they might be gifts to loved ones for the holidays. You're welcome in advance loved ones!

New Sculpture Bowls

I've been experimenting with putting legs on my sculpture bowls trying to find the best height and thickness of the dowels. I really like mixing up the heights on these. The third pic is a more shallow bowl turned that functions as a wall hanging.

More Cylinder Series!

I've been experimenting with some different backgrounds that will make my necklaces really pop. These backgrounds are just paper samples from the paper company my mom works for. Their samples have the best designs and make for interesting backgrounds.

More recycled necklaces and wind turbine farms are kinda freaky!

These are more recycled necklaces that I've been working on. I'm also trying out some "green" images to celebrate trying to preserve the environment like using wind turbines. I used to drive up to Minneapolis and see all these wind farms at a distance. In my travels to Omaha this weekend I saw three wind turbine farms on the way and pretty close up too! They were really cool and alien-like somehow. It's as if we stumbled onto some alternate planet covered in huge wind turbines. They literally made up the landscape. I think we drove through wind turbine country because even large trucks passing were carrying these ginormous blades for the wind turbines! Kinda freaky

Sculpture Bowl

Thanks to friends and family I've got enough recycled cardboard boxes to run my own cereal factory! Thus, I must make more recycled paper bowls. Here's one of my recent ones without legs (yet to come) using some bright bold colors.

Reycled Collaged Flower Necklace

This is a collage necklace on a 1x1 1/4 piece of wood. I've been making a lot of these layered circle flowers playing with colors and textures.

Recycled Necklace: Cylinder Series

I started this series using some leftover cylinder dowels from the legs of a sculpture bowl I made. I made one and ended up really liking the design. These are the first few with more to come! They are a bit small in the pictures but if you double click you get a nice close up. Enjoy!