DIY: Harry Potter Embroidery Sampler

I've had my eye on a certain wall space in our house, right at the top of the stairs. It is a cute little space and it needs something. So I've decided to work on a couple of things in the next few months to use to style that area. The first thing that I created was an embroidery hoop with a cute flower pattern and a Harry Potter quote. Perhaps I haven't mentioned this before on this blog, but I am a GIANT Harry Potter fan! Check out HERE for the inspiration for this DIY.

As I mentioned above, I love me some HP! However, if you're unfamiliar with the movies or the books. "Always" is a beautiful quote from one of the most misunderstood characters. Severus Snape ends up with the most beautiful and heart-wrenching story line. 

I used some lightweight canvas fabric that I had lying around. I also had a small embroidery hoop, a needle, and some embroidery floss. I chose some colors that I think will look nice with the other items I am planning for this space. However, something like this can be changed to suite whatever color palette you have in your house!

After gathering my supplies, I sketched out a basic idea of what I wanted to do and got to work! I used a back stitch to create the letters. I did two rows, right beside each other so as to make the letters thicker. I'm considering going back and adding a third layer to make them stand out even more? Thoughts?

After that I added some embellishments around the outside. I wanted to keep with the embroidery sampler look from my inspiration but I also wanted to make it my own. So I came up with some vines and small flowers and some daffodil/tulip like blooms at the bottom. 

I think the final project is going to look great on my little wall space! I'll keep you posted as I add more to the area and what it looks like when I'm done!

What's Going on in the Classroom: Photography- Shutter Speed

Just an update on Photography students! Students just finished up learning about and using shutter speed successfully in their photography to blur and freeze motion and paint with light. Look at the amazing results they achieved!

A Peak Inside my Portfolio: Figurative Sculpture *UPDATE*

Sculpture Class is over! Last night was our final critique. It went fine and I can officially say I'm done. One more class and a thesis until I get that Master's Degree! Now if you remember from my last post, my figurative sculpture suffered some damage in the kiln. I did decide to use Kintsugi to repair it and I love it!  But before that, here's the final image of my subtractive sculpture:

Turned out just great! Now moving on to the 'happy accident' piece... After some serious epoxy use, both to repair my piece (as best as I could) and secure the posts for weaving, here's what my piece looked like:

The I used acrylic paint and water to create a stain for the piece. I used brown, black, red and brilliant yellow straight out of the tube, watered down, and layered over the clay. Then I covered the entire piece in a wash of black, watered-down acrylic. The places where there were missing pieces, you can see I left un-painted. That's where the Kintsugi comes in.

If you click on Kintsugi, you will head on over to a webpage with some wonderful info about the art form. However, briefly, it is a way of taking broken pieces of pottery and putting them back together to create a new and possibly more beautiful piece. I just used some gold leaf and gold paint, nothing like the actual gold resin used by professionals. Regardless, I still think it turned out pretty nicely. The weaving looks great as well!

A Peak Inside my Portfolio: Subtractive Sculpture

My sculpture course for my Master's work is almost finished and it's been a very bumpy ride, but I am happy to say that my Subtractive Sculpture went pretty much according to plan! I wanted to create more of a non-objective piece that evoked the feeling of cradling or swaddling; the idea of being held safe and warm and cared for. We used a carving method on heat-insulating kiln brick. Here is the progression of my work.

This is not the final image, I haven't taken one yet, which is my fault. But it's fairly close. I believe it turned out well and I'm happy with my first attempted sculpting  of this type of material. On another note, I have some sad news, there was a kiln incident and my Manipulative Figural Sculpture took a beating. Some of it was, no doubt, an air pocket in my piece, but some might also be due to another student's bust that exploded into many tiny fragments. I've done my best to repair it and I'm considering adapting the destruction and doing a take on Japanese Kintsugi to finish the piece. Although I'm very upset since this was my favorite piece of the term, I'm hopeful that it will turn out all right.

What's Going on in the Classroom: Photography Students at Work

First of all, one of our very own photo students combined her love of journalism and her awesome photo skills to photography portraits (what we just learned about!) for the school  news paper! Check it out!

Photos by Audrey Whitaker

The rest of the photo students are hard at work using their Shutter Speed as a tool to stop motion, blur motion, paint with light, pan, and create multiple exposures! Look at these great photographers putting their skills to the test!

So many photographers in one place!

Freezing motion!

Light painting in the MPR

I'll let you determine if these girls are really hard at work :)

A Peak Inside my Portfolio: Figurative Sculpture

This sculpture class is really taking it's toll, but I believe I'm pretty much caught up and in a good place to finish the semester strong! My last portfolio post discussed my Social Issue Additive Sculpture (check out that post here!), which is now completed!

I'm happy with the way it turned out and even more importantly, I'm happy that it's done!

Our second assignment was to create a manipulative sculpture. So instead of adding pieces or constructing, we are to take a material and manipulate it. I used clay for this piece. In addition to being manipulative, the sculpture also had to be figurative. Most students were doing a bust (head and shoulders) so I did a torso, to try something different. As with most of my pieces recently, I wanted to add an element of fiber arts to my design. To that purpose, one half of the torso will be constructed by weaving.

These two images are the front and back of my torso after the first day of working. I was simply building the piece and roughing in the different body parts. My goal was to continue to build up the piece while paying attention to musculature and bone structure underneath.

After my second day in the studio, I had almost finished the piece in relation to size, but you can see from the butt that I was still working on getting the correct shapes and proportions for all the anatomy.

At this point, I thought I was done! But as my husband pointed out, the butt is very tight and firm and the front look like it belongs to someone who maybe doesn't work out as much. Or as a fellow student put it, 'it looks like it has a Sponge Bob butt' So I went back to work refining the overall shape.

Now I can say that I am all done with the clay portion! I'm waiting for it to dry out and then in the kiln it goes. I believe I will stain it instead of applying a glaze. More to come on that. Now for the weaving part:

As you can see along one side I have made holes. There are dowels that will fit into those holes after firing is complete. These dowels will then become the warp form my weaving portion of the piece that will make up the entire left side of the torso! Hopefully that will be done soon! Now we're onto Subtractive Sculpture (carving), wish me luck!