Thursday, April 22, 2010

Spring Cleaning! What!?

You know how Hawaii doesn't have much of a noticeable season change like the continent? Well growing up, I certainly didn't notice, so spring cleaning didn't mean anything to me back then. But as I got older and started my own family, reading about spring cleaning and getting organized in magazines was a new thing for me because growing up we just cleaned things out as Mom saw fit. Now, if you say 'spring' to me, I'm deciding what things I need to clean and/or discard!
Currently, I'm cleaning my workroom, discarding, giving away, cleaning off plastic container tops etc... I went to PriceBusters and found these collapsible containers and decided to use those instead of the mismatched plastic containers that I have now. I ran into a couple of challenges, one, it's getting costly to change all the containers I want to change, and two, I've had DH driving around the island with me in tow to all the PBs looking for my color choice. It was explained to me by one of the PB clerks that when they get products in, it's shipped as a lot, so they get a whole bunch of colors and styles at once; like opening a box of chocolates, you never know what you're going to get.
Anyway, I'm off to visit my SIL in Vegas, hope I find more collapsibles there. My work will still be here waiting for my return (yuk), so I'm not too worried about the mess. Unless of course House Beautiful or Where Women Create sneaks into my house and takes threatening photos to expose my packrat workroom!
Aloha,

Friday, April 9, 2010

Collage and Assemblage

With magazines from Stampington and Co. like Somerset Studio, Artful Blogging and Somerset Life, I've noticed the collage and assemblage terminologies. These magazines by the way are some of my favorites. The assemblage art in these magazines have a different genre than that of the cardmaking blogs that I follow, yet I like both varieties.
I think that the Victorians were the first to do any type of collage with their crazy quilts, assembling them with the assorted embroidery stitches. Now, this type of quilting have evolved into art quilts and much more have been added to enhance these art quilts, much of which can be seen in Art Quilt magazine. Of course I still love the Victorian crazy quilts and have had the pleasure of taking classes from renown author and crazy quilter Judith Baker Montano and Marion Speers to learn crazy quilting, also known now as insane quilting. I'll try to put up a sample of one of the pieces I'm currently working on. 
Now, about assemblage, that would include all card makers.  How long have we been collecting card stock, fancy papers, ephemera, rubberstamps and other found objects to create our cards. I've attended my share of rubberstamp conferences in Vegas. I remember hosting Stampin' Up parties with Joelle back in the early 90s. Each card is an assemblage and/or collage art.  So, whether we crazy quilt, make cards, or create scrapebook pages, we are all collage, assemblage artists.
Have a great weekend, Aloha.