1 day + 100 artists + 100 patrons = $10,000 to fight cancer

I am delighted to be an invited artist for "The 100" to be held next Wednesday, February 4, 2015. The goal for this fiber fundraiser for the American Cancer Society is to raise $10,000 in one day. Just 100 people will have a chance to purchase a randomly selected artwork for only $100! 

See all the details on the Fiberart for a Cause website. See a selection of the artwork available on the FFAC Pinterest board.

I'm sure you will want to be one of the very exclusive 100 patrons who will be randomly assigned artwork from an extraordinary line-up of international fiber artists.

Fiberart For A Cause has already raised $240,000 through the generosity of fiber artists and patrons.

The artwork that I am contributing to this very worthy cause is one of my Bird:Houses - the Apostle Bird. As a patron, you have a chance of receiving this piece.

The FIberart for a Cause fundraiser is one that is near to my heart. I am asked to donate my work to a lot of causes over the course of a year and this is the only one that I say yes to instantly, without hesitation. Virginia Spiegel is a remarkable woman who has made a remarkable contribution to the fight against cancer with her imaginative and highly successful fundraisers.

In honor of my brother-in-law, Juan, who we lost way too early to leukemia.

More Artist Trading Blocks

As promised in this post about my own Artist Trading Blocks, here is a link to the post of my mentorship group, Fiberart Northeast, blog and all of the Artist Trading Blocks they've made so far. What an amazingly talented and creative group of women I am lucky enough to lead!

Here are a couple of previews, but head over to the FANE blog for the rest.

Carole Hoffman

Paula West

Christine Wilhelm

New series - IKEA Hacks

I've always been interested in design - from endlessly rearranging my room as a teenager to building my own furniture, from renovating and decorating the homes we've lived in to helping my daughter decorate her first apartment. I read a myriad of design blogs and voraciously study architecture and industrial and interior design. I apply design principles and color theory to my own interiors, those of family and friends, and to retail spaces that I've designed (more on that coming soon!)

One of the best ways to make an original statement in your home is to customize, or "hack", an existing piece of furniture or accessory. I was discussing this with some of my studio mates at the NEST, Tracey Anderson and Susan Murray of Finished with Style, and we decided to challenge each other to hack something each month and show the results on our blogs.

Conveniently there's an IKEA about 15 minutes from the NEST. For our first month's challenge, we chose the ubiquitous Lack table - which enables us to employ a rhyme for January - Hack a Lack! We won't be able to keep the poetry going for the remainder of the year, so don't get your hopes up, ha!

Check back at the end of the month to see all three Lack Hacks and see some quick tutorials. We'll be announcing which item will be hacked at the beginning of each month and then showing the results at the end of each month. We're intentionally keeping the cost of each item low, with most being under $20 - the Lack table is under $10!

Have you hacked anything IKEA? I'd love to see them!

Artist Trading Blocks

One of my mentorship groups, FiberArt Northeast (otherwise known as FANE) has been meeting monthly since 2006. Among many other things, I am constantly challenging the members with fun art projects, some for exhibition and some just to stretch creative muscles. Over the holiday break I offered them a quick little project that I had read about on the Gelli Arts blog, Artist Trading Blocks. A number of years ago Artist Trading Cards burst onto the scene. The size of baseball cards (2.5" x 3.5") the ATCs are a great way to collect and trade small pieces of art with others.

The artist trading block is a three-dimensional interpretation of this idea. The Gelli Arts blog suggests using 4" x 4" posts cut into 4" cubes for the blocks, but once I realized that I needed over 30 of these and I discovered how very much each one would weigh, I quickly dropped the size suggestion and tried to find a smaller, lighter weight alternative.

I wandered around the lumber department of Home Depot until I came upon what they call "square dowels", oddly, since aren't dowels by their very definition round? Lumber is weird, my friends, 2 x 4s are not 2" or 4", and dowels are apparently not always round. Anyway, the square dowels are 1.75" on a side and 36" long so I bought two. Using Carlos' chop saw I was able to cut each dowel up into 19 blocks, ending with 38 total. Some members took 1 and others took 2 so they would have one to trade. I took two so I could trade as well.

What a blast! Nifty little six-sided collages! Three dimensional accessible art! A great way to slide into the new year art wise.

One block is covered with different whites and off whites to start. I added pieces of an old book, an embossed paper Ganesha, colored art papers, a postage stamp, and then I stamped some letters, numbers, a word, and a chop over the papers.

The other block is a mixture of papers and fabrics, with other papers, a fortune cookie fortune, and more stamped letters, numbers, and words added. This block is in much brighter colors than the first.

I can't wait to see what everyone else has made and I'll be sure to report back. So what do you think? Will ATBs become a thing? Do you have a yen to make one (or three) now?

Printed Fabric Bee's December Challenge - Old World Maps

The theme for December on the Printed Fabric Bee is Old World Maps, as chosen by Lisa Chin. I have to admit that this one was harder than I anticipated, partly because I didn't have the correct supplies at hand, and partly because I made the mistake at looking at some of the artists' fabrics before I tackled my own and I was really conscious of not repeating motifs.

I started with an antique street map, from the 1600s of somewhere in Europe. I painted a white fabric with a mixture of Liquitex acrylic inks (my favorites!). I traced some of the lines of the map onto my fabric with a black Micron Pigma pen.

I folded the fabric to represent the ways you would repeatedly fold a map over time and brushed the creases with a Distress Ink Pad.

Then I stamped the ordinals in one corner (or in the case of the giveaway square, just the N for North). The result is subtle and references the Old World Map inspiration without being literal.

If you'd like to a chance to win the set of squares by each of the Printed Fabric Bee artists, head either here or here to enter. My image isn't on the collage above because I was late getting it in, but as you can see, I wasn't the only one a bit stuck on this theme. What would you create for Old World Maps?