Back in action

March 1, 2017

I'm very excited to be a part of the Elora Handmade Market Spring Show this year! It's a few months away, but I'm happy to have a reason to get back into making stuff! Here's a little taste of what I'm working on, but check out my Instagram for more up to date happenings.

3. Lauren Wright Vartanian- Heart brooch.jpg

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I didn't think I'd participate in today's #marchmeetthemaker 'Silver Linings' but then I got to thinking how having my kid and starting this entire venture IS my silver lining. Up until the end of 2015, I was working in a job which made me very underappreciated, stressed out and extremely depressed. It wasn't only bad for my mental health, but for my physical health as well. I was also really bummed out that I wasn't using my artistic background to its full potential. When I finally became pregnant, it felt like having a child was my golden ticket out of that career. I had a chance to stay at home and start creating again (after being in the trenches of the newborn phase and then only during nap times). When maternity leave was over, I decided not to go back and was fortunate enough—thanks to a very supportive husband— that I could continue on with this. I've never been happier or felt more fulfilled than with this as my job. And this platform has a huge part in my success as a full time professional artist. So thank you for liking my images, reading my long winded captions, spreading the word about what I do, or purchasing my work! [This photo was from July 2019 at the Aga Khan Museum, with Luke Jerram's touring Museum of the Moon.]

🌈 COLOUR!! Fuck yes to colour. Deep, rich, and harmonious colours. 'Non-obvious rainbows' to include a little of everything on the spectrum if possible. Use the highest chroma on the colour wheel and compliment it with nothing less than midway down. Triadic and split complimentary pairings. Good colour combos make me salivate. The only overarching 'theme' on my account grid is black, white, warm brown wood and rainbows! (Don't get me started on that anemic looking ✨Influencer✨ filter again!) [FYI to anyone interested in this puzzle. Yes it looks great, but the pieces have the least satisfying fit of any puzzle I've ever done, and they're so loose that they fly out of place if you so much as breath on it.] #marchmeetthemaker #colour

Today's #marchmeetthemaker is process. First there's a sketch, which I digitize by tracing in a vector program. Then I break down the design into the different pieces/colours to be cut with a Cricut machine. If it's a new design, I usually cut out a paper mock up first to see the size in relation to the frame, or to figure out how it's going to fit together. When I first started out I was making stencils and tracing and cutting by hand. It took forever and I hated it. I included a video of sewing in real time. I love hand stitching. It's meditative and calming. It's been almost 6 years, so my stitches have really tightened up and are more uniform than when I started out. It's like muscle memory at this point.

Three little blazing solar eclipses on their way to Kentucky. The path of totality for the Total Solar Eclipse on April 8th 2024 will just skirt by the northwestern edge of that state. In the before times, I had plans to book a family vacation to Arkansas, or Texas, for the big event (path of totality plows right through the middle of AR.) Hopefully covid is under control by then, but we may need to take our chances and hope for a clear day here in Southern Ontario. Or Southern Quebec, or the East Coast. Not that I don't love my own country, it's just that it's a huge gamble that it won't be a f*cking sudden blizzard in early April. Bonus entry for #marchmeetthemaker 'from the archive' because these 3 have been sitting in my stock pile for a few years now.

Happy Pi Day. These are the closest pieces I have to pi related content. And to be honest I needed to read up on pi to see what I might have already made that could relate. The following is lifted directly from Wikipedia: An occurrence of π in the Mandelbrot set fractal was discovered by David Boll in 1991. He examined the behaviour of the Mandelbrot set near the "neck" at (−0.75, 0). If points with coordinates (−0.75, ε) are considered, as ε tends to zero, the number of iterations until divergence for the point multiplied by ε converges to π. The point (0.25 + ε, 0) at the cusp of the large "valley" on the right side of the Mandelbrot set behaves similarly: the number of iterations until divergence multiplied by the square root of ε tends to π. MATH!

Oh hey, it's my face! Thanks to everyone who came over here from @ologies to check me out. Here's one of those random interesting and slightly embarassing facts about me posts: 🚗 I don't drive. I know how, and I have my full license, but it scares the crap out of me to do so. I'm generally uncomfortable on any form or wheels, or having things strapped to my feet other than shoes. 🐸 I'm afraid of frogs. I don't trust them. They're shifty, evil looking, and it's the beady eyes and suddenly jumping and flailing their gross legs that gets me. 🧀 I love parmesan cheese and cilantro. I sometimes plan meals around what I can top with them. 🎧 I like psychedelic, dark sounding, prog-rock style music. The more it sounds like you're playing Dungeons and Dragons in the back of a van in the late 70's the better (think Mars Volta.) And I love weird complex electronic music (think Aphex Twin.) I also love Ween. 😎 I was never the popular kid in highschool. Or college. Or at the summer camps I worked at. But elementary school, that was my time to shine (or I just didn't know any better.) In all fairness, I always did (and still do) have some excellent close friends at each stage of my life. Quality over quantity. Are you a not so secretly nerdy inept adult outcast like me? Maybe that's why we're friends now. 🥰 Thanks for being here.

Sewing a moon in the sun 🌔😎☀️I love the afternoon sun at my desk and had to share how dramatic this lighting was. That's is all.

Yesterday I went to assist my good friend and rock purchase enabler @therubiesmellow, and came home with some minerals I didn't even know existed! Purpurite is a metalic purple, and it shines like that high-vis reflective tape. Stichtite has gorgeous mauves, greens and browns and is deceptively light!! And dioptase which doesn't even look real it's so damn teal/green. I had to use everything in my power to leave behind some of the most incredible specimens so she could, you know, sell those to other people. I picked out the MOST purple purpurite for my daughter cause she's going to flip her lid over it. Had to forgo on some incredible chrysocolla and malachite pieces. Check out my stories for some of the amazing things (ie ones I was drooling over) that she still has in her collection. And to get a coupon code for 10% off! ✨

Kidney is finished and off to San Antonio! This will be hanging in a nephrologist's office. Stay tuned for what I'm making for a urologist! 🍆🥼

Alright, last #marchmeetthemaker for a little while, but 'small detail' is my JAM. I don't know, but maybe it comes back to my late teens, early 20s psychedelic fueled lifestyle, but getting up super close to something to see just how complex it was, exploring vibrant colour combinations, and being attracted to an animation like lense over reality has always interested me. My paintings were full of a mishmash of chaotic spills and carefully controlled grids and outlines. I wanted people to focus in on like, a square inch of the painting and get lost in a tiny imaginary universe. So with sewing, I like how teeny tiny I can make things, and they're so much more inviting for people to want to pick up and hold right up to their faces to soak in all the little details. I also recently had a conversation with an established illustrator/artist who said I may need to rethink my audience for this book. This might be too confusing– visually, for wee babes. But it's you, the adults, who are eating this up. I know sci-art lovers and teachers are a niche market, but maybe that's who I need to market it to? 🤷‍♀️