A friend of mine struts her stuff on etsy!

Check out this gorgeous pendant made by my friend for her new etsy shop: margotclaire!


I am so happy she's decided to put some of her creative pursuits online. I knew her as a painter, and as a fun, creative, multi-talented friend. Hooray for Margot! I WANT ONE!

-Papermoon

6th graders are a joy.

Luckily for me, I have an abundance of 6th grade girls in my life.

I haven't written in a while, but I am going to skip right past catching you all up... since I am not so sure that anyone noticed the lack of posts except my father! :)

I wanted to share two things: the gifts I made for my sister (6th grade) to give to her friends for Christmas, as well as some of the joys of teaching.

Part one: Super Shawls.


Back in 2008, I made my sister a furry shawl for her birthday. She gratified my creative venture by wearing it all the time, and apparently her friends began to try it out and fell in love. Christmas 2009 rolled around with a plan in her mind: she asked if she could purchase three personalized shawls for her friends.


Armed with cuddle fur fleece, polar fleece, and some scrap felt, I came up withe these quick-to-make and comfy gifts.



I was well pleased with them. I even liked the back side, which featured the stitched outline of the flower on the other side:


Part two: Sugary Science Club

I barely felt motivated to post during the last few months, largely due to the bad quality of my old camera and the feeling I had that talking about my teaching job needed pictoral accents. Luckily for me, I am the proud owner of a new Nikon(!) and can now post pictures.

The girls I teach are amazing and so amusing. I could regale you for hours, but I will content myself to share some evidence of the fun I am having via these shots from today's Science Club.


Our activity of the day was nutrition-focused, in keeping with a recent focus at school on healthy choices. We measured out the sugar content of a few favorite snacks in teaspoons and were shocked and appalled to see the sugar we are eating! Then we made "sugar warning" posters that I can't wait to put up!





Essentially that's what I'm up to these days. You can't seem me anywhere here...but I was behind the camera, in my lab coat! :)

In other news, I am addicted to Christian rock these days. Matt Maher, Chris Tomlin, and John Waller, mostly. I think its improving my overall mood, so I am thinking it's one addiction I don't need to kick.

In hopes I will be posting more soon,

Papermoon

Classroom.

Mountains, Moving, and Monroe Bisque.

I am back, having hiked the Alps.



If ever I must leave the country I love and live somewhere new, by all means let it be Switzerland.

'Real life' (and my job) begins this coming Monday, and so this week I am moving, little by little, into my little room-to-live-in on the Lower East Side. My living space is tiny, but I will pay no rent (and love little spaces) so I have decided there is no reason to complain. Plus, it's got a fearfully high ceiling...which I think will be exciting and fun to tweak around with. I am thinking of putting in some floating bookshelves, 10 feet off the floor. With a little rolling stepladder, I can be Audrey in 'Funny Face' when I go up for a book.



I am painting my room just the color of my bedroom here in my parents' house. Why not? Monroe Bisque makes the room so cozy.


I am basing my design daydream for the room on a painting I made a year and some ago, set in a favorite Evanston bookshop.

Very teacherly, I think.

More to come, assuredly, when New York assaults me with things to talk about...

-Papermoon

The Usefulness of Blogs, the Charms of Being a Teacher.

I made a nice, bland website for my new class (2D/3D Art at a "gifted" camp) last night.

I love it. I feel like I am playing school...

Go have a look: Some Inspirations for Artists

-Papermoon

My friend Tim, on Design*Sponge.

My friend Tim is famous.

Tim Mazurek was dazzling through his MFA while I was finishing up my undergrad art career at Northwestern. Despite my being a boring, Catholic, conservative, Tim was always very nice to me and I enjoyed every shared class with him immensely. As I recall, we met in my Installation Art class, for which he was a TA. (A great TA.) My 'art friends' (we called our clique 'the knitting club') and I all latched on to him and he somehow managed not to act annoyed.

I digress. Tim has an outstanding blog! Lottie + Doof has long graced my 'lovely things' side bar, and I ogle his photos daily. He has been picked up by Time Out Chicago, Refinery 29, apartment therapy, the kitchn, good bite, and Pioneer Woman. And today he made it onto one of my all-time favorites, Design*Sponge! It's no wonder, considering his organic, fresh choices are so enticingly displayed courtesy of his photography skills. The work of an artist, indeed.

I couldn't be happier for Tim. And I couldn't feel hipper for knowing him.

Check out Lottie + Doof here: Lottie + Doof
See Tim's artwork here: Tim Mazurek

-Papermoon

A Bag for Anna.

Yesterday's project: a bag for my dear friend Anna, six months late.



She'd given me the color scheme in January, I'd apologized and promised it was coming by Valentine's day, and I had been making excuses and looking at the fabric ever since... until yesterday.

I got up, ate my breakfast*, put on a dress and some pearls (I am more productive that way), whipped up a little seltzer-with-vanilla, and got down to business.


I used the same oh fransson pattern I have before... it's easy and effective.


I like it. I may make myself a wallet in the same color scheme.



-Papermoon

*cream cheese on whatever I can find seems to be the summer favorite

A Visit.

My friend Becca (alias Lovely Lula) came for a visit this last week.

It is always a joy to have a visit at home with a friend. Bringing together friends and family always brings about some fun and adventure.

I introduced Midwestern Becca to my home town back East. We ate 'real' bagels and she remarked on the hilly landscape and the very tree-ish looks of things here.

We boated in Central Park and took a look at some wonderful turtles, and one odd bird.





We played the Ouija board and tried to determine our futures.



We made this picture of a clock.



All in all we had a spectacular, laid back time. I miss her again, already!

-Papermoon

Bleeds and Paint.

Prime quotes from camp today:

"Painting outside?... Did you ask if you could do this with us?"

"Ugh. I don't want to go home. I wish you could come over for a playdate."

(One girl to another:) "Did you get hurt? Is that really a bleed? Or did you paint yourself? DON'T TRICK ME, OKAY?!"

Oh, children... you are so strange and wonderful. I particularly like this hilariously common kid-practice of calling scrapes and cuts "bleeds" or even "bleeders". There is something very Dennis the Menace/Leave It To Beaver about it.

Camp has been eating up my time, as we've gotten quite a lot of rain. Kids come to camp with the primary objective of playing on the playground and screaming down the waterslide, so it's been a huge effort to cheer them up with crafts. But, I'm making it work. Today we had some sunshine, so our art effort was some watercolor painting, en plein air. A very interesting activity with five year olds. I think they initially thought it was illegal.


On another note, related to my last post, sister Maggie and I finished a painting yesterday based on the delightful aesthetic of A Hundred and One Dalmatians. Nice, eh? And it will match her room!



Summer is excellent.

-Papermoon

Camp. / Up.

First day of camp job #1. This being a very general, half day, primary-grades day camp, I felt that I was running the risk of planning too many activities for such young folks. After today I had to kick myself... these almost-first graders wanted a lot more out of me. Tomorrow I will have a much more chock-full schedule for them, I think.

Not that I had a bad first day... we opened with visor and backpack decorating, which (due to the inclusion of Sharpies and stickers) was a hit. We then moved on to some waterslide time; a good idea except for how cold they get, and how looooooooong little girls take to change into their bathing suits. If only women didn't talk so much.

Next up we played some games (a variation of 'heads up, seven up' and some playground tag) until lunchtime. Despite the fact that no child under the age of eight years eats real food unless forced, lunch went alright, too. After lunch we took a vote and decided on another round of playground time, before finishing out the day with pastels and colored paper. This last bit was a 'fly by the seat of my pants' moment because I got some very flawed advice from a fellow camp counselor, and had banked in a 'storytime' period. Which I knew wouldn't work... Should have trusted my gut.

Tomorrow I am going to give it a go this way:

9 AM Arrival, hopefully wrapping up by 9:15.
9:15-10:00 Model Magic 'fake food' craft–usually a big hit.
10:00-10:30 Water games, hopefully extending well past this time period.
10:30-11:00 Team obstacle courses. The two counselors will each champion a team.
11:00-11:30 Changing out of bathing suits.
(You would not believe how long this takes. It's unbelievable. I think I will have a sidewalk chalk or obstacle course game going on out on the blacktop so that once kids are done they can go join an activity. This, or the playground.)
11:30-12:00 LUNCH
12:00-12:30 Playground time.
12:30- 1:00 Simple paper kites (with popsicle sticks).


Hopefully it will work out.

* * * * *

On an another (though still vaguely child-related) note, I saw Up! today with a friend and my sister and mother. It was wonderful. Simultaneously evocative of childhood enjoyment of Disney movies while also drawing a very nuanced, adult tear from my eye, it was a real story achieved through absolutely breathtaking animation. I am pleased to say this was a movie (like Finding Nemo) that was better because it was digital. Purist that I am, that really matters. The balloons carrying that dear old man's house looked SO real, and that wasn't something that classic animation could have achieved. Reality was surely suspended!

I am too tired (ah, first graders) to go on... but everyone should see the film. The little boy's character is made to seem pesky in the commercials, but he is actually irresistable on the screen. Likewise, what can seem to be an annoying dog character in a quick preview is actually hilarious.

One warning: I cried throughout the movie. My face was consistently soaked. So was my eleven year old sister's. While we are both sentimental, I don't think I could fairly say our reaction would be unusual. You have been warned.

-Papermoon

Progression, at the Dittmar Gallery.

Headed over to Evanston today after work (tomorrow will be my last day at work!) to see the current Seniors' Art Theory and Practice show. It was a great opportunity to see some friends as well as some of my classmates from my college 'artsy' days. I feel very far away from that lifestyle at this point, and certainly haven't found that I am pursuing art-making in a way I might have expected I would while I was still in college.

The show itself was very pleasant to look at. All of the work was actually quite interesting, and their class is lucky enough to have real variation in terms of their media, pursuits, and politics.

My favorite works were some very lovely illustrations and paintings by my friends Yana Myaskovskaya and Lauren Redding; a performance/installation peice involving gauze dragged through the Chicago city streets by one Joyce Kim; and a dazzling glitter painting–something I would never have thought I would like!–by Tiffany Wells. I didn't bring a camera, sadly, but I managed to scoop up some images of a few off of the internet. Here's to Yana and Lauren! :)

One of Yana's illustration works–Untitled.
The ladybug is actual size, printed on a very large sheet of white paper. Clever!

Yana's second illustration–The Sound of Silence.
This really surprised me in person; I hadn't realized how tiny the drawing was!
It is incredibly detailed and beautiful, and only a few inches tall.

Lauren's self-portrait.
A beautiful girl with a beautiful talent!
I love the timelessness of this ...that is the best part about her work, in general.

All in all, the last few years have been a personal tug of war for me over whether or not I would like to continue to involve myself with the art scene. I am often frustrated by the contemporary presentation of art, but I can not deny that I would miss it if I renounced it completely! It was wonderful to see this show.

Off to bed, wishing these friends of mine good luck!

-Papermoon

some summer dresses in mind...

... from another time!

i was at vogue fabrics the other day, just taking a gander and picking up a pattern i've been wanting.



i couldn't help but get distracted at look at basically EVERYTHING in the store, as usual. i had a painstaking battle with my willpower over a bunch of vintage menswear buttons (my willpower, thankfully, won). i must have touched and admired every piece of venetian lace and let's not even talk about the remnants i managed not to buy.

in any case, the best part, as usual, was looking through all the patterns and catalogs at the fancy things i would never make and don't need. i became extremely fixated on the summer offerings in the butterick's catalog from their 'retro' section. i think i might order some of these!



my new life plan, in which i toss all trends to the wind and embrace my love of high waists and secretary blouses, is really making me feel pretty. not that it's so important to enjoy one's reflection at all times...but it is nice! :)

-papermoon

one of the best days of my whole life.

all throughout my childhood i was a compulsive lister. i don't think much has changed. i was constantly revising lists: in my head, in my diary, on scraps of paper and on chalkboards. i loved planners and pocket notebooks and post-it notes, and have written myself at least one daily 'to-do' list since i was about twelve. (i used to include 'wake up' every morning!) the back of my first diary--pink with ballet slippers, and my name in stickers-- held a running list of 'best friends' that is hilarious too look at, both for the ridiculous reasons i crossed people off the list, only to add them back on, and for the fact that the word 'best' didn't seem to limit my quantity! 12 best friends, really?

one of my mental lists through my growing up years was that of the 'best days of my whole life'. some were very specific events--one particular Palm Sunday in which i felt very grown up, my eighth and ninth birthdays, the day my brother and i filled up a top hat with snow and made beautiful 'snow cake', some family vacations, a 24 hour period i spent exclusively painting as a freshman in college, a very hilarious fancy dinner in which my sister katie and i accidentally got drunk... there are too many to count.

today was one of the best days of my life, despite being entirely solitary and without much to speficically define it. i suppose i will just list everything, in keeping with the theme!

• woke up (without an alarm) to good weather
• spent a lovely almost-hour talking to my littlest sister on the phone (SHE called ME! so nice!)
• cinnamon toast and coffee
• did the underpainting for something new i am working on (mother's day!)
• showered, got dressed in the new ($20) Audrey Hepburn pants i bought yesterday (sorry, it's a cellphone picture)

• lunch on my sun deck, pretending i was on an enormous cruise ship (delicious egg salad and iced tea!)

• read C.S. Lewis' The Four Loves: Friendship
  

and in an hour i will finish it off with Mass. the best.

-papermoon

anthropologie-inspired headbands

anthropologie is a great source for research.

i love to window shop there and get ideas, especially for crafting fun gifts for friends.

a few weeks ago, my friend leigh admired these headbands, which fetch a mean price of anywhere from 32.00 to 38.00.

i decided to whip up my own version for her birthday.








i just put together some fabric flowers with bead accents, sewed them onto a fabric strip base, and then attached them to the headbands with a series of tight thread loops. they looked adorable in her hair this weekend!

here are a few detail shots.

sorry about the blurry one. i think i need a new camera.

make yourself some! spring has sprung!

-papermoon