SOHO!

I am very excited about being accepted to be a mentor in the Visual Arts Center's program SOHO.
A Space of Her Own.

13 mentors work together with 13 girls from Gilpin court to develop her own space through art based projects. At the end of the program we get to implement all our projects into her space at home.

I can't wait to meet the girls and mentors. I volunteered at Friends Association earlier this year. They are a partner with the Visual Arts Center and they hand pick the girls!

Training for mentors should be next week and the program starts Oct 29 through June 3.

Letterpress

I took a Letterpress class the Visual Arts Center over the summer and it was pretty awesome. The process is very different from how I am working. Most of the time is spent on the preparation or designing the palette that you want printed. This takes forever! You have to fill up all the empty space that has no letters so that the letters you do want to print are tight and you have to layout everything backwards. It is like tetris, first time was killing but after that you get a hang of how to do it effectively. I actually think the palette is much more interesting than the final print!

This is my palette and prints for Thankyou cards I made for all the folks in Akron that showed us around on our company field trip to the Ten Thousand Villages corporate headquarters.



This is the palette for the Mystery Meeat poster. I need to take pictures of the print but I still need to acetone our graphic on the poster, so once I do that I'll post it.



I also printed some tiny cards but didn't photograph the palette or print. This was my first palette and it was quite complex due to spacing. I really wanted to get the most out of my paper so the layout was challenging. I wish I had a picture of it, but I'll post I'll prints soon.

Graduation Cards

I am super late on posting these but 2 of my favorite people graduated in May! I made them some graduation cards from other folks wedding cards.

John my brother in law from University of Pennsylvania - got his MBA - Whooohoooooooooooooooo - now has a killer job in NYC.
[yes...i spelled congratulations wrong on this card...ahm..i was playing of off of the word graduate?]
Divya my cousin/little sister from Virgina Tech - got her undergrad in Spanish and International Studies - yippeeee another Tech grad!!!!!!!!!!!!! - now has her dream job in DC.

Cards

While searching on the Fair Trade Federation website for jobs I came across this at Cards from Africa.

"The idea for Cards from Africa came to British founder, Chris Page, in 2004, inspired by a Kenyan doctor who had started a similar endeavor to generate income for women in a Nairobian slum. Chris teamed up with Rwandan artist Gabriel Dusabe and together they learned how to make paper and create simple card prototypes. Their first employee was a young orphaned woman named Ariette. After one month's time they asked her to bring another friend to train but she brought two! Shortly after, twenty more orphaned youth were trained and the business was born. Our profits are continually reinvested into company operations as well as the lives of our staff. Our hope is to grow to provide steady employment to 300 orphaned young people in Rwanda and to provide a model for sustainable job creation in Africa."

It's a great program and it's fair trade!

I sent in 5 designs and I don't know if any of my cards will be chosen till December but here are pictures of them.

Books

**sidenote**
it's been a while...i don't think i am gonna finish up blogging about our road trip....opss.

While on our road trip I got this book in Santa Barbara called "How to make books" and I've been into stitching now for a while but now I am getting into some book binding.
Here is what I've done so far..
I've been working on the Coptic stitch, it's not perfect yet but gonna keep going at it.

RT journal - Day 5 - Scottsdate + Palm Springs + LA

On our way to Taliesen, Frank Lloyd Wright's winter home....okay my memory is now very foggy of our trip so details are going to far from good!
We got to Taliesen in the morning and took the tour of the house, it is small in scale but massive in terms of the land coverage. I am always amazed to be in a FLW home, such care to be taken to every detail, such passion to create a home that doesn't deny you of nature. We spent far too much time in the gift shop but it was worth it and gotta say this day was our hottest day on the trip and while Amrit chose to stand in the blazing sun and sketch, the 3 of us went to the car to have our lunch. Amrit got a few shades darker in the 20 min he stood there with pen in hand.
Then we were on our way to Palm Springs, just a stopping point to break our 7 hour drive to LA. We drove through the dessert, but it didn't look like the dessert I think we pictured in our heads. We wanted to get this map of mid-century modern homes in PS but we got to the store as it closed and so we just stood outside the door till the 2 people inside took notice of us. 2 awesome guy dudes told us all about not leaving for LA for a good 3 hours so we tried to do the house tour with complete failure cause they were all gated in and couldn't see a darn thing so we gave up on that quick and just went to grab dinner. On our way out of PS, out of no where the car starts being very hard to handle due to the wind outside, I mean it was some crazy pressured wind and then we saw it....a forest of wind turbines. 100's of them, it was incredible! We pulled over and wanted to get out to feel the wind and ah....we did. Sand and rocks slamming into our skin, I think I flashed a few folks when my dress flew up....it was great!
We got into LA late and went to go see the Walt Disney Concert Hall, with great hesitation from everyone, I managed to make them go all over the grounds. It's a maze there, up and down stairs and ramps and you have no idea where it's taking you or if your supposed to be there. I gotta admit it was kinda scary. Went to the Mann theater and unfortunately the Hollywood sign wasn't lit up and that whole area is kinda weird, they don't show on TV the "ugly" part of that area only the glitz. LA is really big and hard to get to places, you gotta drive everywhere and it sucks.....not a fan.

ModCloth and this Terrific Transformations Contest

ModCloth and this Terrific Transformations Contest

Transformation

Almost a year ago I left my family and friends and moved 2 hours away to start a new life with newly wed husband.
I soon realized that with out all the familiarities of my previous life I was coming undone. No job, no friends, no family, no life except being with the person I loved the most.
I was separated from everything that used to define me. I was uneasy in my skin. What I was wearing, how my hair was, how I looked, how my time was spent and what I was saying were all starting to disgust me.I went through periods where for days I would sit at home waiting for my husband, not cooking, cleaning, exploring or doing anything remotely close to useful with my time. It made me feel worthless - I couldn't get myself to do anything except complain to my loving and understanding husband. Then one day I stopped looking for jobs and looked for volunteer opportunities just so I could get out of the house. If I committed myself to someone else then there would be no way I'd let them down the way I was letting myself down. So I just got out there did something and it was really fun to meet people, make connections and tell others about myself. While doing that I put myself back together but I wasn't who I was before I came to this new place. I was hiding within myself before I moved, as a diluted version of me. My familiar comfortable environment had made me content. My previous life was not me, it fit me then because it was easy to follow rather than to lead, easy to be similar rather than different. But now I am at a perfect fit with my life, I felt like a fully concentrated version of me, what I wear, how I look, how I spend my time and what I say are all lead by my passions not my fears. My physical appearance has changed, maybe not enough to really see a difference but inside I feel embraced by my transformation.