For art's sake

[merrileemakes]

---We interrupt this blog post to give you a message from 2025.

Hey, this is the last of my backdated blog posts that I'm adding to Dreamwidth. I started migrating over from Blogger when I finally, after 6 months, got the spoons together to write and post an actual blog post and then Blogger fucking ate it.

And then, a month after I started this DW and copying posts over I got this lovely little message on Blogger:



What the actual fuck. I swear this is just a move for Google to have more content to scrape for its cursed, inaccurate and sometimes deadly AI overview.

I am so weary of this rapid descent into AI hellscape. And glad I'd already made the decision to ditch Blogger.

Anway, back to your regualrly scheduled programme.---

I feel like I'm down to 2 brain cells and one of them is just melodramatic pop song lyrics at this point (okay I confess it's mostly Secret Codes and Battleships).

But I have been making things.



I finally framed this, Darwin Sampler II by Hannah Stitching Designs. I picked random colours from my decades old stash of embroidery threads. I really like how it turned out. I talked more about the meaning behind this piece in Finished Cross Stitch! (and I just realised it took me almost a year to frame this piece, oofff).

I've also finished and framed its companion piece Darwin Sampler.



Again, random colours from my stash. It took me three attempts to get one of the beetles the right colour, but I got there in the end.

This piece has gone to live on my desk at work as a reminder that even one of the most influential people of the last 200 years often felt like hot garbage. It's comforting.
I've also been dopamine buying random craft kits. I guess this isn't exactly new, but what is new is that I'm actually doing them.

This is a 'sensory art' kit of foam clay inspired on famous artwork, this one based on Monet's Water Lilies series. The foam clay is easy to work with and pretty fun. It's a fluffy, light material halfway between Play-Doh and... cappuccino foam? You can mold it easily when it's wet and then when it air dries it's kind like an eraser. Flexible and you could rip it apart if you wanted, but fairly stable.

The kit comes with everything you need, up to and including a door knob hanger telling people to leave you alone. Which you do kinda need because the clay can dry really fast, especially if you're using it outside in the Australian summer like I was. But I found having a little spray bottle of water helpful to wet it again and it becomes kinda workable again.




I sprayed down the water background once it was done to help the colours bleed together a bit better, and used a metallic blue acrylic paint marker on the ridges to make it a bit more dynamic.

I also didn't really like how the tutorial did the flowers so I made up my own design.



I really enjoyed this project. I'd like to do more of these sensory art kits.

I've also done a piece of actual, legit art.

Queanbeyan Library is running an adults mini art exhibition. They offered mini canvases to people to art however they wished and are currently displaying these tiny canvases at the library.

I designed and painted this little piece featuring lyrics from Kate Miller-Heidke's The tiger inside will eat the child. It's a song about finding joy but also loosing it again because holding on to happiness too tightly can make it dissolve.



I'm really pleased with how this turned out. It's the first time I've had a picture in my brain and managed to capture it pretty well in the physical world. The goblet is the cup that is both full and empty, filled with nebula and dark matter. In the bottom left corner is a black hole which is drawing everything towards its oblivion.

I did this mostly in metallic acrylic paint markers so it's pretty sparkly in real life.

This piece is currently on display with a all the other mini artworks at Queanbeyan Library, until 21 February.

Comments

[yourlibrarian]

Wow, that Blogger/Google tie-in is just yuck.