neonfoxtongue

nft travels: patterns II - windows

Happy Wednesday!  I'm still feeling good after a very pleasant evening at The Workroom's Stitch 'n Bitch.  I met Karyn, the very cool owner of The Workroom as well as some other lovely people, including Shannon Gerard (Etsy shop here) who crochets like a MACHINE!  She's also a very talented illustrator and very nice.  I'm really glad I went.  As soon as I'm working and have a disposable income, I plan on taking a sewing class there.

In the meantime, I'll have to settle for mostly free craft activities.  Like blogging!  As promised last week, I'm going to post more pics of neat-o patterns I found during my travels in Eastern Europe in March.  Today I'm going to focus on windows.  We of course saw some lovely stained glass windows in the churches we visited, but I don't take photos in churches (even when it's permitted), so I don't have any of those.  But I did get photos of the stained glass windows at the Hungarian Parliament (can you tell I love that building?) and also at a hotel we stayed at in Romania.

We arrived in Oradea, Romania (near the Hungarian border) in the evening and hadn't booked a place to stay.  After an unsuccessful attempt at finding the one hostel in the city (we had a pamphlet, but the place wasn't at the address it listed), we decided to follow our Lonely Planet (Romania)'s advice and enquire at the one remaining budget hotel in the downtown area.  Luckily for us, they had a room available - actually, they probably had several available (cash only). The Hotel Parc, originally built in 1785 and expanded in the early 1900s (and presumable turned into a hotel at this point), is on the main pedestrian shopping street of Oradea.  At one point, it must have been quite a grand place, but it was pretty shabby.  And a bit creepy at night.  In fact, I had to actively prevent myself from thinking about scenes from The Shining.  But it was cheap, warm and clean (apart from the mould in the bathroom, but mould was ubiquitous in Romania so we were used to it by then).  And in the daylight, parts of it were quite beautiful.  Especially the windows and doors.

 

This is a window in the stairwell - isn't it pretty?  The plaster decorative accents were throughout the halls as well.

 

This is the front door.  Anyone who knows me knows that I love Art Nouveau (and Art Deco for that matter), so this door was a real treat.  I'd love to live in a place with gorgeous iron work like that.

From Oradea, we headed straigth to Budapest, Hungary, so a couple of days later we visited the Parliament, where, along with pics I posted last week, I snapped photos of the windows.

 

Sorry about the lousy quality - we weren't allowed to use a flash in that room.  I love the main diamond and circle pattern - definitely want to play with it in cross stitch!

 

All the patterns in this window are great, but I was especially taken with the side borders.  I like the mix of geometric shapes with organic ones.

I hope you're liking these posts about travels and patterns.  I got a sketch book from my mom on the weekend, so I'm keen to start doodling some of these patterns and seeing where they take me!

nft travels: patterns, patterns everywhere!

Seeing I don't really have any new projects to post, I thought I'd blog about the great decorative patterns I saw on the month-long trip The Leopard and I took in Eastern Europe.  I love decorative patterns in architecture and Europe is full of great examples. Today I want to show you just a few of the patterns I saw inside the very beautiful Hungarian Parliament.  It's a gorgeous building with incredible craftsmanship which my camera couldn't quite capture, but I hope you'll get an idea of the level of decorative detail.

 
Most of the door frames were adorned with lovely gilded patterns such as this one.

 
A decorated ceiling - one of many

  
A pillar - love this design, like upscale folk-art!

I'm hoping to use some of these designs for inspiration for embroidery and linocut patterns.  I really like how natural elements and shapes have been simplified and repeated. It'll probably take a bit of practice before I can make my own patterns, but it'll definitely be worth it!

Hope you liked these patterns.  I'll post some more next week.

CG Monday: bullet point update

 

As I'm really pressed for time today, this Creative Goals Monday update will be in bullet points.

The creative stuff I did last week:

• Met one and half of my three goals from last week - I knitted a bit (and made a few mistakes) and I planned out how I want to adorn my travel journal
• Made two birthday cards
• Was inspired by a visit to the V & A
• Began culling my craft supply stash in preparing for our move - this is actually quite inspiring and a great way to review what I have and how I can use it.

My goals for the coming week are:

• More knitting
• Execute travel journal design
• Continue the craft stash cull

For this update's visual, here is a photo of the little Valentine's Day surprise I made for The Leopard:

This is what he found when he opened the box of Twinnings Earl Grey on Saturday morning.  I used a pretty (and free!) printable teabag wrapper from Creature Comforts and then added a heart-shaped paperclip I made by following How About Orange's awesome and easy tutorial.  I already had the paperclip and my Oma (that's German for Grandma) had given me the silver thread ages ago. Proof that love doesn't cost a thing!

So that's this week's update done and dusted.  I'm going to try to post more this week - I've got a bunch of birthday cards to show you!

 

Friday I'm in Love: cross stitch

Hello and happy Friday!  This week has seemed rather long. so I'm really looking forward to a weekend of relaxing, socializing and crafting...and not necessarily in that order.

This week's Friday I'm in Love feature is about a craft that I have pursued on and off for many years - cross stitch.  I've always enjoyed doing it, but I do have trouble finishing the projects I start and I've never had the inspiration or guts to create my own patterns.  Recently though, I've come up with a couple of ideas that I hope to pursue in the near future.  So it's no surprise that I love seeing what other stitchers have created. 

I think I was introduced to the work of The Wild Animus through a  Craft Zine blog post.  Her work is simple and stunning. 

   
 

(photos above and below by The Wild Animus)

I *love* cherry blossoms and think dividing the work over three embroidery hoops is genius!

 

I also love poppies.  This piece is so dramatic, don't you think?

I think it would be pretty irresponsible of me to post about creative cross stitch and not mention neawear.  Based in Montreal, Janick, has some very beautiful creations that reveal cross stitch as a hip and contemporary craft.

 

 

 

(photos by neawear)

 

Aren't they lovely?  I find they inspire me to start creating my own cross stitch patterns.  I think, however, that I should probably finish the small project I started back in the Spring first!

 

inspiration: creative brain vs. logic brain

I know I already posted today, but I just saw something and had to post about it.  Ez of Creature Comforts has been posting inspiring quotes lately and today's really hit home for me.

  (Direct link here)

I often feel that the logic part of my brain hinders the creative part, pushing me to only make or do things that are "useful".  I'm trying to learn to create for creativity's sake.  I've printed this quote out and will put it on my inpiration board.  Thanks Ez!

Inspiration: 100 ideas

I read Kerri Smith's blog but I somehow missed this cool page on her site.  I guess one of the (few) problems with using a blog reading tool is that you don't spend as much time poking around a website - you just subscribe to the blog feed and go.  I guess I need to learn to explore a bit more. 

It's not very descriptive or prescriptive (in the general sense), but looks like a great way to be inspired by the world around us, and perhaps within us.  You can also print out a PDF of the list, cut out each idea and pick them randomly.  I think I'm going to give it a try.

(image from www.kerismith.com)

29 Creative Goals for 2009

So it's a brand new year and I'm slowly finding my groove with this new blog - two things that have inspired me to set some creative goals.  I decided on 29 because it fits nicely with 2009 and it works out to just over one every two weeks, which is something I think I can handle.  This list will be used as both a starting off point and a source of inspiration for a year of all sorts of creativity.  I'm going to try my best to accomplish everything on the list and will report on my progress every week in a feature called "Creative Goals Monday" (super original, I know)

I wrote this list quickly - in about 30 minutes - and it's not in any sort of order.

neonfoxtongue's 29 Creative Goals for 2009:

1) Learn to knit Three week course - January
2) Put pen/pencil to paper once a week
3) Learn how to Gocco
4) Sew an article of clothing
5) Re-design my blog to reflect me and my style Done!
6) Paint at least one of the sketched out canvasses I have in storage
7) Decorate a plain black bag I have
8) Learn some basic embroidery stitches
9) Finish my ATC 'Affirmations' series
10) Re-purpose an old piece of clothing into something else
11) Collaborate with a friend on a silk screening project
12) Make a piece of jewelery
13) Come up with an aesthetic direction for our new (yet to be found) home
14) Design and make one thing that I would consider 'good enough' to sell
15) Make something out of wood
16) Paint/refinish a piece of furniture
17) Sew something for our new home
18) Make a mobile
19) Make our wedding album, as well as albums for our parents
20) Play with linocut printing again
21) Recover the seats of our kitchen chairs
22) Take a minimum of four creative classes or workshops (one for each season) - winter: knitting; spring: using alcohol inks
23) Join the AGO
24) Set up an inspiration board in our new home
25) Make an advent calendar for Christmas
26) Cross-stitch a guitar strap for The Leopard
27) Find a way to display our art postcards
28) Undertake some sort of felting project (needle or wet)
29) Try paper quilling

It might seem like a lot to some (or not much to others), but I tried to keep things manageable for me by listing a mix of specific projects and more flexible medium-specific activities.  Quite a number of these won't happen until we move back to Canada in the Spring, but there are enough that I can accomplish (or start) here in London.  And I know that I didn`t go into a lot of detail here, but I`ll save that for the Monday blog posts.

Of course, I'm open to creative activities or pursuits that aren't on the list, but I hope it will give me some focus over the year and result in some projects that I like and am proud of.

Wishing you a wonderfully creative 2009!

("Creative Goals" font is Monbijoux by Billy Argel)