moved !!

WordPress has been great and all, but I just can’t get over how great Blogger is.  I like how I can customize my blog there much more than I can here.

So I have moved !   If you’ve bookmarked or linked this site, please update to:

{{   http://tenwen-art.blogspot.com  }}

See ya! : )

master of fine arts degree

Been thinking about graduate school.  Scratch that, I WANT to go to grad school in 2011, and I will (failure is not an option).  Found this at the Rhode Island School of Design’s website:

{{ US News MFA Program Rankings 2009 }}

Interesting…however, US News forgot to rank them by tuition cost!  (Yikes!)

fabric flowers

My friend is getting married in October, and I have been helping her find ideas and plan decorations for her wedding.  I came upon this fabric flower tutorial { here }.  We thought we’d give them a try and possibly try to sell them on etsy in the future.

Here are some of my prototype attempts.

flower-bead

I like how delicate and contemporary these flowers are.  You could pin them to your sweater or put them in your hair.

flower-tulle

This one has some greenish-colored tulle also sewn into it.  It’s hard to see in this light.

flowers-3

Overall, I like how they turned out.  I’ve figured out some techniques and things to modify as I make them, based on the tutorial I followed.

Embroidery

A while back, I bought the book Doodle Stiching.  I must be honest, I was attracted to the cover first, but the inside is informative and fun as well.  The author/artist creates “doodle” embroidery.  None of this proverb-spewing-home-sweet-home embroidery that your gramma did.  So, I finally got around to using some of her techniques and I made this:

emb-bird1

I made it over the weekend using some fabric and embroidery floss I had in my crafty tub.  I made the design myself, and started from a pencil sketch that progressed to a charcoal drawing on fabric, and from there, stitching!    It was fun.  I need to work on my tension and technique overall, but I like how the bird turned out.

Eventually, I’d like to make a bunch of sweet little kitschy embroidered images to sell on etsy, along with some small paintings, and some other crafty stuff.

Animal Paintings

My brother and sister-in-law are going to have their first kiddo, and so they asked me to make some animal paintings for the nursery.  The theme is Eric Carle – the children’s author & illustrator of books like Brown Bear, Brown Bear and the Caterpillar book.  I was initially going to make some collage-like spin offs of Eric Carle’s work, but upon closer inspection, I discovered that his stuff really isn’t that “cute” in the kiddie way for what I wanted to create, so I did my own animals.  The paintings are oil on 12 x 12 inch canvases.

baby-dog

 

baby-octo

 

baby-hippo

Poppies Triptych

I made these little poppy paintings for my sister-in-law for Christmas.  They are 5 x 5 inches in size.  Small and fun.  And my apologies, the weird whitish glare is due to the lighting used when I took the photos.

poppies1

poppies2

poppies3

handmade pearl necklace

One day, while browsing anthropologie.com {i <3 that site!} I came upon this necklace:

elias-necklace

However, anthropologie wanted $200+ for it!!  D:  Ridiculous, right?  Just some ribbon and pearls glued into a metal setting.  So instead of splurging on the necklace, I decided to make my own version of it:

necklace1

 I got all of my supplies at Michael’s, and it cost me roughly $40 {I could’ve made it for even less, but I opted for the freshwater pearls!}.  I used beading wire, gold ribbon, matching gold thread, 50 freshwater pearls, 6 crystal beads, and 2 hoops from a toggle/hoop clasp set.

necklace3

I left the ribbon fairly long, so that I can wear it long or short.

necklace4

necklace5

 No clasps on the ends – I just tie it in a bow.  Well, I guess my version of the necklace isn’t as elegant as the original, but I think it’s pretty swanky!