My Favorite Season in Food Form

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One of my favorite sites, since I try to limit my intake of sweets, I can at least appreciate the creations of others.

An Endless Supply of Tissue Paper

On the day Irene came to visit (two Sundays ago), I began my end of summer art project. I made the tissue paper pom-poms found on Martha Stewart's website. It took forever, which is probably because I am a lefty and was using righty scissors. The one issue I have now is figuring out where and how to hang them. Currently the pom-poms are living on the chair in my room. Meanwhile, school has started again, so hopefully I will be visiting Etsy Labs again soon.

A "Rustic" Cape Cod

 My family actually gets along well enough that my parents, my two siblings and I can take a vacation together (at least every other year). It took forever to decide where to go. Once the decision was made about location, calls were made about a rental. No rentals were available...

 Until Irene came to visit the Eastern Seaboard. We were able to rent a house that can only be described as a "rustic" cape cod, in Onset, MA. This style of house is built to withstand storms, they are traditionally small with low ceilings and one bathroom off the kitchen. We learned the first night that we had to check the beds before getting into them because there were creepy crawlers everywhere!

 Almost everyday of the trip we visited a quaint, little town. The last of which was Chatham. One of the true gems of Chatham is Mark August, a cute jewelry and home decor shop. I especially loved the fact that most of what is sold at Mark August is created locally.          

Catch-up

I cannot believe that this is the first time I am blogging in several months!

I have been very busy. Literally the day I finished my final exams, I started work doing file review for summer programs across the country and around the world. After that I spend a week in the happiest place on earth, Bethany Beach, DE of course! Where were you thinking?

A week after that, I started a four week long Hebrew language immersion program, called  the Ivriyon.

At the end of July, I went to the NewCAJE Jewish education conference. This was paid for by the Admissions Department of my Graduate School, to which I am eternally grateful.

Last week, I was at a two day training institute with the Jewish Education Project, for Hebrew school.

Okay, now that we are all caught up, the art I want to talk about is a project I participated in while at the NewCAJE conference. One of the sessions I attended was with Nancy Katz, an artist who among other things, facilitates community art projects. One of her projects is creating healing scarves, which is something that I was able to do during the conference. The purpose of this project is for a community to send messages of healing to members of the community who are ill. Once someone has recovered, the scarf is passed to the next person who needs support during an illness. The medium of this project is silk, four scarves are created on one large piece of silk and separated later. 
Each scarf says, "Oh Lord, please heal (her) now. אנא אל נא רפא נא לה". In the left hand corner of the picture are some completed scarves.  

Photo Courtesy of Talia Raymond

Kos Miriam (Miriam's Cup)

Pesach (Passover) is just a few days away! One of my jobs now includes doing to work with the Rosh Hodesh: It's a Girl Thing! curriculum. The project that we did for this month was for each of us to make our own Kos Miriam. Put simply, this is a cup that is put on the table during a Seder (festive meal during which the story of the exodus from Egypt is retold and reenacted), to represent and remind participants of Miriam's role in the narrative.

The top of my glass features Miriam and other woman dancing with timbrels after crossing the Red Sea. The bottom is a quote from a Debbie Friedman song, "And the woman dancing with their timbrels followed Miriam as she sang her song...".

Chag Kasher V'Sameach!

Pics To Go With Previous Post

Here I am, drawing my totally awesome design.

Let the painting begin!

Craft Night, Last Night at Etsy Labs with Jen Cooke

After a couple of weeks off, I went to Etsy Labs to take a drab boring tee and turn it into a work of art. Jen Cooke from Raeburn Ink was there to show us the process, which was really very simple. We either used pre-made stencils, or made our own using wax paper. After cutting out the stencil, it should be
ironed to the shirt so it does not move while being painted.

This time I forgot to bring my camera so, I only have one pic to post at the moment. Once the "official" pictures are posted I will snag any of my work and repost.

In hindsight, I probably shouldn't have added the black honeycomb shaped stencil to my own design but I just couldn't help it.

RIP Converses

It is with a heavy heart that I officially retire my favorite and artsyist pair of shoes. Purchased at the Converse outlet on the shore in Delaware, these (basically) one of a kind shoes have seen me though a move to North Carolina and back to New York City and countless walks from Morningside Heights through the Upper West Side. Some how the inner soles of these fabulous shoes have disintegrated, which leads me to believe that I own bio-degradable shoes. 

   I am now on the look out for my next pair of totally cool sneaks. Do you own awesome shoes? I would love to see them and, or hear your ideas of what I should look for in a pair of sneakers.

Just a Series of Pictures From Around Boston

Silk Painting

This past Sunday I participated in a workshop with Elizabeth Yaari from Explora-Torah, http://www.explora-torah.com/ET/Welcome_.html  Elizabeth is an artist who actually teaches bible, or more accurately, bibliodrama that includes art in the form of silk painting or mask making. This workshop was for Rosh Chodesh, celebrating the new month, which in the Jewish calendar is Adar II. After the participating students took part in an activity where they pretended they were Jews from an earlier period who were responsible for watching for the new moon, so they could make sure they had the day for celebrating exactly right, we got to the silk painting activity. This was something that students, their parents, and staff were able to participate in, so of course I did as well. The theme for this project was sanctuary, more specifically, what is our personal sanctuary and what makes it so? From what I understand, traditional silk painting involves using wax to to make outlines for the images. We didn't have anything as fancy, just gold markers, so the paint is a little runny. 

  


My personal sanctuary is nature, which is odd because I don't like camping. Living in a city makes it hard to find real nature, which is why I appreciate it so much and do things like recycle, and conserve energy, and generally care about the environment. 




(Photo Courtesy of Rachel Rothstein) 

Carla Sondheim's Drawing Lab

I didn't make it over to Etsy labs last week. However, I did watch Carla Sondheim's Drawing Lab, which can be found here: http://www.etsy.com/community. I tried following most of what Carla said on my first try (and my second...). By the time I got to my third I was done following directions. Carla did keep saying that they shouldn't be perfect and should all look different, so I decided that this meant I should absolutely do exactly the opposite of everything she said (Carla, if you somehow ever stumble upon this blog, I mean no offense). 

The picture of the dog I drew, is actually kind of scary and skeletal looking. 

My second drawing is of a cow and I think its cute, but I'll let you be the judge!

The third drawing of an owl, which I like the most, happened when I stopped following Carla's instructions. 

So sometimes the best art happens by accident! 

My Trip to Etsy Labs

Busy times for me means lag in posts. Last week I taught 8 classes in two days so I was wiped out because of all the planning that went into it. Then, this weekend I was away visiting relatives and attending a wedding. 

Right, anyway,Etsy labs, in Brooklyn, yeah. This is an interesting story. I took the F train to York Street and went the wrong way because of the bad directions I got. I ended up on the sketchy side of York St. When I realized I was totally not at Washington St., I turned around and (if you can believe it) asked a real live person for directions!

 When I finally arrived at 55 Washington St. where the Etsy headquarters is. It was an unassuming loft building. When I got to the seventh floor there was a chalk board sign pointing the way.

 The front door featured a handmade sign.

 Inside were tables and chairs, shelves filled with art supplies, books, and board games. This particular session was for painting glass hearts, in a set of three, using paint markers. There was great music, and all different types of people, which among other things meant that no two sets of hearts were the same. 

These are all three of mine together (the middle one says love in Hebrew and is upside down):

This is my favorite out of the three that I painted and it sort of happened by accident:  

The paint pens were rather difficult to use so this happened after I could not get any paint out, and then got way too much. Instead of cleaning it off and starting over when I had and overflow of paint I used the pen to just scribble. It is much prettier in person.     

One more really awesome thing about this experience was the name tag. Not only was it helpful for having conversation with the people at the table, they are really cute! (Note: I changed what I originally had to Hebrew because I am doing a project about Esty for my Hebrew class):

The HeArts

Historically speaking, St. Valentine's day is a Pagan Holiday. This along with the fact that I am Jewish and single means that I won't be celebrating. Judaism has its own romance holiday, Tu B'Av (literally the fifteenth of the month of Av), which usually falls in August. You can learn more about Tu B'Av Here:
http://www.myjewishlearning.com/holidays/Jewish_Holidays/Modern_Holidays/Tu_BAv.shtml
 However, this does not preclude me from participating in some sort of activity so I don't have to be alone, because that would be sad right? Therefore, I am off to Etsy Labs in Brooklyn to decorate a glass heart or two. Pictures to follow...

Backtrack

In December, I ran a booth at a Chanukah fair at one of the schools I work for. The booth was for making "stained glass" dreidels. The Project was simple enough for K-2nd graders, but still fun. I got to make one during the slow times: 

New Beginnings

This is my inaugural post, and as such I will include namesake images to better explain myself. Better yet, since you have probably already asked yourself, "Why Pomegranates and Paper Cranes?" Well, the answer is, that I recently began collecting ceramic pomegranates and I (even more recently) have begun to make paper cranes. I hope to some day be able to create something more complicated out of paper but for now... 

This was my first attempt to make pomegranates out of paper, thereby marrying my two interests. 

This is my first attempt at a paper crane... Hopefully, my cranes will evolve over time into stronger, more adaptable paper critters...