I'm happy to announce that the recipient of my Month of Softies quilt, Tatum Harris Willard, was born yesterday morning at 5:57 AM in Dallas, TX. Yay! I think the family's chosen nickname, Tater (Tot), is appropriate, don't you?

And if you're coming here from Loobylu, welcome! I think its some sort of internet law that the moment you let your postings slide will be the exact moment that someone very cool will link to you and bless you with lots of new traffic. :) But with the sunny, warm spring weather bringing on one of my regular manic creative phases, I've got all sort of new ideas swirling in my head!

Posted by katybeck at 10:49 AM | Comments (2)

I spent most of my weekend working on some plaster carvings for my design class. It was so much fun I made a new project out of it!

Mine looks like this so far (click to see the Flickr set):

The assignment was to make a relief carving based on a master painting, and I chose Gustav Klimt's Tree of Life. I love the movement of all those swirls! Once I clean it up a bit and varnish it, its going to look fabulous.

The second project I worked on was to cast a larger block of plaster and carve a freeform biomorphic shape in it. I haven't taken pictures of it yet, but it looks astoundingly similar to the Plaster Moon Rock Sculpture project in Todd Oldham's new Handmade Modern book. The book looks amazing!

Posted by katybeck at 05:15 PM | Comments (1)

I've caught a major case of the gardening bug in the last few weeks. Last weekend I made a trak to IKEA to pick up some of their lovely, inexpensive glazed pottery:

Can you believe the tall pot was only $40? If my car were bigger I'd have come home with a few more! Now I'm on the lookout for interesting plants. I hit the jackpot at the local nursery when I found the half-price perennial table:

I also made my first foray into starting seeds indoors this winter, since you really can't find a more economical option. I started a couple of flats in late February, and one in mid-March, and they are just about ready to head outdoors!

I started with a seed-starting kit given to me at Christmas, which consisted of empty growing cells, a tray, and a clear cover. They didn't turn out well - I had all sorts of trouble getting the soil to stay at a consistent moisture level, and ended up producing more mold than seedlings. After that I tried a tray of Jiffy peat pellets and had much better luck.

Once I had some little sprouts, I rigged up a little indoor grow lamp by putting a compact flourescent indoor reflector flood bulb in a cheapo IKEA work lamp, which seemed to work well for my small collection. I've managed to nurture a few Bluebonnets (must represent the home state!), a red version of the Bluebonnet called Alamo Fire, Asters, and both Red and Blue Sweet Pea vines.

Posted by katybeck at 03:59 PM | Comments (2)

This weekend I finally sat down to the tedious - yet somehow satisfying - task of restoring my mom's vintage (read: really dried out) Rapid-o-graph pens back into working order. The goal was to be able to use them in a drawing for class, and it only took me an hour a pen!

Ok, thats really not a statistic to brag about. How about the fact that a new pen costs $20 at the art supply store, and I managed to get four used pens back into pristine working order? Now that's shoestring, baby!

Before starting this project I did a lot of research to try and get some guidance on how to clean one of these things. The results: pretty sparse (with one notable exception). I learned through trial and error that your pen will never work if you haven't separated your pen into all of the pieces shown above. Because if something is stuck together, it means there's a motherload of dried ink stuck in there, too. It took a soft, small paintbrush as a "scrubber," a jar of pen cleaner, a mountain of paper towels, and a steadily dripping faucet to get each part clean and like new again.

Posted by katybeck at 10:01 PM | Comments (3)

With only one fang grown in so far, this little guy is still just a baby monster. Soon he'll grow into his claws and be a force to to reckon with!

I'm still thinking up a name for him, but I do know he's going to become a permanent fixture on my computer monitor at work! He's made out of the remains of an Amazon.com gift bag, other assorted bits and pieces, and some minute rice. :)

Any suggestinos on his name?

Posted by katybeck at 11:22 PM | Comments (4)