Daily Art Muse - Contemporary fine craft curated by Susan Lomuto » My-Work

liquid ballet

Susan Lomuto — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 16:30:53 +0000

Every day I measure out a few dark green drops of vitamins into a glass of water. And every day I watch the slow motion ballet as the green drops swirl downward through the clear liquid. It never fails to make me smile. This photograph barely captures the graceful movement – trust me, it is a liquid ballet.

[Click on the image to see the large version.]

news you can use from daMuse!

Susan Lomuto — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 15:58:09 +0000

Popping in on a Sunday to give you a little news from daMuse!

Many of you have written asking for a Daily Art Muse button to put on your blogs and websites. I finally had a little time to create the buttons and you can find them in the sidebar.

Choose the button you like, copy the code beneath the button, put the code into your html page and the image (with a link to daMuse) will automagically appear (or, if you have a Wordpress blog, you can put the code in a Text Widget for your sidebar).

If you love this blog, sharing Daily Art Muse is a great way to show your support – grab a button to put on your website!

One more announcement: Did you know that there is a quick and easy way for you to find out what’s new in my Etsy shop? Simply click on the ‘Subscribe to shop feed‘ link and get the latest listings by RSS Feed. How cool is that?

Over the next few weeks I will be listing my own handmade text-related supplies – you won’t want to miss that so be sure to subscribe to the feed!

a gift for you

Susan Lomuto — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 19:05:04 +0000

I’m a low-key, no-frills, hassle-free holiday type of woman. I’m happiest creating so that’s what I’ve been doing this holiday season while everyone else hustles and bustles. But I do have a gift for all of you! A thank you for playing along in my giveaway last week (the comments gave me lots of ideas for my Etsy shop); a ‘happy holidays no matter what you celebrate…I’m celebrating YOU’ kind of gift.

Polymer clay image transfer pushed through a post office box door

Rainer Maria Rilke’s Letter to a Young Poet is one of my favorite books. There are many passages that move me to tears, to a place of comfort, to a state of mind that allows me to take a deep breath no matter what is going on in the world. I took one of my favorite passages and created a collage sheet just for you!

Rilke: Love The Questions {Collage Sheet in PDF* Format}

This little present includes the sheet of quotes/sentences you see above, the same sheet in reverse (for easy image transfers) and one page of the excerpt alone, framed for your viewing pleasure. I hope it brings you many hours of art-making joy!

*The PDF is a large file (so that you can print it with no problem).

text messages: new etsy supply shop

Susan Lomuto — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 15:19:45 +0000

Yes, I was silly yesterday. Teasing you with images and clues and giveaways. All done in the spirit of fun. All leading up to this announcement:

I opened an Etsy shop!

textmessages.etsy.com offers text-related materials for artists and crafters. I love words, text, quotes and use them often in my art so this was a natural progression for me.

I’m pushing polymer again! This time through vintage brass. Click the image!

At textmessages.etsy.com you will find vintage typewriter keys, brass letter stencils, vintage vocabulary cards, text collage sheet downloads, letterpress wood type and a variety of other text-related supplies to help you add another layer of meaning to your art. It is still evolving and I have lots more to list so visit often! You can access the site through the links in the sidebar on the right or the links in this post.

Vintage French vocabulary cards. Click the image!

Come back this afternoon for my regular post featuring smashing good art and tomorrow morning I’ll be announcing a BIG BOOK giveaway to celebrate textmessages.etsy.com. Stay tuned!

wood type

Susan Lomuto — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 19:06:54 +0000

From my collection of vintage letterpress wood type.

More letter.text.words fun to come soon…stay tuned.

susan tackles photoshop…sort of

Susan Lomuto — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 20:36:50 +0000

I’m teaching myself Photoshop and Photoshop Elements. Slowly. In the past I just dabbled with the sophisticated software – I am kind of intimidated by it. It makes me nervous. Photography is not my strong suit. Never was. Yet I love images, and I love the idea of manipulating images. I’m at the beginning of a long learning curve and looking for a workshop or private instruction. Any recommendations?

Here is a picture my daughter recently sent to my mom. My mother loves this picture of Jess. She loves the look on her face, the soft expression, but it was so dark I couldn’t really enjoy it.

I popped it into Photoshop and played around with it using filters and adjusting levels.

I like this – not bad for a beginner – but I wasn’t done playing.

Sweet, right? It was the middle of the night and I couldn’t sleep so…

This was fun, but I would like someone to teach me how to do more than beginner-luck stuff. Anybody know where I can get hands-on instruction in the New York area?

If you are a Photoshop whiz-kid, I invite you to take the original image of Jess and make some more magic – I would love to see what you come up with!

Oh, and Jess? Thanks for being a good sport and letting me play with your pictures in public – as always, you continue to inspire and teach me every day!

lock and key

Susan Lomuto — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 17:36:04 +0000

Is your creativity locked up, locked away, locked out? Lock mechanisms are curious things that often work in mysterious ways. Try to view being locked out as a gift and see if the key appears, the lock is broken, the doors open wide. It has been this way for me, but there are times that I need a gentle reminder. You too?

new polymer clay cuff

Susan Lomuto — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 17:07:35 +0000

The cuff below is the result of an afternoon spent playing with the new texture wheels I made thanks to an article in the current issue of Polymer Cafe. The author, Irene Semanchuck Dean, explores a new spin (literally) on an old idea. Want to know more? I’m sure I saw a few magazines left on the shelf at Barnes and Noble the other day…

Polymer clay, acrylic paint, wire

After I added the texture and baked the clay, I painted it then sanded off the texture…oh it’s a long story! This is my first attempt at an all-polymer cuff bracelet – it didn’t turn out looking anything like the picture I had in my head, so I will try both again – cuffs and texture wheels (next time I won’t sand off the texture). Have a great weekend!

more early work

Susan Lomuto — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 16:58:38 +0000

I’m going out for a walk in the warm June sunshine this afternoon – hope you enjoy these two pictures that I just found – more of my early polymer clay vessels. 2004 must have been the year that I read about using crackle medium with polymer clay on Glass Attic…gotta love that crackle!

Crackle Ring Boxes, polymer clay/crackle medium, 2004

polymer clay vessel

Susan Lomuto — Tue, 27 May 2008 17:15:22 +0000

Another oldie but goodie. I just found these pictures of a slab construction vessel that I made a few years ago. The handle on the lid is a knot from a tree branch. Not sure what I was trying to do here – this is one of several slab construction vessels that I made when I first learned the technique.

Polymer clay, tree branch 2004

work in progress: thin polymer clay shapes

Susan Lomuto — Thu, 22 May 2008 18:15:32 +0000

I’m still trying to figure out what I want to do with these thin translucent shapes. My original idea was to make a vessel…but I’m not sure how I want to get there. Here are a few ‘chips’ that I threaded with ribbon. I’m going to keep playing until the chips decide what they want to be when they grow up.

on my work table

Susan Lomuto — Thu, 15 May 2008 17:06:57 +0000

I’m playing with thin translucent shapes. Just playing.

What are you working on?

off and on

Susan Lomuto — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 02:06:47 +0000

I’m going to take some time off to attend to some personal business, but before I leave I want to show you what’s on my worktable right now.

This is a paper-thin sheet of polymer clay ready for the oven.

Here’s the same sheet of clay after I baked it – I used it as a background for a photo of a mold. Cool, huh? And that’s all I’m saying!

I hope to be back online in a week or so – see you soon!

finished…

Susan Lomuto — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 18:07:26 +0000

I finished the ‘pushing polymer’ cuff experiment. Not bad…there are several things that I would do differently next time, but isn’t that half the fun of experimenting? Still trying to get ready for Synergy…

go fish!

Susan Lomuto — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 20:43:22 +0000

Today, Kim Cavender wrote a fun post about polymer clay fish (Denise Baldwin’s fish are a riot!). Got me thinking about the ‘fish phase’ I went through a few years ago. The vessel below started what became a series of polymer clay fish. I had just discovered Christi Friesen’s fanciful beads and I wanted to try to make a vessel using the technique.

This little guy is still one of my favorites. Circa 2004 (I think).