Altered Couture of the Month- Customize Your Shoes Tutorial

Recently, I was in the market for a new pair of black wedge sandals. Though I liked the simple form of these wedges from Urban Outfitters, I wasn't crazy about the non-black heel. At first I thought, "thats ok, I'll just buy them and rub black shoe polish over the pseudo-suede heel." Ok. So probably not the best idea I ever had, but thats the great thing about thinking... sometimes one thought leads you to ANOTHER! And lucky for you my blog on Artful Living is here to share it with you!!

The Gift of Prints n Student Creativity

Students, both former and current are one of the greatest forms of creativity sparks and inspiration we can have as teachers and quite honestly as human beings.

From founder of Karma Seed Chris Lo, to current Brown University student Isabella Giancarlo (who recently sent me an envelope filled with valentines day handmade wares including a silk-screened pillowcase) and Colin Alexander current art student to my alma mater Maryland Institute College of Art whose art graces my walls- students feed my daily life.

Current students do it on an hourly basis - whether it is with a cool new nail polish design, an altered book art piece they made, their illustrations, or math class doodles or simply their solutions to the parameters of my assignments, like AK's solution to my good ol' brown paper bag">BROWN PAPER BAG HEAD PIECE PROJECT you see here: made entirely of brown paper brown paper bag">lunch bags to read about this assignment click brown paper bag">here.

Wearable Art made of brown paper bags by my current student AK Hence todays post- A former student came bearing beautiful gifts recently - Lena Jorde (who I taught for only one year during her freshman year of high school before she transferred out of my school). The one year we shared was a full one, Lena participated in my Herstory project and we got very close. And we remained close- at times she wrote me letters and even brought me as a speaker to the Putney school to present the Herstory project. I have always been impressed by Lena, her maturity and her artistic inclinations among an array of other passions and talents..always choosing the path of greatest resistance and integrity in order to develop her whole self. Lets put it this way - she chose to milk the cows at dawn while in high school - as opposed to a cush office task...now that is what I'm talking about. Lena is now a graduate of the Putney School and is attending Columbia University. Without realizing it she made an inadvertent portrait of both my hub and I :
He uses a coffee infuser and I of course am all about tea.

tea by lena jorde

coffee print by lena jorde

Emerging Artists who Caught My Eye Part I

Seeing as I haven't been feeling well these days (looks like what I thought was a cold or developing allergies may be turning into my chronic bronchitis again- but I'm still fighting it), the hub thought it would be nice to take a drive up to Connecticut to see the last hour of the senior thesis art exhibit of one of my former students, Lorena Estrella. Lorena is currently a double major (Latin American Studies and Printmaking) and is now the second of my students who took printmaking with me in high school and went on to major in it in college. If that's not good medicine, I don't know what is!

Lorena is about to graduate Wesleyan University. While there I got to see another former student of both my hubs and I, Nikki Long (psych major) and we got to see other artists in the senior thesis show. The two others (along with Lorena's that really caught my eye) are Nicolina Baxter and Eric Bissell. There were others exhibiting, but had I walked into that space in any New York City gallery these three are the ones I would have photographed for you anyway. So here is part I of three post- each is very different so stay tuned.

Lorena Estrella with her senior thesis prints entitled 'ataduras' Lorena's ataduras print photo by m.diazLorena's ataduras print photo by m.diaz Lorena in the printmaking studio displaying her drawerLorena's matrix from one of her prints

Yes, the Giveaway is still going strong (i'm amazed!) and April 4th is almost here!

-ciao Amarettogirl

A Winter Day

Today has just been cold, wet and gray. Half-snow, half-rain (not conducive to driving) and plain ol' yukky and thats how I feel too. It feels as though winter is lasting 4eva...So I thought I would kick-up a fire and share a sneek-peek into a new project (or two) that I'm working on.

another winter day photo by m. diaz New drawing/painting and linoleum print of my wolf girl by m. diaz a cupcake pinchusion I bought

I have another exhibit coming up after Spring Break and that means more artwork for me. I'm really interested in continuing the theme of the shifter-like creatures from my last exhibit. I was also so moved by my Benecio Del Toro's Wolfman movie I knew it would affect my work and show up there.

Last year I visited the Putney School in Vermont as a visiting artist to do an artist talk. While I was there I got to visit the local town, have some wonderful food and I visited a delightful book shop with a diversified children's book section, which is where I found this adorable cupcake pincushion.

I had been seeing quite a few 'feltie' pincushions on the blogosphere, and since I love all things cupcakes (just see my Mai sweetshop line that I launched a year and a half ago), I really had to make my own. So now I have.

Here is MY version of a cupcake pincushion. Yay.

Cupcake Pincushion by m. diaz

Love Story With No Words

Well, here we are one day away...

I have received some awesome feedback to my blog questions and I'm going to post those responses as tomorrows special VDAY BLOG! So its not too late to add your responses to those last two blogs.

Also here's an awesome tip- if you're running out of time and need to do some serious lovenote gifting go to this awesome PHOTOJOJO site designed with us creatives and photographers in mind. You are going to love these easy peasy ideas. Just click on this little arrow: