Making a Canvas Book Cover

Working with postcards means you have to eventually figure out how to store them. Right now, I’m exploring using small 3-ring binders and creating interesting pages to hold them. The 3-ring binders come from a used book store. They were cookbooks first. For now, I’m keeping the pages so I can use them as templates for holders.

Front of slip cover, fit over binder.

To make the cover, I wanted to use a photographic print on canvas. Because I didn’t want to put the canvas through too much stress, I purchased a canvas remnant to practice.

Friend Rosaland Hannibal had found a slipcover video by Lyric Kinard, made a sample, and offered to teach me.

Rosaland is brave. She knows about my sewing history (failed three classes, can’t cut straight) and promised me this would be easy. What was wonderful about making the cover is that we could use the straight lines on the fabric as guides. Rosaland laughed at my fussy lining up of the print to make sure it was even.

Inside flap of slipcover fits close to rings to hide the original cover color that I didn't find appealing.

The slip cover demands sewing only two straight lines. I got the first one, but the second one, despite the fact that I measured and Rosaland approved, was off. The cover didn’t fit into the carefully measured pocket. Neither one of us knew why. I measured the seam a quarter of an inch larger, and it still didn’t fit. Rosaland showed me an excellent and easy way to rip open a sewn seam without tearing the fabric.

The important thing was not that I proved to Rosaland that I can’t sew, the important learning was that if you screw it up, it doesn’t matter. You rip it open and do it over until it works. I had to put down the story (“I can prove to you I cannot sew”) for the bigger accomplishment (“Let’s make this cool slipcover.”)

The third time was the charm. The slipcover fit. I still don’t understand why the

The stripes don't match, but the slipcover is a good fit.

stripes didn’t line up, as I had wanted that to happen, but over all, I am pleased with how it turned out. Now I can work on the photo canvas.

A new project sometimes requires beginner’s mind–the willingness to see what happens and deal with what shows up–everything from failure to success. That was one important slipcover. And I can’t wait to see how the postcard journal progresses.

–Quinn McDonald is the author of Raw Art Journaling, published by North Light Books. It is available from amazon.com through Quinn’s website.

The Next Pen

Running into the mall to get to the Apple Store for my iMovie lesson, I dropped my pen. It was a favorite, of course–do I have pens that aren’t my favorite?

This was a Metropolitan Museum of Art pen. The cap was striped in primary colors and had a rotating ring of  that produced secondary colors by turning it. Simple, but fun. The pen itself is a fiber-tip in a case that’s bigger–more comfortable in my hand.

The pen shot out of my hand and bounced on the pavement awkwardly and shot into the lane of parking-lot traffic. I automatically reached for it, and the blast of a car horn stopped me from running to pick it up.

A huge Ford 150 pickup roared past me, the door handle height over my head, the truck so long, I had to pause to wait for all of it to get by. At the speed the driving was traveling, which was at least 40 mph, (he must be on the way home, no one looking for a parking spot drives that fast) I’m glad he honked. I would have left a big dent in his lower bumper, and he, in me.

I heard the pen crack and winced. When the truck passed, I picked up the pen, Interestingly enough, although a Ford 150 weighs more than two tons–4,685 pounds (without anyone in it), only the cap was smashed. To its great credit, the aluminum body of the pen and the fiber-tip were fine.

There is no replacement cap–I asked already. So it looks like I need another fiber tip pen. I have enough fountain pens, and don’t want a roller ball–so what pen do you suggest that replaces the smashed fiber tip art pen?

Feeling Impending. . .Joy?

The TV was on, with the sound off. I don’t watch TV anymore, so my interest was vague. When the interviewer leaned forward, and her eyes grew large, and the others around the interview table also leaned forward, I did wonder what the person being interviewed had just said. I wound back the, ummmm, pixels, and tuned on the sound.
“I have a feeling of impending doom,” the interviewed person declared. And the others repeated the action of widening their eyes, and leaning forward in interest.

“About what?” was the first question. I really didn’t care. I had seen enough–we love impending doom. We love the slightly sick feeling of fear, of the unknown. Of putting our fears on “the other,” or “them.”

I wondered why we never say, “I have an impending feeling of great joy!” I’ve never heard anyone say that. Is joy harder to bear than doom? Is it so much easier to think we know bad things will happen than expect good things to happen? Are we so certain of disaster that we don’t want to be responsible for joy?

I’m taking a stand here. I’m having a great feeling of impending joy. I think good things will happen. Because the more I look for them, the more I will find. Just like on the motorcycle, I’m looking in the direction of joy.

–Quinn McDonald has a book coming out in a month. Raw Art Journaling is for people who want to be satisfied and are afraid of the responsibility.

Beet: Cake, Love! (and Art)

When Patti Digh mentioned the beet cake, my eyebrows went up , but my heart skipped a beat. Earthy beets, dark chocolate–yes, it could work. And having just finished Patti’s book Life is a Verb (I read What I Wish For You first)–either one make great gifts, but read them both–I would have tried boiled socks if she recommended it.

The availability of the cake recipe meshed nicely with a friend’s birthday, so I asked Cooking Man if he’d give it a try. He loves beets, so it wasn’t a hard sell. The recipe calls for a lot of beets, so a big pot went on the stove, and the smell of cooking beets leaked through the air-conditioned house. It was odd, smelling beets in summer. But we all suffer gladly for art and cooking experiments.

The batter was as red as could be expected from five-beet puree.

And now it was ready for the oven. The beets add the majority of the bulk in the cake, which reduces the sugar and flour.

Once out of the oven, it looked dense, smelled great, and the chocolate won the color battle.

The fabulous beet stencil from the original recipe was beyond my pay grade, so I settled for a celebratory candle and my trademark wavy line.

Powder sugar covered the entire stencil to make a clear image.

I removed the stencil pieces with tweezers to keep from spilling any sugar in the negative space. There were a few tiny crumbs of sugar. I picked them off with a damp watercolor brush.

Nothing left to do but sing Happy Birthday and whip the cream. We like it flavored with a bit of vanilla, but unsweetened. The cake is flavorful, not overly sweet, rich in earthy-chocolate flavor. Cooking Man said he could get a hint of beet, but neither the Birthday Girl nor I could taste the beets. The texture is smooth, with a great mouth feel. Cooking Man thought that next time, it might be fun to split the cake and add a center layer of banana cream. I suggested a topping of creme anglaise, a vanilla-rich sauce.

Early in the beet-puree process, Cooking Man asked if I’d like to lick the blender–a treat for me with almost anything except beet puree. But wait! There is always room for art, so I took the leftovers and soaked different substrates in beet mash.

Top to bottom is a cotton/poly blend of fabric–it took on a bit of color, but almost all of it rinsed out. Next is a piece of canvas that took the color well. Below that is a strip of Arches Text Wove (now called Velin). The fabric and paper were dried, and then the beat mash rinsed off. Before all the color came off, I heat set the pieces by ironing them. Beet color is fugitive, and without a mordant to hold the color, it won’t last. Over time, it will fade, but I find the reddish brown an acceptable color.  The bottom strip is a very fragile paper that dissolved when I rinsed out the beets. To preserve this piece, I put the paper on a piece of parchment (still visible underneath all the papers) and sprayed it with a squirt bottle. It rinsed off some of the beet paste.

The next step will be to cover the paper in clear tar gel to preserve the color and paper.

Satisfying all the way around. Nothing is better than a cake and some new art papers, all in one afternoon.

–Quinn McDonald is the author of Raw Art Journaling, Making Meaning, Making Art, to be released on July 20, 2011, by North Light Books.

One Second in the Light

It was dark when I left for Prescott last night, to drive up for a training class. Prescott was the capital of Arizona when it was still a territory. It sits at 5,500 feet, so it’s a lot cooler than Phoenix. The sun had set, but the sky looked backlit. The mesas were outlined, and the further I drove from Phoenix, the more stars I could see.

Photo by Andrew Dunn (Image licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic)

I arrived at the hotel late, and collapsed into bed. The day had started before 5 a.m. and after a full day of teaching, the silence of driving for an hour an a half was calming.

Before the alarm rang, I work up and decided to risk finding the bathroom without my glasses on. The room was not completely dark, and while my toes were scared, I was too tired to hunt for the glasses on the nightstand, afraid I’d spill the water bottle onto the phone.

Heading into the bathroom, I noticed a perfect circle of light about the size of a saucer, shining on the wall. At first, I thought it might be a cover on the wall, but I ran my fingers over it, and it was just the wall, with a perfect circle of light. There was a slight rainbow-halo effect around the edges. But I couldn’t linger, and continued on into the bathroom.

A minute later, when I walked by the spot on the wall again, it was gone. No light, not halo, no rainbow. I looked around the room, but no light was on. Curiosity wakes you up. I stood with my back against the wall and looked slowly around the room to see the source of the light.

And then I saw it: the rising sun had swept directly over the peephole in the door, casting a perfect round of light on the motel wall. In the dark room, the peephole in the door looked like an LED bulb at full volume. And then, as I looked at it, the sun’s light arced over the lens, flashed, faded, and the sun continued to rise. The light was gone.

And in those few seconds when the sun lined up against that one hotel room door, for less than a minute, I had been awake and has seen it. OK, it was not Stonehenge, although the principle was exactly the same. But it was a moment that could have easily been missed, ignored, forgotten. I could have taught a day later and missed it. The desk clerk could have assigned me another room. I could have slept a minute longer. Or three minutes less.  But that isn’t what happened. On the one day in a year, when the sunrise lines up with the peephole in that one hotel room door I had been there to see it. One person had seen it and thrilled to the accuracy of sun/door/peephole/wall.

It was a small, perfect moment. And I had been awake for it.

The Lure of Stats

If you are a writer, you practice writing. Even if you write for a living. For me, that’s what my blog is–writing practice. And practice thinking as well. Part of being a good writer is being a good thinker–concepts move to ideas, get analyzed (OK, sometimes over-thought), then explained, resolved, or left open-ended and written. Those steps are a little vague, but you can’t write without thinking. And if there is no emotion involved, feh! who wants to read that?

The Cool Kids Table by Octopus Hat, through Creative Commons

Keeping a blog is more than practice writing, of course. A blog is public. Other people read it. The more we put “social” in Social Media, the more we want people to click the “like” button, friend us, click on links, leave a comment. Drive up our stats. I don’t know a single blogger who doesn’t check their stats several times a day. Sometimes more than several. Sometimes obsessively.

In other words, writing practice can easily push you back to middle school where you desperately want to sit at the cool kids’ table. It doesn’t matter if you never sat at the cool kids’ table in middle school. That yearning to be recognized, accepted by a group of people slightly better than you think you are. . .well, it’s still hard to resist. After all these years.

Several times in the four years I have been blogging, a post’s stats have gone through the roof. Sometimes months after I wrote it. Steel-Cut Oats (notice, no link–I am trying hard not to pander here) was my mainstay top-stat-getter for almost three years. An article I had written in desperation, because that day brought no creative grist to grind in my daily mill, sat at the top of my stat popularity. I’d see it covered with ads if I looked it up  on another computer.

But then it began to nag me–is writing done in desperation, without a lot of thought, is that better than my writing based on research? And steel cut oats? Why not art journaling, or techniques, or creativity, or coaching? Why steel cut oats? Or a fire pit burning for 30 years in Turkmenistan? And then, this week, an article on copyright? Finally. Validation. But that lasted for only one day.

That’s why writers are stat watchers. We aren’t ever sure what will be a hit. We can’t predict it. And writers, who chronicle the world as we find it, want to know when we got it right.

And  still, after all these years, I want to sit at the cool kid’s table. That’s my next project. Being OK with not sitting at the cool kids’ table. Being happy with the table I find myself at. Seeing who else is sitting right here, next to me.

–Quinn McDonald is the author of Raw Art Journaling: Making Meaning, Making Art. Which, at this second, is #20 in Mixed Media on Amazon.com

Image: The Cook Kids’ Table by OctopusHat, through CreativeCommons permission.

Upcoming Classes

Thanks for asking where I’m teaching. Here are the ones around Phoenix:

Make Your Own Raw Art Journal. June 28

Explore Raw Art Journaling–whether you’ve done it before or just want to find out about art journaling, this class will answer your questions and let you take home real journal pages to work on, maybe even a few completed ones!
I’m a certified creativity coach, so you will experience coaching as well.

When: June 28, Tuesday, from 6 pm to 9 p.m.
Time: 6 p.m. to 9 p.m.
Where: Union Hills campus of Paradise Valley Community College 
To register, phone: 602-787-7000.You can see the class listed on this page, New! Getting Started with Your Art Journal
Price: $39. No supply fee, bring the basics to class–scissors, glue, pens or colored pencils you like to write with.

Postcards and folder for Postcard Nation class

 

Postcard Nation: July 9

Make postcards from paper, fabric, ephemera. Bypass glue and messy paints. Oh, wait, we WILL get messy. Because in addition to the postcards, we are going to make a folder to put them in, and the folder is gorgeous, but messy to make.

When: July 9, 2 p.m. to 5 p.m.
Where: The Creative Quest, Glendale AZ
To Register: Call The Creative Quest:623-847-2215
Price: $30

Shorter and Shorter

Layers of paint, layers of meaning. © Quinn McDonald

We’ve got Twitter telling us to write our stories in 140 characters. We have shrunk the novel from Flash Fiction to Hint Fiction–stories told in 25 words or fewer. We even have micro-bios–summaries of 6 words.

Ever since I sarted One-Sentence Journaling, I’ve loved the short form–haiku, postcards, short journal pages. I think it’s time to move from layers of paint to layers of meaning.

This doesn’t mean writing fast or frenzied, top-of-the head responses. It means distilled. Concentrated. The deep subtlety of meaning, rich as home-made raspberry jam, thick with emotion.

What’s important about your life right now that you want to say in 10 words or fewer?

–Quinn McDonald is the author of Raw Art Journaling: Making Meaning, Making Art. It will be available in July. Quinn is currently booking events for discussing and working from the book. Contact her at QuinnCreative [at] Yahoo [dot] com.

Your Life on Index Cards

For decades, I’ve been a fan of index cards. They work perfectly for to-do lists, bookmarks, name tags, table place markers, reminder tags, and, of course, the one-sentence journal. (I’m not putting the link to the original blog post, because I no longer sell the one-sentence journal with prompts.)

A few days ago, I stopped by one of my favorite creative blogs, Daisy Yellow, and she had just started ICAD, Index Card A Day –what a great idea! Go over there and take a peek at the ideas, then join the fun with index cards.

Because I have a book coming out in July, I am learning how to make videos. Seems sensible that a how-to book should be demo’d by the author. That means learning how do create my own videos. I decided to combine the index card project and video, and create a small series of videos called Your Life on Index Cards. Using only index cards and some ordinary supplies, each video will make a comment on life. I hope they will be thoughtful, funny, and interesting.

They will vary, but here’s the first one. You’ll notice a credit for music at the end–and there will be music. Susan Loughrin from Inner Creative Voice offered to do the soundtrack, and I easily took her up. She’s an amazing creative force, so when the music is done and I have learned how to attach it to a video, I’ll post them side by side to compare how music changes the feeling of a video!

Meanwhile, Your Life on Index Cards.

–Quinn McDonald is the author of Raw Art Journaling: Making Meaning, Making Art, published by North Light Books. It will be available on July 20.

Talk to Me

After a horrible experience at a local hospital (well, it wasn’t my experience, I was a bystander), I began to wonder what the problem really was.

Image from Yalemedlaw.com

I find the question “What is this about, really?” very useful when I feel confused or frustrated. Sometimes what looks like “you are so thoughtless” is really “I’m very sensitive about that topic.” Occasionally, “He must be right and I must be wrong,” is really, “Yes, you did violate my trust.” Whatever the problem, it’s worth another look.

So I took apart the hospital experience. I went through layers, just like an art journal page. (And got more appreciation for layers, too).  Here are some layers I dug through, but did not explore, because they were part of the problem, but not the root of the problem:

• Not enough or wrong people doing the job. In an emergency room, the first person you should see is a triage expert who assesses the immediacy of your problem, not the administrator who asks for your insurance card.
• Wrong titles (“patient advocate” really was “My hospital, my rules. I represent the hospital, they sign my paycheck. Now get with the program.”)
• Not enough focus on the patient. If the first thing  you are given is not attention for your pain, but a sheet explaining color coding of employee job function by scrubs color and trim,  they’ve lost focus on what a hospital emergency room is.

The major problem was. . . lack of communication. OK, I teach communication, so every problem looks like a communication problem to me, but lack of clear communication is a slip away from a wrongful death lawsuit in an emergency room. Words I never want to hear from an emergency room doctor: “I don’t know if there is a [specialist] on duty today. They don’t tell us that. I’m just the emergency room doctor.”

Or, “The CAT scan is usually read in 20 minutes. Has it been an hour and a half already? Are you sure?”

Or, “I’ve called the Physician’s Assistant twice. She’s not answering. Here, I’ll order more pain medication for you. What did we give him before? Do you remember how long ago that was? Is his heart beat always that slow?”

When I asked, “Can you give me an overview of  what will happen next?” The reply, “”Well, as soon as I finish typing in these notes, I’m going to have to catch up on my paperwork. After that, I’m going to eat lunch, and then I have a meeting.”I was expecting a list of events that would lead to a medical treatment decision. Nope. In fact, we never got that.

No one in 24 hours could develop a plan that showed progress toward a solution. We were handed off, one to the next, each change of personnel started all over  with the same questions. When I said that we had given all of that information twice, I was told “Well, you need to give it again.” But no progress got made. What should have been a 50-yard dash was digging a hole at the 2-foot mark.

Following at a close second was the refusal of accountability. I understand CYA, but in a hospital, personal accountability for the responsibility of the job creates successful patient care. In 24 hours at the hospital, a specialist never showed up. The emergency room doctor handed off the patient to a hospitalist (doctor who does admissions) who listened to his lungs and signed a piece of paper. After that, all medical care was left to nurses or technicians. (I knew this from consulting my color-code chart).

Third, and most dangerous, is transforming medical care to a consumer service. I want the doctor to be the expert. That’s why a doctor has those enormous medical school bills I indirectly pay for. I am not the expert. I want expert advice in an emergency room. If I’m the consumer, I steer the conversation and the outcome. I get to choose. Making medical decisions for  the too-heavily-medicated-to-understand friend, based on a combination of hints given by a doctor and the administrator nixing choices because the insurance won’t cover them is not “doctor/patient consulting,” it’s bad medicine. It’s also a bad environment for sound financial decisions.

What was the outcome of all this? The patient stayed in the hospital for 24 hours, was never seen by a specialist, and released into my care, heavily medicated with an unresolved, pain-producing medical problem. I hope the pain medication makes it through the weekend, so we can start looking for a specialist on Monday morning. Because the one thing we are not doing is going to the emergency room. That’s just an expensive place to wait for Dr. Godot  for 24 hours.

–Quinn McDonald is not Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman, although at the moment, she wishes she were. She doesn’t even play a doctor on TV. She’s a writer who is in charge of someone else’s medical decisions, and she’s not qualified for that.