Valentines day propaganda is everywhere I look - but I am also noticing some alternatives to the lovey dovey sick making pink - so check these out - lots of fun.

plush black heart by etsy seller batteries not included

Submit your anti-valentines arts/crafts to Dabbled’s Black Heart Anti-Valentine’s Contest. Closes 11pm EST on Feb 12. Winners will receive either a stuffed cashmere black heart, or an original sketch of a suitably black hearted nature. [thanks craft for the tip]

LIMITED EDITION Valentine kits from the fabulous cartoonist, Natalie Dee! available at subversive cross stitch

and the ever fabulous domiknitrix has her ’spank me’ love heart pillow pattern available for a small fee on her website.

and something just a week bit cute is this knitted love heart ring - pattern available at pieknits for free download.

And I do love this knitted anatomical heart by flickr user pretty cranium [via ravelry]

Plush show with Jenny Harada, Heidi Kenny and Spooky Daddy Sat 9 Feb, Gettysburg PA.

I am curious about why you have chosen to write a book and spill the beans on your designs?

Ha Ha thats what you think………The techniques I use are simple, and they can be taught, its having a certain style and skill that I have, or any other designer, that you can try to teach but everyone has their own style and you can’t teach that.

49 Sensational Skirts: Creative Embellishment Ideas for One-of-a-kind Designs by Alison Willoughby, published by Interweave Press (April 1, 2008).

A bit about your background - you studied textiles as an undergraduate and then Constructed Textiles - Mixed Media as a post graduate and wrote your dissertation on the kilt. Making these skirts you say was an inevitable outcome of your process - can you tell me a little about how you came from the kilt to the simple design A-line skirt that you use now as a basis for your designs?

A kilt is basically a wrap with fabric manipulation in the middle, a very simple shape, a strip of fabric. I don’t use an A-line skirt, I use a pattern that is a wrap skirt between a half and quarter circle skirt. Its the idea of a wrap and the fact I can lay a wrap flat on a print table, or a sewing machine and manipulate it with surface.

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artstream gallery - both an online and bricks and mortar gallery - is hosting an exhibition called Lovely Hearts 2. Last year the exhibit drew artists and crafters from all over the world to raise money for The Breast Cancer Research Foundation. The artists may donate or retain 50% of the sale. There is still a week to get your entries in for the show. All work, small in size (up to 10×10x10 inches) and priced at $100 usd or less are eligible. Emphasis is on all aspects of love as the theme and all media is greatly encouraged. More info at artstream.

in LOVE with these doily trees by Lisa from her recent show at little bird gallery October 13th - November 8th, Lisa Solomon “over the river and through the wood”.

love this post at decor 8 on doily fun - wow what a lot of fun and fabulous uses to put those doilies to - this idea from sweet paul caught my eye.

Pricked: Extreme Embroidery at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York City, November 8, 2007-March 9, 2008

The average person encounters embroidery in daily life mainly in the form of tea towels and certain types of clothing. Few people think of the craft as a medium to be explored, a medium whose boundaries, capabilities and functions can be stretched. Pricked: Extreme Embroidery lifts the craft out of the realm of royal or religious vestements, out of the everyday table and bed linens and places it firmly in the realm of artists working not just as craftspeople but also as interpreters of contemporary life.

The exhibition is divided into 6 themed categories: NEITHER MORE NOR LESS concentrates on works incorporating text and words.
Judy Chicago, the doyenne of embroidery in contemporary art, is represented with Its Always Darkest Before the Dawn, where embroidery plays its traditional role of adding depth and luminosity with colorful silk threads.

Tilleke Schwartz’s two works are like embroidery sketchbooks, with motifs, words and images overlapping and interplaying on hand dyed fabric. Count Your Blessings, a travelogue of the artist’s visits to Australia and the US, intersperses phrases and sentence fragments with the question: Are craft people making money on the Internet?

Andrea Dezso’s Lessons from My Mother, a wall with dozens of 6”x6” embroidered illustrations of her mother’s adages. Each one begins with “My mother claimed that…” which is followed by some very interesting statement and an illustration of the sentiment.

Every visitor seems to read them all, and once read, the viewer can’t help but feel that she has just spent a few moments with the artist and her mother in the flesh.

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both of these via craft - led gingerbread man at kitchen budapest on flickr. and felt gingerbread cuties by my paper crane

I love that ornaments come in all shapes and sizes and themes.

The Tardis [via extreme craft]

Mr Pickle from my paper crane

Santa squid

To me jewellery design is a personal intimate experience, it is much more then deciding what necklace goes with which top or of viewing a collection of inanimate objects labeled jewellery in a gallery space. Jewellery design for me is about the relationship between the jewellery and the wearer, it is a live process which captures my imagination and broadens the whole definition of what jewellery is. With this in mind, I spent my MA year studying ‘Three Dimensional Design’ and developed my ideas to research creative solutions in jewellery design that would thrive on the involvement of the wearer and extend beyond the idea of ornamentation and into the realms of interaction.

Porcelain necklace 2007 Model, Charlotta Bergenstjerna

In my work, the body, with its sensation and experience, physically responds to the jewellery as if they are silently conversing with each other. The correlation between the two can be viewed as a performance. How could I visually capture this element of performance when wearing, a piece of jewellery - for example a necklace?

When a necklace is placed on the neck area, once the difficulty of securing the clasp is tackled with, the initial reaction of the wearer is to touch and adjust it. This allows the wearer to familiarise themselves with the item by performing a ritual grooming in the mirror. Touching areas of the face, neck and hair until a level of contentment with their appearance has been achieved. This regular everyday ritual of dressing and undressing possesses a connection between the jewellery and the body and when it is perfected in its repetition this process becomes an unconscious act and quickly forgotten. Recording this ritual is something I strived to capture in my jewellery designs, with the aim of drawing this process onto a conscious level.

Recording 2007 Poster paint

One method I employed in order to record this collection of unconscious reactions was to immerse a beaded necklace into black paint before it was placed on the body. The unusual sensation of paint on skin provided a strong visual representation of the wearers ritualistic habits, resulting in a collection of various mark making over the fingers and chin, as well as leaving a visually appealing pattern on the neck.

As the process was captured an ephemeral recording was left on the skin. I then used the resulting pattern as a template which was transfered back into metal. As it was returned to its precious state the process was immortalized back to its original form, resulting in a piece of jewellery where an experience or moment in time has been captured, from the original beaded necklace to the final patterns of its placement.

Ritual neckpiece 2007 Anodised guilding metal Photographer, Rikard Osterlund

About the artist: Having graduated in BA Silversmithing, Goldsmithing and Jewellery Design at the University College for the Creative Arts in Rochester, Michelle Jessop was given the opportunity to extend her studies at the UCCA through their MA Three Dimensional Design. During her education and beyond Michelle has explored the idea of disciplines and strived to blur the lines that separate them, recording every step of the design process.

Step into a world where art and the human form combine, where dance, music and lighting tell a story of the body as a canvas; where the lines of fashion and art blur and merge as one… WOW® is a two hour show held annually in September in Wellington*, New Zealand to an audience of 30,000 per season.

Supreme WOW Award Winner - Rattle Your Dags, Paula Coulthard & Ursula Dixon, Auckland (left) WOW Factor Award Winner - The Weaver Finch Colony, N.P Jayaraj, India (right)

Garments are judged on originality, creativity, innovation and construction. When designing the work the artist must ensure it is able to be exhibited in a fully choreographed performance, therefore it must be of sound construction, safe to wear, and not too heavy. The work must be a total concept e.g. if entering a skirt, there must also be an accompanying top, perishable materials, stilts and advertising are not allowed. There are several sections for entry and entries close on May 1 of each year - so get your idea caps on for next years WOW. In the mean time check out the winners for this years World of wearable art.

New Zealand born, Australian based artist Julia deVille combines taxidermy (the art of preserving dead animals), with jewellery making and fashion design, DISCE MORI (Latin for Learn to Die). Julia does not kill any animals for her art, choosing only to use creatures that have died of natural causes. She says of the ‘Bird skull brooch’ (from nothing magazine)

That was actually a bird that my old cat caught that I had outside and it was a bit mangled, so I couldn’t really taxidermy it. So I just threw the whole thing in a jar of methylated spirits, cleaned it out, and left some feathers on it. I then filled the eyes with cubic zirconias. That was before I was working with diamonds or precious gemstones.

Julia is inspired by the Memento Mori jewellery of the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries and Victorian Mourning jewellery. She is fascinated by the acceptance of death in these periods. She uses symbols of death through out her to identify with the concept that, we are in fact mortal creatures. She uses taxidermy to challenge people to reassess the way our society views the use of animals for art and fashion.

To find out more read this article in The Age.

Showing at The Dowse in Lower Hutt, NZ from 6 October to 27 March 2008. She shows a selection of miniature taxidermied jewellery pieces from mounted mouse-head brooches to sparrow chest pieces.

Hannah’s recent exhibition: “An ordinary kind of ornament” which is currently at Westspace gallery in Melbourne, (hurry the exhibition closes 3 November) focuses on Preciousness, the poetry of transformation through ornamentation. Hannah’s work looks at preciousness within transient moments, her work is temporary, making elaborate and ornate ephemeral installations that defy the traditional ideas of what is valuable. Her work is subtle and quietly exquisite. There is a big element of process rather than end result in her work - hours of work can be swept up in moments - that is what makes this work so amazing.

Hannah Bertram An Ordinary Kind of Ornament

12 October – 3 November 2007, opens Thursday 11 October 6-8pm
Free Artist Floor Talk: Thursday 1 November, 12.30-1.30pm

An Ordinary Kind of Ornament is an installation which transforms dust into an ornamental carpet. At the end of the exhibition, visitors can watch the work being swept away. Its fragile and temporary existence, seeks to shift the value of the work from the concrete object, to the transient realm of experience. Hannah Bertram is represented by Dianne Tanzer Gallery, Melbourne.

Written afterwards, a collaborative work by mafuyu and yoshikazu yamagata, two Japanese artists, is about the relationships between human and fashion, they say fashion can be a communication tool which has point of views of education, society, culture and environment. This work MY TOWN IN MY HOME was recently at “Arnehem Mode Biennale 2007″ in Arnehem, Holland on 1 - 30 June 2007. [via]

crocheted from red cotton dress 87 cm long, 50 cm wide arms >350 cm long

The artist: Marjojo from London - media: work made from paper, from artificial and real hair (crocheted, embroidered), material and cotton thread (crocheted and unravelled). Shoes, figures, dresses, images, other objects, drawings. About: ideas to do with a woman’s life, a girl’s life, using some of the techniques traditionally linked to a girl’s world. and exploration of memory as of physical experience. Not necessarily concrete memories, more moods and atmospheres, remembered attitudes, emotional states, anxieties, hopes, desires, desire… interwoven with elements from fairy tales, myths, old and new.

the arms: releasing, letting go - pouring down, pouring out, emptying out, depleting - reaching, reaching out, reaching beyond.
The colour red speaks something different: blood, rage, energy, power, fire, passion, flesh, heat, heart, love, wound, confidence. The arms maybe about the fear of all that, all that teeming life within without, the beauty of it, the terror of it, its constant flux, and at the same time the desire for just that. Crocheting speaks neatness, industriousness, woman’s work, as does the shape of the dress. The long coiling arms underline and unspeak and speak anew a different alive.

It’s really taken a whole year to finish, almost to the day. Worked on the dress with lots of breaks pauses interruptions. While its body grew slowly, stitch by stitch, towards its imagined shape, shrunk dramatically when I wretchedly unraveled the mass of stitches that made up the not-quite-right-looking skirt and then steadily grew again, it took on various spectral forms in my head, some of which I sketched down, each time changing its meaning slightly.

Lisa Solomon is a very exciting artist, working in various mediums crossing over between drawing, textiles and sculpture. Her work looks at the notion of hybridization; and she often uses found objects in her work - combining textures , materials, techniques and subject matter that are not natural partners she says that she likes it when “wrong” things are fused together i.e.: tanks made of bright pink felt, sewing onto paper. Much of her work explores gender identity as well as the differences and contrasts between hand made and machine made and the cultural implications of both.

She recently had an exhibition in Japan - her felt tank installation

And has an upcoming show at little bird gallery Glendale Blvd. Los Angeles.

see more of her work here

Editorial - a weekly thought on what is happening, current, edgy and new in the crafty realm. It is time I took some of the brunt of the open forum of discussion that I think is so crucial to this site, and I am happy to do so. This week I was sent a book by Keri Smith called The Guerrilla Art Kit, published by Princeton Architectural Press. It brought to mind an artist I posted about here a few months ago who engaged in acts of public embroidery. There was quite a bit of discussion about her work, with opinions ranging from loving the freedom of speech and reveling in any form of creativity to those who wanted to boycott this site because of us ‘encouraging’ any form of graffiti.

From my personal perspective I find Guerrilla art/ street art /urban art - whatever you want to call it (I am not talking about mindless and destructive vandalism here) an exciting expression of thoughts and ideas. Guerrilla art is an art form that has developed from the underbelly of society and has grown out of frustration and a need for expression for those groups in our society that are invisible and traditionally without a voice.

So this is not necessarily OK in every country, in some areas it is probably tolerated more than in others, and perhaps even encouraged with some local governments giving grants for graffiti artists to put their work in public areas. But guerrilla art is not just about writing slogans on public walls, it can be and often is, much more interesting and thought provoking than that. This form of political activism has become more popularised in recent years and has taken on many different forms.

Keri in her book looks as moss art and guerrilla gardening as well as stencil art and poster art. And in her introduction, discusses why she wrote such a book and how essential guerrilla art is to our society. She says that street art fosters a connection with our urban environment, a connection not just based on all the mindless advertising we are bombarded with, but a meaningful connection that helps us reclaim our streets as our own, makes us an active participant in our urban space. She goes on to say that coming upon a piece of anonymous street art can re-awaken our senses and presents an alternative point of view that helps her to contemplate the world a little differently.

To see some of this in action around the world check out the website wooster collective which brings an amazing array of ephemeral art.

I know many of you are thinking that this is all a load of you know what and is a terrible defacement of public property. And well, sometimes it is. Not all graffiti is meaningful, some of it is pure vandalism but this is not what I am talking about in this article. And as Keri says in her book, the stereotype of the guerrilla artist (extremist action etc), can be expanded to any artist/person who is participating in anonymous street art which encompasses street decoration, performance, installations as well as graffiti, stencil arts and signage. Over the next week I will be highlighting some street art / guerilla art and other urban ephemeral art - feel free to let me know what you think of all this.

Some inspiring and thought provoking projects to check out in the meantime:

Saw - taking back our cities and towns from the businessmen, cops and politicians who define public space for their own benefit - they say their art is a creative tool for social change.

Art of the street from Time, photo essays of artists recreating the urban landscape.

Jodi Green is documenting her brilliant MFA thesis work here at her blog and at her flickr. The fact that she is making all her own clothes and printing the fabric is pretty cool to begin with, but the icing on the cake is her plan to not wear the same thing twice.

“This project started as a way of questioning the value of the hand work put into textiles for the body and the home in comparison with my “real” work in the studio, and the lack of value that my many efforts in textiles and knitwear design had in the context of my candidacy for a Master of Fine Arts degree. This questioning led me to strive to unify my studio work and my work in fashion by not only wearing my prints (as a uniform, or as a costume) every day, but to allow my handwork to be destroyed, if necessary, by my printmaking, and to document that process of destruction. To this end I am printing on fabrics, sewing clothes from those fabrics, then printing on the clothes, wearing each garment only once before altering it again. When the weather turns colder I will make sweaters, inking them up and printing from them and continuing to wear them; my clothes will become the printing matrix as well as the printing surface. The printmaking inks will not hold up to repeated washings, so the normal wear and tear that clothing endures will lead to the destruction of the printing at the same time that the printing is bringing about the destruction of the clothes.”

after checking in with knitting blogs I came across knitting on impulse and her series on making knitting patterns from nature photographs. she pixilates the image using a photo editor and then chooses the colours from the pixilated image.

A while ago I did something similar - using a landscape photo to create a pattern for a patchwork quilt.

Doing this is not difficult - all you need it to either scan a photograph or use a digital image and alter it in photo shop or even a free online photo editing software - and you can change the image resolution to make a very pixilated image - or use one of the filters for various effects.

for those wanting something a little bit alternative

felted skull bag

crochet bike