inspiration

Dublin Street Art

A little bit of street art in Dublin. #dublin #ireland #streetart #sugarskull #skull #graffitiart #graffiti #moustache #movember

Wandering around the city this week, I took a few pictures of some graffiti. Now to me, I don’t like tagging, but a good bit of street art in graffiti style murals will make me pause and enjoy. It can be a political statement, a decoration, or just a bit of abstract art – and viola – it simply adds a bit of “alt-culture” to the area – and to me, enriches the entire experience of city life. Basically, it breaks up the grey concrete that is urbanity and replaces it with… COLOR!

Street art in Dublin, Ireland

The thing is that street art – proper street art – while created with the basics of a design and spray paint – is actually proper art. It takes practice, it takes vision, and it takes a certain amount of balls to go to a business owner and ask hey, do you mind if… (or even more so if you’re doing an entire mural in the dark of night). Note that I don’t agree with illegal activity – nor with vandalism in general. That leads me to the quesiton – is art vandalism… well. That’s not for me to decide. I suppose in this case, it’s all in the eye of the beholder. (Or is it in the case the “bolder?”)

Street art in Dublin, Ireland


My advice to those that are in cities – be bold, work with the community, and put up more street art. 🙂

Share

12 weeks ’till Santa Comes

Rudolf packages after snow

Can you believe it!?! It is only 12 weeks until Santa comes and the rush is on. I’ve set a goal for myself that I will try to hand make as many of my gifts as possible. Not only may it be less expensive, and I get to use some of my talents, but it also will be more customizable to each person that I want to give a gift.

So, what am I doing?

Crochet – scarves, bracelets, etc.
Jewelry – stringing some beads into necklaces
Sewing – making tea towel aprons, pillows, etc.
Paper crafts – think stationary, cards, etc.
Pottery / ceramics – painting some fun pieces of pottery to give as gifts

In the last couple of months, I’ve had a class in sewing for a machine and learned to use a sewing machine. Over the weekend, I found a place to let me use the pottery wheel and also to paint some pre-formed ceramics for a reasonable price. They’ll fire it and glaze it, and after a couple of weeks, you get it back – perfect for gift giving and/or keeping for myself.

Luckily my Christmas gift list isn’t too long, and in 12 weeks, theoretically, if I plan everything right, I should have enough time to complete what I want to.

I want to point a few great sites that I’m using for inspiration –

Crochet me – Fabulous site with lots of free and paid crochet patterns. They have a great magazine for crochet called Interweave crochet that I’m subscribed to and have learned some new stitches from.

Ravelry – They’re a knitting and crochet community and they have several project ideas and free patterns that are available for everything from hats and scarves to afghans, sweaters, and more.

Craftsy – what can I say other than I love this site. I’m not a “single item” crafter. I’m more of a Jill-of-all-trades where I find that one piece of something can influence another of the many projects that I have going or would like to try. This site has a little bit of the crochet/knitting, but also has sewing projects, paper crafts, jewelry, and so on.

Crafts Beautiful – this is a magazine that gives away free crafting items (who doesn’t love that) once a month. They have a little bit of everything – and while I don’t always like everything, it really gets my creative juices flowing. The latest magazine that I bought had a bunch of Christmas themed papers – perfect for the holiday cards.

Pinterest – photos galore. Everything from beginning to end from colors to jokes, to patterns that are linked from what others have done.

CreateForLess – repository for lots of craft supplies that are reasonably priced. They also have craft ideas, and they tend to keep me within budget on whatever I want.

Wish me luck, and expect more posts with some of the finished projects coming soon.

Share