• Demary for the hearts and flowers block;
• luburo for the 9 patch & heart block;
• leeal for the red harlequin block;
• babalooo for the pink four-piece heart;
• cherlyQ for the 4 hearts block;
• allie for the green patches block;
• debbi2quilts for the block with the red background;
• Qtree for the green block set in a square;
• quiltleonfish for one all-green heart;
• dihardqltr for one green heart AND the floral and solid stripe;
• Bzy1 for the light blue heart block;
• Sissy2 for the heart block with button detail;
• heart for the shades of pink block; and
• janna4 for the green/brown block AND the light and dark blue block.

The other blocks are either made by me, or in three cases, made by someone whose nick I didn’t record.

Thank you all!

Here’s a terrible picture of me making squiggly lines so that you can see the bristles fan out:

drawing (well, markmaking) with the Nomad Brush

Click the photo for a closer view of the bristles. Neat, eh?

I made 10 different designs using 10 photos of my work, or of me doing something. I also listed my interests down one side of the front, and highlighted in bold the one that relates to the picture on that particular card. So if I meet someone who is interested in visual practice, I can give them a card about visual practice. If I meet a quilter, I can give them my quilting card. Yay!

The back of the card has pertinent contact details, of course, but I also added a photo of myself. Maybe it’s just me, but I often get home from a conference with a stack of cards from wonderful people I met, but when I go through the cards (usually a few weeks later) I can’t remember who was who. The photo is to help other people not have that problem. And ooh! It’s the same photo I use for all my social networking sites, so folks know when they find me that it’s really me. The back is the same on every card.

I designed all the cards, front and back, in Illustrator, using the template that Moo so thoughtfully provides so as not to lose any text off the edge. Their guidelines were also extremely helpful when it came to choosing a file size and format. I wasn’t sure how the text would come out, so I only ordered a few, but I LOVE the cards and I’ll definitely re-order. They make that really easy too. Yay Moo!

all the cards

(Photo credit gratefully given to stoobydoo for Illuminate Yaletown 2009. Thanks for using Creative Commons!)

And the instructions:

What would your own album look like if you were in a band?
The image is what mine would look like.

Follow the directions below and find out yours…

Here are the rules:

1. The name of your band is the first random Wikipedia article you get here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random

2. Your album name is the last 4 or 5 words from the last random quote you find here:
http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3

3. Your cover art is the third photo you find on flickr’s interesting last 7 days here:
http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days
** Rachel’s rule addition (yes, you know I had to make up a rule): Reload until the 3rd image is under a Creative Commons license allowing you to use it! Then use that one.

4. Assemble in your favorite image editor.

5. Post in note – add photo and tag your friends!

Have fun!

We started with Georgia O’Keeffe and Matisse. We read books about them first (I recommend the Getting to Know series by Mike Venezia), and then we talked about some of their works using my extensive library of art books. That was the point at which I realized exactly where all my money went while I was in college. It really is a nice collection. We went to the grocery store and bought large flowers that interested us — we each picked out one bunch — and then brought them home and drew them close up, like Georgia O’Keeffe. Tomorrow we will be drawing with scissors like Matisse.

This morning David, Craig and I made the trip to the city and visited the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. They have Femme au Chapeau, which is one of the images from the Venezia book, and I wanted David to see it. It could not have been a more perfect moment had it been scripted. We climbed the stairs and turned to the left on the second floor — you can almost see it right from there, but there were people in the way. We moved over toward it, and when a gap opened he saw it and pointed and squeezed my hand and gasped, “That was painted by Henri Matisse!” Why, yes, yes it was. Imagine finding that here.

We talked about how it looked, and how it was bigger than he thought it would be. I had told him the colors would look different than they did in the book. He wasn’t convinced, but that’s okay. Then we wandered through the galleries, looking at whatever interested him. Fountain stopped him for a moment, but he was perfectly ready to accept it as art. “It’s sculpture, Mom.” Yup.

We spent a few minutes in the Koret Visitor Education Center, watching part of a film that talked about Matisse and Picasso and their models.

I have a personal tradition when I visit a museum of choosing a postcard from the gift shop to remind me of one particular work that I enjoyed on that trip. David made his first postcard choice today. He picked Les Valeurs personnelles by Magritte, which is the painting he spent the most time in front of during our visit. Back in the car, he showed me Femme au Chapeau in his Matisse book. He admitted that his favorite part of the visit was the translucent walkway on the fifth floor. Fine by me: he had a favorite part.

A ticket, a postcard, a map, and a blog post — David at SFMOMA.