Make-Up and Dress-Up Party

In addition to our birthday celebrations for Katya and Li the other night (September 29th), we also held a Make-up themed craft night. We all dressed up for the occasion, and looked really good, if we may say so ourselves!
Top row above, left to right: Jess, Mary, Laxmi, Kara, Cory, Katya and Michelle
Bottom row, left to right: Li, Ellen, Jasmine and Mirna

Some of us were the artists/painters and the others were the blank canvas/paintees. The artists brought their tools and supplies (make-up, brushes and what-not, as well as a large selection of nail polish), and set up shop in various corners of the house. The paintees then chose who they wanted to be painted by, and sat down to have the work done. Mary and Laxmi, dressed in their beautiful saris, watched and admired. Laxmi was the official photographer for the evening.



Make-Up artists Ellen and Mirna, with their creation: Jasmine

Cory, with work done by Katya.

Michelle make-up courtesy of Mirna and Ellen.

Katya's colourful eye shadow on Jess.

Nail artists were Kara, Jess and Cory. We have no close-ups of their work, but some beautiful and funky designs were created with interesting combinations of colours and shapes. Michelle now has colourful toenails with a design of multi-coloured polka-dots on a bright pink background, courtesy of Kara. A couple of girls got French manicures, and some very pretty flower designs on their fingernails.

Birthday Pinata for Katya and Li

Two of our collegues and friends, Katya and Li, celebrated their birthdays within a week of each other this past week. To add some fun and crafty spice to their celebrations, we (Mirna, Ellen and Michelle) built a pinata for them (cardboard box with top mostly cut out, a trap door at the bottom, and tissue paper decorations).

The pinata was filled with chocolate and candy, and little slips of paper with embarrassing and/or funny and/or touching stories about each of them. After a hearty song of Happy Birthday, Katya and Li pulled the strings on the pinata and spilled the contents. They then each took turns reading the slips of paper (each reading stories about each other). The stories were collected over the past week or two, with the participation of alot of Ciborowski lab members. It is interesting to note that since Li is so much more well-behaved than Katya, Katya's stories outnumber Li's, and some of Li's stories were pure fiction!

Check out the hilarious and well-done cartoon sketch of Katya and Harry Potter's Severus Snape, done by Jess and Daniel:

Congrats and well wishes to Van on her marriage!

As a group, we UWindsor Crafters have been together for about a year now (we should probably celebrate some sort of anniversary! another excuse to have cake!). The year has seen some changes in the group: Nicole, one of the original members and creators of the group, left us last November (to go off and do a PhD in Quebec), though she's still with us virtually.

Van got engaged some months ago, then finished her Master's, and moved to Guelph to start her PhD. Her wedding to Tim was this past weekend, Sept 25. We all wish her well, and as a remembrance of the good crafty times we've had together, a few of us worked together on a wall-hanging which we presented to her as a wedding gift.

Jess started the piece by painting a white sheet of fabric with fabric paints.


Michelle then added to the design and free-motion quilted the piece, and finished it by wrapping around and glueing to an 11"x11" canvas. Kara did some beautiful lettering on the back of the piece, and we all signed it.


Best wishes Van and Tim!

Whisper Craft Unveiling

Our game of "Telephone with Crafts" (or Whisper Craft Project, as we have been calling it) came to an end about a month ago. On the evening of Sept 1st we got together for the unveiling. Most of the participants were able to attend (with the exception of Van, who was in the process of moving to Guelph that very day). Thanks to Nicole for joining us all the way from Quebec!

The Whisper Craft Project, once again, was meant to be a series of art/craft creations, each inspired by the piece created before in the link. We started with an original inspiration of a photo and/or object; Van offered to be the starting point in the link. The rest of us followed in this order: Jess, Michelle, Katya and Nicole.

Below are photos and descriptions of each of our creations. We were each allowed to see (and be inspired by) only the piece created by the person before us in the series.

Van

Inspired by the dragonfly photo on the Microcosmos video cover, and another dragonfly ornament. More details to come.



Jess
Inspiration for whisper craft: When I first saw Van's whisper craft, I was drawn to the contents of the frame- colourful, diverse flowers. I was pretty sure I wanted to paint something, but kept rejecting ideas I had about painting flowers- flowers in a vase? Too literal. Garden of flowers? Meh. I then spent more time looking at her whisper craft, and decided that instead of focusing on the main subject of her craft (the flowers), I would focus on the cute little dragonfly in the upper corner. Once I had changed my frame of mind, I was quickly inspired to paint a dragonfly, with floral elements in the background.

Making the whisper craft: My craft was painted with acrylic paints on a canvas bought from Michael's. I used large flat brushes for the sky and to paint the earth green, and then used smaller round brushes to paint in the abstract floral background. I then used really fine, sharp-tipped brushes to paint the dragonfly, starting by painting it all black, and then filling in the colour patches. I had originally thought I'd use a gloss to make the wings shiny, but I ultimately decided to go ahead and make the whole darn dragonfly shiny. This was accomplished using acrylic gloss I picked up from Michael's (took about 4-5 coats to achieve ultimate shinyness).



Michelle
I've been going through a mosaic phase the past couple of months, where I obsessively want to cover everything I see in tile bits. So my whisper craft was going to be a mosaic, no matter what! I loved Jess's painting, and what drew me to it most was the grassy background.

I decided to recreate that background in bits of green tiles and glass. For the sky, in addition to having some blues, I opted to use mirror shards as well (bad luck for me for the next 7 years for breaking the mirror I used!). Mirrors, reflecting light, make me think of the sky. I switched the layout of the piece from Jess's wide (landscape) to tall (portrait), and used a wooden cabinet door as the base of the mosaic.

Instead of a focal point of a dragonfly resting on a stem (try getting THAT much detail with mosaics!) I added a bit of red glass to represent some flowers in the grass. The effect of the whole is very abstract. This could have either made it really difficult for the next person in line to be inspired, or gave Katya lots of options and possibilities and free reign to the imagination for her piece.



Katya
Michelle's piece reminded me of a waterfall, which reminded me of spirits that live in waterfalls, which reminded me of spirits in general. By that time I was already painting a sunset in the ocean and added an upside down ghost ship as a bridge to the Otherworld. It didn't photograph well, so instead I sent Nicole another piece (see photo below) which was inspired by the colors of the first one.

Unlike Jess, I cheaped out on the brushes (and everything else) and used my fingers and a mesh. The mesh can create a pretty cool texture. Hands take long time to clean. Enting. Oil on canvas.



Nicole
When I saw Katya's tree painting, my thoughts immediately went to an afghan pattern I had seen on Ravelry a few times, called "Tree of Life". I had no idea how difficult it would be, but I wanted to give it a try. I stuck fairly close to replicating Katya's piece by using a green and turquoise variegated yarn that I already had on hand. I noticed some light and darkness in Katya's painting that reminded me of healthy nature versus pollution; I tried to incorporate that idea into my piece by adding a smattering of other coloured yarn. The tree shape is created using Front and Back Post Double-Crochet stitches and I ended up deviating from the pattern a little bit to add some asymmetry to the branches. Finally, I bordered the piece using an orange, yellow and blue variegated yarn. I plan to use this crocheted piece as the centre of a lapghan or a shawl, I haven't decided yet.

Welcome New Crafters!

A couple of new crafters have joined us recently. Welcome Mirna and Ellen!
Here they are with their cake creations on the evening of 1 September:

Food crafts galore!

Last Thursday night, we had a fun food-themed craft party as a send-off to Van and Megan who have moved away. We'll miss you guys- keep on craftin'!

Activities included: chocolate art, vegetable bugs & animals, cake decorating, and black bean brownies!


Kara made an amazing chocolate art, recreating a gorgeous photo in our Department calendar of a green violet-ear (a hummingbird) in delicious, edible chocolate!


Kaitlin decorated a chocolate cake for her boyfriend, complete with green FONDANT that she infused with edible glitter and shaped into leaves! Beautiful work!!!


Michelle made a complex, multi-layered confection, with a black bean brownie base, red food dye, vanilla icing, and then an edible mosaic top! The mosaic was made up of chocolate with red food dye that she'd melted and frozen beforehand, and then broken up, and also chocolate pebbles from Kara's stash of chocolate bits. Then she made this caddisfly larva, complete with brocco/flower case!



Jess melted down different colours of chocolate, and created this assortment of candy trees and random patterny things. I also made a few random veggie animals (loon, mouse, beetle).



Ellen grouted Van's mosaic tile from last week, and then made this awesome veggie Hexagenia (veggegenia?). It's even recognizable to species-level, for those who want to try! :D



Megan made a couple of veggie bugs too- she was an assistant on the veggegenia, and then made a snail and a mite!



Katya melted down truffles (sniff!) to create awesome swirly chocolate designs. These also made a nice decoration for the top of the black bean brownie mess. :)



Theo really didn't contribute much to the craft night... he sat on the floor and pined for chocolate. He also made a fun obstacle for people working in the kitchen.