New Hobby Roundup: Paper Marbling!

I finally caved and bought my own supplies to try marbling at home and wow, what a difference time and good materials make to the finished product:

 

I did have a grasp on the basic process already from the class I took in June, but the results at home are so much better–the colors floated perfectly and stuck to the paper just fine.

(Not shown, using the comb to make the non-pareil pattern, because that takes two hands.)

 

I printed 12 sheets and got 8 that I really like, but none of them were flawed because of the supplies, just beginner printing errors. I highly recommend the supplies from Galen Berry, aka MarbleArt. I got his paints and instruction book from Hollanders but I think they’ve stopped carrying the full line–I had to get the carrageenan and alum and a comb straight from the MarbleArt site (via sending an email, lol).

 

I make a lot of things and I’ve been doing a lot of my hobbies for a long time, so I don’t get the “I can’t believe I made that!” feeling very often. But look at this! I can’t believe I made that.

Dilettante Catnip

I was browsing Pinterest the other night and saw some vintage examples of letter art–decorated envelopes where the address is part of the design. That pulled up some modern examples and then I found The Graceful Envelope contest, which “was created in 1995 by the Smithsonian Institution’s National Postal Museum, which administered it until delegating responsibility to the Washington Calligraphers Guild in 2001.”

This is literally everything I loved as a teen/want to dabble in again: sending things in the mail, fancy lettering (and a CALLIGRAPHERS GUILD!), cool stamps, and little paintings. You can see the current winners here and past winners here and you’d better believe I looked at them all.

Bulb Report

Turns out that being a dilettante with tropical bulbs is very rewarding: Look how huge this elephant ear is!

Look at the pattern on the leaves–it’s almost like marbled paper (dilettante worlds colliding!)

 

The cannas are blooming too:

So red it’s blowing out the camera

 

And this wasn’t a dilettante project, but over the last year I’ve been gradually moving all the daylilies from the yard, where they just didn’t get enough water or really bloom, into pots, where they now get water AND fertilizer. (And I can take them with me when we move.)

Turns out that when you give a plant what it needs to thrive, it thrives … sounds like a metaphor to me.

Book Arts Wednesday/Dilettante Update: Paper Marbling!

Last week I took a paper marbling class at the same place I took my first bookbinding class, aka The Class That Launched a Whole New Hobby to Shop For. I don’t think paper marbling will be any different, honestly.

It wasn’t the best class–the instructors weren’t all that great at diagnosing issues and defaulted to cheerily saying “It’s a temperamental art!”–but it was good to get an idea of the physicality of it before I splashed out on supplies of my own. And there’s so much info online! As you can see on the papers on the left, my paint stopped sticking to the paper. The class instructors were stumped, but one search got me to a Reddit thread that said the paint probably wasn’t diluted enough. One more search taught me the right way to do a non-pareil pattern (what I was going for with my green-and-blue sample): You have to zig-zag it before you comb it, something the instructors either didn’t know or skipped.

But again, as a way to try something to get an overview of the basics, it was a fine class. Have I spent lots of time reading about marbling online? Yep. Do I have a list of items I want to buy to try it again? You know it.

Year Of The Dilettante: Tropical Bulbs

What have I been doing for dilettantism since I talked about stringing beads being hard? Waiting for some bulbs to grow:

My sister-in-law gave me a gift certificate to Eden Brothers for my birthday so I ordered some summer-flowering bulbs at the end of January. They shipped at the end of March, I got them planted in April, and then I waited for something to happen. It took a while, but they all came up! (Clockwise from 11pm, that’s a “Cleopatra” canna, elephant ears, and Mexican tuberose.)

Other than the amaryllis, my winter-flowering bulbs from Brent and Becky’s were duds (one variety of paperwhites never bloomed, the other never even really sprouted), so I’m really pleased these Eden Bros. bros are doing what they should.

I put the canna and the bigger elephant ear into outside pots over the weekend but am still babying the rest of them along on the windowsill. There’s really no skill to bulbs other than patience, so all around an ideal dilettante project.

Dilettantism: Some Things Are Trickier

Of course I ordered stone beads and threads and findings after I talked about making a necklace–the best part of a hobby is buying things for it. I jumped right in to the tutorial and it turns out…getting the knots in the right place is a lot harder than it looks:

 

And as much as I tried to remember that you don’t have to be good at your hobbies, I was getting frustrated, so I cut it all apart and started practicing with the spare beads and thread:

 

Practicing helps! But at this point I was unhappy with the bead quality and the colors (that Etsy seller the tutorial recommended really doesn’t deliver colors that match what they show on screen) and my lack of IMMEDIATE EXPERTISE and was full of seasonal malaise to boot, so I put it away.

Will I finish this hobby? I don’t know; I don’t wear jewelry in my day-to-day, nor do I leave the house much (perhaps this is contributing to my malaise???). Maybe I’ll try again when I can remember these wise words better:

Year of the Dilettante: Crochet

Like I said on Monday, I took a three-hour class on “Granny Squares 101” at Harmony in Provo. The name “Granny Squares 101” was right in the title but I assumed we’d get a breakdown of the stitches and THEN learn how to put them together into the granny squares. Well, not so much…so I can crochet a granny square and a granny square only. But I can crochet now!

I”m still figuring out tension and hand positions but it turns out that self-striping yarn works great in crochet, too–there was even an afghan example at the class that was just one giant granny square made with yarn with a long color change. (Naturally I bought the same yarn.) I guess we’ll see how long it takes to make an afghan!

Dilettante Report: Mark Making

I’m wrapping up the 30-day mark making class on CreativeBug and it’s been really fun. Yes it was structured, but it was definitely not a class in the sense of, “Do it exactly like this to get these particular results.” And for someone who doesn’t draw, that was perfect. I took ten minutes a day, tried new things, and learned a lot!

For example, I never would have thought that using one color and random lines would fill me with accomplishment:

 

I never would have enjoyed the travel watercolors so much that I bought the 36 color set (let’s be honest, the “buying supplies” part of any hobby is the best):

 

I never would have discovered that I like mixing media a lot (watercolor and Micron pen above, watercolor and colored pencil here):

 

Nor would I have realized how satisfying drawing ancient pottery could be:

Get your library card out and get your free subscription to CreativeBug and give it a try. Remember: you don’t have to be good at your hobbies!