So much stuff!

Everything seems to be going so fast those past couple of days, and at the same time, the beginning of the week seem like a lifetime ago. I can't remember when i last wrote in this blog, though I'm sure it wasn't that long ago. Between facebook and flickr it feels sort of strange to report about everything that's going on again, but I think that it'll clear my head a bit so I'll try and write some of it.

It seem that all this effort to go out more, socialize and interact with people is starting to pay off, also, it really helps me be more friendly and conduct my online work interaction better. It's also at least in part thanks ot Bob, the guy who's the teacher at the Sale's class Ned and I are taking.

So, there is a lot of exciting news!

First of all, I'm going to teach a class in etsy next month, it's going to be a demonstration of drawing on cups and will be broadcast in their chat, so people all around the world can follow! the coolest thing is how once thing led to another with this - I did an order for the company who makes the paints I'm using then the nice woman from the paint company asked me about the class and of course I agreed. It's going to be wonderful! though I'm just going ot not think about it so I don't get too stressed.


Second, Ned and I just had a really great meeting at a huge advertising agency today, with the guy who's the head of their print department, I don't know if it'll lead ot anything (though if id does that would be the best thing in the world) but it was really great to sit in am eeting and feel like I have my shit together.

Third, Ned and I are shooting some of the fashion week backstage shows - we did one on Thursday and another one tomorrow, I've had an excellent time on the first and got massive amount of photos that I like. Tomorrow we are shooting in the Briant park tents, I'm a little nervous, hoping we will not have problems with getting in, and hoping to have an amazing time, and take a lot of photos.

Also, I just got a new lens and made banana bread today (first attempt at real baking in oh, maybe 6 years...)

Pattern

Every night the soul shutter to a million pieces
In the morning we weave back the pattern
over and over again.

Aftershoot blues

I'm so tried, we had an evening shoot tonight and one yesterday. it's 4:00 AM and I just finished editing my photos, editing Ned's photo with him, and making chilly before the beans we
sprouted goes bad. For the past few days (weeks?) I feel like all I want is to sleep all the time. I'm not sure if it's allergies, still getting over being sick or just stress and the weird dreams I've been having lately.

I'm happy with the photo I took though.

I hate feeling like I'm not doing everything I want, I feel like I'm missing opportunities and messing up stuff by not keeping in touch with people and follow things though.

I'm not sure if it's really the case or if that's just a feeling, I don't know if I'm really messing up or not.

I'm just so tired of feeling tired, and hate feeling so aimless and unfocused.

Illustration Friday - Theater

The word of the week for "Illustration Friday" was Theater. I used to love theater in high school, I don't really like acting but I love studying the plays and history and going to the theater to watch plays.

One of my favorite theater genre is "comedia del-Arte" which is basically the root of all modern comedy.The characters are almost always the same, and the plots are very similar, the show doesn't really follow a script but just put up a story guideline that allow the actors to make fun and joke and improvise all the time.

In this illustration I wanted to not only show the characters of the play, but mostly to give the feeling of a theater - the way that theater is a little perfect world of it's own, and so I created a couple of shadow boxes made of paper showing a few of the characters from Comedia del-Arte.

There were supposed to be 4 pieces in this series, but, building stuff out of paper is a pretty fragile thing and one box didn't make it, so I had to change my plans. looking at the figures in the box made me think of those butterflies in display cases and so I decided to give this a shot as well.

Mother day's freebe prints

I don't celebrate mother day myself. about 2and a half years ago, when I moved to NY my mom stopped talking to me. Mother's day was never a big holiday in Israel, but here, I keep hearing about people's plans for it and all the cool brunches they are taking their mom to, and I feel really strange not doing anything about it. I guess it's my version of being single on Valentine's.

So for a while I didn't want to make anything special for my Etsy store to celebrate mother's day, but when I run out of those bunny prints really fast and wanted to do that again, I decided to make something that will represent what I want mother day, and my relationship with my mom to be about, which is all about feeling happy and safe.

So I made not one, but two special mother day prints! one with a mommy and a baby penguin one with a mommy and baby goat. You can all have one (until I run out) either by spending some money or by spending some luck and time.

There will be one free print per order for anyone who buys anything from my shop.

Or - you can win a print for absolutely free if you check out the hand painted dishes section of my shop and suggest the next animal I should put on a tapas plate that haven't been used before.
I'm going to raffle one print of each, so there will be 2 winners, one gets a goat and one a penguin.

Please leave your e-mail when you comment so I can contact you if you won!

Raffle will be held on Mother day, May 10.

Eye Level Gallery BQE

We went to the photodrifting BQE show at the Eye Level Gallery last night. It was really fun. I've never had a photograph in a show before and it felt really nice to see it on the window in the gallery. There's something really cool about being in a gallery opening that doesn't involve my main artistic medium, somehow it was a lot less stressful then if this would have been a painting or a drawing.

Also, I finally got to meet JP - the awesome curator and founder of Photodrifting, it was so nice to finally match a face and a voice to an online persona! thanks JP for making this happen!

I'm trying to remind myself of how much fun this was, and that i'm doing good, I just got news that I was rejected from the About Glamore Fairy tale show - which I really really wanted to be in.

Winter Weather

New louchelust movie, i finished it tonight, it's cool to have this site updated after probably a year of not touching it.

New Site

A couple of weeks ago, Ned and I went to a Portfolio Review at PowerHouse publisher, one of the people we talked to was really impressed by the fact that we were a couple working and living together.

She talked about other photographers who work as a team and how she, as an art buyer, prefer working without couples because she know they can communicate and compromise and are easier to work with then a single photographer who's just focus on taking a shot and don't know how to listen ot a client or their crew.

We realized that we have been working together for a while and that this is, in fact, one of our biggest advantages in taking picture. So in the past couple of days we worked on setting up a new site for us as a photographer's team.

www.nedandaya.com

Apartment therapy competition

Yay! my apartment therapy tutorial got in the competition, I'm so excited! there are still 2 weeks left so I'm sure by then there are going to be a lot more competitors, but right now there are only me and one other person in the re-nest category. I'm trying to raise my hopes too high, but I'm really excited about this.

If you don't mind signing up, please vote for me! I would love to win this!

State Collage PA

We drove to state collage today, returning merchandise Ned's mom took for a trunk show in New York. Ned's father is on a 3rd day of chemo and they couldn't take it back themselves as they usually do.

Ned hates coming here, he's got a lot of bad memories about this place and feel bad about not calling his grandfather or uncle and meeting family while we are here. I love coming here, it's so different then our everyday life, I like staying at this strange motel and watching the view as we drive. A short 2 days trip always makes me feel like I was away from home for years and I come back with many cool ideas and new appreciation for my life in Brooklyn.

We got here at about 5:00. Dropped of the many bags of clothes and went to pack our bag in the hotel. The building was surrounded with policeman and firetrucks, there was a fire in the laundry room and they were putting it out, a couple of photographers were also on the scene taking pictures.

Me and Ned walked around for a bit, then had dinner and ice cream and walked around in some odd outlet store, which Ned remembered by a different name.
We came back to the hotel, Ned took a bath, I read him his e-mails and took pictures. Then he fell asleep.

I have my computer and my MP3 player, and a book and a sketchbook, basically almost everything I have at home to do and entertain myself, but still being in this strange room, without my stuff and without Ned makes me feel very lonely. And very much wanting a drink...

Severine

Ned and I haven't shot in about a month and a half, Ned was sick, we were tired, then sad with his dad's cancer news and other things, it's winter, it's cold, we were busy with other things.

We've seen Severine's Model mayhem page a while ago, and both liked her style and photo personality, Ned wrote her an e-mail and said we'd love to shoot with her if she ever comes to NY. Then, a couple of weeks ago, she wrote back to say she's going to be in New York for a week and would love to shoot with us.

Ned and I were pretty nervous about this, we both felt unpracticed in taking pictures and also, unprepered, we decided ot not have hair, make up or wardrobe for this one and to just shoot intuativly, without any type of concept or idea.

So the day started sort of slow, as Ned was adjusting the lights and figuring out while shooting what are better angles, I was very tired and feeling sort of sick and upset all day, which meant I couldn't really take any charge as far as outfits goes, Ned had to deal with everyting on his own and I felt like a usless lump.

Severine on her side, was really nice but also very closed, she felt very guarded and dignified, I liked her strangth but it felt somewhat hard to communicate, She was pretty shocked when Ned asked her to shoot without any make up on, and then also made her wet her hair and let it frizz as it naturally wants to and not just be straight like she's used to wear it all the time, I had to go out and get a blowdryer so she can strighten it before the shoot.
We talked about how we all see ourselves in different ways and always want to look like different people then ourselves. Both me and Ned agreed that her hair looks beautiful when it's curly, it actually looks like a lion's mane, but she wasn't intierly convinced.

When she was drying her hair in the bathroom, I fall asleep, I only slept for about 10 minutes, but when she came out I felt a lot more refreshed and much more awake. I looked into my camera and were shocked to discover I took 174 pictures! I felt like I was doing nothing all day...
Andthen when I downloaded them I was even more amazed at how the pictures came out. I really love what I shot. I think it's my favorite photos that I took of a girl that isn't me.

We are shooting again tomorrow and I'm going ot try and use Ned's lens and not my own, I'm ciourious to see how those would come out.

Vespine gallery show

So a few weeks ago Ned gets this phone call from an art gallery in Chicago, it turn out that they were looking for me for a few weeks, I usually don't answer my phone and for some reason I didn't get any of their e-mails. They wanted to give me an art show in their gallery.

This is not only my own personal dream (and art show without having to run after the gallery, but them running after me) but probably the dream every artist I know.

I couldn't bring myself to call them, but I e-mailed, Ned did, he told them I'll e-mail them and so I did.

So then, I never heard back, which made me a bit sad, but I sort of moved on. Then about 2 weeks later, they called Ned's phone again. It turned out that for some reason, again, I didn't get their e-mail. They needed the artist statement, and bio and know when I'm sending the pieces and so on.

Again, I couldn't bring myself to call, and Ned did. He's been doing all the communication for me, even e-mails, that I'm usually not so anxious about. He consulted a gallery owner that we know about prices and arrangement and what to ask and do.

It turned out that this is the only show in the year in which participant artist don't have to pay for the space. the gallery is giving me one of the most amazing gifts and opportunity I could ever wish for. Everyone around me who Ned have told to about this are so happy and helpful and wonderful about this.

Yet, I feel so scared and anxious and like I'm messing up. I've been creating a second body of work for this show, about 30 drawings in less then a week. I've written a nice enough artist statement, later improved by Ned, a gallery owner \ friend and Ned's dad. And yet I feel like I haven't done a thing and like I keep messing up.

Everything is so good, I just paralyzed with fear waiting for the other shoe to drop.
The show is going to be at the Vespine Gallery in Chicago on November 15. We are already planning a motorcycle trip to come to the opening!

This week has been such a crazy emotional roller coaster.

I just want to sleep (and for all my painting to sell in the show of course...)

Project Renewal

I was reading some tread on the etsy forum today where people recommended different things to jump start sells and told what they did to make their store work better. One of the things many people mentioned how renewing and listing often helps a lot! I usually list something every day or two, but I'm going to try and do better now.

I've decided to check this theory by spending a 1$ each day on renewing and listing, meaning, about 5 items either new or renewed per day. I'm going to try two things. In the first week of the experiment, I'm going to list or renew 5 items in different hours of the day, while at the second week of renewing, I'm going to renew all of them at once.

I'm going to put in some numbers in my blog everyday to see if this works in any way to make my sells get a little better.

So here's today's numbers:

Items renewed:
past present future - a set of 3 drawings for 40$
opossum sewing kit - 20$
a cups set of tarot cards - 40$
a fox - 25$

New items:
a painting called strange summer, which I did today at a coffee shop while ned was at the gym escaping the heat of the apartment - 15$

Number of hearts - 1042

Electricity

Back to NY after a mote amazing trip ever - eventually we made it to 2 weeks of motorcycling, hoteling, site seeing and photographing. You can read about it more here.

So eventually, back at home, trying to get myself into work pace again and failing, I did manage to get to Illustrator Friday today, the topic was "electricity" and I made those 2 small drawings for it, the reference is a book from the 70's that I found on those outdoor carts on Strand for 50 cents.

I really like how box like those kitchen appliences look on the outside and how intricate and complicated they look on the inside.

Day 2

Morning at the Sheraton Columbia Hotel. It’s clouded and foggy outside, there’s a beautiful view of a lake and a forest. We are in some strange hi tech and business area with really nothing but office buildings andhuge chain outlet stores, by the looks of it.

Still all foggy by the absence of coffee and not enoughsleep. I really wanted to write about Yesterday, but it was already 2:00 AM andI went to sleep. Sitting in the bath while Ned was on the computer. I was doingthis math: Writing down everything that happened today will take about 3 hour,if I also want to download some photos and post them in the website, that’sprobably about another hour, I also want to draw a bit, let say, another halfan hour. And I still won’t be getting everything I want on paper \ file.However, if I wait till morning, not only I probably won’t have the time, butalso, I forget a lot, not so much the other stories of places and people butthat abstract feeling of how a moment is, and how I am in it.

I’m frustrated with the mapping program as well, because i can’t just register everything I want it to. I don’t know why documenting thisjourney is so important, but it feels right now that on every moment I spend onthe road I would have to spend a moment writing about it, is it more importantto document then to experience? Probably not, but then again, the documentation makes the memories, and somehow, making memories feels important now.

No Land

Flying is strange, not so much that knowledge that you are sitting in the air in the hight of 1200 feet or so and it's -60 degrees out is the middle of a big heavy metal box - this is just totally imperceivable to me and so I ignore it. It's more the notion of spending some hours in this strange elevator with a bunch of strangers and too much free time with nothing to do in it, and then you come out into a totally different world and a totally different experience. Not to mention time zones.

I was thinking so many thoughts, I was thinking of how incredibly futuristic and yet a reality it is, to sit in an airport and write an e-mail to my husband and send it from the lap top and then, talking to him with a webcam showing him where I am, while about 4 people around me are also sending e-mails and doing the same.

This is my first time of traveling with a computer, it's very cool and very strange.

It's also my first time that I'm going to Israel since I left to live in New York. I'm sitting in a plane with a bunch of Israelis who makes me feel both repulsed by the lack of manners and consideration and very jealous. They are going home, the complain about being in the plane and want to go back to their familiar apartments and homes after a vacation. I, on the other hand, am not, and though I left Israel, I feel rejected, like I was kicked out. Also, I realize. I don't feel 100% "home" anywhere now. I have 2 homes, my homeland and the place I live now and nither Brooklyn or Tel Aviv are my home now.


I think about how when I started using the internet there was a huge significant to homepages - those portals into the world wide web was sometime the entire way people used the internet. reading the news and checking their e-mails and searching all from yahoo.com or aol.com or, in my case, excite.com for some reason. Now I use bookmarks and tags and history and my own memory to wonder around the net, and no longer, there's one site who I do most of my internet connections from.

I think it was Albert Camus that said the 20th century is the century of the immigrant, I wonder what's the 21 - maybe we are all so much immigrants now that the notion of homeland, just like the notion of homepage is obsolete and meaningless now, maybe also, the fact that I can connect from everywhere by carrying this computer around makes where I am less important.

What does one do in a day of no crafting?

I didn't make anything today, usually I don't make stuff in a day before a shoot. Ned's shooting a beautiful model tomorrow and we are trying to get over the mass in the studio and turn it from an artist studio, a very messy place indeed, to a photography studio, which is basically a lot of free space. So what did I do today?


Well, Ned when into the city for a meeting and I came as well, we agreed to meet back at coffee shop in an hour and a half. I'm almost out of cool fabrics for the lining of the tarot decks, so I walked to PurlSoHo to get some new ones. The store was really crowded and it's tiny, but found some good stuff. It was cool to listen to all the conversation and how people are dealing with crafting problems and what they are making.



It was very cold and i was getting tired walking out, so I stopped in some tea shop and had some tea. I didn't have my MP3 players and for the first time in a while I got to sit on my own and listen to people's conversation that were very strange, There was 2 women in some meeting on one side, one of them were a voice coach or an English teacher and this was their first class, she made the other girl read out a poem lout loud in the middle of the cafe and they went over the difficult words.

On the other side, a girl was telling her friend about her trip to Pushkar, India. one of them watched a TV show about Pushkar and they were comparing notes and talking about guys.

While I was having tea and listening to conversations, I was finishing a painting I was working on for a while.



We went back home and Ned fell asleep while I was trying to clear the mess in the apartment so that we can shoot tomorrow. After a while I stopped, we didn't do the image research we usually do before shoots and I didn't know if Ned's going to wake up in time to do it, so I made one myself, after an hour of finding and downloading pictures, I went back to trying to clear the mess.

Ned woke up and we went out for a late late dinner in Kellogg's coming out, we saw the most beautiful snow falling. It looked like tiny shards of glass or the small tinsels in a snow glob, all tiny and shiny. It was very cold and the snow was staying on the ground, all dry and stiff, like powdered sugar.



In Kellogg's it was warm and crowded, and we had some sandwiches and talked over the photos I downloaded before, thinking about different ideas for tomorrow.

Stab stitching tutorial

This is a tutorial for my currently favorite book making method. A Japanese style stab stitching cook, it's perfect for making small notebooks, sketchbooks and albums, as well as bigger hard cover books (though I personally haven't tried those.

The benefits of stab stitching books are - since all the pages are stitched together, there are no signatures and so you can bind any number of pages together. Also, there is no glue involve which make this craft a lot less messy (though you won't be able to judge that by how the studio looks right now.


Materials
A rubber ballet or a hammer, paper cut to size, I used about 25 pages for this one, nice paper for the cover and pack cover, also cut to the same size at the pages inside, an awl, a ruler, craft knife, pencil, floss, needle, 2 clips.

Step 1. Attach all the pages together using the clips, put the clips in about a third from the top, leave at least 1"-2" clear to work on.
Step 2. with the ruler and the pencil, mark a straight line on the top part of the book (where the stitching will go). Mark 5 points in equal intervals.


Step 3. Using the awl and mallet, puncture 5 holes where you made the marking. make sure the awl made it all the way through all layers of paper and that the holes are nice and even. If you down have an awl, this can also be done with a nail.

Step 4. make a knot at the end of your floss and thread it through a needle. Start by passing the needle through the center hole from the back of the book to the front, then loop around the top part of the book and insert the needle again through the same hole.

Step 5. Then, pass the needle through the hole to the right of the center hole, and loop around the top part again. turn the book to the back part and move to the next hole to the right (the last one) and loop around it as well. Loop around the side of the book and insert the needle through the first hole to the right again. Then stiched back to the center.
Step 6. Repeat steps 4 and 5 to the left side of the book, then tie a knot at the end and trim the floss.

Ta-Da! the book is done, you can decorate it with rubber stamps, bits of paper, beads, drawings or whatever you like. Or, if you are too lazy, you can hop on to my store and buy one. Writing the instruction is honestly more complicated then actually making one, there are very few options to where the needle can go and it's really really easy to make.

More book binding information
Book binding glossary
The how to make books book
Japanese book binding
Center of book art
The Arm - a wonderful gallery and letter press shop, that offer classes and is just a great place to visit.

Weekly Summery

Sales This week: 11 (!)

Hearts: 358

Treasuries: Curated 2 (the art of war and Original sin)

Main source of inspiration: A fabric shopping spree in PurlSoho and a paper shopping spree in NY central art supply gave me a beautiful new thoughts about colors.

Best thing to eat: Not an amazing food week, but I just had some amazing chocolate.

Shopping: Oh my god! so many cool things were bought this week - about 20$ in Purl for 2 pieces of linen and 4 pieces of cotton, then about 10% in dickblick for 3 sheets of paper, and then about 30$ for 11 sheets of paper, all for the back of tarot cards. Expensive - but so beautiful!

Greatest achievement: 11 Sales! the most I've had it a week so far.

Disappointments: Still not brave enough to list any pine art pieces.

OK, so lets see how I did with this weeks goals...

1.List something each and every day I think that aside of one day, I have indeed list something everyday. On top of that I'm learning to use the Etsy listing exel document so I'll be able to follow my listings better.

2. And make a fox! - Nop! I was too busy making Tarot cards.

3. finish the cups set production and list it, and make at least one tarot deck of the major arcana this week - I made much more then that! one of my nicest buyers wrote about "the cups" deck in a collectors forum which got some cool people seeing them (and buying them!) I made 8 of them this week - and sold 6 of the ones I made.

4. get one treasury, at least, and be in one (hopefully) - I got 2 treasuries, but were not featured in any - sadly.

5. list a fine art item - Nop, I'm still not brave enough for that. I'm going to try that next week.

6. write a store review about someone else's store - Didn't do that either.

7. see the Irving Pen exhibition in the Morgan library and also the Horst exhibition in the Forbes gallery - And no exhibitions!

I guess I didn't do so well on the tasks for this week, however, it doesn't matter so much cause I was really busy making tarot deck and taking care of orders. I'm so happy and excited about people's reaction to the new cards and all the sales. I just hope it keeps going like that.

So, most of the goals move to next week and this is what I plan to do:

1. There were already 14 sales this month, I'm very happy about that. My target was 20 sales this month, so I hope to have to revise that, If I can make those 6 sales this week, I'll be happy.

2. Get my hands on one more treasury at least and if possible, be in one.

3. I got a very nice e-mail from the woman who wrote the Etsy article in Ynet. I want to answer it and write her about my favorite Etsy store.

4. List a fine art piece.

5. Odin the wolf sold, so I want to make another wolf. And possible another fox.

6. Make another cups deck and another major deck.

7. I want to write a blog entry \ article about my experience in Tarot and the history of them in my life. Possibly the first of a series of articles about my personal view of Tarot card. This would be a perpetration to a fuller instruction manual I intend to make about cards.

8. Go see those exhibitions!