Fused Plastic Desk Lamp Shade

Gaudi lampshade

As Frank Zappa knew all too well, necessity is the mother of invention, and it can lead to some fun experimentation. When I bought this lamp from Amazon, I was going for the two USB ports built into the base as well as its dimming capabilities, and found the vaguely Edison, science-lab appearance appealing.

In practice, the bare bulb delivered a raw, unpleasant level of glare no one would want in their home. Instead of spending a half hour returning it, I decided to spend around five figuring out how to solve the problem.

I have posted about past experiments with Fused Plastic any number of times on this blog, in projects from  bunting bombing, to wildly frilly aprons, to Barbie survival gear, to Chinese Lanterns. If you follow the link you will find how-to tips for getting started on your own fused plastic experiments. Happily, my own experiments have resulted in a huge bag of promising plastic wrapping. This project incorporates a gift bag from the Gaudi Museum in Spain along with two different wrappings for toilet paper in bulk and a couple of clear vegetable bags to give thickness and strength.

The Gaudi on the lake

The How-To:

Measure, measure, measure. Make several stupid mistakes. Learn from them. And the solution is to use a strip of stiffer plastic (cut from some ribbed plastic shelf liner I have for some unknown reason) at top and bottom to hold the cylindrical shape, glued in with clear silicone sealant. Two wood skewers normally used for something like Chicken Yakitori are cut to size and inserted (after a lot more measuring) so that the shade balances perfectly atop the lamp.

The how-to

And there you have it. A lovely fused plastic lampshade that, while helping to save the planet, will also charmingly light up my life.

A Party in A Pothole

 

You are encouraged to zoom in

Like so much about America, our infrastructure seems to be crumbling - as evidenced by the killer pothole in front of my apartment building that has been trashing tires and wrecking suspensions for over five years now. Mysteriously, it is always filled with water due to a persistent leak that has stumped the city's finest for so long that they finally gave up.

Before

The pothole

To celebrate the 4th of July and all that America is becoming, I decided to turn the pothole into a resort. This hit and run installation project was made far easier by the fact that all of the streets surrounding Lake Merritt in Oakland are closed and barricaded to prevent out of control crowds and any one of a number of unfortunate events. As a result I was able to sprawl in the street while gluing all the little figures into place.

At least five people including a security guard stopped to ask if I was okay during this process, which I guess is to be expected when you are a white-haired woman in your seventies lying prone in the street. Not a single one of them showed even a trace of interest when I explained I was doing an art installation. This is fine with me. My installations are for the perpetually curious souls who tend to see fine detail and wondrous things when they go out into the world. I would be equally happy if I succeeded in bringing even a moment of amusement and puzzlement to one of our neighborhood crows.

The North Shore

Happy Fourth of July.

A Happy Encounter of Objects: The Poetry Jar

 

Sometimes when I am in the creative doldrums I simply wander around my house and stop to dig aimlessly through old stashes of stuff — objects that looked like they might turn into something interesting given the right inspiration and a little luck.

The Poetry Jar is the product of my latest wander. The objects that found each other in this piece include: 

• Mormon Glass Grapes (read all about these fascinating artifacts of Americana here);

• A lovely glass container from the flea market that was originally used to create a spordscape, back when I was into cultivating mold;

• Glass slides with lettering on them (and all the verbs in red!), from a kit from the 1950s intended for use in schools. The idea was to use these with an overhead projector to teach students about word endings in poetry. Another flea market score and one that I have been trying to figure out how to use for three decades or more.

And the result of this creative play turned out to be the perfect gift for a poet: The Poetry Jar. Now these are no longer objects looking for a purpose in life; they have morphed into a gift looking for the perfect recipient.

The Poetry Jar

Close-up

Elements

Upcycling: The "Ta-Dah" Nightshirt

Front view

Back view

Introducing the Ta-Dah! nightshirt — guaranteed to help you make a noteworthy entrance at any pajama party. On a recent visit with my sister, she began to covet my nightshirt (Exotic Upcycling: Indigo Dreams), and put in a request for one of her own. Because that first shirt used such unique materials, including a length of West African cloth, I was dubious about replicating the effort. My solution was a trip to the thrift store where I scored three recycled men's shirts for a total cost of $8. The name of the shirt comes from the embroidered initials on the hem of one of the shirts.

How the shirt got its name

I find it delightfully absorbing to figure out this kind of textile puzzle, and the two photos below offer an idea of how the three shirts melded into one.

Guide to the puzzle pieces - front

Guide to the puzzle pieces - back

Detail

Note that I use the term "nightshirt" loosely. While wearing this garment assures you will look incredibly stylish if you encounter someone in a hallway in the middle of the night in alien surroundings, it also doubles as an entertaining shirt during the day. Below, a photo of me modeling the shirt before shipping it off to a sister in need.

Spontaneous Stitching: Spirit Cloth

This piece is the result of itchy fingers and an overwhelming urge. It combines scraps of eco-dyed fabric, fabric printed with pounded flowers, and fabric from random projects. The scraps are connected using sashiko stitching, and some are hand-stamped with my current thoughts regarding the meaning of life, death, and the universe. It is 3 inches wide and 21.5 feet long.

I have no idea what it is.

A friend came over when it was close to completion and after fingering it thoughtfully said, "This would be perfect for wrapping a dead body." In the past she created a tasteful shroud for her own mother, so in my immediate crowd she is certainly the expert on such matters. It is an idea rife with possibilities. I pictured hearing of a death and then discretely sending them a lovely small bundle of spirit cloth (see first photo above).

My own vision, as I stitched away until the scraps ran out, was to drape it artfully over the branches of some large piece of gnarly, picturesque driftwood on the beach and set it alight. My 10-year-old grandniece was so horrified by this idea that I dropped it, at least temporarily, out of consideration for her sensibilities.

So currently it hangs in my dining room from vintage French wood sewing spools while it awaits its ultimate, unknown fate.

Eco Dyeing Mania #2: Hyper-Local Couture

 

Test-dyeing to see what works

Hyper-Local Couture

The ongoing experiments with eco-dyeing and the heightened focus on my own limited environs during the pandemic led to this concept of hyper-local couture. Hyper-local couture is clothing made from recycled natural fabrics and eco-dyed using plants that can be found in the immediate neighborhood of the wearer.

The Lake Merritt Top

The Lake Merritt top is comprised of scraps of fabric dyed using plants foraged during walks around my neighborhood. By the time I made the top I was well versed in which plants would work, and used copper and iron mordants to vary the colors of both the cloth background and the plant prints. Copper gives a greenish yellow tone while iron offers a rich, earthy, reddish-brown to black tone.

Lake Merritt shirt: front

Detail

Back

Detail

Me wearing the Lake Merritt shirt

The Northeastern Connecticut Top

This next top emerged from an ad hoc eco-dyeing workshop I offered to a few friends at a lovely rambling house in northeastern Connecticut with equally lovely rambling grounds bursting with foliage — much of which I was unfamiliar with. As a result, the first part of the workshop involved foraging and testing plants and trying to figure out which plants lent themselves to eco-dyeing (see top photo in this post).

All participants, including myself, walked away with pieces of eco-dyed fabric. What better way to say thank you for a wonderful interlude in the Connecticut countryside than to use those scraps of fabric to create a piece of hyper-local couture for the hostess, based entirely on plants found in her own backyard.

Connecticut shirt: front view

Detail

Detail: lining from recycled men's shirt

Back

Detail

Modeling the shirt before sending it off

For more about ongoing eco-dyeing mania and some helpful how-to links, see Eco Dyeing Mania Part One.