House No. 31: A-Frame House

House No. 31: A-Frame House
ink, colored pencil, and watercolor on paper, digital layout
8.5 in. x 11 in.
031/365; 01/31/11

Today's house is the first in an alphabet series that I am making for the month of February, with a few dalliances into other houses along the way.

You see, I have had a craving lately for early 20th century educational posters. (Some people want chocolate or chips, and I get a hankering for era-specific print design.) I have also just wanted to draw. This satisfies both needs. It's like the salty and the sweet in one month-long 365 sub-project.

If you love architecture, world culture, and domestic dwelling trivia, then this is the month for you. Stay tuned for the tricky letters for potential new vocabulary for you logophiles, verbivores, and crossword puzzle-players out there. And if you are into educational ephemera, we can talk. There will be a little something for everyone. What can I say? I like to mix it up for ya.

Monday Meet the Neighbors, Annabelle's House

Welcome to this week's edition of Meet the Neighbors that posts every Monday here on The Happy Homemaker. It's a chance to introduce and showcase other 365ers and artists by whom I am inspired and with whom I am collaborating.

This week's neighbor is Annabelle, who created this house out of paper.

My friend Kelly is Annabelle's mom, and a fellow 365er. After Annabelle made this beauty, Kelly told her about my 365 project. I am hoping to see lots more from Annabelle, and perhaps we might even collaborate on a house together.

House No. 30: Frost House

House No. 30: Frost House
vector illustration
approx 8 in. x 10 in.
030/365; 01/30/11

Inspired by the frost photo posted by Angie Neimand on Simulacrum.

House No. 29: Brew House

House No. 29: Brew House
malted grains remaining from brewing
approx 12 in. x 12 in.
029/365; 01/29/11

I cannot tell you how good this house smells. I seriously wish that I had smell-o-vision capacity. It smells like baking bread and caramel.

Today the Werepanda and I participated in our friends' brew day afternoon. (Well, I mostly colored with their 4-year-old, but I did add some hops. And I made a house. But mostly colored. A girl has to have priorities. Mine were crayons.)

House No. 28: MacGyver House

House No. 28: MacGyver House
repurposed wrapping paper, theater ticket, and coffee cup sleeve; gum; the saliva of four people
5 in. x 4 in.
028/365; 01/28/11

Take one 365 project,  too many activities packed into one day, forty minutes to get home to post, and four people in a car with what they have on their persons and in the car ... MacGyver house — with all of our DNA contained therein. Hey, there was a lot of chewing to be done to stick this stuff together.

The house name came from my brother-in-law who called me MadGyver while putting this one together.

Mad props to my husband who drove us from Richmond downtown to the burg in a record fifteen minutes while I constructed. In the fog. I still have not recovered.

It just goes to show that art is a communal effort. An insane, unhygenic, unsafe, communal effort.

House No. 27: Shadow House

 

 

House No. 27: Shadow House
paper, repurposed corrugated cardboard, twine, staples, glue
8 in. x 13 in. x 6 in.
027/365; 01/27/11, International Holocaust Remembrance Day

And they said, “From now on you do not answer by your name. Your name is your number.” And the delusion, the disappointment, the discouragement that I felt, I felt like I was not a human person anymore.
Lilly Appelbaum Lublin Malnik

Today is the 66th Anniversary of the Liberation of the Nazi German Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camp by the Red Army.

Today's house is a reliquary for all that was lost.

 

 

Poster Image from the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial & Museum

House No. 26: Bird Houses

House No. 26: Bird Houses

ink on paper

12 in. x 9 in.

026/365; 01/26/11


Today, I have drawn for you a portrait of the Vanderbeaks East Coast homes: Park Avenue, the Hamptons, and the Berkshires.

365 Challenge: March Mix-it-up Madness!

I have been having so much fun interacting and collaborating with the members of the 365 community, so I propose a 365 Crossover Challenge.

Let's all make some sort of image or template having to do with our own 365 project and post it one month from today on Thursday, February 24, for others to use to collaborate.

Let's fill March with collaborative work, a 365 universe crossover, if you will. Like when Josie and the Pussycats would show up on Scooby Doo. And we already have a Velma!

(Photo shamelessly swiped from the lady herself. ©2010 Amy Whitehurst of Green Shutter Photography)

House No. 25: A Room of One's Own

House No. 25: A Room of One's Own

ink on cut and glued repurposed cardstock

8 in. x 7 in. x 10 in.

025/365; 01/25/11

In honor of Virginia Woolf's birthday, my house today is a home for creativity. In the paraphrased words of Woolf, one must have a little money and a room of one's own to create.

Our creative room is not only a physical space in which we may work but the room to evolve and grow and the space for independence and free thinking. Woolf made her room in a lodge at the bottom of her garden at the country house she shared with her husband.

My house today is loosely based on that writing lodge where Woolf wrote some of her best known works. I realized while working on it that today's house is the first in which I have done an interior.

House No. 24: House Music

House No. 24: House Music

digital painting

8 in. x 5 in.

024/365; 01/24/11

Say what?! House music all night long.

Monday Meet the Neighbors, Starter House

Welcome to a new Happy Homemaker addition called Meet the Neighbors that I hope to have every Monday. It's a chance to introduce and showcase other 365ers and artists by whom I am inspired and with whom I am collaborating.

For my first Meet the Neighbors, I am exhibiting the fantastic stylings of my day 12 Starter House by these creative people.

To start, here is what I made:

And here is what Heather Addley of 365 Days of Me created with it:

view Greetings From the 50 Foot Woman of 01/13/11

And here is 365 ~ Trees Please Misha's take on the Starter House:

 

view Misha's Our House of 01/16/11

My good friend Angie of Simulacrum cut out the windows and replaced them with stained glass:

 view Angie's post of 01/15/11

Tara at Sun a Day made the house bright and cheerful:

view Sun 18 of 01/18/11

While Phil at Micrograves made it Southern Gothic:

Pink Bayou, the creator of The Little Glass Fish, made a house for her fish, Ralph:

view Ralph's house at Pink's post of 01/19/11

The amazing Amy (Amyzing?) of Snow Globe 365 made a snow globe. How cool is that?

view Amy's post of 01/28/11

Thanks so much, everybody, for playing along. I love the way they all came out. I think that I just might make another collaborative house. And please let me know in the comments section if you have a collaboration that needs participation.

House No. 23: Shanty

House No. 23: Shanty

Repurposed scrap wood & wood glue

3 in. x 3.5 in. x 2 in.

023/365; 01/23/11

Today's house is the antithesis of yesterday's McMansion. Plus, it doesn't smell of fried food.

This was a collaborative piece. I designed, measured, and glued it together, but my husband worked the power tools. That's what she said.

It's rough and tumble, this little shanty, but I think it's sweet. The wood has so much character on its own.

House No. 22: McMansion

House No. 22: McMansion

Upcycled McDonald's containers

5 in. x 4 in. x 3.5 in.

022/365; 01/22/11

As if poorly built, oversized suburban architecture weren't bad enough, there is now the post-housing-crash threat that the artificial communities created to house these behemoths may fall prey to blight similar to the plague of abandon in inner-city neighborhoods during the fifties and sixties.

And yet, I keep seeing new construction everywhere. Meanwhile, for-sale and foreclosed houses keep dropping in prices and well built, historic homes decay. The insatiable need for the new and excessive drives the construction of homes and storefronts that remain empty. It seems like the perfect, unfortunate metaphor for the state of the economy.

I think that I will start collecting real-life metaphors. What are others that you have observed? I would love to see people illustrate them in their work.

House No. 21: House Call

House No. 21: House Call

Ink on cotton rag paper (more paper swag, this time from Crane)

5 in. x 4 in.

021/365; 01/21/11

The call is coming from inside the house!

House No. 20: City House

House No. 20: City House

Manually-masked digital photograph

8 in. x 8 in.

020/365; 01/20/11

 

A grey and overcast sort of image for a grey and overcast sort of day in downtown Richmond, Virginia. Thanks to Sky Noir, who let me snap this photo from his office window, as it was a more intriguing view than mine.

House No. 19: Fashion House

House No. 19: Fashion House

Logo design and photo manipulation

10 in. x 8 in.

019/365; 01/19/11

 

The Happy Homemaker has its own line of couture and prêt-à-porter and a brand new fragrance that smells like home. All from the House of Happy.