As more the world is going digital, local libraries are coming up with ways to get patrons to visit and use their services and an initiative the Allen County Public Libary began in the past few years to offer craft classes to adults.
Today's craft class was for ticky yarn art at the Little Turtle Branch at part of their Alt Art program, I had never heard of it before, so had no idea what it involved, but thought it would be fun to try something new.
It turns out it involves yarn and the backside of a floor tile, as it is very sticky, and you just create a design on it with yarn; that's it!
I would never have thought to so that so was excited at the repurposed creativity possibilities.
Here are the instructions we were given:
Here is a sampling of creations they had on hand for inspiration.
You can't really see in the above photo, but on the far right behind the instructor's arm is a tile full of circles.
I had thought about doing that, but it seemed too simple and like a cop-out and then the lightbulb went off in my head to that the little circles sort of look like the stars in Van Goh's "The Starry Night" painting and decided to do a project inspired by that painting.
The inspiration:
Van Gogh, Vincent. The Starry Night. 1889. The Museum of Modern Art, New York.
The Van Gogh Gallery. “The Starry Night.” 15 January 2013
https://www.vangoghgallery.com/painting/starry-night.html>.
he Van Goh Gallery wrote the following for the Starry Night story:
Vincent van Gogh painted Starry Night in 1889 during his stay at the asylum of Saint-Paul-de-Mausole near Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. Van Gogh lived well in the hospital; he was allowed more freedoms than any of the other patients. If attended, he could leave the hospital grounds; he was allowed to paint, read, and withdraw into his own room. He was even given a studio. While he suffered from the occasional relapse into paranoia and fits - officially he had been diagnosed with epileptic fits - it seemed his mental health was recovering.
Unfortunately, he relapsed. He began to suffer hallucination and have thoughts of suicide as he plunged into depression. Accordingly, there was a tonal shift in his work. He returned to incorporating the darker colors from the beginning of his career and Starry Night is a wonderful example of that shift. Blue dominates the painting, blending hills into the sky. The little village lays at the base in the painting in browns, greys, and blues. Even though each building is clearly outlined in black, the yellow and white of the stars and the moon stand out against the sky, drawing the eyes to the sky. They are the big attention grabber of the painting.
For my sticky art project, I had to work with the colors of yarns that were on hand and selected the following. Wish there had been more shades of blue.
Not pictured, they also had tulle, ribbon and stick on butterflies. I took a tiny scrap of light blue tulle, but the other items would not have worked for my project.
It was about an hour and 15 minutes later I ended up with the following. We were actually to make two projects in that time frame
As the tile was only 6 inches by 6 inches, it was not a lot of space to work with and I started with making the moon on the right and it was too big, but already stuck down by the time I realized it. You can take up the yarn if you don't press it down to hard, but I already had and when trying to take it up, it lost the stickiness.
I ran out of time to do anything with trying to make detailed houses and hills.
I ended up using E6000, a strong, clear craft glue, to secure any bits that were loose and I am now using it for a mug rug.
For the unused tile, the instructor allowed me to take it home and pick out what I wanted to use. I took some green, white with gold and red yarn to do another project at home, which I figured will be Christmas themed and probably something a little more simple; perhaps just those simple circles I snubbed for this project.
It was fun and could see this could be a good project to make with kids as you can cut yarn with children's safety scissors.
