Squid Angel Blessings: Peyote Stitch, Canadian Music, Kansas, and a Hawaiian Recipe

I've just been made a Squid Angel for the next three months which gives me the opportunity to give lenses I find a little extra boost.  I'm going to feature the blessed lenses here on my blog as well.

Peyote Stitch

Peyote Bead Work:  Turning Glass Into Cloth tells some interesting stories of how lensmaster Margo_Arrowsmith found women who were doing intricate beadwork for very little monetary compensation.  It also shows how to do the peyote beading stitch.

Canadian Music

Obama's Canadian Playlist ~~ 49 Songs That Define Canada and Our Music (created by Treasures-by-Brenda) is about how the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation created playlist of songs that they thought represented Canada to give to President Barack Obama.
I was lucky enough to know a Canadian who loved music and he introduced me to so many great bands and musicians I wouldn't have known about otherwise.  It's really a shame that people here in the US aren't exposed to more of them.  So of course I had to bless this lens.

Kansas

I have a good friend who just moved from near where I live in Iowa to Kansas to be near her daughters and her new grandchild.  We used to go on a lot of day trips together, driving all around eastern Iowa, northern Illinois, and even Wisconsin.  Now I'll have to get to Kansas so we can have fun discovering what all there is to see there.

I happened across this lens completely by accident on my first day as Squid Angel:  Must See Places in Kansas, created by of_different_sorts.  As much as I love to read guidebooks and research places to visit on the Web, sometimes it's nice to have the most interesting places listed up front in an easy to find way.  This lens does just that by listing the Top 10 Places to See in Kansas.

Hawaiian Food

I have been learning about the culture of Hawaii lately through a group I belong to which practices Hawaiian shamanism, or Huna.  I found this quirky Hawaiian recipe lens in the Travel category, Loco Moco, A Traditional Hawaiian Breakfast Food, created by Susan52.  The story goes that it was created by hungry surfers getting ready to go out and spend a long day in the water.  You'll have to look at the lens to see just what it consists of. :)

Gratitude and Turkey Recipe Lensfest

I collected these lenses from members of the Squidoo Club for the latest lens fest.

100 Things I'm Thankful For
Gratituding Your Way to Inspiration
Thanksgiving Songs
My List of Lenses~~Blessed by an Angel
My Squidoo Angels
Our Online Supporters
Rocket Moms Photos Session 4

And then some lenses for what to do with that turkey:

A RocketMoms Thanksgiving Day Feast
Tastiest Post Thanksgiving Treat Ever

Copyright Laws Make Me Crazy

Pardon me while I rant.

I'm an artist. I create images. Sometimes I would like to be able to create images from other images. Despite the internet, it is STILL really hard to find free domain images. Even the Library of Congress says it isn't responsible for the images it posts. Then tell me why again that people can be arrested for uploading music?

When I started on Squidoo there was the Flickr module. You could put in a search term and it would show any images from Flickr that matched. That lasted for about three years. Recently Squidoo has decided that unless the person uploading the image to Flickr has designated an image as Creative Commons - Commercial Use Allowed it won't show up on the Flickr module. And even more recently Flickr or Squidoo (don't have time to go find it) decided there will be no loading up of images to the module by search term anymore.

But wait, there are more levels of inconvenience! This means I can't even use my OWN art because I'm not about to designate it commercial use allowed because that means somebody can take it and sell it to somebody for whatever amount. Why would I want to do that?? (And by the way, yes, I have been paid for my work and quite well. On the other hand, derivations are okay - see below.)

I know there's nothing stopping me from just plugging in the HTML and loading them up that way but that takes so much more time. I don't want to waste that time when for years I didn't have to.

That is, if I can even get the images. There are public domain images listed on Flickr that the uploaders refuse to list as commercial use. WTF??? They don't want them to be made into collage sheets. It's. Not. Their. Copyright. They make a big holier-than-thou point of not claiming copyright, so why do they care? Don't upload anything then.

This kind of b/s has been driving me crazy since I first got interested in artsy rubber stamps ten years ago and found out that some rubber stamp companies didn't want you using their rubber stamped images on work for resale, even hand stamped. What, you're going to pay $10-12 for a stamp that you're just going to use a few times to send cards to your friends? Are you kidding me?? Then don't make rubber stamps!! Again...WTF?

And the whole no derivation clause of the copyright law. Look, if somebody seems my work and wants to make something like it, go right ahead. Every piece of art is a derivation of something. It's pretty hard to make a pure piece of art uninfluenced by something we've seen at some point in our lives. It's called being inspired.

Oh..and...if an artist sells a painting and then person who bought it sells it for a profit, does the artist get any of that money? No! They retain copyrights but they don't get any of the money. So why the hell do magazines get to say you can't use images in them to make collages out of for resale? It should be that once a magazine is sold, that is the end of their rights to any monetary gain. It's ridiculous!

I just want to make art. But I've just about had it with trying to make money from it.

Image Transfer - A Cool Art Technique

I first fell in love with the look of image transfer while reading about it in Somerset Studio magazine. The technique itself, though - despite reading numerous how-to articles in the magazine - escaped me. In the beginning people were using toxic substances such as acetone to dissolve the toner on copies. Or, to get a colored image they were using Polaroid pictures and expensive equipment. So although I admired the look I didn't use it.

A couple of years ago an artist friend of mine asked me just what an image transfer was. Googling to find the right information was so frustrating that I decided to create a lens as a sort of bibliography. Since then the lens has grown quite a bit and includes many different methods for image transfer as well as my own "faux" image transfer technique that I developed.

Check it out for yourself by clicking on this link: Image Transfer on Squidoo.

Image courtesy of "T" Altered Art on Flickr.

Make a Free Online Vision Board Using Squidoo

Vision boards, or dream boards as they're sometimes called, are becoming more and more popular as a way to visually map out your goals and dreams. They are often part of a philosophy called the Law of Attraction made popular by The Secret. I have to say I'm getting a bit tired of the overuse of the Law of Attraction, but since I am an artist I still like the idea of creating vision boards. Apparently even Oprah made one to add energy to President Obama's campaign.

Originally to make one you cut pictures out of magazines and glued them onto poster board to make a collage. Now there are online sites where you can create vision boards. I thought why not make one from a Squidoo lens? You have modules to add pictures and modules to add text, and not only that you might make a little bit of money from them if it's a topic lots of people are interested in.

See what I came up with at my lens here: Create a Free Vision Board With Squidoo

And although I am a bit jaded about the "LOA", I've found a new book that puts it in a more down-to-earth perspective. I made my first Squidoo "SquidLit" lens about it. Check it out here: The Law of Attraction in Action .

(Just a note to any other Squidooers reading this who are thinking about trying the SquidLit template. I'm tempted to say don't. It seems to have a lot of bugs. Don't write too much in the introductory template because I lost most of it in transition to the regular workshop.)

Just Desserts: Sugar Cookie Recipes

I just have to take a moment to toot my own bright orange Squidoo horn. If you are part of the Squidoo community you know that making it into the top 100 Lens ranking is a big, big deal. So I was thrilled when my Sugar Cookie Recipes lens made it there earlier this week. I then set my sights on the Top 50 so I could put another shiny new badge from Lens Candy on my lens (having just proudly "hung" one for Top 100). But I didn't really think it was possible. Lo and behold, much to my wondering eyes did appear a lens ranking of 49 when I checked this morning!

If you think this was an overnight success it isn't. I created this lens in November 2007 based on my grandma's Christmas lemon sugar cookie recipe. It got close to the Top 100 last year but never got over the threshold.

And to those of you who don't have a Squidoo lens this may seem like a lot of hoopla over nothing, but I've spent countless hours crafting my lenses and it feels like, as the title says, just desserts to be rewarded in this way. Oh, and I actually make money from it! So if you're inspired to join in the fun, click on this link to start creating your own.