The Bunny Dresser

Whether I’m starting a sewing, woodworking, crafting or painting project, I always begin by sketching out some concept art in my journal. Scrapbooking and storyboarding helps me gather my thoughts and ideas before they escape forever from my head. Pinterest is good and all, but nothing beats marking your ideas onto something tangible, something that can be manipulated – cut, shaped, beat up and pasted. I often flip back to old pages of my journal and it sparks so much more joy than looking through old “pins” – seeing the visualizations of my past thoughts helps inspire new ones. The only way to control my racing thoughts sometimes is to get them on paper and have them run a marathon across the pages. I love seeing the marks from my pencil smudge across the paper. Seeing text on a screen does nothing for my creative mind – I need the tactile feedback of a physical medium. The sound of scissors going cleanly through paper or fabric is music to my ears. Sometimes I start off a project with the intent of painting something and I end up at my sewing machine. Sometimes I start with a small idea and it expands and grows into a huge piece. Jumping from medium to medium and project to project is my exercise.

I’m writing about a project that is now quite dear to my heart, for many reasons. This piece started out with me smearing some leftover paint from a dirty brush onto a page in my journal – a practice I have engaged in for a while now to make use of otherwise wasted paint. I cut out an inked impression of one of my bunny stamps to experiment with. I stamped some foliage around the edges of the paper. The dark blue navy and venom green became a menacing forest where a fleeing white hare lived, desperate to find refuge from the many dangers nearby. The imagery stuck in my head over the next few days - I wanted to see this somewhere other than just my journal. Minimizing waste is one of my core values - I am an unapologetic rescuer of unwanted items during the seasonal neighborhood garbage pickups. I had picked up an old dresser recently that was a perfect canvas for this concept.

After giving the dresser a proper cleaning and prepping it for painting, I gave it an “all over” coat of the venom green. I wanted this dresser to have a similar feel as the vintage illustrations that can be found in old children’s books, so I set out to capture that stylistic whimsy. Over years of crafting, I have accumulated a fairly large assortment of stamps that embody the style I was looking for. To create a densely packed forest, I would need a lot of layering. To accomplish this, I had to cut out a stamped paper impression of each type of stamp that I would be using. After making the initial impression on the piece, I could then place the paper cut out (called a mask) to partially obscure the ink on the piece, and place another impression to create the depth I wanted. Most of the stamps I used are quite intricate, so having a sharp set of scissors that can provide the high degree of precision needed for this work, makes a normally frustrating job into a much more pleasant process. The rest was repetition – my meditation; bray the ink, apply the mask, stamp the stamp. With the foundation of the work in place, I began to dance a small paint brush through the stamp lines to enhance the lowlights – creating more dimension in this newly grown forest. Finally, the home for my timid little bunnies was ready – I stamped my furry little friends into creation using the same techniques as the forest.

I mentioned earlier that this piece was special to me. Prior to this project, I hadn’t really shared many of my pieces with anyone, besides my husband and small army of children. Sure, I would put up the occasional post every once in a while with a few pictures, but that vast majority of my pieces were kept private. I’ve always had this voice in the back of my head telling me that my work wasn’t actually good and that there’s no way anyone else will like it. I finally worked up the courage to post of a picture of the finished dresser to a public group of crafters and the positive response was overwhelming. All the noise from the chaos of life fell quiet and I got to feel the positive aftereffects of this creation. Social media can be such a negative thing, but it doesn’t have to be. This experience helped to show me that sharing can lead to more than just personal validation – it can inspire others.

If your art tells a story – it stays with people. It can be more than a picture, more than a dresser, more than a few hours of repeating the same steps: bray the ink, apply the mask, stamp the stamp. Now my dresser holds the clothes of my little twin sons. Every time I open the drawers to get them an outfit, my hands linger for a moment and I’m taken back to the nights in the studio where I made this dresser anew.