From the Studio

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It has been quite awhile since I’ve shared any creations from my studio. I’m not exactly sure why that is but I think it has something to do with knowing that I will be moving again and I am transitioning towards moving my studio towards a new living space. Even though I don’t have a moving date yet, I feel myself disconnecting from my current studio space. It’s an interesting process.

Has anyone else ever experienced that with a pending move?

The creative time I have had has been mainly spent curled up in a cozy nook in my living room and I find myself more often than not turning to pick up a ball of colorful yarn. In this transitional time, I look for soft, tactile comfort to ground and center myself.

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A pair of beachy colored socks.

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A buttery yellow baby dress.

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A rose garden colored floppy baby hat.

Last week my company had its annual shutdown and I spent a good part of the week transforming the look of some old wicker furniture. A good Spic n Span scrub and light sanding prepared them for some sprayed on primer and then porcelain colored paint. I love their creamy vintage look and am looking forward to fabric shopping so I can create some plump cushions to adorn them with.

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While I’ve glanced at my art journal a couple of times and sorted some beads and jewelry components here and there, I haven’t felt like creating in that direction lately. I’m sure that I will return to them with renewed joy someday in the near future.

My company will be closed down every Friday during the month of August. We started doing this last year as the summertime is our slowest time of year. It gives our staff members extra time to relax and enjoy some free time before the busy fall season starts.

In anticipation of that extra free time, I’ve recently picked up a book, “Watercolor: A New Beginning: A Holistic Approach to Painting”, from the library. The first sentence of an editorial review from amazon.com expresses the book perfectly.

“Lindsay’s approach to teaching watercolor emerges from somewhere between the traditional art world and the deep, mystic spaces of the self.”

The author Ann Lindsay encourages her students to learn watercolor through the kind of playfulness we experienced in childhood. I find that approach immensely appealing so I took myself down to the arts and crafts store to purchase a pad of watercolor paper, 5 tubes of paint and a large palette for mixing.

Time to schedule some watercolor play time for myself!

7 Simple Ways to make time for your art

Jun16

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As I’m now back to a 40+ hour workweek and my art time has become more compressed, I’d like to share ways that I’ve discovered work well for me in my goal to make time for my art. Of course, these ways can work for anyone no matter what your schedule is like.

Turn off the tv. Plain and simple. TV can be such a time sink and before you know it hours have gone by. The same goes for browsing the internet.
Schedule your art time & make it sacred. Pick a specific day(s) and time(s) and only do art during that time. Tell your family and friends that you’ll be turning off all communication devices and immersing yourself in your art. You and your art are worth it!
Learn to say no. Volunteering and helping can be wonderful and fulfilling commitments. The important part is learning the balance and being in tune to how you feel about the balance of your time. If you feel that you aren’t getting enough time for your art then it’s time to look at the balance.
Divide art projects into small steps. This works wonders to help you feel like you are accomplishing something and working towards your goal. Once I know what I want to create, I actually write a list of the steps needed to complete a project. I can then check them off as I go along. This might sound very left brained and not supportive of the creative flow but the flow actually happens within the steps. It’s important to be flexible with your steps and rewrite your list, if necessary, as you go along.
Relax your housework standards. Enough said.
Make your art project portable. Whatever your medium of choice, you can make up a small portable art kit to bring along for creating during the kids’ practices, lunch breaks at work, riding on the train, waiting at the doctor’s office, traveling on a plane.
Carry a notebook/sketchbook with you at all times. Ideas come at all different times not just when I’m sitting in my studio so I always have a notebook with me to jot down observations I make during my day – colors, textures, patterns, the light, nature changes. Anything that inspires me.

What helps you make time for your art?

From the Studio

Jun5

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A brand new knitting project. I love to pick out my yarns.

With the Jane Thornley free-form “Come Spring” vest pattern in hand, I’ve chosen a similar color palette as the pattern photo because I love the vibrant greens and browns of this lovely season. One of my art friends directed me to a great website for purchasing good quality yarn at affordable prices. I purchased all of my yarn (pictured above) from them except for a ribbon yarn, called “Copper Penny”, I discovered while browsing at Joann Fabric’s one day for art supplies.

So far, I’m liking the contrast between the stripes of rich color.

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Last week I picked up a beading book at the library. As I have been getting into a more personally expressive and organic, free-form flow with my beadwork, I have lost interest in books and magazines devoted to beadwork patterns and other artists’ designs. However, the title of this book, “Shaped Beadwork: Dimensional Jewelry with Peyote Stitch”, caught my eye and my interest.

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In the book, Diane teaches how to make geometrical shapes in peyote stitch, starting with flat one-dimensional shapes and then building upon those to create 2 and 3-dimensional sculptural shapes. So, I started at the beginning of the book and made a triangle. Geez, that was fun. How about if I make another one? Cool! Then I sewed them together and created a little triangular pillow. This little shape is fascinating me. I find myself picking it up and turning it over gently in my hand every time I walk by my beading tray.

Now, what shall I do with this little shape? Make another pillow for a pair of earrings? Use it as a focal shape and free-form around it? Use it as a component in a mixed media necklace? The infinite possibilities bloom in my imagination with wild abandon like the riot of pink peonies in my garden. Hehe Interestingly, my thoughts also lead me back to memories of how much I enjoyed geometry class and its spatial language.

All this from a little triangle pouch.

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The start of another journal page. I had vaguely remembered someone mentioning or reading somewhere that you could paint on used dryer sheets. This so appealed to the recycling devotee in me that I collected some sheets after a weekend of laundry chores. After dripping, brushing, and wetting paint across its surface, I let my sheet dry and then ripped a piece off to create a waterfall shape on my bright yellow page. I then glued some dried tulip petals at its base and drew some water swirls around the petals with a white gel pen.

This page is far from finished but it has a good start. As I glued and painted my “waterfall”, I thought of water and its symbolism to feelings. I thought of how my page could represent my getting in touch with feelings that are frightening to me and how I sometimes relegate those frightening feelings to a very deep place inside of myself. Can I ride my tumbling waterfall into the depths of myself and explore some of those feelings? I wrote:

I tumble down the waterfall inside of myself

to get in touch with my feelings.

From the Studio

May28

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Now that my studio time has become limited to evenings and weekends since my return to full-time work 3 months ago, I have slipped into a comfortable rhythm as I dip into one art project and then another. Depending upon my mood, my energy level (especially after a day of work) and whatever else is going on, I choose my project and settle in for some blissful art making. Lately, my choices have been between my knitting, weaving beads for jewelry pieces, and my art journal.

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My knitting is a dear old friend, with its cozy and comfortable rhythm, always there to wrap me in its warm embrace. Using a newborn sock pattern I recently found online, I’m making a rosy pink pair of booties for a colleague’s brand new daughter. It took me a couple of practice starts trying to find the right gauge and now I’ve settled upon using size 2 double pointed bamboo needles.

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My beadwork is constantly evolving as I try new and different weaves to express the beauty of nature and how it touches and resonates within my soul. I love the color palette I used for my Spring free-form bracelet and do not want to let it go just yet. Using the bead soup mix I found left over on my bead mat, I created a 2-drop peyote cuff.

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I was pleasantly surprised by how quickly and easily this cuff came into being and am excited by the range of ideas floating in my head on how I can use it for a background for polymer clay work like canes, cabochons and buttons. For this particular cuff, I think I will create a glazed polymer clay face cabochon in soft pinks as a focal point. I haven’t figured out yet what I will do for a clasp. I want something that will go well with the design and colors of the cuff. I feel that if I add a metal clasp that it might be too jarring for the rest of the design, especially with the soft colors of this palette. Any ideas?

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My new love is my art journal. Sarah Whitmire’s wonderful Soul Journal prompts have taken me gently by the hand and guided me as I start out on this self-discovery journey. Now that I have almost completed the 22 days of prompts, I find my wings starting to flutter open. I want to fly on my own across my journal pages and see what happens.

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I am having so much fun mixing and layering paint colors on the pages. I’ve discovered the “My Studio” line of inexpensive acrylic paints at A.C. Moore and everytime I visit I am compelled to get just a couple more colors! I also find myself looking around the house for interesting elements to add and use for stamping and texturing my pages. Inspired by my dear friend Judy, my next step is to try my hand at molding paste to bring a lot more texture to my pages. I’d like to use that for the cover of my journal. If anyone has any tips or stories to share about your own art journaling/collage experience, please do!

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I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it.

~Pablo Picasso

From the Studio

May15

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Another Ripple scarf!

I love this pattern so much that I’m making another scarf, this time in jeweled tones for a dear friend’s birthday next month. I imagine her wearing it with a vibrant fall colored outfit.

One of the things that I love best about this pattern, besides its wonderful rhythm, is the way you can choose 2 different yarns that coordinate in color but contrast in texture. As you only use one skein of each yarn, it’s also a great way to use up leftover yarn from a bigger project.

I’ve returned to my art journal pages. I put my journal aside for awhile when it was time to create some pages of your home, the one that you’ve felt most comfortable in. I’m sure that the intent was to journal about what home means to me. Well….in the past 6 years, I have faced a lot of challenging questions about that so this was an interesting exercise for me. After putting it off for days and days, I finally sat my butt in the chair and just started drawing a house.

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I’ve created my dream house with big windows and skylights. I love the idea of living in a home filled with light, illuminating my sacred living space in a wash of warmth. I have yet to find this place of my dreams in real life. As my writing states,

“Under an ocean of stars, I hope to find my true home.”

The house itself (on the left) is made of a brown paper bag glued onto my journal page as a pocket. Our assignment was to create some paper dolls of myself and the loved ones I live with. As my kids are grown and I am no longer married, I have decided not to make the dolls but I will place some beloved photos of myself with my family in the house pocket.

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The next assignment was to find a couple of interesting body shapes in a magazine and cut them out precisely. I laid the body shapes onto my page and then, using a makeup sponge, painted around each shape, thus creating a beautiful silhouette. I especially love the shape on the right and thought that she needed some wings. Then, using a gold gel pen, I wrote down as many descriptive words as I could think of. That exercise really sparked my imagination. I found that sitting outside in nature was the perfect setting for accomplishing this.

Visual journaling gives me such a calm, peaceful feeling…

“Every spirit builds itself a house, and beyond its house a world, and beyond its world a heaven. Know that the world exists for you.”

~Ralph Waldo Emerson