Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Wednesday wiped out.

My multimedia journaling has taken a decidedly Dervish like turn lately. I find I am needing more time to feel each page is complete but am getting more frantic with the desire to finish in the time I have. I do not deal well with deadlines when it comes to my artwork and there is something awkward about feeling self imposed deadlines pushing down on you.


 With my work schedule being what it is right now (two part time jobs that have yet to balance with each other) I have decided to take a break from the glue, spray ink, stamps and paint brushes and get back to the line art that got me on this path in the first place. The use of one or two pens to create an entire page of evolving patterns. I will continue sharing what art I make and a little peek into hectic-ville with my loyal three at least once a week, almost surely on Wednesday. When I get back the peace of mind and the time (most important) to delve back into the rainbow  dervish whirling happily in my head I will let you all in on it. I hope you enjoy what I have for you today.

Peace, joy and love to you all.

Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Wednesday with pictures

Today I will be putting up pictures of some of the things I have done with my stamps. I made the stamps and the ink out of things you might already have in your home or that should be fairly easy to acquire. If you have questions feel free to ask.











Peace, Love and Joy to you all

Sunday, September 16, 2012

Warning, there will be stamps

I will be posting a few pictures of my stamps in action on Wednesday as requested. I just finished collaborating on a post for a friends blog and that will hopefully be going up on Wednesday as well. This week is going to be pretty hectic so I apologize in advance if there are no words to go along with the upcoming pictures. Any questions I will try to get to in as timely a fashion as possible.
Peace, Love and Joy to you all

Thursday, September 13, 2012

Long winded Wednesday (On Thursday)

So many things  have happened since my last post. I have started a second job as a server in a 24 hour restaurant. Worked this past weekend at both jobs getting three hour blocks of sleep between shifts. Not my favorite way to achieve sleep deprivation.
Made some serious decisions concerning the education of the small one. She has been pulled from the charter school officially as of this morning. Was delighted at being able to proceed with this new direction thanks to someone wonderful I have known online for a while. Homeschooling has been something we had been considering for a long while and the situation we are in now allows for it. Since I am working outside the home and hubby is doing the stay at home dad thing it has become a real possibility. He has always been more of a teacher than I and can work with her much better. Sometimes creative people clash and it seems to be made worse when it is parent and child.
I have done many things in and for my various journals and would love to share some of them with you here.
 This is in my larger journal. These are going to be filled but the boxes were simple and looked right on the background. The color is not great in this picture but starts as a green and runs through to bright orange at the other end of the page.
This one is in my travel binder. The paper is actually yellow and this picture is mostly true color wise. I have been exploring the symbols I use most frequently and the color combinations that speak to me most. Adding writing to a piece is something that I feel a need to work on as well. I have been trying to expand what I put on a page and writing seemed to be the next step in that goal.
I have been following a prompt challenge from one of my favorite bloggers (link on the side-bar, you should check her out and buy her stuff if you are into journaling at all) and the most recent challenge I have completed was about books. I have read and been influenced by too many books so I decided to stick to the most influential Authors. I made an 8 page simple signature and pasted it into the small journal I made for this challenge. On the pages I listed my 13 favorite authors of all time and as many of their works that I have read as I could. I think it came out well.
This is a selection of the stamps that I have made recently. The black pieces are indeed chunks of flip-flop that were dissected for this purpose. One pair were on clearance for 2$ at the grocery store and the other pair were 1$ at a dollar store. The number of stamps I will be making with the rest of the material is dizzying to me. The corks are not saved from my own drinking habits (not much for wines) but gotten for free at a local "high end" eatery. They were going to throw them away... Can't have that now.

Finally, these are my homemade ink pads. A round make-up sponge set in a small plastic tub. I added food coloring, rit dye and alcohol. I love the way the colors blend and vary with each stamp. The top one is an orange / red / purple and the bottom is yellow / green / blue.

I hope you enjoy this peek into my craft room. I wish you all peace, love and joy.

Wednesday, September 12, 2012

Apologetic place-holder

Wednesdays post was pushed off till tomorrow due to mass chaos. The post will be full of lovely pictures and wonderful bits of prose but not till tomorrow. Thanks for your patience, all three of my loyal viewers.
Peace and joy

Friday, September 7, 2012

Weekend, for the rest of the world

Today starts my work-week and my life is about to get even more interesting. I have training for the second job I just got at 6am tomorrow and Sunday morning after closing shifts at job #1 the evening before. This means that I will be attempting to stuff 3 hour blocks of sleep between working nearly round the clock for the next 2 days. Yes, I chose this. More about why another day.
For now I will leave you with a little art.

Saturday, September 1, 2012

Unfocused productivity

Sometimes when I am feeling upset by reality and need to make art it won't flow the way I want it to. When that happens I try to take a deep breath and figure out what I can do instead of what I can't do. One of the things that has become a fall-back is to create backgrounds. I can use my little bottles of alcohol ink and my stencil type things. I can make the base for future artwork without stressing over what the finished piece will be. Finding a new way to combine the chunk of gutter guard with a piece of plastic mesh on the page is enough to satisfy the creative need. I love making the colors appear on the page as mush as I love putting the pen to paper.
If you are stuck, take a breath.
Look at what you have and say taking it slow is just fine.
Deadlines may work most of the time but art is a healing process as well. If you wake up and can't walk in a straight line let alone draw/paint/sew/stitch one think about how you can make doing those things easier once your head is back in the right place. That will let you feel like you are still making art because you are making ready for art to happen.

Have a breath right now and I hope you enjoy an art filled day.