Happy Birthday to me! (Well to my blog anyway ...)

Oooh - and I've just realized my first blog birthday has come and gone by a few days - it was on September 23rd. May there be many more blogging days to come!! :)

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO LARA'S ART SPACE!!!

H A P P Y B I R T H D A Y T O L A R A ' S A R T S P A C E ! ! !

(Says the same in Webdings - too tempting not to use that font for something!)

Two extremes ...

Warm enough even to dip my feet into the Indian Ocean!

Beautiful blue skies and sun at the weekend ....

.... grey skies over our house this afternoon ....

.... the rain and hail storm that followed minutes after.

My blogging has a few gaps whilst I'm showing mum around Perth. I've taken some awesome photos though and must share some here with you - photography is after all another form of creativity. And I do enjoy it so much (I am wishing for a fab camera for my 40th birthday, and already planting subliminal messages into my family's minds!)

Also, I know I call this an art blog and it is supposed to be about my creative journey - but here I am posting photos of flowers and the beach and weather. What's it all about? But as I stood on that beach I got to thinking that creativity is food for the soul - visiting the beach and listening to the surf is soothing to the soul - everything is inextricably linked! I see my soul and creativity as being intertwined, my soul would indeed be miserable without my ability to create - enjoying the colours and sounds of nature is just another aspect of my soul and feeds my creativity. So I will keep posting photos of things that stir my soul!

Just being ...

I've been having lots of fun catching up with mum and news of the UK. We haven't done much, just mooched around drinking lots of tea and chatting. Next week we'll start with the day trips as it's school holidays and we can go out with the whole family. Should get some good photos of the countryside to share :)

So for now I will simply share a quote with you from a book I've borrowed from the library called 'The Soul of Creativity' (edited by Tona Pearce Myers). Several creative people from artists to musicians share their beliefs about creativity; it's very inspiring. This morning I read about an artist called Michelle Cassou and I love her approach to art, believing that free expression is the ultimate aim. Of creativity Michelle said,

"Creation does not need anything added to it, no reward, no approval, no praise. Creation is a moment filled with spirit, a moment when the soul reaches far and brings back God's heart."

Amen to that.

Chilling out ...

I'm making a new label today - an 'embracing your inner child' label as I think we can all get a bit too serious about life and need to remember the little things that make us smile or take us back to those childlike lighter moments in life. Yesterday as I was on my own I treated myself to a pastie and a chocolate cupcake for lunch - yum. The baker in the village makes the best ever cupcakes, the icing being the best part. The tricky part is whether to eat the cake and icing together or to pick the icing off and eat it on its own - delicious - just like my kids do today! I also don't tend to drink dairy milk very much any more, but when I do I like to partake in a flavoured milk, hmmm, banana this time! I remember when I was very little and travelling around the UK with mum and dad we used to stop at the services (rest break) on the motorways, and my very favourite drink was strawberry milk which we only used to get on these journeys. So I embraced my inner child in a big way yesterday!

Do you like the teatowel I used as a background? It was actually a freebie with a magazine, but I like it too much to use for its proper purpose, I'm thinking of making a bag with it instead.

We've been making order out of chaos in the house today after having two new floors put down - just before mum gets here tomorrow! As I write she's in the air somewhere, wondering what she will find in Australia, a country she's never visited before. I think she'll like our little home in the Hills.

Spring is sprung!

Oh, I have missed visiting my little home in the blogosphere! As I've been really tired in the evenings lately as we've been so busy, I had the wonderful idea of blogging in the morning, but that didn't materialize either! Where in the world does all the time go? I'm so glad that nature still has her cycles, death in winter, birth and renewal in the spring. It's comforting to have that connection to time progressing in it's natural order.

Spring officially begins on the 1st September here. And it's been decidedly mixed up spring type weather! (Oh go on, let me moan about the weather, I haven't done it for a while, and it's in the British genes you know!) Yesterday, I managed to do a bit of weeding in between the showers and the puddles they left in the flower beds! Couldn't resist taking a photo of the beautiful tulip in one of my pots. True creation - a still, apparently lifeless bulb, planted in the ground, given the right conditions, grows and develops into a beautiful, vivid flower, apparently by magic. It still takes my breath away, and I see my little bulb blooms every year!

Work and play on a Saturday

Doll number 13 of 100-art-dolls-challenge

Well, I thought I was going to be talking about something deep and meaningful today, but I'm tired after a hard day's work (and play!) so I won't. You'll just have to wait for that treat! Instead I'll share piccies with you of a spirit doll I made for the expo - it's my Sun, Moon and Stars doll. A break away from the colour wash effect, painting in flat colour instead and embellishing with twinkly sequins - ooh, I love them! You may be able to see the clear crystal on the front of the doll - I wrapped that in thin jewellery wire, so that I could sew it to the doll using beading thread.

My mum is coming to visit next week and we've been moving furniture around as we're also having a new floor fitted in the front room before she arrives - it's exhausting work. Luckily for me I had a break when I went to my Chakra workshop at the Creative Seeds studio. Today we learnt about the colours indigo and gold and how they respectively represent the mysteries and magic of life and our inner wisdom. I got to play by painting a canvas and drawing a picture of a wonderful golden warrior in soft pastels. Seems like I can still produce original art despite my doubts I've been having recently.

Here's a doodle drawing I made at the Expo in between talking to people! I decided I wanted to do a 'freeform' doodle, doodling without thinking, covering the sheet with shapes. I started with a treble clef squiggle and made shapes to fit round it - it soon became apparent that it would take days to fill the entire sheet of paper, so I drew my favourite shape and decided to fill that instead. It was purely to keep me amused during the quiet times, but people were quite interested in seeing me create something from doodles and would watch as I sat there in my own little world. It received lots of compliments from its start to the finished product. You never know how your creativity may touch others!

I signed up to an ezine called 'Creativity-Portal' which is edited by Chris Dunmire. It offers snippets of other articles about the creative journey. I found out about the inner wizard from Chris' ezine, there's much of interest to creative spirits so visit the site and sign up! Today there was a lovely quote which I felt fits with my 'just for the sake of creativity' doodle!

“Allow that creation to be a creation. It's not a measure of your talent. It has naught to do with your worth.” — Angi Sullins

Go on, have a look at the website, there's plenty of food for the creative soul!