AEDM - An Aussie image - the beautiful Xanthorrea

As promised, an image that is purely Australian :)  And it's close to  my heart, as in the beautiful bushland behind our house, there is a veritable treasure trove of glorious grass trees, emerging from the iron rich earth.

Considering I did this drawing in the semi-dark and couldn't really tell which colours were which in my pencil box I think I did OK.

Don't forget to visit other AEDM creatives ...

Kind heart



Here's a little giftie from me to you xx   I've been shown a lot of love and friendship for the past few days, by seemingly small gestures, but they mean the world and I want to pay it forward!!  I have a lovely bunch of roses on my kitchen table from my friend's garden, we were just leaving her home when she grabbed some secateurs and cut a huge bunch for me.  The same friend made me a cup of tea today on the rocks by a stream near our house, as our children and dogs played close by.  It's the best cup of tea I've had in a long time xx    And we also visited our neighbours today, as Little Man has been promising to drop in for a few days now.  They stopped what they were doing, got us both a drink and we sat outside under their verandah and chatted happily for an hour.  Little acts of kindness that mean a great deal.

During my browsing of the net this Blogtoberfest, I stumbled across this lovely blog, take a look if you have time, the title says it all 'Kind over Matter'.  I wish you a lovely weekend, filled with special moments of pleasure. xx





Button Moon

Is it my imagination, or did there used to be a kid's programme called Button Moon?  It had a cute little song to go with it.  The beautiful, supernaturally big moon we had this weekend, coupled with my love of buttons inspired this temporary artwork.

I just adore buttons!  They are so cheerful.  I love the sound they make as I empty them on the table.  I love the colours and shapes.  I love simply playing with them and putting them back in the pot.  Love, love, love buttons.

Pretty sure I've mentioned this before in this blog - but someone different might read it this time and discover the wonderful, therapeutic quality of buttons for themselves.  I hope so. :)

Take some time out

Yesterday I went to a party for a friend of the Little Man and I had a good natter to the mums.  Seems I'm not the only one feeling the stress of the holiday season and everything that goes with it.  Many complained about not having enough time just 'to be'.  Which is why I drew the above doodle, inspiration struck in the midst of rushing around.

So my special wish for you all who visit here, is that this holiday season you may find a few precious moments 'to be' and to savour a moment of quiet to replenish your spirit!

Butterflies

I woke up with butterflies in my tummy this morning because I was nervous about meeting my blogger friend Sally.  We've 'talked' via our blogs for the past year or so, admired each other's creations and shared moments of motherhood woes and life experiences.  Really we knew quite a bit about each other already ... but I always get those nerves when I'm up to something new.

Anyway, we had the most lovely morning tea.  Dear Sally had already chosen a seat inside the cafe as she knew I hate the heat, and we sat and chatted non-stop over our coffees (mine iced and hers hot!).  We put the world to rights, spoke about motherhood, our love for craft and creativity and how we both view it as a necessity in our lives; food for the soul.  We talked about how we're all caught in a consumer society that puts little value on unique, handmade goods - when did we all begin to want to be the same as everybody else? 

One of the best things I got out of today though was when I was explaining that I don't use my little studio as much as I want to, and that I don't produce as many art works as I would like.  Sally asked straight out why was that - and I floundered around for answers; the best I could come up with was that I was scared no-one would like my work!  It sounded so silly to my ears and I realized that I'm just making excuses.  So, thank you Sally for your wonderful honesty, your hints on crafting, crochet and blogging, but most of all your company - it was a great way to start my day and how wonderful to meet someone in the 'real' world that I'd first met in the virtual world of blogging.  The community spreads a little wider :)

If you go down to the woods today ...

As I was walking through the woods today I got to thinking about how much I'm enjoying going for my walks with Charlie dog, especially being so blessed to live in such a wonderful, vibrant, natural setting.

Then I realized it's also reminiscent of a place I used to visit when I was little; my dad would sometimes take me to Alderley Edge (northern England) to walk our dog.  I loved that place, it was so full of mystery and magic, fuelled  in some part I am sure by my love for the Alan Garner books I would read and re-read.  Even the sound of the first book I devoured was magical - The Weirdstone of Brisingamen.  Using the excuse of having children who liked fantasy literature I bought all the Alan Garner books I could find and have them sitting on the bookshelf for when I want to return to the underhill where all the knights are sleeping, ready to return to save humankind. 

I feel that same sense of wonderment when I'm walking in our woods and I feel happy that I can spend my time here.   Where's your magical place?

And for info - my picture is drawn on pastel paper using water soluble oil pastels - they smudge really nicely, and the white pastel adds enough light to give the picture life.  Inspired by my walks in the wood. xxx

Simple gratitude ...

Saw my lovely fat paintbrush and amethyst paint and felt compelled to paint a spiral and came up with my gratitude wheel:

Creativity doesn't have to be complicated :)
xxx

It's Blogtober - a late entry - and a typo!

I had decided to blog everyday in October, but wasn't going to tell anybody in cyberspace so if I didn't achieve it I wouldn't feel too bad.  But, I've joined 'Blogtober 2010' instead, so now everyone in the whole world potentially could know and now I'm going to be made accountable to sticking to my plan.  Which is all for the good really.

So there I am on the Blogtober site, looking at the fab button which I will have to install tomorrow, and I sign up on the correct page and just as I press the submit button, in that final nano second I see that I've actually listed myself as 'Creat for Life!'.  Duh!  Now I have to pretend that I'm being creative with the spelling of CREATE or else admit that I was outside in the dark, typing and not concentrating as much I could have been. Ooops.  Good job creativity embraces imperfection.  I love imperfection!

Planting

Don't you love how life takes charge sometimes and wonderful things happen?  This morning we helped out with planting seedlings as part of protecting the bushland around our area.  The small group was brought together by a friend of ours who is passionate about environmental issues and walks his talk; it was fantastic being in amongst nature and having the opportunity to meet other people on our street, whilst helping to slow erosion from the stream when it floods by planting out seedlings, which will hopefully stabilise the ground with their roots.  We stopped for morning tea, and I swear that the cup of Earl Grey I had outside, in the bush, chatting with new friends was the best cup of tea I've had in a long, long time. 

I got chatting to another member of the group who is also an artist, and before we knew it we'd organized to have a walk together later in the week - I can't wait!  It's awesome to meet someone who is as passionate about creativity as I am. 

And to think, when I woke up this morning, I wanted to stay in bed and read and take a slow start to the day.  So glad I was persuaded to change my mind!

Messing around - creatively of course

Here's my little chad, who's very excited because in a week's time I am getting some new spondooly PURPLE framed spectacles (and a pair of sunnies with some gold bling!).  My prescription has barely changed, which is good, so I decided to get some newer model specs as my present ones have lasted 6 years, have been sat on several times, an arm snapped off by a baby, left in silly places, etc, etc. and are nearing retirement.

Do you ever start something then wish you hadn't?  I had the terrific idea of stamping my "wot ..." message for my chad, but hadn't realized that the rubber stamp bits hadn't been stuck onto the wooden handles (must be why they were so cheap!)  Well, I thought, this will only take a minute ...  after getting mixed up with the backwards b, d, p and q, I nearly lost it and reverted back to using my pen, but having a stubborn gene I did persevere and the little wooden sticks and rubber bits didn't end up in the bin.  You can see what fun my daughter and I had testing out my new stamps on a page from my little purple notebook, which travels with me everywhere.  It's full of inspiration for my next artworks, quotes I've heard, ideas for stories, phone numbers, doodles, you name it.  I think it's worth carrying something like this around with you, even if it's simply to put mum's addresses from school in. 

I'm always going on about portable creativity; you can be creative anywhere.  I've got over my anxiety about being seen as a granny and now take my knitting with me in my bag.  Came in very useful today at the swimming pool.  Didn't matter either if it got splashed as I'm going to felt the knitting when it's done - so no excuses to not be creative when you're on the move!  By the way I was watching someone swim, rather than swimming whilst knitting :)

Portble creativity ...

Yeuch - you can tell what sort of week it's been by my little pencil drawing.  This picture serves another purpose in that it demonstrates you can be creative anywhere.  I've taken to carrying my wee sketchpad around in my workbag, and I drew this picture whilst waiting to see the doctor on Tuesday.

 My little world became very confused early on Wednesday morning (it doesn't take much these days) when my husband told me Nick Clegg had been made UK Prime Minister.  The children and I had a very interesting conversation on how weird it was that the man who had come third ended up with the top job.  It really was a bad combination - I was still sleepy in bed  when I heard the news, and my hubby always gets names muddled up!  My world suddenly made sense again when I read the internet news and realized I'd been misinformed!  Moral of this story I suppose is - always check your facts ...

I was going to blog last night, but I had a really weird allergic reaction to our part-time cat (story for another time!) and my eyes swelled up and I couldn't open one of them!  When you could see what was going on my eyeball was all 'blobby' - the children kept asking to have another look and their faces were a mixture of amazement and revulsion.  How loved did I feel ...

So, I was spotty last week and blobby this week - I definitely need to put a choccie bar or two in the shopping trolley tonight.  It may not help the spots, but it will soothe the soul!

Drawing a face with pastels

I bought some fantastic pastel pencils at the weekend that are skin tint colours, 12 pencils in all, made by Mont Marte.  This picture is a doodle I drew whilst waiting for the kids to get ready for school.  Actually I'm quite pleased with it - whilst I love drawing faces I still find them very difficult, so I need all the practise I can get.  I'm going to pinch a piece of my daughter's pastel paper and have a go at a bigger picture.  This picture was drawn on normal cartridge paper so produces totally different results than if you use proper textured pastel paper.

Short and sweet tonight.  I've been looking after a friend's little girl today, and I'm absolutely pooped.  She really brightened up my day, especially when she gave me a huge hug and told me she loved me!  Need to regain my strength though, I've forgotten how much energy you need when you have little ones around! 

Crochet Challenge Commences!

Lots of words in my last post - lots of pictures today (and lots of words too probably!)

Firstly I have to tell you about my BIG tea mug. I do love tea, and sometimes I need a huge tea, so out comes the BIG tea mug. Delicious! As well as being an awesome drinking vessel for a tea addict, it always reminds me of my adventures as a traveller many moons ago (16 years ago to be exact!). When my husband and I did our big OE together we found these mugs on sale - they were only $1NZ each and I loved the deep blue colour; we bought one each and carried them round in our backpacks for a few months until we returned home to the UK. And we still have them! What nutters!

Anyway I digress - on to the CROCHET!! Firstly I have to thank Sally at virtu for putting me onto the granny square challenge, which you can sign up for too at this link. It's really captured my imagination and yesterday I made 3 squares!! As you can see from the photo I had a granny square bag felting kit in my collection, which I started yesterday, hoping to felt today. The kit was on sale at Spotlight - they may have a few left! The wool is lovely and soft, but be careful not to twist it too much as you crochet as it goes very tight and thin (lots of untwisting happening last evening!) My very first square of the challenge was made from a pattern I'd ripped out of a magazine when I was about 14, although I didn't learn to crochet until I was away at uni a few years later - see even crochet brings back memories! The square is in my most favourite creating colours of purple and orange.

When I woke yesterday morning the first thoughts to pop into my head rather than 'what shall I have for breakfast' were 'ooh, what sort of squares shall I crochet and what will I make out of the squares'. Here's a little list:

1. pink and grey squares (sounds revolting, but honestly looks quite pleasant)
2. really bright squares
3. blocks of 9 squares, each with a colour theme, to be joined into one big blanket
4. cushion covers
5. use up my stash of acrylic 8 ply to make a random patterned afghan blanket
6. crochet with pure wool to make a lovely soft blanket, possibly in natural colours
7. alternate traditional lacy designs with 'solid' crochet squares
8. find as many different squares as I can and make them all!

Most probably I am going to do number 8 as I cannot resist trying somthing new, and if I find anything really interesting, I'll share it with you here! To start here are a couple of websites to start you down the track: try out Bev's Country Cottage for lots of afghan squares, including hearts and flowers; also this site has lots of links to different patterns with intriguing names such as cluster flower afghan square, puff flower and popcorn flower - I'm going to try them all!

I think this project is so inviting because it's small and portable and a great way to get some creativity into your day - it's also very quick, you'll be able to find a pocket of time somewhere in your day. It allows you to be creative with colour and design. Personally I think the traditional granny square is just lovely in it's simplicity and gives lots of range for colour choice.

Well, I'm off now to sit under the air-con and make another square, then I'll make start on my new blog banner. And off you go to crochet ... join the challenge!

Falling asleep ...

Here's a tired little doodle - I've just finished the rest of my data entry and feel so sleepy, but have learned from last night that entering figures into a computer for a long time then trying to go straight to sleep just doesn't work! My mind was working overtime and I had an argument with myself to stop thinking and go to sleep! So I've wound down by doing a 5 minute doodle, completely off the top off my head, no thinking about what I'll put - although I had planned to draw spirals, they are so relaxing!

That's my wee creative piece for today, I'm too dozey to write anything inspiring and exciting! Until next time .... ;)

I feel like ...

OK - so why do I feel like a pair of big pants? Lots of little things really, nothing that bad at all! Firstly, I have been feeling quite homesick, I guess it's to be expected when my mum has just gone home. This homesickness feeling is like a little dog that follows me round all day, no matter how fast I try and run away from it, it manages to keep up with me! (And I think there's a piece of art in there somewhere ...)

I intend to use my 'feeling like pants' day to help me with my next medicine doll tomorrow. The second doll I have to make for my Medicine Doll Course is the Scapegoat doll where I can explore my fears and the shadowy side of my personality. I'm going to look at all the negative self-talk I constantly bombard myself with, and unfortunately I listen to it too much. (I promise you this is all leading somewhere!) For example, I started the day feeling low; later on in the day I went online to check e-mails and to read my favourite blogs. Instead of just enjoying them I started comparing my blog to others, looking at the number of blog visits, coming to the conclusion that I'm not as good as everyone else. Now, I am not whinging and fishing for a sympathy vote - rather I'm coming clean with a confession that I think I have an issue with checking blog statistics for a start! And also confessing that I'm annoying myself with this constant self-sabotage! Maybe if I declare my problem publicly I will be on the journey to overcoming it! Part of the journey is to be able to put all my feelings and emotions experienced in my self-sabotaging behaviour into a doll - it's an immensely powerful experience - I'll be sharing photos of the doll here without a doubt - I feel ready to make the doll now; I've been chickening out of making it for a while!

Now, the next part is that I made a drawing with a visual comment of my feelings about my day - the result being the beautiful big pair of pants at the top of this post! I can tell you I felt so much better and lighter in my mind after drawing the picture - you can see that by the flowers and hearts I added to the pants that I was already feeling more lighthearted. It's positive to see the lighter side of life! More proof that art helps heal I believe.

When I sat down and really thought about it I realized that blogging is important to me simply because I love writing and putting my thoughts down on 'paper'. I do it for me, and blog visits and statistics don't really matter. The other great thing is through blogging I've got to meet some awesome creative people, and I get to share a little of their journey. Check out these sites for inspiration and a dose of sunlight in your day: Violette's folkart site, an awesome whimsical artist; Attic24 for crochet and lovely images; Virtually Sally where you'll find creativity and friendly chat. There are so many, I can't include them all here! Go exploring ...

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!)

Embrace your creativity!

I have a new hero - he's called Sir Ken Robinson and he's pretty amazing! I've always personally believed that by the time we are adults our inborn creativity is pretty much squashed out of us. Until recently I've been on a one woman quest to encourage people to embrace their creativity, wondering if anyone else felt the same as I do, or was I in fact a little bit mad. However, more and more people are coming into my life who share the same belief; on 'The 7.30 Report' programme for the past two nights Sir Ken Robinson has been interviewed about his views on education and creativity and what responsibility education has for encouraging and nurturing the innovators of the future. Well, I've been doing a little more research and found lots of information about him and written by him such as the quote below - it really outlines a major problem in the world today:

"We are educating people out of their creativity".

I also love what he has to say on people finding, or not finding, their passion and the difference it makes to their lives and communities in general:

"I'm always struck by how many adults have no idea what their real talents are, or whether they have any at all. Many people just do what they do with no particular passion or commitment to it. I know others who genuinely love what they do; who would probably do it for free if they had to, and can't imagine doing anything else. Understanding what makes the difference is essential for transforming education, business, and communities to meet the real challenges of the twenty-first century."

It's awesome that a man who holds these beliefs about creativity also has so much influence in the wider world. It's certainly motivated me to keep on my journey to help people bring creativity back into their lives. Sir Ken Robinson is much more eloquent than I am on this subject and has written some books as well, so if you would like to read more on his work you will find the link to his website here, a talk and other links on ted.com here, and the blog article with the main quote. It's a fascinating and important subject.

Trying to be as creative as I could I decided to produce tonight's drawing using only the materials I could find in the office pencil pot!

Releasing fear and moving on

Today I was just going to write up my quote, but then I found this pen called 'Tech-Riter' and I couldn't resist doodling with it! Decided to see what I could come up with in 5 minutes and this is the result - it probably means something at a subconscious level I'm sure!

Here in Australia we have this great holistic journal magazine called 'Nova', and in this month's issue I was reading about letting go of negative beliefs so that we can move forward. The article finished with this quote by Nelson Mandela, which is too wonderful not to share:

"As we let our light shine, we unconsciously give others permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our fear, our presence automatically liberates those around us." - Nelson Mandela

As I've been working on overcoming my fear of ... everything ... I thought this was a very powerful quote and a real encouragement to move forward into our true potential, which also benefits those around us - a win-win situation!

Growing all the time

I created this picture using water soluble oil pastels on cartridge paper. They have a lovely thick texture as you pull them across the page, very soft and squashy! Art isn't just about the colours; it's about feeling the materials as you work with them - or at least that's what I believe. It's a truly emotional experience to create something! I didn't have any agenda in mind, started in the centre of the page and drew in an outwards motion. Expansive - growing. I like that, it's a positive feeling of moving forward. Like I'm doing with my art dream.

Happy Mother's Day

Arthur: 'It's at times like this I wish I'd listened to my mother.' Ford : 'Why, what did she say?'
Arthur: 'I don't know, I never listened.'
Douglas Adams

I did look for quotes for Mother's Day, but some were too soppy and most just not right. The one above appeals to my strange sense of humour, and after all it was my mum who introduced me to 'Hitch-hiker's Guide to the Galaxy', so it's kind of a tribute as well you see. :)

In my little book of Friendship I did find this quote which I thought was appropriate:

"When I count my blessings I count you twice." Thanks mum for everything!

Do you like my lovely necklace my children bought for me? It's got glitter and sequins in it, and I love it! I also enjoyed a lovely brekkie in bed and was left alone to read my book for an hour or so. Absolute heaven.