Artist dates & blog inspiration, part 3

In this third and final post about revving your creativity engine (see original post here) by reading inspirational blogs, you’ll note that all three of the BBEST blogs that are highlighted today serve the function of an Artist Date. These blogs are certainly about the artistic journey, but also about how art and the blogger's personal life are intertwined. Featured today are Judi of Vintage Legacy Studio, Rose of Big Island Rose Designs, and Marion of artmixter. Let’s get started!

Judi, whose blog, Vintage Legacy Studio, is the counterpart to her Etsy shop of the same name, is one of the newer members of the BBEST team. As a life and leadership coach, Judi says part of her mission is to design space to grow, and to empower herself and others to be creative. She does so not only with her Victorian era-inspired creations, but also through writing and performance. You can visit eHow, for example, and read some of Judi’s articles by entering her user name, CoachJudiB, in the search bar.

In one of her other blogs, The Heirloom Gazette, Judi reveals that for seven years she wrote as Abigail Bradshaw, a Victorian character whose historic detail is “gleaned from antique magazines and books, and is authentic in its content.” She performed vignettes of this character, incorporating vintage songs into her performances. One of them was “The Bird on Nellie’s Hat,” a song about a bird who knew more about Nellie than Nellie would have guessed. Among Judi’s family photos is one of her Great Aunt Millie, who wore a hat with a bird like Nellie perched on it; this is Judi’s current Etsy avatar.

Great Aunt Millie, described by VintageLegacyStudio

Recently Judi has been decluttering her sewing space to make room for new projects, and in the process she discovered some vintage handkerchiefs that were originally intended to be part of a quilt top. Instead, Judi is re-purposing the handkerchiefs into unique necklaces incorporating vintage lace, loops of beads, glass beads, and vintage buttons.

Lace Necklace with Vintage Handkerchief Flower,

by VintageLegacyStudio

Another recent project is what Judi describes as a bib necklace, fashioned from vintage lace and trims. In her blog, she describes how challenging it was to photograph this item.

Statement Bib Necklace - Romantic Collar - Vintage Lace, Jewelry, 

by VintageLegacyStudio

In The Rose Journal, Rose of Big Island Rose Designs writes delightfully meandering posts that will surprise you with their ultimate destinations. In Blessings in Disguise, for example, Rose tells us a story about how her husband pruned her precious kukui tree beyond recognition, but then—a few days later—she looked at the tree and realized her husband had cut the tree in the shape of a heart. “It won’t last forever,” Rose writes, “but I’m enjoying it for the moment and it got me thinking. I stressed and fussed each time he cut that tree not knowing that someday I would be blessed by a heart. (God sometimes gets out His pruning shears and gives us a good topping too! He’s trying to bring out His heart in us.)”

Kukui tree in Blessings in Disguise, described by birose

Rose’s tendency to reflect about blessings instead of missteps is evident in her collage and mixed media work, which has been evolving since, as a little girl, she collected stamps and broken egg shells. “Collage has always been my constant companion,” she says, “whether I’m working with paper, fabric, found items, or fibers. Even when I think about working with people it’s always with the idea of showing them how to take simple things and make them into something beautiful. Isn’t that what our Creator does with us? He takes the broken pieces of our lives, mixes in those of others, adds some color, spices, or laughter and makes beautiful stories, beautiful lives.” In her secondary Etsy shop, SaRoMaSa, Rose is beginning to sell her collage work.

Simply Orange 5X7 Original Mixed Media, by SaRoMaSa

Although many of us are most familiar with the colorful fabric yoyo flowers in Rose’s main shop, Big Island Rose Designs, Rose reveals she can also do wonders with the absence of color. Applying herself to the challenge of the Creative Every Day blog, she produced a work of collage, mostly in white.

“Almost White” collage work, by birose

Scottish artist Marion of artmixter, whose blog tag line explains that “artmixter” is a mixture of art and thought—with a bit of everyday life on the side—has a busy life. Activities such as writing, teaching workshops, creating art, attending the Festival of Quilts in Birmingham (United Kingdom), and—oh, yeah—working at a paid job produce a schedule in which every day is an exercise in avoiding procrastination. “Procrastination is fine,” Marion writes, “if you've got the time for it. I don't. So I have focused on the essentials, my commitments in the short term, and I've decided how to tackle them.” She writes, in fact, about the topic of procrastination in her new book, Finding Your Creative Focus, available on her blog and in her Etsy shop.

Finding Your Creative Focus, by Marion Barnett

When she’s not writing, Marion is often teaching textile workshops or demonstrating the use of lutradur and Evolon, two unique synthetic fibers. In a recent workshop, participants produced transparent bowls with words trapped inside them. Marion’s philosphy about teaching is to provide examples of what is possible, rather than a specific set of instructions. “I make suggestions,” she explains, “show what is possible, or at least, what I think is possible at this point; you might find there's yet more you can do with what I'm showing you. And that's the joy of teaching workshops in this way; if you provide six people with the same materials and the same instruction, they can produce six completely different pieces of art. Of course, if you want to copy what I've made, you can . . . but I'm pretty sure that yours will turn out with a different 'feel' to mine. Why not try it?” She has written a book about lutradur, and is working toward completion of a book on Evolon.

Lovely Lutradur, by Marion Barnett

With all that she does, it is amazing that Marion finds time for her own art. As the saying goes (or something close to it), people make time for the things that are important to them. Recently, Marion has been producing a great deal of collage work, especially with transfer dyes and lutradur.

Sample collage for workshop taught at The Gallery, 

Dereham (United Kingdom), by artmixter

Her artistic efforts have caught the eye of The Storque, the official blog of Etsy. If you haven’t already read it, you’ll want to read about Marion in The Storque’s post, High End Etsy: Fiber Arts.

Hopefully these BBEST bloggers have aroused your curiosity, and possibly have inspired you to explore some new areas you have not previously considered. That’s the purpose of an Artist Date. As author Julia Cameron of The Artist’s Way reminds us, “Doing your artist date, you are receiving—opening yourself to insight, inspiration, guidance.” If you missed the earlier posts in this series, you may wish to read the following:

• Carving time for your Muse
• Artist dates & blog inspiration, part 1
• Artist dates & blog inspiration, part 2
  

© 2009 Judy Nolan. All rights reserved. Please note that the images in this post are owned by the artists and may not be used without permission. Simultaneously published at http://sparklines.blogspot.com.

Artist dates & blog inspiration, part 1

In my previous post, I discussed the need for a creative timeout, or—as author Julia Cameron calls it, an “Artist Date”—to explore our sensory world, thus stocking our idea storehouse. Because we don’t always have the resources or the time to visit different places, one way of carving inspirational time for ourselves is to read other artists’ blogs. According to Tara Frey in Blogging for Bliss, “Creative blogs are wonderful and welcoming places, introducing countless avenues to express one’s passions.”

While this post is certainly not long enough to recognize all of the BBEST blogs whose visitors would consider them to be Artist Dates, here are three that are worth your attention. Over the next few BBEST blog posts, I will highlight a few others. Prepare yourself to be entertained, inspired and educated as you visit the blogs of kimbuktu, CoffeePotPeople and lizplummer.

Kym of kimbuktu devotes an entire section of her Web site to “Twelve Months,” a description of her creative journey during the last 12 months. Her beautiful Joanne Watercolor Bag and African Quilt, for example, challenge fabricholics to dig through their fabric stockpile or local quilt shop for colors and patterns that fit a specific theme. Kym’s projects include bags and quilts, journals and jumpers, place mats, paper crafts and much more. In another part of her Web site, Kym provides tutorials that will encourage you to make your very own Origami page corners, alter a tin container to become a coin purse, or learn how to do free motion quilting on a standard sewing machine. Artist profiles are in another section of the Web site; Kym has featured a number of BBEST artists.

Joanne Watercolor Bag, by kimbuktu

African Quilt, by kimbuktu


Altered Tin Coin Purse, by kimbuktu

In her shop announcement, Ani of CoffeePotPeople tells us, "They say, 'Earth laughs in flowers.' I want to give it something to laugh at!" Her blog certainly matches this statement with photos of her imaginative coffee pot and tea kettle people. She also tickles our taste buds with a recipe for Chicken Alfredo, and provides an account of a visit to the 12th Annual North Plains Elephant Garlic Festival in "Fun Stinks." You never quite know what to expect from Ani on her blog, which is fun, inspiring and educational. Yes, Ani includes some tutorials, too, among them Ice Cream, No Machine! and Shank Button Earrings.

Hermione, CPA Extraordinaire, by CoffeePotPeople

Recipe: Chicken Alfredo, by CoffeePotPeople

Fun Stinks, by CoffeePotPeople

The queen of textile techniques is Liz Plummer, whose blog, Dreaming Spirals, provides both written and photographic evidence about what inspires her, and about her creative explorations. Spinning, Gocco printing, printing with a pasta maker, dyeing, embossing, and painting with acrylics on fabric represent just a few of Liz’s experiments. If you click on “Archives” at the top of her blog, you will be able to locate posts on specific topics. Even if you never explore these areas yourself, you will be inspired by Liz’s energy and her dedication to learning.

Screen Printing with Natural Dyes, by lizplummer

Painted matboard book made with Bind-It-All, by lizplummer

Rainy Streets post card, by lizplummer

Stay tuned for future posts about inspirational BBEST bloggers!

© 2009 Judy Nolan. All rights reserved. Please note that the images in this post are owned by the artists and may not be used without permission. Simultaneously published at http://sparklines.blogspot.com.

Carving time for your Muse

Why are most artists fascinated with the topic of creativity? Perhaps the answer is that we fear its loss. We examine how we come by our own ideas and how others do so, panic when we have dry spells, and attempt to furnish our physical space in ways that are conducive to the creation process. We seek inspiration anywhere we can by taking workshops, reading books and blog posts, collecting pictures and quotes, journaling, listening to music, or taking a walk in the hope that we can jump start the creative engine. Above all, we’re in a hurry to “get it right” because time is a-wasting, and we don’t want a great idea like Diane Clancy's Poetic Mountain to get away from us.

If we listen to the advice of American painter Georgia O’Keefe, however, we need to give ourselves the gift of time to develop our ideas. “Nobody sees a flower—really—” says O’Keefe, “it is so small it takes time—and to see takes time, like to have a friend takes time.” Great advice! While creative thinking tools that I have written about in previous posts (such as SCAMPER or Attribute Listing) can be very helpful in generating ideas when nothing else seems to work, these methods depend more on an organized approach than on the clock-free zone of our subconscious. In a perfect world, we can take all the time we need to let our senses absorb impressions. We see and hear and feel and smell, wrapping ourselves in a cocoon from which ideas emerge—organically—when the time is right.

The Lavender Pickers (Greeting Cards), by ColoursandTextures

According to Julia Cameron, one of my favorite authors who has written numerous books about creativity, we need to set “artist dates” for ourselves to give our Muse the time it needs to percolate. An artist date is a period of time you set aside at least once a week for just a few hours, in which you use your senses to explore the world. This is not a time to take along a friend, a spouse or your grandchild. You may choose to attend a concert, visit a museum, bird watch, stroll through a butterfly garden or a field of flowers, curl up with a book in a secluded library corner, bake a rich dessert for yourself, or even meditate.

Blue Square Baking Dish, by artsielady

This is your time. Open your eyes, listen, taste, smell, touch—and dream, as the BBEST artists below obviously have done. In my next post, we'll explore Boomer blogs whose posts are an artist date in themselves.

A Bird Gathering, by BethPeardonProds

Her Majesty, The Monarch, by MysticSilks

8.4 ... Journey. Bamboo. Sendak. Snoopy. (Corner Bookmarks), by joonbeam

Asymmetrical Dream Borosilicate Pendant, by gimmebeads

© 2009 Judy Nolan. All rights reserved. Please note that the images in this post are owned by the artists and may not be used without permission. Simultaneously published at http://sparklines.blogspot.com.

Peeling away pounds through creativity

When I’m writing a blog post, a poem, a letter—or anything else—my husband knows better than to open a discussion about today’s mail or tomorrow’s weather. I am so absorbed in my task that I simply don’t hear him. Some creativity experts refer to this experience of shutting out distractions and focusing on the moment as “being in the zone” or “experiencing flow.” Whatever you call it, there is no doubt that productivity is in action! It may also be that you snack less while you’re being creative.

That is the premise behind Julia Cameron’s The Writing Diet: Write Yourself Right-Size. One day while browsing titles on a bookstore table, I ran across this book. Cameron, who has written many books about creativity, including The Artist’s Way, maintains that “. . . weight loss is a frequent by-product of creative recovery. Overeating blocks our creativity. The flip side is also true: we can use creativity to block our overeating.”

Whether Cameron is right or not (after all, I am drinking a Pepsi as I write this post), The Writing Diet provides its readers with seven writing tools that not only enable you to lose weight, but also to explore your creative inner self, whether you write, paint, fire a pot, sew, or pursue any other creative endeavor. Here, then, is a summary of the tools.

• Morning Pages. Morning pages are Julia Cameron’s basic tool for creative recovery and weight loss. They represent three pages of stream-of-consciousness writing, answering the question, “What are you feeling?” The idea is that as you write, you identify what is blocking your creativity, and also what leads you to overeat. The pages, of course, are intended for your eyes only.

Polymer Clay Decorative Pen
with matching Pen Holder,
Purple Flower Design, OOAK,
by ClayCenter

• The Journal. Much like the food diary that Weight Watchers® and many other weight loss groups recommend their participants keep, a Journal is a log of the foods that you eat, every time you put anything in your mouth, as well as the times that you feel like eating. The difference between it and a typical food diary is that you jot down what you are feeling at the same time. Over time, the hope is that you will identify negative patterns and change them, and also to reach for your Journal for answers instead of food.

Monochrome Paisley Wear-A-Note Notebook Necklace,

by karalennox

• Walking. Cameron encourages her readers to walk for at least 20 minutes a day, replacing worry with exercise. She asserts that exercising our bodies not only helps to peel away calories, but it also “grounds” our creative energy in the real world, rather than allowing us to approach creativity as an ethereal, out-of-reach notion. Walking provides time and space to examine our problems and reflect on them, to consciously open ourselves to inspiration and new connections.
  

Priyanka Gandhi Goes for a Walk . . .
and a Bird Flies Overhead, by AltheaP

• The Four Questions. The Four Questions are four strategic queries designed to ward off snack attacks, especially at night, when all bets are often off. The four questions are: (1) Am I hungry? (2) Is this what I want to eat? (3) Is this what I want to eat now? (4) Is there something that I can eat instead? The value of these questions is that they are grounded in the reality that you are probably going to succumb to some sort of craving, but that you can make good choices about what you ultimately eat, instead of bad ones. And, of course, when you make better choices about what’s good for your body, that increases your mental well-being and increases your physical creative energy.

Floorcloth with fruit design, by HeronsTreasures

• Culinary Artist Dates. Much as the Artist Dates that Cameron describes in The Artist’s Way are designed to encourage you to expand your comfort zone, once-a-week Culinary Artist Dates are intended to tease you into scheduling a date to explore new, healthy ways to cook, or even to taste foods you might not otherwise choose. Often we associate a diet with deprivation, but the Culinary Artist Date suggests it can be a creative adventure for the palate. You can use this date to take a cooking class, explore fresh foods at the farmers market, learn about spices, or treat yourself to a special meal at an ethnic restaurant.

Stoneware Shaker /
Spice Fairy dust Salt Peppershaker /
Glitter dispenser, by fehustoneware

• HALT. Participants of recovery programs are often encouraged to identify the patterns or situations that lead them to become (H)ungry, (A)ngry, (L)onely or (T)ired because this is when they are most vulnerable to whatever weakness they are suffering. This is just as true about overeating as it is about the times we feel creatively blocked. HALT is a common sense rule, encouraging us to eat at regular intervals, and to journal about anger, loneliness or tiredness (or paint, fuse glass, shape clay, or utilize our creative talents in some way) instead of allowing these emotions to trigger overeating.

Lonely Looking Sky Original Painting, by MysticSilks

• The Body Buddy. A Body Buddy is a partner in your quest to lose weight and release your creativity. He or she is neither an enforcer nor someone who agrees with you all the time, but is instead a sounding board, or someone who helps you to see inside yourself with more clarity than you can by just reading your own Journal. A Body Buddy is someone with whom you can share your Journal to discover new insights about what leads you to overeat. Often a Body Body is someone who is also an overeater, in which case you can act as checkpoints for each other.

Original Print ACEO MY SISTER MY FRIEND,
by BethPeardonProds

I have to admit that I never consciously thought about using my creative energy to shed pounds, but The Writing Diet provides some food for thought (pardon both the cliché and the pun!). You can read more about creativity in these books by Julia Cameron:

• The Artist’s Way
• Walking in This World
• Finding Water
• The Complete Artist’s Way
• The Artist’s Way Workbook
• The Right to Write
• The Sound of Paper
• The Vein of Gold
• The Artist’s Way Morning Pages Journal
• The Artist’s Date Book
• How to Avoid Making Art (or Anything Else You Enjoy)
• Supplies: A Troubleshooting Guide for Creative Difficulties
• Inspirations: Meditations from The Artist’s Way
• The Writer’s Life: Insights from The Right to Write
• The Artist’s Way at Work

© 2009 Judy Nolan. All rights reserved. Please note that the images in this post are owned by the artists and may not be used without permission. Simultaneously published at http://sparklines.blogspot.com.