I experimented with polymer clay. The chocolate brown was deeper than I had in mind, so I added transparent gold paint and some green puff paint. It’s not as lightweight as a regular Art Card, but I like it nonetheless. It was a piece I could do while standing in the kitchen as Claire played nearby.
In this piece I experimented with image transfer, paper, paint, a piece from a magazine bead necklace, a crushed bean shell, and seed beads.
The base of this card is card stock with a texture stamp in mustard and olive colored ink. I didn’t really like it and thought about tossing it. But I happened to come across some scraps of other paper I used in other cards and got to playing with the arrangement. It absorbed me, and I finally found a use for the random, stray puzzle piece that’s been sitting on my desk for months.
I wanted to subdue the brightness of the yellow card stock, so I used a texture stamp (made of rubber) and mustard yellow ink. Then I used a sunflower stencil. Simple and fun!
Happy Thanksgiving!
I wanted contrast and intensity. I had random scraps. This is what came together!
A mesa is an isolated, flat-topped hill or mountain with steep sides that is smaller in area than a plateau. A butte is also a flat-topped hill with steep sides, though smaller in area than a mesa. Definitions of the surface areas of mesas and buttes vary. One source states that a mesa has a surface area of less than 4 square miles (10 square kilometers), while a butte has a surface area less than 11,250 square feet (1,000 square meters). Another source states that the surface area of a mesa is larger than 1 square mile (2.59 square kilometers); the surface area of a butte is smaller than that dimension. Some simply define a mesa as a landform that is wider than it is high and a butte as one that is higher than it is wide.
There’s your science factoid for the day.
I often like what results when I sit down without intention or agenda and play.
When at a loss for inspiration, reach for Crayolas. I still like to color in coloring books too!
So tomorrow begins an adventure! We are all getting on a plane to fly to Texas. Other than one overnight in Monterey, we’ve never gone anywhere with Claire. We’re all set!
I won’t have access very much to a computer until after December 1. I’ve created blog posts for the remaining days of Art Every Day Month, but those will automatically publish. I may log onto email a couple times if you want to contact me; just don’t anticipate a prompt reply.
Happy end of November, everyone!
Poor little peacock. This format was too small for him to have a full array of tail feathers.
This one is for my Mom and Dad, especially because winter approaches. Long, dark Syracuse winters require a reminder of the future.
This quote by Beatrice Wood caught my attention. I’ve got a superhighway!
I’m having an ego moment. Cruising the Internet, I find so many sites by people — especially women — who are creative and generating a living (or at least some income) from it. Friends are making and selling their art. Friends are designing clothing and selling the patterns, and knitting up gorgeous garments. A friend is starting fitness accessory business. Friends write books and hold retreats. Acquaintances are life coaches, writers, have award-winning blogs, make and sell jewelry, and so on.
And I’m here in my little corner of the world, dabbling away. I suspect I’ve always been a dilettante. I walked away from a fledgling career as a professional counselor with her own practice to move here with Husband. (To get licensed here would require almost going through the whole process again — at a cost in money and time that I just won’t spare.) Sometimes I think about setting up a life coaching practice, but what is that, anyway? Everyone seems to be doing it; Google produced 42 million hits for the term. Plus, I’ve been out of the work world long enough that I feel rough and rusty.
One reason I go through sporadic periods of creating is that once I’ve got something made, the question arises of what to do with it. I’ve got knitted stuff stored in my drawers. Art I’ve made sits in a portfolio. Space is limited, so I create less often, and it depresses me to create only to have it sit in the dark. Yes, I could knit for charity — and I do. But there is something satisfying in being compensated monetarily for one’s efforts, and it is validating and heartening to be recognized for one’s work.
I’m not complaining so much as I am musing aloud whether I could be doing more, if I am wasting precious skill and talent by not generating income in some way with all this creativity.
And I’m wondering where these women get the energy. Some of them, in addition to being mothers, work outside jobs, and yet still find a way to create, often at the expense of their sleep and perhaps health. Maybe they can actually function this way. I did it for years in my 20s and 30s, but I’ve found that I’m a crappy mother if I’m exhausted and sick, and I want to be a good mother. I don’t enjoy life when I’m barely able to move or think. There are no sick days available.
So I struggle a bit with… envy? Or maybe it’s worry… a fear that I have retreated into a passive state, almost infantile, in that I don’t generate income, especially from all the dabbling I do. I’m getting to play, while Husband is out there bringing home cash. I don’t have currency in a world where the question, “What do you do for a living?” is unanswerable because I don’t make an income. There was no place on the U.S. Census form that I filled out for our household for me to write that my current job is Homemaker and Mother and that no, I wasn’t laid off and seeking work. It — I — just didn’t count.
I know, wah wah wah. But I do wonder.
Every now and then it’s good to remember that love is attention right here, right now.
A second rendition of this equation, only with fabric too.
Some people wish for fame, some for money, some for love. Almost everyone wishes they could avoid dying and death. What do you wish for?
