currently: ten things

1. Volunteering at my daughter's Violin Solo Ensemble. My husband and I worked this two day event that played host to over 600 students. It was an amazing display of talent and community. I enjoyed getting to know so many different young musicians from the tri-county area, each one as friendly and polite as the next. 

2. Feeling proud. I was fortunate enough to be invited in to listen to my daughters solo performance at the above mentioned event. Her score was a Concerto in A Minor. It was a long and complicated piece and one that she has only been practicing for about a month now. She amazed me and floored the judge. I was prepared for the usual jitters, the occasional flawed note, the skip in the beat of her steady rhythm. It didn't come. She took us all by surprise, and pulled out all the stops, playing a perfect score and earning herself the highest Superior rating and medal. 

3. Feeling obsessed over this planner project. It made me happy to just walk into the studio this morning and see it sitting next to my work area.

4. Filming some short tutorials for the blog. Be looking for a few fun things to come in the near future!

5. Loving this beautiful bright new roving a sweet sweet girl sent to me! What a wonderful surprise along with the most fantastic pair of hand knitted fingerless gloves! I am so blessed to have such wonderful pals all over the world! Thank you sweet Linda!

6. Thinking about Valentine' Day and how I am so lucky in love! Cards from cupid are my favorite to make and I always enjoy coming up with new ideas for the kids each year. I will be working on some this week!

7. Crocheting again. I go in spurts. Mostly because I am so dang busy that I have no business picking up a book or a crochet needle or anything else that takes time away from the fifty other things I should be doing... But I LOVE these things, and so I do them anyway. This means I stay up way too late, way too many nights a week. Oh well. Soon enough I will have another pretty yarn project to show for it!

8. Realizing my heart physically hurts when one of my children is feeling sad. Life is so dang hard. The lessons she throws our way, even harder. I wish I could soften the blow for my children. I would gladly deflect some of the hurt. I have been there. Love is not easy. It's like riding a bike. It's great fun, and a breeze until, for one second, you take your eyes off the road. I have three grown daughters. Three times I have tried to give the best possible advice I could offer on love. But I can not steer the bike for them. They have to do that. All I can do is help pick them up off the ground, brush them off and hold them tight, all the while my heart hurting deeply. Next time, maybe they will remember to wear a helmet.

9. Loving my newest thrifty find- an old cassette tape holder. It's a great organizational tool for all of the smaller papers, envelopes and ephemera I use on a daily basis when I collage. I haven't decided if I am going to paint it or not. For now I am leaving it natural, like my pine countertops. It's so cool!

10. Working on something new. I am experimenting with some new colors too! More peeks coming soon!

the documented life project: weekly challenge 7

Welcome to Week 7 of The Documented Life Project!

February 8 - Draw one Shape. Repeat. Add Color. 

I knew I would love this week's challenge! Any project that is repetitive in nature calms me. I can draw the same thing over and over again and feel myself de-stress. It is silly, but true. 

Circles are my favorite. To create my shape I took one of my homemade palettes, a paper plate, and cut several different sizes of my shape out. I stitched them to a piece of patterned cardstock that had white circles printed on it and filled them in with two bold colors.

I chose to make my tip in much smaller for this week. I wanted my circle shapes to hang off of the edges so I could see more of my planner page peeking from behind. I love the way that this challenge turned out. It is bright and colorful and the paper plate circles have a lot of yummy texture. The mix of paint, gesso, ink and thread all create a painterly look- just what I wanted!

Want to stitch something to your page? You can see a quick little video here----->  STITCHING ON PAPER.

I am looking forward to seeing your interpretations of this week's challenge and I can't wait to meet you back here next week!

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

-------> Art to the 5th Blog - Our Story

-------> List of Weekly Archived Challenges

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-------> Our Blogs

            Rae

            Lorraine

            Sandi

            Barbara

            Roben-Marie

stitching on paper

Ever since I learned how to turn a sewing machine on I have stitched on paper. I am sure in the awesome world of great seamstresses this is a big no no. Well, I can't help it. There is something about paper and thread together that make me very happy.

What started out as scary and frustrating, is not my favorite thing. I have broken a hundred needles, clogged my bobbin too many times to count. I break my thread on a daily basis and have to look up how to change the tension every. single. time. BUT I love it. I love it. I love it.

Enjoy the process. If you get frustrated, keep going. I promise one day you will love it. 

 

mailart from my art

Just making a little mail art over here. Hoping to get my act together this year and do a swap!

MAILART: print of my be bold canvas. vintage ledger paper. to do tab. wasi tape. vintage grocery stamps. painted paper plate circles. patterened paper scraps. vintage postage stamps.

currently: ten things

1. Taking the time to THANK those that matter. It is so easy to overlook the little things. I know I have been talking about this alot lately, but it matters. The little things really matter. I can't think of a single time that a small THANK YOU didn't make someone smile. Making the time to let people know you care is rewarding. They won't forget it and neither will you.

2. Spending alot of time in the studio. I am enjoying all the time creating and am trying to balance time with a paintbrush and time on the computer. Can I just say yuk! I don't love the computer. It is a time sucker. I am as guilty as the next person when it comes to letting it take over. If I allow myself one hour for computer duties then why am I checking Safari on my phone when my hour is up. I am trying to be more aware of what I am doing and how much time it is taking. I want to create. Being on the computer is necessary, and there are things I NEED to do each day- I just have to be careful not to let time get away from me!

3. Loving my new Golden paints. I splurged awhile back and picked up several colors. Wow! They are my favorite paint EVER. I was afraid that would happen. Now I need, okay WANT, every other color known to man. I am pretty sure I don't have $200 in my budget for paint when my paint cart is filled to overflowing. I made a vow to use what I have, BUT I am going to save my coupons and treat myself to ONE new golden every few weeks. All that time on the computer- I think I have earned it!

4. Stitching on my zipper pouch. I came across a few spools of thread the other day that did not have labels. They were those beautiful multi colored strand spools. Yummy! I wanted to test the colors, so I decided to add some colorful circles to my pouch in the name of research. I love the bright pop of color now! It goes perfectly with the rest of my bright and beautiful DOCUMENTED LIFE PROJECT planner!

5. Sewing up a few pretty covers for art journals. I love my small art journal. I take it everywhere and so I recently made a pretty stitched cover for it, complete with a pocket for my pens and paintbrush. I have been trying to use up all of my smaller quilt blocks and this is a great way to piece the prettiest scraps together!

6. Believing that Documenting my plain ole' regular life is important. Read more about it here.

7. Packaging up goodies! These days are the best. It makes all the long hours and pizza dinners worth it!

8. Playing around with watercolors. I am NOT good at this yet, but I am hoping to be more vigilant with the practice. I love the way I can manipulate the color. I love how I can mottle it with the dab of a paper towel. I love how I can virtually wet it and start over...yea, a lot of that happened. As with all new things it was hard. I wanted to toss it aside and create something I NEW I was good at, but I didn't. I stuck it out and even taped it in Documented Life Planner. Is it my favorite thing I have ever created? - ummm. NO. But I tried something new. THAT is worth documenting!

9. Looking at my worktable and sighing. I have too much stuff out. I have too many things going on right now. I am feeling a tiny bit overwhelmed, truth be told. I like order. I want my table to look like this all the time. It makes me feel good to tidy things up at the end of the day. It calms me to go to bed knowing things are in order. I feel fresher and less stressed to start a new day with a clean slate. Lately my life is not letting me do that. I can't complain. You have to be very careful what you ask for! I looked around last night and realized the very best I could do was to make some piles. I NEEDED each of these projects OUT and accesible. Realistically I don't need to start from scratch each morning. Realistically I need to make some piles and get to work and widdle them down. This is my plan. This weekend. For sure. After the family movie night Friday, and the Glow in the Dark Golf Event Saturday Night and an Orchestra Ensemble on Saturday and Church on Sunday...yea. After all that.

10. Taking a break to have some fun and remind myself that all work and no play made Jack a very dull and grouchy boy! Business is business- I am learning that, but I am also learning that we have to take time to step away. You have to refresh your heart and mind from time to time. Without the occasional intermission we start to breakdown.  Good things can't happen unless we are in a good place. It isn't good enough to just want it. You have to committ with your whole heart, and for that you need time to breathe and laugh and reflect.

the documented life project: weekly challenge 6

Welcome to Week 6 of The Documented Life Project!

February 1 - Open Your/A  Pinterest Board and Be Inspired!

At first I wasn't sure about this challenge. Pinterest is a tad bit overwhelming on a good day - to open a board and be inspired could easily lead to hours of surfing beautiful pages and boards. To simplify things and keep my "surfing time" to a minimum, I chose to open one of my own boards - Tutorials. This is what I found!

I loved sharing how to make this mini canvas and everything about the way it turned out- the colors, the texture and the interesting look the paint took on. I took the challenge one step further and only allowed myself to use watercolors. Watercolors are a fairly new medium for me and I am much more comfortable using acrylic paints. I thought this would push me to use the watercolors, experiment with them a little more...

I used a piece of watercolor paper that was already collaged on the reverse side for my tip-in page this week. I chose a pretty, bright palette and following the lines of my pinterest inspiration I began painting.

As it turned out, I taped my tip-in backwards (NOT the first time) and so I had to create my challenge on the back of my collaged paper. I could have removed the tape and started over, but I chose to leave it as is. Now I have TWO pretty pages this week.

I quickly and loosely applied a bright "frame" like border to my page, followed by several large circles of color. Next I added some swathes of color to the bottom edges of the page. I applied several colors of the paint to my hand-carved feather stamp and then stamped my page. I love it! 

Once all the paint had been applied and dried, I added little pops of white using my favorite white pen of all time. You can see that I have a lot to learn about moving and thinning color, but overall I enjoyed the challenge. Watercolor paints leave such a beautiful fluid look to your page when applied correctly. I look forward to giving this technique some more practice!

I am looking forward to seeing your interpretations of this week's challenge and I can't wait to meet you back here next week!

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

-------> Art to the 5th Blog - Our Story

-------> List of Weekly Archived Challenges

-------> Facebook

------> Flickr

-------> Instagram - #documentedlife

-------> Our Blogs

            Rae

            Lorraine

            Sandi

            Barbara

            Roben-Marie