Eccentric Spirit

Hello friends – long time no post… ok, that feels completely silly to say on a blog I’ve had for less than a month, but I was SO enjoying posting fairly regularly and then Christmas came and I didn’t have time for a few days. I was chomping at the bit to post when I got home, only to get a message saying “Warning, 3% battery power left” on my laptop after watching too many YouTube vids. “Yikes,” I think,  “Better go get the power cord out of my overnight bag!” …which, of course, was the point at which I realized my laptop cord somehow got left at my aunt’s house, three hours away. I’ve been trying to coordinate family members to get it back home to me ever since, and borrowing my boyfriend’s completely unfamiliar laptop in the meantime. MUCH better than no computer, but still a hassle – no photo editing software on here, or any of my music or pictures or my news reader! I had hoped to get my cord back tonight, but no such luck, thanks to the icetastic weather. Maybe by the weekend.

In the meantime, I wanted to post that I had a fabulous time at Kelly Kilmer‘s classes at Ink About It in Westford. I tried some fun new things, hung out with some fabulous art ladies, and made a book from scratch – a new adventure for me!

I will try to post some pictures of the results in the next few days, but for I’m going to share a picture of my studio nesting project. Things have progressed a bit since I took this, and there are plenty of other bits to show you, but I’m struggling to upload any pictures at all while working on an unfamiliar machine. If you want more details you can check it out in my Flickr photostream. Hope you enjoy the little studio peek – more actual art coming soon, I hope!

I haven’t really completed any art in the past few days, but I made two backgrounds in my altered book journal that I really like, so I thought I’d share them with you.

First is a sort of pink-ish text background. First I stuck some hole reinforcers (you know, those little donut shaped sticker thingies?) in random lines on the pages. Then I tore up a zillion different bits of text pages and glued them down. This took FOREVER. At least, where forever is defined as the length of the pilot of Star Trek Voyager, which I put on to keep myself amused. So, like, and hour and a half. Anyhow. Next I used the weirdest color combo I’ve ever tried – a nice bright pink, somewhere between carnation and fuchsia and… beige! I am SO not a beige person. (Don’t believe me, check out the pics in my About page.) But it actually works surprisingly well, especially with the addition of a small amount of white gesso. It gave it a cool grungy sort of look, that whole shabby chic thing.

The other background I made I made in about five minutes, after getting inspired to play with my brayer after watching the beginning of this awesome new art journal vid:

I saw it linked from the photo of the finished journal page on Flickr, and now I am totally following chlorofluoro’s blog. Yes, I am an art blog addict, don’t try and stop me. I’m not sure if the photo does this page justice, the colors are amazingly, eyepoppingly bright – almost neon. I’m madly in love with this page; I told my boyfriend I’m going to run away to Vegas to marry my brayer. He told me to have fun. (True bliss is having a boyfriend who understands the need to run away and marry your brayer.)

To see more details on either of these backgrounds, you can click on them, and it will bring it up in a new page, and if you click on it again you will see a big version. You’ll probably get a magnifying glass cursor so you can click on it AGAIN for mega-details! (Yes, my colorful one has old to-do lists under the paint!)

P.S. Yes, I know I said there would be no post today, but thanks to what the greater DC area is calling “Snowpacalypse” and us folks up in New England are calling “December” my family wasn’t able to make it out to my house today. Oh, and I really do promise to share some studio pics soon, I’ve been hanging so much wacky fun stuff on the walls it looks like the artist equivilant of a TGI Friday’s in here!

Hey everyone, nothing much to share from me today, but I wanted to pass along that Lani Kent of Healing Expressions is offering a lovely giveaway – two, actually! Two names will be drawn on Christmas Day for the two lovely gift sets shown here. All you have to do is leave a comment on that entry (linked above) with your contact info. There is also a truly beautiful “virtual open house” series of pics in that same post. If my name is drawn, I really hope I get the first one – I just adore that “Embrace the Journey” ornament and as you guys know I’m in a super nest-y mood! I would love more inspiring art for my walls, and the message really speaks to me.

I’ve been cleaning and organizing and decorating like mad. I guess the Christmas season brought it out in me, it may have started with setting up a wreath and some lights for a small family gathering last weekend. My boyfriend and I had my mom and two siblings to visit and wrap Christmas presents as part of my plan to my Christmas less stressful from now on. Too often in our family people end up staying up til 2am wrapping gifts and then are crabby and tired the next day. The party was bittersweet, as my father’s memorial service was the day before. He got sick in early November and things progressed very quickly; he had surgery on the 24th but they were unable to stop the bleeding. Needless to say, it’s been a difficult holiday season for us all. The service last weekend was very healing for me though, and I’m working through my grief as best I can. It’s been quite the reminder that life can be so short. At 27, I am about half the age my father was when he died – and nearly twice the age my dear cousin was when he died close to twenty years ago. I’m sorry to sound so dark and morbid, but this thought has occurred to me many, many times over the past few weeks and in a strange way it’s a very encouraging one; one that encourages me to live my life because it can be so short. Even the longest life will go by quickly, so I’d better get moving and do the things I keep meaning to do. Maybe that’s part of my nesting mood too – I’ve been meaning to decorate and make my apartment homey for years now, but never got to it. But now I have an pair of fairy wings from a few Halloween ago staple-gunned to my wall, the collaborative watercolor piece from last year’s art retreat FINALLY hung up over my whiteboard, and today I even got out hammer and nails to create a happy little halo of white Christmas lights around the studio. They are never coming down!

Gosh, I thought I didn’t have much to share, but I guess I just meant I didn’t have much ART to share today. Sometime soon I’m going to go through my art journal (my first, which I started in September – did I mention that already in a previous post? I forget.) and take a bunch of pictures so I have stuff to share even on days I have nothing new finished. I will also try to take some studio pictures, to show you more of all this nesting I’m talking about. Probably no post tomorrow though, my family is coming over for a second round of wrapping! Next year, I hope to get it done in one day, but it’s been an unusual holiday season to say the least. Today I would like to leave you with a lovely video from the wise and wonderful willowing – yes, I figured out how to do it without crashing my computer! (I hope!) She shares some powerful insights about the concept of “being here now” – something that I feel is very important for me; in general, and especially during the holiday season, AND especially with what’s on my mind about life being short, and how I need to really LIVE my life, savour every moment.

Today’s picture is of the journal spread I made today, which I made as a way to work through the mental process of figuring out the theme for my 2010 Strategic Planner. (If you click on the image, you’ll be able to see a bigger version with more details in my Flickr stream.) I bought Lisa Sonora Beam’s book “The Creative Entrepreneur” right after Christmas last year (one of those “Dang, Santa didn’t get me that one!” moments). I worked with the journaling prompts last January and made some important discoveries about my personal values and goals, but somewhere along the way I lost momentum. I’ve been back at it in a sort of haphazard way the past few weeks and was just thinking that with a new year coming up it was a good time to work on making a Strategic Planner when lo and behold, she started blogging about that very subject. I’m terribly grateful that she’s sharing advice on the subject and even her own personal notes on her goals for next year. It really got the juices flowing so I could figure some things out.

So many materials went into this spread, it’s definitely one of the more noticeably MIXED mixed media pieces I’ve done lately. The background is three or four colors of blue and green craft acrylics smooshed around with a funky little foam… thing. I have no idea how to describe it; I bought it at a dollar store ages ago because it looked like it would be fun to paint with – I think it was supposed to be some sort of soap latherer bath type thingamie. Basically it looks like what happens when craft foam and Koosh balls mate. (Am I the only person who remembers Koosh balls? They were THE thing for about five minutes when I was in school.)

Umm, anyhow, now that I’ve spent a whole paragraph on the first layer, let’s see… the left page is written with a large black magic marker and a white paint marker. I added various rubber/acrylic stamps with my Staz-On inkpads. The compass and map get a TON of use in my journal, I spent a lot of my time feeling very lost. I just unearthed my knot stamp in my marathon of studio cleaning over the past couple days, and it made a nice border next to the spine. On the right page I did a little journaling about what I want to accomplish and what the unifying theme there is. I was delighted to find that my purple ballpoint wrote just fine on the dried acrylic. As I wrote, it came to me: BLOSSOM. That’s my theme for 2010. So I drew a blossoming flower with Gel FX crayons, gel pens, and my beloved paint markers. I was very pleased with the result, I rarely draw because I usually don’t like the results. Finally, I added the rose sticker in the corner, some notes in black paint marker, a bit of paper doily, and the word “blossom” that I printed on some specialty paper.

“Blossom” for me encompasses my desires for growth, independence, exploration, healing and weeding-out in 2010. My goals include getting my driver’s license, losing weight, increasing my income, and de-stuff-ifying my house.

Breaking out of my rut, by cleaning up the studio! That seems to be the what my muse demands of me today. I’ve done extremely little in the way of work in my journal today; I wrote a list, and I added a couple of stickers. Yes, I use stickers in my fancy altered art. Sandylion, no less. I’m such a rebel! ;)

Seriously though, my muse must be pregnant or something, she is nesting like crazy. But I suppose a pregnant muse is better than a barren one – I just hope I don’t need to eat pickles and peanut butter to get her to let me make art! I’ve sifted through a small mountain of random bits and pieces today. In the process I’ve thrown out at least 7 gunked-up and painty foam brushes, unearthed approximately 26 fortune cookie fortunes saved over from the past heaven-knows-how-many takeout dinners, filled a grocery bag with assorted paper items to be recycled, and piled up a good sized (but much smaller) heap of paper items to save for collage. To keep myself company, I’ve been listening to podcasts and YouTube videos, in particular this podcast interview with Kelly Kilmer and willowing’s YouTube video of “10 Rules for Life“. I’ve listened to both of these twice through today, I am enchanted by both of these new-to-me ladies. I am seriously considering signing up for one or possibly even two of Kelly’s classes when she is here in MA at the end of the month. And I may just have to reward myself of a print of the 10 rules when I finish cleaning this studio of mine!

I would have embedded the YouTube video, but I crashed my computer when I tried – yikes! So instead there is a link to it, and for your viewing pleasure I’ll give you a lovely picture of my new and improved mirror shrine. I’ve had this awesome mirror for many years, with the cool swirly frame and a little shelf below, but lately it’s been neglected. All my pretty little doo-dads were overflowing and strewn every-which-way and stuff had started to pile up in front of it. I moved it to the wall behind my computer a few days ago and finally spruced things up today. I tidied up the various knick-knacks, stuck my shiny little “dream” star to the mirror, and twist-tied a broken plastic tiara to the top. The art doll is not my work, she is the result of a round robin my super-fantastic artsy momma participated in, and she gave her to me for my birthday a few years ago. My mom rocks. (And made the head, crown, and the -oops- slightly battered wings… gotta spruce those babies up!)

I’m feeling very stuck lately. I don’t like any of the art I’ve made or worked on in the past few days. I’m feeling restless and irritable, with a thousand little ideas flitting about my head like gnats and I can’t get them to coalesce into a useful whole no matter how hard I try. I have this nagging yearning, like a growling stomach, bogging me down and filling my head with cottonball confusion and self-doubt. I can’t seem to shake it, I can’t seem to settle to anything, no matter what I try to do to break out of it.

So here I am on my brand new blog, venting about it. I’m hoping I can improve my state of mind a bit by blowing off steam and sharing this collage, made about a year ago during a similar bout of indecision, hopelessness, and confusion. I’ve shared a portion of it before, on my old blog, but like I said, I don’t like any of the art I’ve made lately, and this certainly captures my current mood fairly well. I think the main difference is that now I’m feeling just the slightest shift, a feeling of things just starting to gel for me into a cohesive idea of What I Want To Be When I Grow Up (a fairy godmother, by the way). It’s only the faintest taste, the germ of an idea – and it’s aggravating me, like a scab that itches or the feeling of not being able to think of the word you mean. I can almost see a vision of the future, of where I want to go, but I can’t quite get the picture to focus. Like my heart and mind need new glasses, or a hearing aid, or both.

Often my favorite techniques are the ones that start out as accidents. Take the example to the left, with the interesting lettering. I’d created a spread in my altered book journal, with a magazine image of what looks like some sort of magical fairy tent and a sharply contrasting image of rhinestones, intended as a space for me to journal. I softened the rhinestone texture by adding a couple layers of pearl finish, a fun find amongst all the other cheap two ounce bottles of craft acrylics. But it was still hard to tell if black paint pen would show up well enough to read later, so I wrote my page in lime green instead. Even before I’d finished writing, I could tell the color wasn’t going to be as legible as I would have liked. I didn’t want to break the stream-of-consciousness flow to correct it, so I finished what I was writing before trying to fix it. I waiting until I was sure the writing was dry, and then went back over each word with a black pen, slightly finer point than the green. This worked out well from a visual standpoint, leaving me with an interesting two-tone look to my handwritten words. The bonus from a journaling standpoint was that it was a lovely meditative process, giving me a soothing opportunity to contemplate my own words.

Click on the image to view the full journal spread in my Flickr photostream. If you’re curious, the products mentioned in this post are Creamcoat pearl finish, and DecoColor opaque paint markers – Fine Line Light Green and Extra Fine Black. DecoColor paint markers are one of my favorite writing instruments for visual journaling, they have a remarkable ability to write on gesso or acrylic paint where many other markers tend to dry up.

I’ve finally set up a new blog! I had one for a little while called “A Path My Own” where I wrote about trying to find my way as an artist but I stopped keeping up with is some months back – in part because I’m a big control freak and I want to be able to have more control over the look and feel of my blog. Lately I’ve been wanting to get back to blogging, on much the same theme as before but with more sharing of the discoveries I make in my lab, er, studio. I like to think of myself as a mad scientist in artist form; I’m always concocting new formulas and performing crazy experiments – and now you’ll get to read all about them! Lucky you. :)

I’ve been selling funky altered art supplies (vintage game cards, antique keys, etc.) on Etsy under the name EccentricitySupplyCo  for close to a year now, and I’ve had the domain for it this whole time, so I decided to make use of it. So far it’s just this blog, but I’ll be setting up a shopping cart here soon, as well as a gallery of artwork and craft projects made with goodies from ESC. Customers are welcome to submit images!

Anyhow, I don’t have much else to say for now – just hello and welcome! :) If you’d like to get to know me better, just stop by the “About” page linked up at the top of the site.