Serendipity Speaks

Living a Double Life

I saw this phrase, "Living a Double Life," in passing a moment ago. And it resonated deeply. Immediately. Unlike so much that I see in passing each day, literally thousands of words and phrases.

Why? For the same reason I think that I cried at the thought of my childhood home being sold today (final offer accepted, pending financing). Because I feel like I am so far from the person I want to be, the person I was, my inner child, so to speak. I am stressed, busy, barely keeping up. I am aging, my icons (yesterday Farah Fawcett AND Michael Jackson) are dying. I feel myself dying - aren't we all every day? And I wonder when was the last stretch of time (not moment, stretch...) where I was truly living authentically? Where is this girl?

Bird Collage

I've had so many projects in my head lately. Do you know what I mean? I can see them clearly, I know my starting primary element, and I can feel the overall theme. When I have these projects in my head two things happen. First, I obsess with getting into the studio to create them. Second, I try to grab blocks of an hour here or there to get the image out of my head and onto the desk.

This can be very frustrating if I cannot actually create my vision. There are certainly times when my mind's eye has a lot more talent than my hands do! Lately, however, things have been coming to life fairly quickly. I love that! I haven't been very good at photographing and posting recently and am working on updates.

This is the first one that I made acouple weeks ago. I have been inspired by a tin of Cavallini bird postcards that has been sitting on my work table for weeks. This came together relatively quickly and I'm pretty pleased with the result. My forays into collage have been increasing. I have yet to master a look that is totally "unlinear", but the layering has been coming together and I feel more confident about knowing when I am done. Please feeel free to comment as I would love some feedback.

Jenni Bowlin Digital

I've been playing with the brand new Jenni Bowlin digital kit availalbe here. No pictures on the new laptop yet, but oh aren't these elements beautiful.

 

 I can already think of so many uses for that beautiful bird image! I love that the Jenni Bowlin look will now be available in this format. Now to keep practicing!

Discoveries

I've been strolling through blogs, following links, and making discoveries lately. Today I found this wonderful poem here:

What's in My Journal

Odd things, like a button drawer. Mean

Things, fishhooks, barbs in your hand.

But marbles too. A genius for being agreeable.

Junkyard crucifixes, voluptuous

discards. Space for knickknacks, and for

Alaska. Evidence to hang me, or to beatify.

Clues that lead nowhere, that never connected

anyway. Deliberate obfuscation, the kind

that takes genius. Chasms in character.

Loud omissions. Mornings that yawn above

a new grave. Pages you know exist

but you can't find them. Someone's terribly

inevitable life story, maybe mine.

~ William Stafford

And all I could think was "Yes! That's what's in my journal!!!!"

 

 

 

Scraplift Challenge

This was my effort in yesterday's scraplift challenge at Designer Digitals. It took FOREVER! While I'm happy that I perservered (word of the year) and finished it, I can see the flaws. But on a positive note, I did it! I challenged myself and finished a layout that was not a template. Now, if only I could make the computer run faster, maybe it won't take six hours next time! 

Digital

I'm new to this digital thing, but the possibilities continue to amaze me. After taking a free class on Two Peas I have a lot more confidence. Still, after messing around for a while I settled on this as my layout.   

 

I'm not a simple scrapper in paper, far from it. But this picture seemed to need nothing more. I think my next experiment should be a scraplift of something complicated, but to make myself stretch more.What do you think?  

Haiku

Today I'm frustrated

Fights, fainting, feeding frenzy

Time for sleep

House of Three

Found House of Three today through a link on 2Peas. I'm laughing at myself for spending the afternoon transferring the blog to typepad, and going from free to paid, and THEN finding some ultra-cool and affordable designs for the OLD blog site. So, hmmm, now what? I'm experimenting, of course :). Once my downloads are approved, we'll try them on both sites and see what happens. Stay tuned! 

The Word of the Year

Ok, so this is a little late, but I've been thinking about the trend of picking a WORD to focus on for the year. After duly considering a lot of great possibilities, I have settled on Persevere. I love this word but it can give a misleading impression of troubled times, or enduring problems. The reason I chose it is not for any of those things, but for "sticktoitiveness" (which I might have picked if it was a word LOL!

Persevere: to pursue steadily any project or course begun; to maintain a purpose in spite of counter influences, opposition, or discouragement; not to give up or abandon what is undertaken.

I have a "subtitle" word for the year as well, which is FOCUS. So my mantra this year is to not give up what I've started and focus on my goals.

This is all related to my art and I've been working at it already. I am giving up my old behavior of waiting for the right time to work on a project from start to finish in one sitting or I just don't start. I have been working on projects in 10, 30 and 60 minute increments, and they are moving along!

I would love to splurge on a gorgeous necklace by Lisa Leonard Designs to honor this commitment, but for now I will dream of that and PERSEVERE!

Coming Up For Air

Well, to say its been a crazy couple months would be a massive understatement. Work has been nuts with one person who worked for me leaving at the end of July and the other one leaving at the end of August. My co-workers have been wonderfully supportive during this time, but the bulk of the work has fallen to me and I have been stressed and just generally feeling saturated.

In the midst of all this I had to cancel my planned vacation at the beginning of September, a time when my husband and I were going to finish the remodel of our downstairs that had sat idle since last year. Matt has carried on alone, and done a wonderful job, but a planned one week disruption has extended into a month and we are only now starting to see light at the end of the tunnel (and floor under our feet!)

Both boys started new schools last month as well, with Logan in Kindergarten and Max in a new pre-school. Logan has had some trouble transitioning but is starting to find his way.

So, overall, I have had lots of time to ponder my lack of artistic output, and very little time to invest in changing that. My free hours on worknights have come late at night when all I have brain cells for is staring mindlessly at the TV for an hour. My weekends have been devoted to taking the kids to my mothers so Matt can make progress on the house.

I have been prolifically reading magazines and dreaming about upcoming projects. I am in full "get ready for the holidays" mode - at least mentally - and am trying to come up with something unique and wonderful to make for the family. I need some ideas!! Its difficult because my taste is different than many others in my family and my "art" may not be what they want to receive. I will probably end up crafting fairly standard mini scrapbooks, but may try to do one fabulous piece for Aimee. We'll see how the time goes.

Onward and Upward!!