A couple of days ago there was a loud rap at the door. When i opened the door (still in my jammies) there stood a man asking me how much i wanted for my van. Mr. G had put a “for sale sign” on my glittergirl van. This fellow was a scrap car removal guy – he was obviously looking for a good deal. He told me that no one would want to have a painted van sitting in their driveway except for me and that since i had painted my vehicle that it was now worth very little. Of course i felt pretty bad and countered with all of the adventures Glittergirl had been on and that she had appeared on TV a few times and that i in fact loved her. So he argued with me that i could not possibly love her since glittergirl is an inanimate vehicle that could not love me back. He cited Scott Peck in his book The Road less travelled where Peck spoke about this concept. I asked him if he was a philosopher and that perhaps he should dub himself “the philosopher scrap car removal guy” with the subtitle: philosophy for free. And then of course i heard a bit more about his life story….still while standing at the door in my jammies.

The scrap car removal guy waved his arm unceremoniously at the magic cottage and asked “what the heck is this all about anyways?”. So i said that i was an artist and painted everything. He asked me what i did and i told him. Then he asked me “who says you’re an artist?” I told him that i did and then he went on to say that it was subjective and that someone might come along and say i wasn’t an artist. This bizarre interchange lasted about 20 minutes leaving me very deflated at the end of it. It ended off with me dispensing a bit of dating advice (he asked for it).

To make a long story short the fellow wanted my van for about 100 dollars so that he could cannibalize it for parts….which of course drove me nuts – Cannibalize glittergirl??? Glittergirl needs a new battery in order to run along with a new windshield (there is a crack in it). She does still run though. So if anyone is interested in having Glittergirl for FREE please let me know (as long as you don’t cannibalize her). It might be kind of fun to put her in your backyard and turn her into a mini art studio! How cool would that be? I would do that only there is no way i can put her in the backyard without cutting down my magnolia tree and tearing apart a fence. So let me know if you are interested okay?

Thank you everyone (from Mr. G) for the birthday wishes – you are all so sweet!!!

Many thanks to my friend Rhonda for sending me this lovely video on “how to be alone” .  I am enjoying alone time right now after a frenetic few days so don’t have too much to blog about however i do hope you take the time to watch this lovely – poetic short video – poem by Tanya Davis . It is incredibly moving and beautiful. xo

P.S. i don’t know how to make the video smaller so it doesn’t take up too much of the screen……sorry.

No….i’m not talking about knitting here – i’m talking about having my cast of 6 weeks removed!  Hooray…….it feels wonderful to be free of it – now i just have to think of what to do with it – make a lamp or incorporate it in a mixed media painting.  As you can see i’m wearing a plastic splint for a while until my wrist gets stronger.  Now i have to train my left hand how to type again – it’s not doing too badly actually.  It’s sort of like riding a bicycle – you never forget.  It just takes a while to get up to speed.

I’m still recovering from a busy weekend and company yesterday – it seems like i just need more downtime when i’ve been around lots of people – especially if they’ve all come here! So i’m not really into blogging today but wanted to leave you with a link to Rice Freeman Zachary’s latest blog rant – it’s brilliant….all about branding – and the post before it is on the creative life.  Both post really spoke to me.  I hope you enjoy them.

Yours truly in front of the studio

Some of the stationary items for sale.

Mr. Gee decided to repair the dragonfly (that is normally perched on the front of the magic cottage) in the backyard.

Friends Susan and Rob dropped by for a visit with their little pooch Sam.

Signs were made and displayed to show the way…

Betty Ann – a frequent visitor of this blog dropped in!  Thanks Betty Ann! 

Jess Rice, a local artist and friend came by.  Thanks for the flowers Jess!

I will post some more photos tomorrow.

Escaping the corporate world for the creative life

 I often receive emails from people asking me for advice regarding making the transition from the corporate world, looking after children and family, and retiring to a more creative life (read less structure). Where do you begin? I think first of all that it’s important to not criticize yourself and have the same expectations you had in your previous life. You are after all embarking on a new chapter in your life and you’re navigating different waters. How exciting to be starting out on this journey. I think when you come from a background of structure such as working a corporate job, or looking after children you feel lost when you’re standing in front of a proverbial candy counter of creative possibilities.

Now, I feel that since I lack a lot of structure in my life and often struggle with organization that I’m not one to ask. However since you did ask (or some of you did) – here’s what I think:

Sit down with a piece of paper and begin to write down all of your creative dreams. Did you ever hope that one day you’d have enough time to learn how to collage? Or did you want to learn how to sculpt clay? Were you always fascinated by the human body and wanted to learn how to draw from life? Write down all of these dreams without censoring. On another page write down the things you love to do as a child. My list would look like this – playing marbles, being in nature – close to water, drawing, daydreaming and playing school. The next thing I would do is to create a mind map with perhaps creative life written in the center. Here’s an example of a mind map:

  check out the little freak who is trying to infiltrate the talking heads

Yesterday Cintha came by to help me clean up the studio and office for my Open studio event this Sunday. I still have about an hour or so of cleanup to do in the studio but so far it’s looking pretty spiffy. As you can see I have my little freaks and talking heads, my Journal bliss book among other artful offerings. My little freaks look as if they are guarding the talking heads above them!

Today I’ll be busy making magnets and cutting greeting cards to have available at my open studio. The production will be little bit slower with my arm in a cast however I seem to be managing OK. And Monday I get the cast removed – HOORAY!!!!!!

You can watch a video of my studio here.

Check out this wonderful video I discovered on Tina ferguson’s blog – it will make you happy and maybe bring a few tears to your eyes – it did to me!

I hope you all have a marvelous weekend! If you live in the area please come and visit me at the magic cottage:

Well – I don’t have too much else to share with you today as my organizational guru Cintha will soon be here to help me organize my office (which has gotten really out of hand again) and my studio which needs tidying up for my open studio on Sunday. So I’ll see you tomorrow with bells on!

How do you find your purpose or your path? Sometimes it’s difficult to find it in this day and age where we are bombarded by messages from the media, messages from the net and more. I sure as heck have fallen into a heap wondering at times what is my purpose, why am I here? Whats at all about Alfie? You can always find a life coach who can help you navigate your life and help you realize your potential. They give you a series of questions and tools to discover what your values and goals are while encouraging action. Of course you don’t have to have a coach to do this. You can enlist the help of a family member or friend who will be your accountability partner. I have found though that a coach is better because they are trained to keep you on track. They’re much more objective and don’t have an agenda.

You might think that this is a strange thing to say however I have personally very cleverly sabotaged my success by diverting the attention of my friend to a totally random subject when we were getting too close to my dreams. And my friend was to eager to agree – “yes let’s go for lunch!”

If you can’t afford a coach then you might want to invest in a book that will provide you with a toolkit of exercises to  use or check out this site – top 10 ways to coach yourself to success.　 Have fun discovering your purpose!

Snapping green beans – I love hearing the snap noise.  It brings me back to my childhood when we had a vegetable garden in the backyard complete with a few rows of green beans.

Picking blackberries in the backyard for my protein shake.

I just can’t believe it – I spent well over 1 hour writing this blog with the speech recognition program and all of a sudden the program did something and lost it all.  So I’m having a mini melt down and I’m going to walk away from my computer.

I was sharing something about two e-classes I was taking, one with Traci Bautista and one with Suzi blu but lost that too.  Also I shared about my studio open house this Sunday at the magic cottage – it’s between 11 AM and five PM.

I have to go now before i break something…..  Thank you for the kind thoughts some of you sent me about feeling under the weather yesterday.  I really appreciate it.

You can check out my repost on the big black balloon on the craft for health blog – they are over one year old now!  As an  alumni they are repost  my story and artwork.

This post will be brief as i’m feeling under the weather – might have e-coli, our water supply was contaminated

I’ll be back tomorrow hopefully in fine form!

The genesis of an art journal page:

Yesterday I received a bit of upsetting news. I have been waiting for many months to see an ear specialist about a hearing problem. Not only did the Dr. have bad news but he also had a terrible bedside manner. I had spent the past year going to clinics about a hearing problem – the doctors made me go home and do strange things like use a steroid nose spray which only made my nose run and clog up my head. Another Dr. Told me to go home and have a shower, plug my nose and blowhard with my mouth closed so that I could pop open my plugged ears. Of course that didn’t work! I kept thinking that I had plugged ears and needed grommets or tubes put in my ears. To make a long story short the ear specialist said I had hearing loss and that grommets in my years would not help. He implied that I would most likely benefit from hearing aids and controlling my environment??? What the heck? By controlling my environment he meant only talking to people when they’re facing me, not across the room or when they’re out of earshot.

So I was pretty upset when I came home and decided to create a journal page around what had transpired. On a happy note – not hearing very well can be quite entertaining since I find what I think people are saying is infinitely more interesting and humorous than what they are actually saying. For example the other day Mr. Gee said we should have brought our umbrellas with us but I heard him say gorilla!!!

Life is full of fodder for your art journal pages.  What upsetting situation did you have that can be transformed by creating a journal page around it?  Art truly can heal you in so many ways!

This is going to take me quite a while to do this tutorial so you might wanna check back in a while to see when it’s finished.

Supply list:

• Micron pens
•  Water color pencil crayons
•  copic pens
• cardstock
• decorative paper for background
• Grommets (grommets kit)
• Folk art acrylics
• Glue
• derwent sketching pencil -medium wash

Begin by painting over a piece of decorative paper (if you look closely you can see I had first glued some text over the background). I thinned down some white folk art paint and dribbled it on the page.

Begin sketching your idea on a loose piece of card stock in pencil.  Ink in with your micron pens and erase your pencil lines.  Colour in the woman’s face, hair and the flowers with watercolor pencil crayons and also copic  pens (you can use ordinary felt pens as well). Colour in other elements as well such as the hands and talk bubbles.

Cut out all of your elements.  A little trick I use to make cutting things out more easier is by outlining everything with a thick black felt pen.

Tone down the background a bit with some watered down white folk art paint.  Glue all the elements  on your page.  As you can see at the last minute I decided to add a hand holding a talk bubble with grommets hammered into it.  When the glue has dried add a bit of shading to your cut out pieces with a derwent sketching pencil -medium wash.