Time Sure Flies

Looking over the posts from the last year I notice that I've been posting more and more on regular family things and not on being creative. This last year has been a challenge that way.

Most of our focus has been on the husband's pedal building, music playing and getting into school. Then there were bucket of other family matters. The last time I had a spurt of creativity was around the winter holidays. Until now that is. I'm getting myself busy getting ready for the holiday selling and craft show season. I have felt ready for sewing, birds sculpted and right now, between typing paragraphs (you know, to let the tips if my fingers recover in between) I'm working with wire to make bird feet to go in the sculpted birds.

There are a few things that I've been doing to stay creative this year. One is a daily photograph on Instagram (my instagram name is PeanutButterPie if you're interested in following my stream). I've been trying to incorporate a smallish diary type entry with each photograph and that is getting me to think labels and hashtags too. What I'd like, is to look at these together and see what patterns arise; what images really get me excited and happy and perhaps use them as a spring board for art projects or just to get my brain working.

I've also started to draw and paint again as you can see in the image below, there are a few of my quick watercolour sketches included on my instagram feed. And I'm gearing up for the Peanut's birthday party but this year it will be much more about baking than crafting as she's having a drama party at the ArtSpace for Children instead of a back yard party.

On top of that I've been working on a separate project that I have kept away from here. It's a guerrilla art project that you can read about on the blog; The Paper Heart Project which I've created just for it.

So I may not have been blogging here lately but I've been doing stuff. What have you been up to? anything you're doing that you are excited about? Share in the comments.

Go ask Alice....

Here's the thing about Disney's Alice; it creeps me out. Watching it as a child awoke some deep seated anxieties about loss of control that the book just doesn't stir up for me, perhaps it's because the Disney version is so sterile while trying to be surreal (for the record, Fantasia made me feel the same way)...

Anyway, I much preferred the live action versions I saw on TV growing up and the books; maybe that's why I'm so excited about Tim Burton's Alice which opens next month. So excited, that I've been a little busy re-exploring Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. Not only have I been going back into the books and re-reading but I've also gotten a little creative with John Tenniel's Illustrations.

Last week I mentioned that I'd gotten out, and had been able to make some art at Blim. Since I've been working a lot with glass and paint (more on that project later); the opportunity to play in Photoshop, work with paper and glue and scissors was like a breath of fresh air.

Generally, the creative work I do is 100% mine; from the drawings and paintings for my embellished cards, ATC's and nursery blessings to the photographs in TMCPhoto. Sometimes you just have to go in another direction to keep the creative momentum going. Making use of Tenniel's illustrations was a great jumping point for me. The Blim workshop was a wonderful opportunity to work with ready made images, incorporating some of the newer things I've been working on at the same time. At the end, I was excited and brimming with ideas, planning another trip to make more!

In preparation for my workshop, I scanned some of Tenniel's illustrations into Photoshop, adding colour here and there, cropping the images into a circular format and resizing them to fit the button diameters available at Blim. These were printed off and put aside for the workshop. I made all my illustrations into 1.5" and 1" diameters just because I like those two sizes. This process took me a full day to do what with the details of adding colour without removing the original lines of the illustrations and keeping the Peanut occupied.

For the workshop, I brought some of the rubber stamps I've been carving, some alphabet stamps I've recently purchased and some markers and ink pads for inking up the stamps. I made use of some of decorative papers and the art and fashion magazines Blim had handy for collage and went to work cutting, pasting and putting my buttons together. Because I had plans to make my buttons into magnets I took the pins off of the button backs before putting the pieces and my art into the machines for pressing.

Of course I went into the workshop with only a hazy idea of what I'd like to do and there were some less than lovely pieces that came home with me (yay for learning!) and also some pretty fantastic ones too. What I liked about the workshop was that as I was cutting and pasting I was also thinking of all the other things I could add to the process. Since then I've carved a few new stamps for more Alice magnets (teacups and skeleton keys were my first ideas) and I'm also thinking about other images too.

Out of the 25 button/magnets that I created, I've put together four sets of 3 buttons that I'll be selling in PeanutButterPie. I'll be listing the first set of three this afternoon and I hope they attract some interest. I know they're already attracting interest on my refrigerator, where I've already put some to good use holding up some of the Peanut's more fantastic works of art.

Are you excited about the new Alice Movie too?

I hate to be a Downer

I really really do, so I'm not going to spend time complaining or belly aching. In the interest of staying relatively complaint free I'm just going to state the facts. I'm in the doldrums, I'm feeling blue, overwhelmed and awash in the fuzzy heads.

I've taken steps to detour around what could be a downward spiral. I'm creating on a daily basis. I'm brushing my teeth and applying minimal amounts of makeup I have plans to colour my hair. I'm getting out into the sun shine and making plans for the spring and summer garden. I'm not sure if it's just that time of year or just me so I'm asking for advice.

When you're not feeling rosey pink what do you do to snap out of it?

I fought against it

but the little green mold spores all over the stroller that we've used to transport the Peanut and library books and groceries and art supplies for the last 3.5 years talked me into splurging for a new one to use until sometime next year.

We'd actually been thinking about trading the stroller in for a wagon so that the Peanut; who is getting more and more interested in getting from point A to point B on her own two feet (No thanks, I'm just good with walking) could jump in when those two feet had had enough or when she wanted to stop and have a snack or both (I want to have a snack inside the stroller!). The above mentioned stroller was getting too small the the Peanut; her feet were hanging down below the foot rests and knocking on the snack tray.

So Saturday morning saw us leaving the house all on foot; catching the bus to the mall and picking out a new stroller to haul library books and the weekly grocery run oh yeah, and to push the Peanut to and from library and grocery trips that is when she's not insisting on walking.

The rest of the weekend was taken up with watching the penultimate episode of Dollhouse (it was awesome as expected), cutting some new relief blocks and working on my latest project (I'll let you in on what that is in the next few days) and considering changes that I've made to the 5 question feature. I've expanded the feature but cut back on the frequency of posts. I'm hoping that it will be a change for the better; allowing me to keep it going and also giving me time to keep on with my own things. I've gotten off to a pretty strong start with creating and want to keep the momentum going.