Deep Deep Breaths or There's nothing quite as exhilerating as jumping in with very little prep

Oh boy; so I went and gone and done it.

An assortment of snowflake ornaments

The Peanut's school's PAC sent home a request for items for a silent auction that they hold as a fundraiser every year. Last year the husband and I attended the event for a short hour and a half before heading downtown to see The Watchmen (one of our all time favourite Canadian rock bands) perform at a grey cup party. While we were there, we bought the Peanut's art pieces that she made for the sale and also a few other gifts for family and friends. This year we have no other obligations and are excited to be there all night long.

The Bean's Peacock ornament I made for her last year

I've been playing with the idea of approaching them next year to have a table at the sale. It's well attended and the people who attend are there to spend some money, it's a fund raiser after all and also an amazing place to get holiday shopping done and dealt with. So I thought to get my feet wet I'd dip a toe in and offer a set of three ornaments for their silent auction and perhaps inquire about setting up a table for the following year. They replied with an invitation to set up a table this year and now I'm awash in excitement and panic in equal measure.

This Year's ornaments for the girls; the first of as many
as I can put together over the next few weeks

We have about 60 finished ornaments sitting in boxes that can be sold right away and about 60 more that can be soldered if need be. Is that enough? should I include other things? The Peacocks I created last year? I have 5 of them in various states of finished; read all done to still needing a first coat of paint. The felt trees I've been making this year? I can make about 3 or four a day if I don't embellish them with stitchery and beads.

What do I have on hand to display with? What do I need still? What should I build my banner with? Should I have one? Should I price individually or use signage since all my ornaments are the same price across the board? A Float how much change should I have on hand? Packaging, business cards, mailing list, artist bio..... on top of keeping up with the laundry, feeding the family and making sure the Peanut is picked up from school and the Bean isn't drawing on the couch with permanent marker (true story) and also dealing with her recent habit of getting up at 4, 4:30 and 5AM. I have one pretty full plate.

One of my intentions for this coming year is to take any reasonable opportunity and keep up any momentum that builds so that I keep moving forward. I could have politely declined the offer of the table. I could have stepped back and made plans for next year instead. Instead I closed my eyes, took a deep breath and accepted. I've been reading up on doing shows, I've got a list of display items I'd love to be able to put to use, some that I can only dream of and others that I have on hand and or can put together simply and elegantly (I hope).

So the roller coaster is starting up that first big hill, the trick will be to keep those cars on track after that first hill. Any good advice out there?

Months have passed

since my last weekly 5 question feature.

Doing a weekly feature was taking a lot of time away from my own creative practice so I took a break from it for a little while to focus on doing my own things.

Of course I never considered completely giving up the features, they're one of my favourite things to do on this blog but I think a break was necessary for more than one reason. I put a lot of work into each 5 question feature I do here mainly because the artists and artisans I feature are some of my favourites and I'd love to be able to help them succeed, even if it's just in the form of someone visiting their shop after reading about them here. Putitng one of these features together each week became a pretty daunting task what with contacting artists, compiling links and adding photos not to mention the research I put into the features, I was working in some cases a month or more in advance of a post which meant that I was working on more than one feature at a time which really became overwhelming.

While I was focusing on my own work, I made a few decisions about how I wanted to do these features and I'm happy to announce that 5 questions will be returning at the end of this month as a monthly feature instead of a weekly so that I can keep up with the momentum I've built up over the last few months with my own stuff. I'm also hoping to keep you all informed about my own processes, tragedies and triumphs too, so if you think I'm a little behind in sharing feel free to give me a nudge...

I think it was something I ate

that knocked me down all day yesterday. I won't go into details because well, you just don't want to know... I'm feeling much better today (that's my story and I'm sticking to it) which is good because I have some gallivanting to do.

Things have been hopping over the last few weeks, I've sold an ACEO, and a hand sewn card; I snagged a photo job and then had someone express interest and order a photograph that was featured in one of my 1000 words posts. Today, the Peanut and I will be heading to the post office, the bank and then to the photo lab. Then we'll go back to the post office and mail off my latest order of photographs.

It's kind of silly that I didn't think of doing it before, and it's kind of an obvious idea. I started the 1000 word posts as incentive to keep photographing, (not that I really need incentive but more of a good reason to carry the camera around). I really do love some of the shots I've used for the series, but it never occurred to me to list them in the Etsy shop (you can't see it but I'm slapping myself in the head with the heel of my hand) until my friend form high school contacted me last week about purchasing the print of the Japanese Maple that lives in the front yard.


I took the photograph after a heavy downpour and the sun had come out. I loved the glistening droplets that were clinging to the ends of the branches and the glare from the sun reflected off the wet pavement. The trunk of the tree is wonderfully tree-ish and the branches a riot of intersecting branches and trapped leaves, the look like a head full of dreads.

So, it looks like I should have been listing these in TMCPhoto from the beginning; I better get started...

I had a night out

last night.

I've been playing with the idea of taking a workshop at Blim for quite a while now. Last week I finally got around to registering for a workshop.

What's Blim? Well based on their web site:

BLIM is a Community Based Art Resource Center which facilitates screen-printing, button making, drawing, knitting, local underground audio, film screenings, animation, video, dance, spoken word, visual art, creative workshops, and crafts in the independent field.

Based on my experience Blim is a funky open studio/ retail space with a super helpful director Yuriko Iga; who facilitated our workshop and made sure that the workshop atmosphere was comfortable and enjoyable. I took the collage button making workshop and I am so excited about the whole process and the fact that I can now attend open studio there and have access to the button making tools. It was a small workshop, with only two other participants, so access to the cutting tools and button machines was pretty open. If you live in BC's lower mainland and want to try a little arty fun I give them a big thumbs up! You can find out more about them here.

A few things I'll keep in mind for my next visit:

1.5" button images have to be cut by hand (past participants have used heavy card and glued on paper which has made the 1.5" cutter unusable), I'll have mine done before I go so that I can get right to the machines. If I'm going to collage I'll also have that done to my 1.5" too.

1" and 2" buttons can be cut at the studio, I'll have collage extra's ready for these too so that all I'll have to do is glue extra bits onto my images

I'll make my 1" images a little bigger than I had them (my print outs turned out to be a little smaller than 1").

I did some Alice in Wonderland buttons. I'm planning on altering the buttons to make them into fridge magnets.

I was so inspired last night that I also have ideas for some hand carved stamps that I'll be able to use with the Alice Images and ideas for Alice related photographs....

If all goes well I'll be listing some of these in PeanutButterPie soon. The shop has been sitting empty for months as I've been focusing more on Photography and putting time and effort towards some other new projects that I'll be listing there soon. I've been busy making and creating over the last few months and I'm hoping to keep up the pace. How about you? have you done anything new lately?

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.

Speaking of Momentum

A few weeks ago I posted about the challenge of keeping up momentum. I've been actively working towards this, trying to overcome lulls and create momentum for myself as well as grasping opportunity wherever it rears it's elusive head.

Having said that, I'm once more heading into a situation where the temptation to drop the ball is going to be high. We're going on Vacation next week and I'm a little worried about whether I'll be able to keep up with the Blog, Tweeting and TMCPhoto and PeanutButterPie.

With the worrying has also come the drive to keep things going. I'll be posting while we're gone (thank all Gods for Laptops) and I may even add a new photograph or two onto TMCPhoto while we're there. We'll be at my Mom's, the location of my Borealis Photo-shoot as well as the Electric Series. I'm hoping that I'll have the opportunity to take some new and fresh shots while I'm there. Since I'll have the laptop with me I'll also have access to my Creative Suite programs.

It's been over two years since I've been back to Alberta and I'm pretty excited about seeing my family. With the exception of my older sister and my two nephews who came in March for a Hockey Tournament; I haven't seen any family except on Facebook in all that time. I'll either be so homesick to stay at the end of the trip or ready to get out of Dodge and not want to come back until a suitable time period has passed. I suppose any posts I do while there will give clues as to how I'm feeling.

Speaking of momentum and grabbing on to opportunities; I was lucky enough to get in on the recent Etsy Treasury window. In honour of our upcoming road trip I've put together a selection of items that are just making me yearn to get on the road.

If it's not one thing

There's this problem I have that I'm hoping to fix. It's all about momentum. It always seems to happen that as soon as things start to get rolling, a speed bump pops up. Sometimes it's a planned one and the gathering momentum comes from out of the blue. Other times its unplanned on all fronts and still others it's just an unplanned stumbling block that knocks me off course when I least expect it. How do you keep things moving along despite those small and major hiccups?