I have decided to do a live show.

Doing art live.

Even if it completely cocks up and I look like a talentless idiot.

Scares the bejesus out of me.  And I feel a little ill.

BUT…I am still doing it!  :)

So…details…

The channel is here.

And it will be live on the 29th January at 1pm EST (USA Time)

I believe that is…

29th January 12pm CST

29th January 6pm UK time

30 January 7am New Zealand time.

So yes, I will be bringing coffee!  :)

And there may be the sounds of a family getting up and sorted, but I will go with it.  And cross my fingers it all works.

My intention is to do an intuitive tribal-ish piece with a bit of lino printing as well.  I am concerned my intuition will leave me in a bout of stage fright, but that is the beauty of live tv, and thank goodness I don’t mind laughing at myself.

So yay!

Come and join me.  On my FIRST live show.

The photos are all from a class in the altered books class that can be found here.  A portrait pop up that has nothing to do with this post.  :)

I was going to put the link here to Rhomany’s Coptic binding class at MixedMediaWorkshops.com, but it does not look like it is currently offered over there, it is over at Willowing.ning.com, the information for that is here.  The class is Cryptic Coptic, and honestly she makes it so easy to understand, it is fantastic!

So every week I will have a spread dedicated to an art or creativity quote.

That will be here on my blog every week.  And I am thinking there will be a quick video to go with that of me doing the spread as well.

As well as that I will have another journal that I will work in everyday inspired by Judy Wise.

AND another journal with a weekly self portrait, or representative portrait, or maybe a poem, but something every week to represent me.

All explained in my rambling in my VLOG! 

Happy New Year everyone.

The doctor didn’t know what was the cause of his leg problems and sent him for a scan.

While he was at the scan, I was on my way to collect our son from school, and I got this text:

“Have blood clots, going to ed [emergency department], will see you at home”

Really?  See me at home?  BLOOD CLOTS????

Having seen a few medical programmes I imagined blood clots traveling to major organs and so began the complete shift of my current paradigm.

We had a brief text conversation that I would come up to the hospital with the children and he assuring me that all was well and he would see me at home.

I didn’t bother to argue.

We went to the hospital.  Frankly he was dreaming to imagine I would ever do otherwise.

When he first saw me he told me we had to discuss some general disobedience issues.  I cried.

The doctor said Deep Vein Thrombosis and mm’s from been very dangerous.  And I cried.

To be honest I had cried at the initial text as well.  And I have cried a lot since.  I am a crier anyway.

And we are in the middle of daily injections, and blood thinners.  And I am worried sick.

And I wake up countless times a night to make sure he is still breathing.  He did suggest in a smart arse kind of way that I didn’t know if he had a clot to the brain while he was still breathing and I offered to wake him to check cognitive function when I checked he was still breathing.

And he calls me in to listen to his new theme song, which turns out to be “Knocking on heavens door”.

One of the reasons I love this man is his sense of humour and how much he makes me laugh.  But I am not in a laughing mood yet.  He does persist in trying though.  Sometimes it has worked, other times I end up in tears.

But I know he gets it, because we had a discussion and he illustrated clearly he got it.  So I get it.  He is trying to take my mind of it.  But Operation Clot Watch is quite dominant in my thoughts.

I am grateful for doctors and my paints.

It is amazing to me how something like this completely puts all other stresses into perspective.  You remember what is important.

Just in case you lose focus.  Especially at this time of year.

A new calmness has descended on me.

I love Christmas.  I go completely over the top with the homemade baking and crafts and activities.

I love it.

But this year some stress had crept in as well.

Now I am refocused once again on what is important.  Funny how sometimes that needs a big wake up call, though if I could order a lesson a little less life threatening and scary I would appreciate it.

The art belongs to the FREE altered book class that is still on over here (with new content STILL added every week for at least the next four weeks)….

And if you are looking for a new project for the year can I suggest this that looks freaking cool.  Though I have other plans for next year (that I will announce soon), and I won’t be doing it, I do recommend it and can hardly wait to see what people do with their stories and postcards…just a super cool idea, and already some fantastic people have signed up.  I was so, so tempted…(and there is still time before it begins where I may change my mind )

Back to Operation Clot Watch…and of course Christmas, arting and everything else that fills in the cracks.

Time slipped by, days barely perceptible from each other.

Memories of any past before where they were right now were almost completely forgotten except for a vaguely unsettled feeling the red haired girl could not put her finger on.

Days went by.  Then weeks.  Then months.  Peg and the red haired girl spent their days drinking the sweet tea that the Goldwater’s always had on hand and eating marshmallows and other delicacies that grew freely on this cloud world.

Their days passed in a haze of sweetness and light with a tinge of the unsettled.  But never enough of a feeling that the red haired girl could even put a tangible thought to.  Peg on the other hand never seemed to notice anything amiss.  Always well fed with her favourite treats, the temperature and light of the cloud world were perfect for her, and she forgot there was anything more than what she had right there in cloud world with the scent of cotton candy sweetening her thoughts to a level close to numbness.

At night however it was a different story for the red haired girl.  Violent ocean swells dominated her dreams in shades of stormy teal darkness.  Roiling and tumbling oceans, the girls very own subconscious telling her something was wrong.  But she never remembered in the morning.  Apart from the vague sense of unease that remained with her while she was awake.  The only recourse her self-conscious had was her dreamscape, away from the tea, and marshmallows and scent of cotton candy.

In her dreamscape sea turtles visited her from the depths of the ocean telling her to find the mirror.  Mermaids called to her and told her to break the mirror when she found it.  Waves tumbled on to the shore of her subconscious, trying to wake her. Anything so that she would remember in the morning.

But when she woke there was her cup of tea and any chance of remembering her dreams vanished as she sipped from her cup of steaming sweet tea.

And then one day, months later, the Goldwaters were running late and her cup of tea was not there when she woke.  And her mind chanted to her.  “Find the mirror.  Find the mirror.”  And she looked around.  And realized she had not seen a mirror since she arrived in this cloud land.  And slowly she began to think of memories before she had arrived at cloud land, and she began to suspect she was under a charm.

Just then, she heard a creak outside her door, and she lay back down, pretending to be asleep.  Without the tea-induced stupor she was beginning to think more clearly.  She heard the soft steps of Mrs. Goldwater come across the room and smelt the sweetness of the steaming cup of tea curling towards her nostrils, and as Mrs. Goldwater began to leave the room she pretended to be just waking up.

And despite moments ago, thinking that the tea may be to blame for her forgetting her prior life, the tendrils of steam reached her nostrils and she went to take a sip.  But as she held the cup to her lips she heard “Find the Mirror.  Break the Mirror”.  And in fright she dropped the cup.  Thankfully it did not break, but in her panic to mop up the spill, she grabbed her blue scarf and soaked up the tea, hiding the scarf under her bed.

And without the steam of the tea, without tasting the tea, the voice in her head got stronger.  “Find the mirror.  Break the Mirror”.  Repeating over and over.  Mrs. Goldwater came into her room and the girl with red hair gave her a sweet smile as though nothing was afoot, and handed over her cup, commenting on how much she loved the tea.  Mrs. Goldwater smiled saccharinely as she left the room.

The girl with red hair quickly got dressed, and trying to act as though nothing was wrong and there was no sense of urgency she went outside to find Peg.  But Peg was munching on sweet cloud grass, which not only smelt of cotton candy but tasted of cotton candy too.  And Peg did not want to move anywhere.  And the girl sensing the urgency of the chanting in her head moved away from Peg slowly, towards the only part of the cloud world where the light was a little dimmer than everywhere else.

Not knowing why she felt pulled to that area, only drifting along to the chanting in her head.  Walking along the cloud path, in the slightly dimmer light she felt her foot sink a bit in the cloud, and then she felt something hard stub her toe.  She jumped back, realising that she had not felt any pain since she had first come to the cloud world.  Sensing that she was close to something important, she reached down to feel what she had stubbed her toe one, and there was a handle.

As she pulled on the handle, she felt a little resistance and then up popped a hand mirror.  As she looked into the mirror she gasped.

Her face was reflected back to her, but the landscape behind her, in the mirror was not the landscape of the cloud world, but the world she had come from.

Just then she noticed the Goldwaters and Mr. Panda running towards her, and the voices in her head were screaming at her.  “Break the mirror, break the mirror.”  She looked around and there was nothing to break the mirror with, but she could feel people closing in on her, and the voice in her head was reaching a crescendo and so she lifted her fist up and brought it down upon the mirror shattering her reflection into tiny pieces…

To be continued…

And I am linking to Butterfly Effect and Paint Party Friday as well.

Nanojoumo is still on and I am working on it each day and am really loving the down time and space it is giving me working in my journal.  And while I have so much going on, it really has been a sanity saver as I process things in the pages.

And I have a migraine.  I haven”t had one for so long, and for the last month I have had a pretty low level headache all the time and not been sleeping, and then for the past week it has gotten a bit worse, but there have been some personal family things going on as well, so I thought it was just stress really.  Combined with a bit of teary pms moments and some other blah, and then yesterday.  Wham.  The pain stepped up a level and all my other migraine symptoms stepped up so I had lights and nausea and dizziness and vampire-itis as any light hurt my eyes…and I retired to bed.  And trying not to move.  And it made sense because I had felt a bit off all week, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.  And I just received a call to tell me about the death of an acquaintance, a very fit healthy acquaintance, not old, with a youngish family acquaintance.  And so now I am also feeling a bit shell shocked as well.

And this morning, I am shaky and not well.  Still.  So I am writing this post.  Posting my photos.  Because I have been meaning to, but got caught up in personal family stuff and editing and making videos and this post has sat around long enough, and it is haunting me.  And the longer I leave it, the bigger the update post will be!  And then I am going to lie down and try not to move.  So I can get better.  Because I have videos and editing to do as well, and I feel like this down time is going to put me behind everything I have going on at the moment.

So here are my Nanojoumo photos…with some explanation for those that find it interesting!

Nanojoumo #7

The buildings up the top came last…and were painted with Twinkling H20s which I have been trying to use more, the rest was a bit of smushing and writing with ink.

Nanojoumo #8

Some pages have a lot of writing, others not so much.  This did have writing for me, and things going through my head, these prompts this years have been good for sorting out things in my head and crystalising what is in there.  And I love that elephant!  And the colours.

Nanojoumo #9

This page was a bit messy to start with, though the writing came very easily.  It was nice to stop and reflect and then write down whatever came to mind.  I didn’t want to put a face there, but I saw her, bold and with no hair, and I was going to put hair on her, but I had this very strong feeling to leave her as is.  So I listened.

Nanojoumo #10

This page is really hard to get a good photo of. It was fun playing with patterns.  And this was going to get covered up with paint, but I decided not to.  I like the roughness.  And I love writing with sumi ink and a bamboo skewer!

Nanojoumo #11

I had an old frame I had made a couple of years ago for another journal that I ended up not using and it hung around so I chopped it up for this page.  And I used my homemade alcohol ink and I I decided to leave this page quite simple as well with all the embellishments, I didn’t want to do too much else.  In person it looks quite vintagey-pretty.

Nanojoumo #12

These girls were painted during Manon Visser‘s FREE live class that can be accessed over here.  The one on the left is using chalk pastels, and the one on the right prismacolours.  It was the first time I had used chalk pastels and I really love the look of them.  More playing will be had…

Nanojoumo #13

This page, right down the bottom, you can see a part of the marmite label poking through from the previous page.  It seemed somewhat appropriate to the message of the page about letting go of attachments, to rip some of the clean book pages off the page.  I think I made a mistake, and the page makes me a little annoyed that I did that, which is the perfect sign that I did have an attachment to that page.

Nanojoumo #14

This page had a whole lot of writing in white pen.  The flowers were kept simple with my Neocolours, but this question clearly sparked something and some of the things I wrote actually surprised me, and has given me much pause to think.

Nanojoumo #15

This whole page was kept simple, I used some of my home made graffiti paper that I have punched stars out of, and there is pink acrylics, and necolours and twinkling h20′s.  I person there is more depth than can be seen in this photo.  But I could not get a good photo of this page!

Nanojoumo #16

This is one of my favourite photos of my beloved and the children, thought it was taken a few years ago now.  I remember where they were and where I was, and it was such a nice intimate family moment, that belied that 10 minutes earlier my daughter hot and dusty and tired had lost the plot completely outside our tent while we were camping.  As we calmed her, and she calmed down her father sat down with her and her brother came up and we all just kind of sunk down.  I always see such love in this photo.  And because it has my beloved in it, who has no real online presence, with no facebook account or anything else, I did offer to put a post-it note over his devilishly rugged handsome face (which I scratched by accident on the photo), however he gave me permission to post freely! 

Nanojoumo #17

This page was hard for me, I don’t normally plaster my photos all over the page, but it seemed somewhat appropriate to use at least one photo for this prompt.  And what you can also see is that I have taken a lot of stupid photos of myself with photobooth.    I printed out a stack of them this year to use in my journal, but have only used a couple so I selected a few that were calling to me and used them, and I like how this page came out.  It sums me up reasonably well as of this moment in time.

Nanojoumo #18

I love the scarecrow that I sketched out with my stabilo pencil.  The journaling on the page is all mixed up and in a strange order, because when I started writing I thought I would only write in one panel.  Turns out I had a lot that needed to be said!    What art journaling gives me really is sometimes a therapists couch.  If I am feeling a little off or out of sorts but can’t quite work out why, I can investigate and generally find out the real cause of any discontent.  And sometimes it turns out my head is the one suffering and telling myself stories and I need the space to see those stories for what they are! 

Nanojoumo #19

I am not a doodler, so this page was really hard for me.  When I am scribbling on the backs of envelopes and on the margins it is portraits or facial features or flowers or stars or spirals that I draw.  But in no coherent fashion, and I always block myself by thinking that doodling has to look like some great zentangled masterpiece, so in this one I just started a drawing with a face where I didn’t lift the pen, and then I went back in with other details and even while I was working on the first face I put the word doodle into the middle of the hair.  I don’t know that this is necessarily proper doodling, but is there even such a thing as proper doodling??  But it is what I did and I am happy with it.  I did think about adding colour, but I like the black and white feel of the page.

And that is as far as my photos have gone, so I will get the other pages photographed soon, and upload my next lot of progress…but a whole lot earlier, because this has been a mission post and I really need to lie down.

We went away for the weekend, and while reading the local rag I discovered that there was a street art exhibition on, where they had brought street art artists from all around New Zealand to paint the backs of buildings and you could walk around watching them work.  We went around on the first day, and I really thought I had taken more photos, but clearly you will see I didn’t!  I know on a couple I felt a bit embarrassed taking photos, so maybe that was the case for more than a couple as it turns out!  And some had not yet been started when we first went around.  But still this post is chocka full of photos as it is.

Before Photos:

I persuaded my beloved into going back on the second day to look at the progress, and oh my gosh.  Some of the works were just knock your socks off inspiration that took your breath away.  Some of the artists were really happy to talk about their process and I was so filled up.  I was looking forward to the weekend away, but this just made everything perfect.  Such a well organised exhibition on the face of it.  A map was produced with where the artists were going to be, and you just wandered around.  Looking and feasting on the visuals.

Such differences between all the artists.  I loved it.  The children loved seeing the progress and Sebastian especially was quite excited about how far the pieces had come.  And somewhere I have the pamphlet with all the artist’s names, and when I hopefully find this, I will match names and photos on this post.

And now I am going back to work, felting and making cards and tags and sewing and making mini books, and plaster and burlap magnets, and mini art works ready to be framed and getting things ready to package up and send up to be sold.  Why I leave these things to the last minute I will never know.  A lot of it has been the thinking behind the projects and the preparation.  Now it is starting to all come together.

I have been bookbinding this week.  I made two books, one will be an art journal for this, the other a traveling sketch book.  They have been a learning curve.  And swear words have been muttered as careful measurements were taken and then I discovered that they were taken from the wrong place.  But next time I bind books like this, I will know somewhat what I am doing.

But I am happy with how they came out overall.  And they look so professional, and should be able to be thrown in a bag and carted around and I love the way they feel so robust ready to be played in.

And I have worked on this painting for the Butterfly Effect…

The Masks We Cling To

I love all the texture and I am very happy with this, despite having another idea about how this was going to look when I first started.

I read this week, where another artist (I can’t remember who) mentioned in passing how much more confident they felt as an artist having the skills to bring their vision to life and make the painting look how they mean it to look.  And I thought it was interesting given I feel I have gained more confidence as an artist by letting my original vision be changed as the painting develops and comes through on to the canvas.  And how I love all the differences in this art world that helps us all develop our own styles and bring our pieces to life in a way that satisfies our muse.  There is no right way or wrong way or one clear path to follow.  I love that.  The sameness and differences for all of us.  All following our muse where ever she leads.

And I made a commitment this week to something that both terrifies me, and excites me to goosebump level, so will be some exciting news on the horizon.  One of my big  dreams is on the cliff top of happening thanks to connections on this huge small interconnected world online.

And I am linking to Paint Party Friday in advance as well. 

Have a good weekend everyone.

And card making.

And applying for exhibitions for next year.

And doing some more tinkering with this blog.

And finishing this painting..well working more on it at any rate.  I haven’t signed it yet, so it possibly isn’t finished.  But it is finished for today.

And I am linking it to Paint Party Friday.

I first posted the start of it here. The wing is book text covered in paint. And the rest is a mixture of paint and oil pastels.

And now I am going out to round up the children and do something before the rain sets back in, two weeks of holidays and the first week has been rain…good for the oldest who has had chicken pox, but I think cabin fever is setting in…

And this week over at the Butterfly effect the theme is wings.  And I thought about this, but did not have a way forward.  So I had another idea I was going to do.  And then just before I went to sleep last night I wondered about scraping the wings and dripping sumi ink all over it.

And I did not get up immediately to do it, although I thought about it, because it is school holidays and I don’t need to add tiredness to the mix.  But this morning, before sorting out the children’s breakfast I tried scraping the wings.  And though I did intend to scrap all of the modelling paste off, I was done just roughing it up a bit.

And then I put masking fluid on her face and skin.

After that dried I dripped sumi ink on it, and then got lost in splattering and smearing paint.  Just playing, because frankly it was hard to wreck something I disliked so much.

And after I had finished smearing paint around I peeled off the masking fluid, and did some more work on her.  And I am so much happier…so much happier that I took multiple close ups!

She feels a lot more like me than she did before I started this morning.

In the midst of going through all my stuff last week I found an old planner I had, that I had never used, except for a couple of days. And two addresses that were in it. It was black and impersonal and very not me. And while I intended to use it to be more productive and professional, I never did. And I was going to gift it to the one of the children. And as it sat on my dining room table I glanced at it and wondered what would happen if I painted it.

Because if I am going to give it to the children then it wouldn’t have mattered if I wrecked it, so I grabbed my paints.

And oh my freaking gosh. I love this now!!! It was the first time I had embossed and it isn’t perfect, but I love that anyway.

I also painted the inside. And all of it has had a couple of coats of polyurethane.

And I gutted the inside. I threw away the professional, impersonal insides and made new dividers that I painted. And so far that is where I have stopped. Because it was getting close to procrastination of other things that need to get done this week.

But all the dividers were painted in a colour of the rainbow, and then a pink one. And they are all in rainbow order – ROY-G-BIV. And while nothing is fixed yet I have roughly decided the folders will be:

1. To-dos
2. Routines
3. Planner
4. Business
5. Dreams
6. Money
7. Address details
8. Snipperts/notes/ideas

Though I will just try these out for a while. See what works and what doesn’t before any labels get attached, because more than anything else I want to actually use this.

I am thinking the dividers will all end up as a mini work of art with a pithy quote of inspiration, but we will see.

I wanted to get on with the doing, rather than the prettying up and getting it perfect, because if I wait for the perfect, it will never happen.

So far I have just clipped some holes in paper from to-do pad I had and slipped those in. But I have ideas for the planner etc, and how I want it to look that I will actually use it, so that will be my job over the next wee bit. Getting my crap together.

As I begin to make this thing I do my business, and make business plans and all that other grown up stuff…I have somewhere to put it all, even if in my perfectionist OCD-ness I end up redoing it five times, it is time to make a start.