Entries from: December 2009
Creative Every Day Challenge Check-In: December 14-20
December 14th, 2009, Comments (13)
This weekly post is a place for CED participants to share their creative activities.
Ways to share: Leave a comment on this post and/or use the "Mr. Linky" widget below to link to a post (or posts) about your creative activities during the days of 12/14/09 - 12/20/09.
The widget below is an optional method of sharing your creativity that makes it easier for others to check out what you're up to. You can use it to link to a blog post (or posts) during the week listed. Or if you have a bunch of posts and don't want to link to all of them, you can link to your main blog page once. Do it in a way that makes sense and is fun for you! (If you're reading this in a RSS reader or email subscription, you will not see the "Mr. Linky widget", so click on over to the blog to use it.)
You can also take advantage of the great CED flickr group to post your images and see what others are up to.
Join in the Challenge: To find out more about the Creative Every Day Challenge check out the details here. The 2010 Creative Every Day Challenge is starting up soon! Find out more and fill out the sign-up form here to join in!
Theme: The (totally optional) theme for December is recycle. I'll be posting about the theme throughout the month. You can find out more about how you can use the inspiration theme here.
Happy Creating!
To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong. — Joseph Chilton Pierce
Recycled Bits and Pieces in Art
December 11th, 2009, Comments (12)
A little sneak peek of something I've been working on for a book by arist, writer and teacher extraordinaire, Carmen Torbus, that I'll be featured in along with an amazing group of artists. So exciting! And it's so hard not to share the whole thing because I love the way it came together! But soon enough.
I share this little snippet because it fits well with the recycle theme going on this month for the Creative Every Day Challenge. In this piece and in a lot of my art, I recycle bits and pieces of paper to create the collage backgrounds for my paintings. In this small section, is a bit of to-do list stationery and some sheet music.
Where do these bits and pieces of paper come from? Well, like many creative folks, I'm a collector. I see interesting pieces of paper and I have trouble throwing them away. So, they get stored in boxes and eventually used in artwork. Sometimes I buy the scraps at fairs that sell antique goods in the summer, sometimes I trade with other artists for scraps (I loved doing this for a 6x6 collage project), and sometimes I find the bits myself in everything from my own scribbled notes, junk mail, and doodles on rice paper. My sister-in-law recently gave me a great stack of old blueprints that I adore using and my bff recently gifted me an old book of design forms. I like having the variety, so when I sit down to collage, I can pick through my supplies intuitively and use what works for me in the moment.
Sometimes it's easy to forget what we have, so it's good every so often to sort through it all. Whenever I do this, I'm always inspired by what I find and re-discover amongst the boxes. What are some of your favorite recycled goodies that you use in your artwork?
p.s. I was recently interviewed as part of the "Inspiring Women" series on the All Things Girl blog. All Things Girl is a fabulous zine filled with great articles, art, and interviews (and you can submit your artwork too!) that I highly recommend checking out!
Creative Recycling Linkage
December 9th, 2009, Comments (4)
After an intense period of creating over the weekend, I've been taking some time to rest with the hubster who has the week off. We've been enjoying a lot of relaxing, movie-watching, and reading. It's been lovely.
I'll share some of what I've been up to soon, but in the meantime, I've collected some super fun ways to play with the totally optional theme of recycle this month for the Creative Every Day Challenge:
* I love the look of this plastic bag wreath seen on Vickie Howell's blog. So cute with Target bags. I also loved Vickie's instructions for turning greeting cards into tree ornaments!
* Recyclart might be the coolest recycling find I've discovered this month. It chock full of amazingly creative artwork and diy projects that utilize recycling to make super cool things like this vintage button rings, inner tube vases, and beach plastic artwork.
* This cool project shows how to make a wastepaper basket out of...waste paper!
* Here's a great interview with artist William Wagenaar, owner of Reclaim2Fame and creator of super fun recylced, sculptural creations.
* I enjoyed this Craft Sanity podcast interview with author and clothing designer Cal Patch, someone who strives to make all her own clothing and do as much repurposing as possible.
Creative Every Day Challenge Check-In: December 1 – 13
December 7th, 2009, Comments (20)
This weekly post is a place for CED participants to share their creative activities.
Ways to share: Leave a comment on this post and/or use the "Mr. Linky" widget below to link to a post (or posts) about your creative activities during the days of 12/1/09 - 12/13/09. Normally, this would be a check-in for one week, but because of Art Every Day Month ending on a Monday, this is the first check-in post, I've put up in December. Feel free to post links to posts from last week and this week here or you can just post blog address once.
The widget below is an optional method of sharing your creativity that makes it easier for others to check out what you're up to. You can use it to link to a blog post (or posts) during the week listed. Or if you have a bunch of posts and don't want to link to all of them, you can link to your main blog page once. Do it in a way that makes sense and is fun for you! (If you're reading this in a RSS reader or email subscription, you will not see the "Mr. Linky widget", so click on over to the blog to use it.)
You can also take advantage of the great CED flickr group to post your images and see what others are up to.
Join in the Challenge: To find out more about the Creative Every Day Challenge check out the details here. The 2010 Creative Every Day Challenge is starting up soon! Find out more and fill out the sign-up form here to join in!
Theme: The (totally optional) theme for December is recycle. I'll be posting about the theme throughout the month. You can find out more about how you can use the inspiration theme here.
Happy Creating!
The artist is a receptacle for emotions that come from all over the place; from the sky, from the earth, from a scrap of paper, from a passing shape, from a spider’s web. -Picasso
Full Cold Moon
December 3rd, 2009, Comments (22)
Last night, in between a bunch of other projects, I took some time to sit in bed and make this little drawing for the full cold moon. I've loved making art around the full moons along with Jamie Ridler's full moon dreamboard group. This drawing represents my desire to have some more flow and ease in my life this month. In fact, I think I'd like that to be my theme for the year...flow and ease, ease and flow, like the babbling brooks I watched on a walk this afternoon.
Because of these behind the scenes projects going on, I may be quiet over the next few days, but in the meantime, do check out the information on the 2010 Creative Every Day Challenge that I posted about yesterday. I'm so excited by all the sign-ups pouring in! It's going to be a fabulous year!!
2010 Creative Every Day Challenge
December 2nd, 2009, Comments (16)
The second year of the Creative Every Day Challenge is wrapping up and I'm getting ready to launch into a beautiful new year of creativity, community, inspiration, and sharing in the 2010 Creative Every Day Challenge! So exciting!
If you're new to the challenge, here's a little information about it:
Creativity is meant in the broadest sense, so it doesn't have to be something art related. Your creative acts could be in cooking, taking pictures, knitting, doodling, writing, dancing, decorating, singing, playing with your kids, brainstorming ideas, gardening, or making art in the form of collage, paint, or clay...or whatever!
You do not have to post every day! I know for myself that having to post every day for a year would be too much. You can post about your creativity in whatever form you like, whether that be once a day, a few times a week, once a week, or once a month. Do what works for you!
This is a low pressure challenge, with the idea of bringing more creativity into our lives. I will not be the creativity police. I hope that we can all find ways, simple and grand to express our creative selves. Have fun with it!
Once again, this year I'll be doing a (totally optional) monthly theme that you can use to inspire your creativity throughout the month or you can ignore it and do your own thing! Like last year, every Monday, I'll have a check-in post with a Mr. Linky widget, where you can leave a link to your blog post (or posts) from the week. I'll also be posting regularly with my own work, things that are inspiring me, ways to play with the monthly theme, and interviews with amazing creative people. Plus, I'll be throwing in some fun surprises!
Themes: Last year, I had all the themes planned out way in advance. This year, I've got most of the themes planned, but would love your input. What themes would you like to see? You can see all of 2009's themes here.
Sign-Up: In order to keep the sign-ups more organized this year, I'm going to be using a sign-up form. This will also allow me to get in touch with everyone with any important announcements or updates. I don't plan to send out group emails that often, most announcements will happen on the blog, but this will make it easier to be in touch.
Simply fill out the form below to the best of your ability, then check your email, and click the link provided to confirm your sign-up. The details I'm asking for below will help me know how to list you in the list of participants which will go up in my blog's sidebar later this month.
Although I won't be putting up the 2010 list in my sidebar until the end of the month, I appreciate getting the sign-ups early, so I can build the list over time instead of all at once.
Check out the Creative Every Day Challenge info page for more information about the challenge, how to participate, and details about how to post an the logo in your blog's sidebar.
I'm thrilled to be starting another year of creating with you!
Heading into a month of Recycling!
December 1st, 2009, Comments (19)
Hello, all! So we've moved into the month of December (ack, time flies!) and the (totally optional) theme for the Creative Every Day Challenge this month is Recycle (which you can read more about here.)
The first thing that came to mind when I thought of this month's theme was a project I did back in June, when I recycled and old, unused yoga mat and created stamps and stencils from it. You can read all about that here. I then used the stencil and stamp of a eucalyptus branch and a leaf stencil to make fun art like this:
Fun, eh? What sorts of unused things around your home could be recycle into fabulous art tools?
p.s. The details and sign up form for the 2010 Creative Every Day Challenge will be up either Wednesday or Thursday, hopefully tomorrow. Til then, toodaloo!
