Mission Continued {Link + Love}

“We are travelers on a cosmic journey, stardust, swirling and dancing in the eddies and whirlpools of infinity. Life is eternal. We have stopped for a moment to encounter each other, to meet, to love, to share. This is a precious moment. It is a little parenthesis in eternity.”
Paulo Coelho

The mission continues.

Help me SHARE THE LINK LOVE by posting a list of 5 or more blogs on Fridays in May and June. Participate as many Fridays as you wish.

Even one Friday helps the cause! 

Grab a retro pastel orange LINK LOVE badge and read the intro to the MISSION. Linking to creative blogs you've just discovered, blogs that you adore, blogs you've read for a long time but might not be well known. Consider smaller blogs, and blogs with a fresh perspective.

Here's my post from the first week. The second week. The third week. Another week.

My links for this week:

1. Jennifer reviews homemade vs. packaged gesso at her blog PixieDust.
2. Michelle documents an art journal page from start to finish.
3. Lori talks about designing the life you wish to have, and the impact on your kids' lives.
4. Karen shares insight about artistic growth.
5. Natasha asks an interesting life question in Card #9/52: Oh for an Insider's Guide.

If you are participating in SHARE the LINK LOVE, please add the URL to your blog post in the Mister Linky below. Links to your home page or links not about our MISSION will be deleted.

365 Somethings #126-132

"We know from myths and fairy tales that there are many different kinds of powers in the world. One child is given a light saber, another a wizard's education. The trick is not to amass all the different kinds of available power, but to use well the kind you've been granted. Introverts are offered keys to private gardens full of riches. To possess such a key is to tumble like Alice down her rabbit hole."
Susan Cain

"future recedes quickly"

fabric, found text

"looked behind us"

hand-painted papers, fabric, found text, ephemera

"step by step"

fabric, found text

"because the mail stops coming"

fabric, found text

"the competition:

fabric, watercolored paper, found text

"a parade in a day or two"

fabric, found text

"and another witty and inexpensive poem"

stamped index card, fabric, found text

My background project for 2013 is to make 365 stitched collages on 3x5" cards. I say "background" because it's sort of always there, behind the scenes. It's not feasible for me to make 365 Somethings in a week or even in a month, but in a year, definitely. You can see all of the collages to date in this Flickr set and read all of the posts about my 365 Somethings project.

I just had to use the word conundrum today

“I am struck by how, except when you're young, you really need to prioritize in life, figuring out in what order you should divide up your time and energy. If you don't get that sort of system set by a certain age, you'll lack focus and your life will be out of balance.”
Haruki Murakami

 

A daily conundrum.

What drives you to get the laundry done?

The dust bunnies herded?

The Bicycles of Italy

 

I've collected the bicycle shots from photographs from our trip to Italy all together!

Immersed

every so often

i find myself

completely immersed

drawing lines

in a coffee shop

extraordinary. not.

“I used to think I was the strangest person in the world but then I thought there are so many people in the world, there must be someone just like me who feels bizarre and flawed in the same ways I do. I would imagine her, and imagine that she must be out there thinking of me too. Well, I hope that if you are out there and read this and know that, yes, it's true I'm here, and I'm just as strange as you.”
Frida Kahlo

The beauty of creating art simply for the sake of creating art is that you gradually learn to focus on the process of making. Not the rules. Not the right-wrong thing. Not whether this matches that. Just the doing. The joy and flow. My mantra. Create simply for the sake of creating. 

It doesn't have to be extraordinary.

365 Somethings #119-125

“Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions. You change direction but the sandstorm chases you. You turn again, but the storm adjusts. Over and over you play this out, like some ominous dance with death just before dawn. Why? Because this storm isn't something that blew in from far away, something that has nothing to do with you. This storm is you. Something inside of you. So all you can do is give in to it, step right inside the storm, closing your eyes and plugging up your ears so the sand doesn't get in, and walk through it, step by step. There's no sun there, no moon, no direction, no sense of time. Just fine white sand swirling up into the sky like pulverized bones. That's the kind of sandstorm you need to imagine. And you really will have to make it through that violent, metaphysical, symbolic storm. No matter how metaphysical or symbolic it might be, make no mistake about it: it will cut through flesh like a thousand razor blades. People will bleed there, and you will bleed too. Hot, red blood. You'll catch that blood in your hands, your own blood and the blood of others. And once the storm is over you won't remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won't even be sure, in fact, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm you won't be the same person who walked in. That's what this storm's all about.”
 Haruki Murakami

"the sandstorm chases you"

acrylic squares painted on index card, then stitched in grid, quote

"sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm"

acrylic painted index card, fabrics, quote 

"keeps changing directions"

acrylic painted index card, fabrics, quote 

"swirling up into the sky"

acrylic painted index card, fabrics, quote 

"you change direction"

 thin strips from my gel printing experiments, quote

"short storm crossed"

fabric

"adjusts over and over"

fabric, found text, maps, japanese papers, hand painted papers, paint chip, cardstock, ephemera

One of my projects for 2013 is to make 365 stitched collages on 3x5" cards. The more I make, the more I am drawn to make more. You can see all of the collages to date in this Flickr set. A twist in this set - I used fragments from the Murakami quote in most of the collages. And some of the index cards were painted already with acrylics, so I used them too.

Have you ever done a 365 project? What was it like? Did it spark creativity? Did you fizzle out at some point? Would you ever do another?

Link Love to the Nth Degree {A Mission}

 

Some of the marvelous mail art received for Hanna's postcard swap!

To be a groovy mission member, grab a LINK LOVE badge and learn about why I'm asking you to join me in giving digital hugs and spread the link love. The goal is to post 5 links every Friday. Links to creative blogs you've just discovered, to blogs that you adore, to blogs you've read for a long time but might not be well known. Think also of niche blogs that spark your creativity but might not be in the disco light of the blogosphere. 

Just start this Friday.

I am committed to sharing links at Daisy Yellow and I hope that you will get in on the action and do a link round-up on your blog too. This was one of my favorite things to do when I started blogging and it has fallen out of fashion. 

Here's my post from the first week. The second week. The third week. Another week.

So without further ado, my links for this week:

1. Roben-Marie has a fun new set of mixed media stamps that I adore.
2. Stephanie adds new details as she reworks a mandala from several years ago.
3. A cutie patootie tutorial at Artsyville about making little file folders.
4. On a much softer note, I discovered Mother Henna's blog Exploring Grief Using Radical Creativity, and her warm video post about discovering beauty even in our dark moments.
5. Teresa speaks simple life truths in her 52 Weeks of Noting project.

If you are participating in SHARE the LINK LOVE, please add the URL to your blog post in the Mister Linky below. Links to your home page or links not about our MISSION will be deleted.

Art Journal: Fly

Golden heavy body acrylics, airbrush colors, machine stitching, gellyroll, Uniball marker, ephemera, japanese washi papers, Caran D'Ache Neocolor II wax crayons.

In early 2012 I started with a hardback book and transformed it into an art journal. These are pages from what I call The Noticing Journal. It contains my messiest, most paint-filled journal pages EVER. In this journal, I focus on simple ideas that I might otherwise overlook or forget to document. The journal has been through so much that it has literally fallen apart. Having loose art journal pages {or pages that have fallen out of a journal or altered book} is a wonderful opportunity! Before stitching or binding the pages or gluing them back inside, you can take the chance to sew them with a sewing machine!

After I’d painted blues and whites and the pages had dried {this takes up to a few days, depending how much paint... dry to the touch is not dry to the core}, I decided to attach two things with stitches. I attached the photograph of my daughter using a zig zag stitch. The print is from my Polaroid PoGo Printer, by the way. It has a nice retro feel and a peel-off sticky back. {PS. When I bought the PoGo it was under $50, and so perhaps they've updated the functionality because now it's more expensive.} Then I used a straight stitch to attach a paper I’d dotted with neon acrylics. If you don’t have a machine, you can hand stitch metallic embroidery floss around a photo to add interesting texture to the page.

As I worked, I thought about what I wanted the page to symbolize. The key was the swing. I still find it difficult to come up with words to write. And remember, no rules! But I "like" having at least a few words on my pages. One trick I use is to find something on the page to focus my attention. So I wrote about my daughter’s lifelong love of playground swings. I considered stamping the word FLY with alpha stamps but envisioned something larger with movement to echo the word and the photograph. I painted the word FLY directly on top of the hand-painted paper on the left in bubble gum pink.

Spinning Assumptions

“Begin challenging your own assumptions. Your assumptions are your windows on the world.
Scrub them off every once in awhile, or the light won't come in.”
Isaac Asimov

“All your questions can be answered, if that is what you want.
But once you learn your answers, you can never unlearn them.” 
Neil Gaiman

“If the desire to write is not accompanied by actual writing,
then the desire is not to write”
Hugh Prather

Making collage fodder.

Experimenting.

Watercolors, masks, alcohol inks...

 Spin your assumptions around with creative recklessness!

What haven't you tried lately?