Happy Birthday!

Happy Birthday Jenn!

This tasty little morsel is a Happy Birthday wish to my friend Jenn.  I wish I was a baker, I'd make a treat like this for her. I know what would happen though...I'd eat all the rejects, the practice cupcakes, etc! Then I'd end up looking like Betty Baker!

Hi there babycakes!

Lately I have been crazy about cupcakes. With Valentine's Day I was thinking of lovely heart candies adorning them.  These little gems are Red Velvet with Butter Cream frosting. Yummy!

Love Love Love

I love this girls face-I was able to resize the pic and ad the glitter lettering at www.fotoflexer.com.   I wanted to put something new up as the Do What You Love has been there for a few days.  My current project is a  boat load of Valentines for family and friends! I will post some of those  pretties soon.  I'm infatuated with cupcakes at this point...two weeks ago it was Sparrows!  This is so much fun!!

3 Ways to Change Your Life: Do What You Love!

We all spend an inordinate amount of time dreaming about having the life we've always wanted. I decided a short while ago to  embrace changes that happening in my life and use the momentum to move toward the life I always wanted.

I've found 3 simple things YOU can do to begin your journey toward the life you want.

1.  Identify your Bliss. By that I mean, what is it that makes you truly happy. What makes your heart sing? When you were a little child what did you want to be when you grew up?  Art makes my heart sing and speaks to my soul. 

2. Begin to follow that bliss a little every day. Not many people have the luxury to stop their current job or life and just switch gears but EVERYONE can do one small thing every day to move towards that goal.  For me it was literally as simple as picking up a pencil, finding a scrap of clean paper and beginning to draw again.

3.  Many small changes over time lead to a BIG CHANGE! Follow your heart, feed your soul, do that one little thing everyday that makes you happy and then build on it. Changing your life doesn't have to be expensive; go to the library to check out books on your dream job or life change. Tiny changes over time will help you to know what you truly want and will motivate you to continue to transform the life you have now into the life you are truly mean to lead. 

I am firmly convinced that our time on this earth is too short to spend even a minute without a dream.  We may never fully get that dream life or dream job but we can do something every day for ourselves to do what we love! 

You can find the original art shown above at: Hot Pink Pansy

Pretty, put together, purposeful, paste, PERFECT!!

...to complicate things when it is really quite simple; find what it is that makes you happy and who that it is that makes you happy, then you're set. Promise!  Text:Google Images.

One of my first loves was a pot of paste. The super tasty minty paste, made by Elmer's that had an orange top with an orange dipper to dig the tasty paste out. I also loved my scissors! My mom let me borrow the house scissors (not the really good ones!) but the ones kept in the kitchen that were really sharp! I was in heaven if I had a rainy afternoon, a stack of paper, pages from magazines, my scissors and my paste. If I got hungry I could just have a fingertip or two of the sticky minty goodness!!  My sister who is a little older and always LOT wiser scared me with tales of gluing my insides together after catching me putting a large dollop in my mouth! I was relieved to find out a few days later that I could still eat paste and digest food just fine!

I thought it would be fun to find a picture of a pretty room and then add objects that were the same size, scale and proportion. I am not sure but I think the desk, chair and window are all that were original. The rest was added.  (The picture is from Pretty Simple Magazine to always honor the copyright images-the additions were from advertisements or scrap-booking paper).  The little girl looks just like a friends daughter which made it all the more fun!

The art of collages is great in so so many ways: easy, fun, creative, whimsical, with minimal learning curve and uses cheap or re-purposed supplies. Collages can be very therapeutic depending on the emotions of the person at that time.  The medium also allows a person to create something beautiful or to communicate a thought or feeling that they might not otherwise be able to do so due to disability, language barriers, an emotional  block, communication issues or perceived lack of artistic ability. I am a fan of mixed media and   enjoy the process very much.

The collage is entitled "Kyra".

Giddiness

I saw an old friend yesterday, who really knows how to get my brain to think, think, think!  I was telling her how I do not ever want to go back to the type of work I used to do (Social Work), that I loved the individuals that I worked with but was SO very averse to the business side of it. I always had filing, charting, deadlines like you wouldn't believe, new policies to implement, Pilot Project This and That  and a TO DO list that usually was 40-50 items long. The perks of the field were migraines, insomnia, stress weight gain, anxiety, depression, burnout. It wasn't just one company that was bad, it was the nature of the Social Work beast itself. I am not an office worker bee. I'm a honey bee that needs to be out flitting here and there, buzzing, humming with my little bee hands into this and that. I work so well with people but not so well with paperwork (as in filing). I spent 20+ years trying to mold myself into someone I'm not. Sad.

From Google Images-Artist G. Kerr

I had an exciting thought last night as I was wrapping up the day with  my husband. Could I combine my art and working with special needs friends, children, the elderly? Classes, somewhat like Art Therapy but can't call it therapy as I am not a credentialed therapist. But something along the lines of that??? Then I let my brain just flow and imagined: Art Parties for kids, Art Classes for Adults and Children with Special Needs, Art "Therapy" at a Senior Center. I would be a travelling artist bringing projects and parties to groups of people.    Woot! I am so excited!!  I would Love Love Love to be able to really blend the two things that I really enjoy. Happy Happy Me!! My heart is singing today. Tra la la!!

My Girls

Miss Love

 These are "My Girls". I love to draw pretty faces, pretty dresses and  I'm thinking of trying my hand at doll making!  I would enjoy seeing Miss Love come to life! I've seen several dolls at sites that I follow that have a similar look to the ones I've drawn. Great Minds Think Alike!!

I try to draw happy little faces yet the sometimes come out looking worried or even sad.  I've drawn and redrawn an image to try to fix it or erased until the page has worn through only to end up with the same face over and over. I've decided to just go with it. I tell myself, "This is a stubborn one apparently!"

Angel Faces

I'm curious to know if other artists and artisans have experienced the same phenomena as I have.  I start off with the eyes of the picture, then the nose and mouth. Once the nose and mouth have appeared "she" tells me who she is and what she wants to look like. It is quite bizarre. I will try drawing a pretty ethereal angel and come up with a late thirties chick with a cool fur stole going to the Opera!!

Deep in Thought

Happy Happy Tuesday to all! It's rainy here and is a perfect day to sit and create something new! I watched videos on You Tube last night on how to make air dry clay and how to make dolls! Can't wait to get started!

Pretty Nest and Treasure Chests

This was my evenings work from yesterday. It really looks better in real life! Need that scanner! Or need to figure out my camera's settings.


Just so you don't think I'm a one trick poney, I'm adding images of my other projects. Pretty pretty little packages...I keep odds and ends in these first two, on my bedside table.

This one is a project my daughter and I worked on together to save our treasures from the sea. Turquoise and all it's permutations is my favorite color!

This little gem is showcased with some beach sand and a pearl necklace but is really my little boy's. He keeps his LEGO skeletons hidden in it!

 It's true bounty:

Ahhh....If I'm being honest, I think at this very moment I take more pleasure in art that I've created with glue, glitter, paper and paste rather than the drawing. I think it has to do with esthetics.  I don't feel any compunction tearing off a piece of paper that has been mis-glued -or sanding over an area where I had a heavy hand with the glitter. I feel like my drawings are not quite perfect yet but like my children...perfectly imperfect and wholly loveable as they are.

Fairy Tale Dreams

I definitely need to get my scanner up and running. Taking photos of my cuties doesn't produce the best image but you get the idea.  I will draw, draw and re-draw this image until I get it juuuust right. Right now the apple blossoms look funny and the baby a bit flat. Oh well! I do like the subject matter.  When I feel like I have the image the way I like it, my obsession with that subject is done and on to the next!  A graphic artist aquaintance told me I should find a niche and stick to it; for example to make my art marketable, I might make my specialty little tea cups or pastries or somesuch. I guess I haven't found what strikes my fancy. I would probably get MUCH better if I stuck to one image or category of images.

I've read that Van Gogh painted 102 versions of his Sunflowers.

Last night I woke up dreaming of a sparrows nest with four perfect eggs in it. My brain seemed to be studying the light, looking at the nest up close, from far away, this way and that. I was marvelling at the four tiny perfect eggs.

I love dreams like that! I have them often. They used to be stressful dreams of work related problems when I worked in Social Services. Those dreams were anxiety provoking, prompted a bout of insomnia that would last for days and often ended with a migraine. The dreams I have now feel the same only in the sense that my brain is working on a "problem" but they fill me with happiness. They are like a gift that wakes me up to notice it and feel like fairy tales; so colorful, sparkly and welcoming. I can snuggle right back into sleep with my brain working on detail, shading, or a new technique to try so easily.  The dream last night was not so much about technique but subject matter.  Beautiful, perfect little eggs in a perfect little nest. 

I feel better than I have in years! I think my brain is thanking me for not abusing it anymore with left brain tasks and work that never suited me.  I adored the people I worked for so many years to help but never flourished with the deadlines, To Do lists, micro-managing supervisors, the musts, shoulds and have to's.

I am SO much happier now.

Baby Sparrows

Today's project is Mama Sparrow feeding a baby sparrow amongst a nest full of eggs. I went to Google Images for some inspiration. While most of my art isn't supposed to look realistic, I prefer cutesy...I still want it to look like a sparrow's nest with eggs and baby/babies.

I have been so infatuated with sparrows lately. I'm drawing little engaged and married couples! I don't have a scanner at the moment so I came up with a low tech work around, using my digital camera to snap some quickies. Artistic and clever she is! (Talks like Yoda she does!)

This little couple is Henrietta and Stu with a change in head gear. Too Cute!  

I had a career change this past September, not my choice but it turns out to be one of the best things that has ever happened to me. I have had time to nurture my true self, the silly me, the artistic me that had been put aside for so many years.I have been working as a nanny which has allowed me lots of time for playing with pencils and paper, crayons, colored pencils and paste!

I've worked full time my entire adult life and finding myself unemployed left me a lot of time on my hands. I began again with simple collages and then transitioned to pencil sketches. I am having so much fun exercising my right brain again!

I absolutely love creating beautiful things. l