Arting with Friends

A year ago, my friend Ellen (above) and I took an encaustic class from Ellen Koment

in the Paseo Arts District here in Oklahoma City.  It was a long hot two days.

We learned a lot. 

And then, because we didn't use it right away, we forgot a LOT. 

So yesterday Ellen came over and we practiced, practiced, practiced.

And if you know either Ellen or me, you know we talked and talked and talked.

But that really helped us be loose in our experimentation.

(More on the experiments at the bottom of the post.)

Here's the only piece I made from scratch and finished.

Well, I'm not quite sure if it's done.  I think so but . . .

Makes me think of grapes for some reason

(maybe cuz I am ALWAYS hungry?  LOL)

The next piece is one I started in class and didn't like.

So when I first whipped up my batch of encaustics, I covered it in white.

And I still didn't like it!

So I scraped and dug and put green wax in the cuts, scraped some more, etc, etc, etc.

Still didn't like it!

So yesterday I pulled it out and covered it in black.

Then I scraped in a tree which I filled with gold.

A lot more scraping and torching and this came out.

I like it.  But it's nothing like what I usually do.

Which can be a very good thing some times.

Ellen and I had so much fun! 

By the end of the day, I think she was as in love with scraping as me. 

I'm telling you, it is soooooooooooo relaxing ~ even contemplative. 

And I'm pretty sure she'll be buying a kitchen torch soon. 

They are so much less intimidating than those big old tank things. 

And easier to control. 

My friend Roz loaned me her torch but I'm going to wait to use it til I do something BIG! 

You see, I am deathly afraid of fire and I burn myself all the time in the kitchen. 

Yeah, I'm a little confused as to why wax is my favorite medium. 

Talk about pushing yourself out of your comfort zone!

In my last post I mentioned I was working on 3 art group projects.

This year we're doing a round robin of boxes.  Very cool. 

When they're all done, I'll share pictures.

In addition, every month the hostess gives us a "challenge".  

I've got to admit, I am pretty lax about doing them.

But in May, Lynda gave each of us an unfinished curved wood cabinet door.

LOVED IT!

and I came up with this ~ After the Fire

Working on the curved surface was tricky. 

But again, something new can yield wonderful results.

Also in the last post I showed some works in process.

Here is one of them with a few more steps of wax collage & color.

Looking pretty different, huh? 

Well, I think it's about to change.

You see, while we were experimenting and talking yesterday, guess what happened?

I got distracted (surprise!  not) and ignored a piece

on the heat for a little longer than I should have.

And I loved the glass smooth finish it gave the wax

so I'm going to do it with this piece on purpose.

I have no idea how it will work becuz you just never

know what the wax will do when it gets hot. 

Okay, you know it will melt, but will it run, pool, slide completely off?

I'll let you know what comes next with this.

I love arting with friends.  New ideas just seem to form in the air.

And while most of the women in my art group do work entirely different than me,

I always come away so inspired.

I am so glad I revamped my studio so there's room for two or three to play.

There's even room for small class of four.

If you're in OKC, let me know. 

Maybe there's some arting in our future.

She's Baaaack!

Yep.
My muse is back and I'm feeling myself again.

It all started with art group. I'd fallen WAY behind on the round-robin projects so I had three of them to work on.  And the inspiration really kicked in while working on the top of Lynda's altered box.  She wanted words and sayings on her box so I wrote some of my favorite sayings all over the top.

About the same time, my daughter Dani asked me to make one of my Cut-Ups! for her (oh!  I just realized I hadn't told y'all about these other than the initial idea in a December post  - I'll tell you more later but in the meantime you can see them on my Facebook page) in the very color I was using on Lynda's box!  And when your daughter asks for something in a different color, well, you do it.  And I have to admit this little guy is adorable!

I was having so much fun that I pulled out a pink heart piece I've been working on for months.  Since I showed you the rough draft (in the same post mentioned above), I had scraped off all the natural wax and the speckled paper.  And then it just sat there.  From time to time when I had a minute to walk into the studio, I pulled it out and stared.  But mainly it just sat there.

Then last week I had an idea.  I wrote out some thoughts on tissue paper.  I stamped some scrollwork.  I pulled out the Pan Pastels and the "white" wax.  And of course, I torched and scraped and, voila! ALMOST OVER YOU is finished. 

AND I'm happy with it!!  Without the natural wax, the pinks are much more vibrantly pink!! And the three or four more layers added a lot of depth.  I was reminded however that fusing each new layer gives you yet another opportunity to mess up the earlier layers.  Which made me invent a new way of warming the piece/
Unfortunately, when my muse came back she brought along another source of inspiration.  Just not ART inspiration.  The kind of inspiration that says "you should do this" and "you should do that" about all sorts of little projects you really don't need.

No I'm not talking about cleaning - I killed off that little you-know-what years ago.
I'm talking about things like "you should move your computer out of the studio" or "you should make such-n-such for Christmas gifts" or "you'd use that supply more if you could see it".

You know.  The LITTLE ideas that become HUMONGOUS projects.

And I suckered to the first one. I realized that the internet was just too distracting whenever I hit an art block and that art was always too distracting whenever I was supposed to be doing accounting so I moved the computer & officey stuff to a guest room.  It's sooooo nice in here - I can even sit on the bed and watch YouTube art videos HUGE becuz I'm using a TV for my monitor!

And the best part? All my great shoes are on display.

  

The bad news is that this is what my studio looks like.

 

That's the problems with this little instigator ~ she doesn't always tell you about the consequences!

I'm also working on a 24x48 collage and trying to remember to take photos after every step.  It's surprising how much that slows things down!  But I want you to see a piece start to finish.  If I can, I'll try to give you my thought process as well.

Phew!
Think I tried to make up for my extended absence all in one big post.
It's good to be back.

Now to go work on that messy studio for a little while ;-p

what I've been doing

busy, busy, busy
we are all so busy
when I looked at the blog last week I was shocked to see I hadn't been here since Thanksgiving
but as I thought about it I understood

you see I was working on a piece of art that really really stretched me.
why was I stretching?
mainly cuz it's YELLOW!!!
I know, I'm a little weird but yellow is just not a color I'm comfortable with - it's hard to keep it clean and, well, yellow, when doing as much layering as I do.

the other stretcher was that I actually wanted to paint an image that looked like its counterpart in the real world and I haven't tried to paint realistically in years

all-in-all, I'm very happy with the results

I struggled with a beeswax collage I was working with. I must have scraped this one down five different times. I really like the way it looks now except it's missing something. Any ideas?

I also went shopping with a new friend and she suggested I could do a line of pieces for some local stores and etsy that was a little less involved and less expensive.  I loved that idea and wondered

why didn't I think of that before?

and my brain was off and running.  I came up with a whole series of 6x6 whimsical collages which I finally finished today.

I desperately wanted to have these two pieces and the new series done and on here and on the website and on Etsy and everything linked to everything and and and . . .  
You know how it goes, the more you need to do, the more things go wrong as you try to do them all!  When my camera battery said "ENOUGH" today, I realized I needed to say it too and just post what I have so you all don't think I moved to Mars or something.  Afterall, tomorrow I start tax season and the odds of me popping in regularly are pretty slim.

Thanks for sticking with me.  Maybe I'll get that new series posted before the overtime crunch starts but maybe not.  LOL  In the meantime, I'll be stopping by your blogs and Facebook pages to see what you're doing amidst the crazy busy-ness of your world.

Feel free to visit/like my FB page as it's so much easier to post artsy tidbits and images there than here.
TTYL

Which Way?

Which Way?

encaustic collage on wood

A few posts back I asked how you know when a piece is done?  There are certain pieces that I know are done and others that I know need further development.  Then there are the others ~ those pieces that don't tell me to stop or to keep going.

Today I decided to attack one of the pieces I knew was not quite right (I'm very happy with it now but I can't show you yet because I need my husband to cut the end off) and ended up reworking the one shown here.

Here's the thing: I thought this one was finished when I showed it to you earlier.  But today I realized the wax was too thick and bland so I ironed off some wax and ironed on some color.  What do you think?  Was I right to listen today?

There are a couple more pieces that are speaking to me so hopefully I'll have more pictures soon.

In other news . . .
> as I mentioned in my last post, I started another blog this week.  I also set up a Tumblr blog (not impressed with the format so don't know if I'll keep that up).  And I'm contemplating Google+.  I'm starting to think I should stop - how much is too much?  I'm afraid that social media could take over ALL my time.
> I watched entirely too much Hoarders Monday while defrosting the freezer in the garage.  Now everywhere I look I see a mess!  So my daughter came over and helped me gut the guest room.  It looks so good with the art on the walls.
> Speaking of art - where do you keep yours?  I am getting quite a few pieces here so I decided I needed to hang more so I'm working up piles of what to hang in which rooms.  My house is looking more like a gallery every day.  And while I've sold a few pieces off the walls in my house, I don't really have tons of traffic traipsing thru. 

I guess that means I need to start looking around for gallery representation.  A few friends on facebook have given me some direction in that area so I have no excuse. 

Afterall, I can always make more art to fill the unoccupied spaces on my walls ~ if I don't spend all my time online, that is.

Distant Bridges

Here's another one of my tax season art pieces. 
It began with a lovely water scene - see it next to the lips?

Next came some pattern tissue with a dart.

I dabbled at this 10 or 15 minutes at a time,

sometimes before work, sometimes late at night.

Actually, it became a tester board for another piece I was working on.

The problem with that is that lots of the stuff I tested didn't work!

So I'd layer on some gesso and test something new.

Then, near the end of March I wrote a journal page and blog post about a vision I had about how I wanted my life to be.  At the end I said I might write that on an art piece.  Well, I did.  I wrote it on here with charcoal pencil and immediately hated the way it looked.

So of course, I couldn't remove it which meant more gesso and spray colors and some modeling paste.  Then somewhere along the line, the image was turned upside down (I think with the writing) making it look more like a bridge than the dock it originally was.  And it all took on a yellow-green cast.  Here it is right before the final layer of beeswax and encaustic.

It's very similar to the final product but the beeswax added so much more dimension and texture.  And the encaustic helped balance the color at the bottom.

I have really been getting into beeswax more and more lately - I think every piece I've finished has had a topcoat of it.  Not only do I love the texture and dimensin it adds visually, I love the soft smooth feel of it.  I really like the look when I mix in colors from crayons or encaustics.

Speaking of encaustics, I'm taking an Encaustic Painting Workshop in June.  I'm so excited.  So far all I've done with encaustics is add color to collages - in this class I'll learn to use it as the primary medium in a piece.  I can't imagine using only one medium in a piece - let alone for always - but I cannot wait to have an expert teach me how to handle the wax.  Everyone I know who works with it can't get enough of it. I'm very excited about learning about it and about meeting other artists here.

Thanks for letting me share ~ Sherry

Vision

This morning I was looking thru my old poetry to find something to write on a current collage when the vision of my life just crystallized perfectly AGAIN in my head. 

As with so many of you, it is my dream and my ambition to be a full time artist.  But is it what God wants for me?  Did He open my eyes this morning or was I just wishing?  To pursue the dream seems so very selfish (after all, this isn't as noble as MLK's dream!) yet I know I'm better to people when I'm following this path.

Here's what the above journal page says:

I saw again the vision

Of how my life should be

Of how the art flowed from me onto paper, canvas

Of words and paper

Of timeless, no, time-free immersion in my art

Of a life spent as I've spent only moments until now

Of being me all the time, unencumbered by financial constraints & concerns

Of me loving & living my best

Of being a temporary vessel allowing art & words

             to flow thru me

hmmmm, maybe I'll go write that on this art piece

Blue

I've noticed lately that nobody's reading my blog . . .

could it be cuz nobody's posting to it?

hehe

I have been so neglectful lately of everything -

including the things that matter most to me

family

friends

art

I am so sorry for not posting or reading your blogs regularly -

in six weeks I should be back to normal.

Which we all know isn't all that normal  *WINK*

I made the piece above, BLUE, over a couple weeks

by dabbling a little every nite - and I mean a little.

Patrick dropped it off for

MONEY TALKS, ART WALKS

Maybe we'll see you there Saturday nite?

ps ~ since some have asked, I plan to get brave and post about the art I wrote about in my last post soon - how I did them, full size pictures, etc.  And, they did not get into the OKLAHOMA FRIENDLY show.  They had 785 pieces submitted and chose only 20%.  Guess that makes the rejection easier to handle. 

Great Weekend

I had the BEST kind of weekend - I got to spend it arting.

I'm trying to get a piece ready to submit to the OKLAHOMA FRIENDLY show

but I can never do just one thing!

So I did background prep on a LOT of journal pages (above)

and I worked on two pieces for my art group and two other canvases.
The piece for the show is the one on the bottom right.

This is how I left these yesterday morning when I went to work -
piles on the floor and incomplete pieces on the desk.

In addition to arting, Patrick and I went to a FUN party Saturday night -
I  just LOVE to dress up in a costume!

AND
I sold a piece of art!
I'm telling you it was a GREAT weekend!!!

There was no art yesterday since it wasn't just Valentine's Day
but also our 20th anniversary of loving each other.
I can hardly believe how lucky I am to have him.

Hopefully I'll get to work some more on these tonight.

If not, I'll at least pick up that humongous pile of painted papers off the floor ~
last night I did move them from the hall to the studio at least!!!

I'll share more pictures of these as they get done.

Thanks for continuing to drop by ~ Sherry

Bye-Bye 2010 - Hello 2011

It's time to say good-bye to 2010 and hello to 2011;

time to reevaluate our goals and the steps we're taking to achieve them;

time to look back & analyze and to look forward & hope.

What are your goals?
Are you going to go a new direction?
Do you care if you sell or do you only create for yourself?

 After moving at the end of 2009, I didn't enter many art shows
and didn't do a single craft show in 2010.
Yet as I look back, I realized I actually SOLD more art during 2010 than any other year
(thank you FaceBook!!)

I took an online class, went to a conference and read lots of articles

in order to learn more about how to do this art business. 

Blog.  FaceBook.  Etsy.  Twitter.

Some of these are easier for me to do than others;

some I haven't even tried yet.

What about you?

But the biggest thing I've learned is the thing I've always known -

the thing that's easiest for me to do cuz I get lost in it,

yet hardest for me to do consistently cuz I'm so easily distracted -

get in the studio and

CREATE

and then get the art in front of a lot of different people so the

right person can see it at the right time and make it theirs.

So, my goals for 2011?

GET IN THE STUDIO!!!

I want to continue to explore this abstract thing - I feel so free while I create - 

and I want to take some encaustic classes - I think I'm in love with wax!

GET IN SHOWS!!!

That's why I've joined every local art association I could find and

I'm so excited about getting five pieces in the show next month.

PROMOTE, PROMOTE, PROMOTE

(ok, I lied earlier - this is the hardest part!)

If you've already taken steps to change/grow next year, please let me know -

after all, we're all in this together.

As far as non-art decisions, I've decided to try to STOP eating when I get full.

If I accomplish that, I'll work on reducing my diet coke intake.  Again.

ps ~ the pieces above are the ones that I sold last year

pps ~ I have a FaceBook page now if you'd like to come LIKE me

(remember: promote, promote, promote - hehe)

ART TIP OF THE DAY!!!!!

I know this isn't a new tip, but

PLAN AHEAD!!!

Remember to take the appropriate sized vehicle

when buying oversized art supplies 

OR 

have a great sense of humor 

or both!!!!

See the PT Cruiser in the garage?

Wouldn't it have worked so much better for this large canvas than the Audi TT?

In all fairness to myself & Patrick, we didn't KNOW we were gonna

buy a canvas when we headed out to spend our gift cards this morning.

ps - thanks Jessica for the new canvas!

The Creative Connection Event #3

Just wanted to share a few more pictures from TCCE.  I can't believe I forgot to include this one with the pictures of all the fun goodies we received.  This awesome fitted long-sleeve T is from Curly Girl Designs and was part of the package we got when we signed in.  Don't you just love the saying?

These two pictures are of mosaic cupcakes I bought from Mosaic Cottage at the Handmade Market at TCCE.

Well, I think that's the last of TCCE posts.

Now, I'm going to finish a couple bracelets and then return to a collage I started several months ago (REST). Hopefully, I'll have a finished piece to show you soon.

My Artistic Conundrum

I'm an artist.
I want to be a successful artist.
I take the Classes.
I read the Books.
I go to the Conventions.
I follow the steps.

I burn out.
I vegetate.
I watch way too much TV.
I read mysteries & magazines.
I ignore the studio.
I ignore my friends - artistic or not. 

I wake up a little & look around.
I realize I haven't made art in awhile.

I enter the studio & see a mess.
I order paper trays & drool over storage bins.
I reorganize.  Again.
I make a new list.
I read inspiring blogs.
I still make nothing.

I know I MUST create more art.

I must create it for my peace of mind.
I must create it because I need a large body of work to be successful
.........(whether for gallery representation or licensing).
I must create if I'm to bring in money doing what I love - and
I must bring in money.

So why don't I?
Am I lazy?
.........afraid of failure?
.........afraid of success?
.........afraid of not being enough?
Or am I just tired of trying for so long and still needing to keep on?
Has it become a job instead of a passion?  And a low paying job at that?

Do I need to know?
Or just do?  (channeling Yoda there)

I pour out my heart on the front & back of a pre-painted journal page.
I pour out my heart on a computer screen.
I paint over the page in broad strokes of multiple colors.
I rub black charcoal around the edges.
I scribble on top of it all with a good old number 2 pencil.

Time slips away.
I am making some art.

I get to play with beeswax - YEA!!!

I finally finished picking up the pile in the studio and my "must-do" sewing (and can I say, the sewing area of my studio is great) so today and tomorrow I get to work in my studio.

I've already pulled out the beeswax tub and I'm ready to get going on the two collages I've been working on since the beginning of tax season. Hopefully by the end of tomorrow I'll have some completed pieces to show you.

I also will be writing a post about a great little store I found here in OKC.

Oh, and it's my wonderful husband's birthday so I have a few errands to run. I love birthdays.

The kids celebrated Patrick's birthday and Mothers' Day with us Sunday by taking us to a movie and making dinner for us and my parents. It was one of the best Mothers' Days ever. Actually, it was a great weekend - relaxing & productive at the same time.

Guess I'm kinda rambling - I better go get to "work" ~ Sherry



(this is an ATC I made a long time ago - I don't like to do a post without a picture!!)

Patience

Patience.
If you know me, you know that I don't really have lots of this.
But, hey, that's an improvement - when I was younger I had none!

But that's not the real point of this post. (Well, after reading the end of what I wrote, maybe it is.) It really has to do with this particular piece of art and selling art in general.

I'll start with the selling art part first: I make art because I NEED to - I've written about that before. But I also intend to sell most of my art. Some pieces sell right away like the two I just sold. But others end up hanging on the walls of my house for quite awhile waiting for a new home. I don't mind looking at them one bit - well, if I do, I pull them down and add them to the pile of substrates in my garage - but I want to be able to spend all my time "arting" and selling is what's gonna get me to that point. Lots of selling.

So this piece that I call PICKET FENCE is hanging in our bedroom. And I've been looking at it. Look how patiently that cat is waiting for that bird. Cats are like that - they take their time, wait patiently and then quickly seize an opportunity. Of course, they don't have to go to work every day - I mean NOBODY could consider napping and preening WORK!!

Anyway, I realized this morning that I have given this piece the wrong name. It should be called PATIENCE - not just cuz of the subject matter but because it hasn't sold for 4 years.

But not just that. Because it hasn't sold so that it can hang in our bedroom and remind me:

WAIT.
WAIT PATIENTLY.
WATCH CAREFULLY.
BE READY TO SEIZE THE OPPORTUNITIES.

"For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare, and not for calamity, to give you a future and a hope" Jeremiah 29:11

I already know His ultimate plan, my final destination. Until then, the journey really is the important part. So I'm waiting. And while I wait, I create. While I wait and create, I learn.

And hopefully, while I wait, create and learn, I'll also be growing. As an artist. But more importantly, as the person He wants me to be. I hope. Guess I'll have to wait & see (hehe)~ Sherry

Completed Art Journal

I finally bound my journal for 2009. I know a lot of you work inside a pre-made journal, but I work on loose pages and bind them with my Zutter Bind-It-All at the end.

Why loose pages instead of a pre-made book? Mainly becuz my journal is more than just my art pages - I include other things that I don't necessarily want to glue down:

• I like the freedom to use any paper I want when I'm art journaling. Sometimes I feel like using big paper. Sometimes I feel like using ledger pages. Sometimes I use prepainted papers. Sometimes I close my eyes and grab.
• I tend to write things down whenever they occur - which isn't always when my art journaling supplies are with me. Sometimes I sketch. Sometimes I make notes about an idea that's popped into my head. Sometimes I journal my feelings about a particular situation. I want all these in my book.
• I print out my blog entries. Most people probably don't do that but my posts are records of how I did a particular piece and/or what I was thinking about at a given time and therefore journal entries in my opinion.
• I photograph or scan everything I make* so I can put it on the website or blog or Etsy or all the above. So I print out those for my journal too. Then I can see where I was on my art journey at a given time.

After I have enough pages, I put them all in order and bind them. My friend Roz has given me a bunch of old World Book Encyclopedias so I gut the pages, gesso, Modpodge, stamp, paint, write on the covers and glue the last page of my bound "signature" to the inside of the back cover.

I love the way the journals look like books from the outside but all the pages are different and "messy" on the inside. Hmmmm, kinda like me?

So, what do you think? ~ Sherry

* I also photograph or scan my art at various stages - especially while working on the backgrounds. I can use these later as backgrounds for journal pages or other pieces of art - and hopefully as parts when I finally learn to do digital collage.

My First Giveaway

I woke up this morning thinking about two things - a pendant that's been dancing around in my head for awhile and that in two weeks I begin tax season.

Then I thought about my blog. Then about the gorgeous earrings I won at Starving Artist Designs. One thought lead to another and soon I hopped out of bed (for those of you who don't know me, that is seriously out of character) and started trying to figure out how to implement my plan:

MY FIRST GIVEAWAY
You will receive a charm pendant made for you featuring the new idea in my head and three charms (found objects and/or hand-crafted) in a theme of your choice.

To enter, just leave a comment on the blog within the next ten days.
To enter twice, do that AND become a follower of the blog (there's a follow button on the very top near the left).
I will need to know how to contact you so anonymous comments/followers won't work.
There's a program out there somewhere that randomly selects winners which I will find again and use.
The winner will be posted on January 15th.
Thanks ~ Sherry

Just FYI, bloggers LOVE comments and followers - it lets us know we're not just talking to ourselves!

Recovery Time in the Studio

As I may have mentioned before, in addition to being a mix-media artist, I'm an accountant - it's the way I pay for art supplies. As you may not know if you're not into accounting, this Thursday is another IRS deadline: 401(k) reports are due. That's what I'm doing these days.

And I'm exasperated and worn out. There are clients who didn't send in their "stuff" until last week and it was so wrong that I have to spend days correcting it. I know they're well-meaning clients and probably perfectly nice people but . . .

So in an effort to recover from last week and build up strength for the next week, I'm going to spend today doing things I love. First, there was a fattening breakfast. Then we bought flowers for the garden. Then I went shopping for boots (OMG, they are SO awesome), jewelry, a jacket and a couple sweater dresses. It is amazing (and kinda sad?) how great a new pair of shoes can make me feel. Bring it on clients: I have new, incredible high-heeled black boots and I know how to use them!!!!

But after I finish writing this, I'm going to do what soothes my soul the most: spend time in my studio. Even if all I do is reorganize art supplies, time in the studio both calms and invigorates me. There's just something about touching all the fun goodies that soothes and inspires me. (The only problem with reorganizing is that then I can't find anything!)

Today I won't be reorganizing or even just playing around. I'm going to "finish" the book I started with a group of friends on 9/24 (you can read more in the previous post). It's titled ART INSPIRATION: ENCOURAGING WORDS FOR THE CREATIVE SOUL. I put the word finish in quotes becuz this book has so many pockets that I can keep adding quotes and sayings indefinitely.

Life and work can be exhausting. So, restore yourself this weekend - whether that means time in your studio or a hot bath (I plan to do that later today too) or reading a book (hmmm, can I fit that in too?) or a walk or shoe shopping or prayer and meditation ~ Sherry

Ideas and Inspiration

I became a fan of WHERE WOMEN CREATE on Facebook (I was already a fan of the magazine). They have a discussion thread going: "Where do you find inspiration for your art?"

As I thought about it, I realized that I don't seek out inspiration - it's kind of just a byproduct of going thru life. Right now, I have a lot more ideas than I have time so I WRITE THEM DOWN. My thought in doing this is that some day I may have time but no ideas and, voila, there's a well to draw them from! I have a secondary reason as well - sometimes, the ideas come to me at night and I'm unable able to sleep again until I've done it or at least written it down. (I hate to admit I'm the same way about accounting and groceries and everything else too - once it's in my head, I have to deal with it!)

As to the inspiration for a particular piece, I'm a "go with the flow" person. Sometimes, I'll just start painting a bunch of journal page backgrounds. Maybe I'll pull out a piece of glass or an image. Or I might pick up a piece of fabric or paper that I like and start pulling things that go with it.

Pretty soon what I'm working on tells me what to do. Or it tells me to backup and try again. Or it shouts at me to STOP! Enough! NO - not THAT paper! (BTW, art talking to you is NOT the same as the other voices some people hear - LOL.)

Let me know what your "process" is - after all,the number one thing that gets my creative juices flowing is interacting with other creative people (See Inspiration: The Company of Other Creative People ) ~ Sherry

I'm baaaaaaaaaaaaaaack!

As all of y'all know, this year's dreaded tax day has come and gone. I should have had plenty of time to recover from what was my busiest tax season ever and returned to arting. But NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO, I had to get sick!

I think I'm finally over the sick and should be able to start some art later today. I want to make something for this year's Bite The Apple. I have to come up with a project that I can demo over and over again at a local school art show Friday. And my brain is just swimming with tons of ideas for other projects. Sometimes, when I get like this (lots of ideas and lots of deadlines) I freeze up as much as when I don't have any ideas.

So I thought I'd stop and say "Hi. I'm alive. And well (I hope)". Then I'll shop for some supplies for the demonstration. And hopefully you'll see something completed and posted here soon.

~ Sherry

Busy, Busy, Busy

I know I haven’t been around much. It's certainly not becuz I don't have anything to show or say.

This year I’m working at a great CPA firm preparing individual tax returns. We’re in six-days-a-week mode right now and when I get home at night I crash on the sofa. I can do some handwork while there but that’s about all I have energy for in the evenings. So on Sunday, after church and lunch with family and/or friends, I try to spend my free time creating. I’ve actually finished a few things. Even photographed them! But I haven’t uploaded or edited the photos, let alone try to get them on here or the website. That part takes too much time away from the actual creating!

So expect to see lots of photos (of the re-organized studio, my nephew’s wedding, the scarves I’ve been weaving [that’s the handwork I do on the sofa], some more journal pages, and maybe even a finished piece of art!) around April 16th. Or maybe the 17th cuz I am sure I’m gonna need a serious nap by then!!

I know you're busy too so thanks for stopping by ~ Sherry