I’m waiting for Carin to get here so we can dye things pretty colors (after doing about six pounds earlier today already), so I dove back into Collage Unleashed AGAIN.  Three in one day!

My sewing machine’s being all funky, though.  I’m clueless about the whole tension thing, but I’m pretty sure that’s what the problem is.  The back side is all thready and loose, and pops through to the front.  When I mess with the tension, though, it gets all funky and weird and the thread snaps, so I’m thinking it may be time to actually read the manual or something.  Meh.  (The next two are sewing things, so I do need to get it fixed, or be happy with not doing any fabric stuff in the book.  Not that I’m above doing that, but I’d like to dip a toe into the fabric world, and I figure with this, at least, I won’t question it too much if it comes up looking like crap — it’ll just be par for the course. :>)

So without ado, the washed photocopy collage (a really, really bad picture, but artificial light was my only choice and it just wasn’t coming out.  It looks better than this grainy thing.):

I do kind of like a collaged background of photocopies, but next time, I think I’d use a titanium buff wash, mixed thick so that it de-contrasts a bit.  All the contrasty bits give me a headache.  (Oh, and it’s coincidental that it’s all lime and violet — those were the random two colors I picked out of the basket o’ paint.  Seriously.)

And then, the only thing I’ve sewn other than curtains in the past six months…a fabric flower brooch that isn’t a brooch at all — it’s made to be mounted on the front of a journal, which will make it heavier than all get-out, but I like it anyway.

For some reason, that photo came out just fine.  Go figure.

That’s dyed paper towel, scrunched up over some heavy interfacing, stitched down randomly.  Embellished with  glass marbles, freeform crochet flower, buttons and a fabric yo-yo.

I think that’s my favorite of the things I’ve made from this book.  I’d like to make some smaller ones, but not until the machine’s working right — the back of this is a giant mess.

Three posts in a day.  Wow.  This won’t happen all the time, I promise.  It’s just that I’m really re-energized on this list again, now that I want to go to Portland in October.  (And yes, Michelle, seeing you and nabbing those letterboxes is on the list of Must-Dos. :>)

Eight gesso backgrounds.  Two washes with acrylic glaze, color added in with oil pastels, since I don’t have the other tools Traci talks about.  I like them, though, so I don’t really care if they’re not quite to specs. :)

I *believe* these are then cut up to use as book covers and the like, so it should be kinda interesting to see how they look in chunks.  Adminnie just cut me another stack of papers for today’s exercise, which is something about washed photocopies (actually, the next is about textured papers, but I don’t have any and have decided not to cry about it. :>).  Sounds like fun to me. :)

Squeee for getting started on the list again — only 12 more exercises to go before I’m done and can move on to the next item on the list.   Which is good, since I think I *really* want to change my reward for 50 items completed to “go to Art & Soul in Portland in October”.  Juliana Coles will be there, teaching both her extreme journaling methods AND doing a project class called “Circus Circus” and, really, how perfect for me is THAT?

One Sideshow Wife, reporting for duty. :)  (Plus, then I could tick off the list items for both Seattle and Portland letterboxing, and probably stay in a Yurt AND the Madrona Inn on the coast before heading back to the flatlands.  It’d be like List Check-Off Central.)

Must get busy.  Dyeing roving today with Minnie, and yarn tonight with Carin, so I’ll be ticking a bunch of line items off on THAT list item too.

Caffeine, apparently, makes me chatty.  Ahem.

I don’t have any pretty pictures (yet) today.  I dove back into Collage Unleashed last night, since I can now *find* my worktable under all the crap that used to live in my studio.  More on that in a bit.  But the exercise I’m on has you do this textured gesso-with-words thing, and I didn’t have rosin paper.

Apparently, “rosin paper” is this giant red roll of stuff you get at the hardware store.  They use it for roofing, instead of tar paper.  I know this because I had to look it up — I’d never heard of such a thing before, and needless to say, it wasn’t residing in my studio.  Which is kind of surprising, since I apparently had EVERYTHING ELSE ON THE PLANET.

I ended up using some paper of unknown origin that was residing in my paper roll basket.  (I have a rolling basket — metal mesh, on wheels — that’s full of rolled up papers.  Decorative ones, watercolor sheets, bizarre large pieces of vellum.  All kinds of crazy stuff I’ve collected over the years with the good intentions of using it someday.

I figured today was as good of a someday as any, so I lopped a large roll into 9 x 11 sheets, and got to work.

The exercise is largely multi-step.  Gesoo, glaze, paint, letter, do something to the edges, gold leaf, etc., etc..  (I don’t have any leafing pens, so I’m skipping that step.) So I’m through the first few steps and getting ready to do the oil pastels on top of the top of the other five bazillion layers.  And while it’s still MUCH more chaotic than I’m used to, and more complicated than I generally like in my own work, I’m finding that I like this a little more.  Especially knowing that it’ll be hacked up as decorative paper, rather than being an end unto itself.

There’s also the fact that there’s less chaos in my studio, in general.  I got the curtains done, though I think I want to add tab-tops to them and hang them on some kind of rod at some point.  (J found me a big stick — I’m thinking about making the curtain rod a limb instead of a metal rod.  It’s more tactile and natural, and I like that idea.)  I think I have a picture…lemme look here….

Aha!  From when I had one done:

(Ignore the clutter.  That’s all gone now, too.)

But it’s looking much more “grown up” in there (as opposed to the sheet that was tacked to the wall over the window before), and now with the major, MAJOR declutteration, there’s so much less chaos that I think I’m a little more accepting of the chaotic nature of the exercises in this book.  (Clutter affects everything, see.)  Not that I’m planning on changing my style any time soon, but anything that helps me be more clear and likely to get into the whole Flow state is a good thing.

After last night’s purge, I’ve managed to get rid of almost three *thousand* things in my studio.

Three.  Thousand.

From paper to bits of ephemera to tiny pieces of fabric on up to giant yards and yards cuts of fabric to tools I’m never going to get around to using…I’ve been purging out all the stuff in there that isn’t serving me and my purposes.

Not surprisingly, after handling all my Good Stuff, I’m feeling more creative in general now, too.  Yay for positive side-effects!

Y’know, I was thinking about it all last night, while slopping paint onto some of the gessoed paper, and it occurs to me that the time in my life when I felt the most creative and productive was when I first moved to Seattle and got settled in. Much of that came from the company I was keeping, for sure, but a big part of it was the simplicity of it.  I’d moved on the fly, taking with me only what I could carry.  (Long story, but suffice it to say that I had to go, and right then.)  I had very, very little by way of posessions.  Like, one notebook, a couple pens, and a glu-stick.  Not even the cheapie watercolors.  Two art books that I read front to back twice over.  (Biographies of Dan Eldon, actually, not even art technique books.)

Still, with that very limited focus, I was often like a WOMAN ON FIRE with the writing and the journaling and the drawing.

Now that I’ve had time and distance, and have some longer perspective on the time, I’m thinking that it’s not having the right materials that makes you creatively productive.  It’s the lack thereof that makes you work with what you have instead.  Creativity can’t help but happen when you’re having to come up with solutions, instead of just grabbing something from a store or the shelves.

Even when I had a little more money, and could buy what I wanted, the times i did the most journaling was when I was Out — on my bike with a backpack full of just the journal, pens, watercolors and glu-sticks.  (And masking tape, because apparently, there are just as many uses for that as there are for duct tape, but it’s not as sticky. :>)

There is a lesson in here for me, people.  One that I keep getting reminded of, from time to time, when I sit very quietly and listen to the voice of wisdom in my head.  I have this realization, in varying forms, over and over again.  And then I get all crazy busy and desirous of time to create, and stock up on so many art supplies and books that I’d never get through it all in a year (or ten), and wonder why I don’t do anything at all.

Well, duh.

I’m hoping this time, even though I didn’t have to slash-and-burn everything in my posession, I’ll learn my lessons well, and avoid the Restocking Of Creative Stiflement(tm).

We’ll see how it goes.

I’ll finish these papers up here in a bit, and if the weather cooperates, get pictures of them today.  Wish me luck, I’m going in.

So in the mail today was my wacom tablet.  And you KNOW I had to try that out.  New toy, duh.

It still feels like I’m drawing with the mouse.  And I can’t quite get used to the whole idea of looking at the screen instead of my hands for the relativity factor.  It’s very, very weird.

I know it’s just a matter of reframing how I’m seeing things, and developing a new way of drawing.  So it’s a little like riding a bike, I’m sure — my first few attempts are going to be odd (like this one), with weird perspective and crazy lines and wobbly hands, but I figure if I practice a little, it’ll be as much a second nature as the real, non-bamboo pen.

I’m sure it was that way with the physical pen, too, but I don’t really remember all of that so much.  I’ve just been drawing what I see for so long that I just *know*.  I look, I draw, it doesn’t always look like what I’m seeing, but I figure it’s going through my own perception-filter anyway, so I just draw again.  And again, and again….

It’s a busy day for me today, so the practicing will have to wait.  But I’m really looking forward to doing it all again.  Seeing whether I can’t match up paper drawing and tablet drawing.  It’d make life a lot easier, in some respects.

Today, there are houses to be cleaned, guest beds to be made up, dinner to burn…er…cook.   There’ll be a housefull of people after 4; weekend guests by ten.

I’m surrounded by new stimuli, old friends.

It doesn’t get any better than this.

Well, now. That didn’t take me as long as I thought it would. (Usually, editing pictures takes for-freakin’-ever, but there were only three, so t’was quicker than I remembered.)

This week’s Worden Challenge, on the topic of Simplicity:

Her challenge was to do a piece on Simplicity, but in 3-D if you usually do flat stuff and vice versa. So I found one of my old boxes that was splitting a bit on the sides and the black and white paint, grabbed some river rocks and a copy of Walden, and here she be.

I’ve been really drawn to the whole idea of simplicity and simplification lately. Paring down things to just what’s needed and called for, and burning the excess. Ironically, paring down and simplifying…? A lot of very hard work.

Over the next few weeks, I’m going to continue to de-clutter the studio, for instance. Which, in theory, shouldn’t be all that hard. Just find the things I don’t use, and either use them and throw them out, right?

The problem isn’t in the THINGS, per se, but the MEANING of things. Or at least that’s where I keep getting hung up. I have a bunch of soldering supplies, for instance. I’m never going to use them. I know this about myself — I don’t have the time to perfect that particular technique to the point where I could make things I’d be happy with. And even if I did drag it all out and make a bunch of stuff, it’d be largely useless, because I’m just plain ol’ not interested in making jewelry or frou-frou decorative stuff. So even IF I got it out and played, I’d end up with a bunch of half-assed charms with no purpose.

So it should be easy for me to just ditch it all. I should be able to drag the garbage bag to that side of the room, throw it all in there (or in the donation box), and call it good, right?

Not so, kimosabe. Because I learned how to do the whole thing when I was still making a lot of altered books. And my friend Jill showed me how. We sat at her place (or maybe someone else’s; I can’t remember now…) during an Artgirls meeting, and made these charms with glass slides and soldering guns, and mine came out pretty good, for altered booking purposes, at least. I remember driving home through the blue light of Seattle’s evening, and thinking that if I could just get a soldering iron of my own, I’d totally make a bunch of these things. But I was broke-ass at the time, and couldn’t afford to think about an iron for very long, much less buy one.

So when I finally saved up and bought one, quickly making a bunch of charms that, quite honestly, stunk…I remember my friend. I remember that day. I remember how good it felt when I finally had the cash to buy it all. I think not just about the applications of those little charms, but also of home.

Aw, damn.

Can you see why the decluttering is going so slowly? (Unless there are several shots of Ouzo involved, making things much simpler….? As in, “if it’s sitting still, it goes in the bag” simple.)

I know my THINGS are not my MEMORIES. And my things aren’t me, either. As I’m getting more time and distance from experiences and things, I’m much more likely to get rid of them, in preparation for my life *now*, which needs a lot more space to do what I want to do and am good at. I may be reclaiming a lot of myself that I’d abandoned in the years hence, but where I am now is nowhere near where I was *then*. In order to be open to the possibilities, I need to put to rest the things that happened before and have a little honesty about what things really mean.

I still have my friends. I don’t need the supplies to prove it. Not even to myself.

If you need me, I’ll be in my studio, shuffling off those soldering supplies.

(eta:  I mentioned selling off most of my books.  I forgot to mention the link to see ‘em, if you’re into knitting or artstuff.)

When my hands are covered in paint, I feel like a real, grown up artist.

And since I’ve been decluttering the studio (no, really….over the past four days, I’ve shuttled off more than 700 items total, 500 just *yesterday* to donate to a local school district.), I feel a lot more grown up in general.

Made an ATC or two, carved stamps every day thusfar, and I’m working on this week’s Worden Challenge (under the topic of “simplicity”), so there will be a larger post later on today or tomorrow.

Just wanted to share in the painted hands glee.

Guys, I really wish I had a bunch of crazy artwork to show you, but really…I don’t.   Between being a mucous-laden lump of girlflesh and the frenzied housecleaning that came right after the first nostril opened up to let air pass through (I get weird energy spikes.  I blame the extra, unexpected oxygen.)…I’ve done almost nothing.

So have a picture of a stone hippo instead:

Doesn’t he just make you happy?

Maybe it’s just me.

He’s on top of my television cabinet, hanging out and eating chee-toes.  More hanging out than the other.

I’ve updated the carved stamp gallery over there on the right, and I have one from today to scan and get in there, too, at some point today.  Those things-a-day have been just about all I could do, especially when my body really just kind of wanted to lay there and drip all over.  Kleenex was my only friend.

So sick was I that I didn’t even SPIN.  And considering the New Toy, that’s saying something.  However, now that the Ick appears to be mostly gone, with the occasional coughing fit left over to remind me of its presence, I’m planning on getting that saddle-stitch tutorial for letterblog done today, and probably make a few more gluepapers, since I’m still not *quite* up for dragging out a bunch of supplies that I’d have to put back afterward.  (The gluepaper stuff is still on my table from last time.)

I’ll get pictures if I don’t pass out too early.  Apparently, my body wanted to go to bed around 9 last night, and wake up this morning at 2 a.m., raring to go.  Two. A. M., people.  If I live to be a hundred, I’ll never understand the weirdness that is my physiology.

On the plus side, I’ve been bagging up all these stamps, and once they get logbooks (possibly today, during the tutorial-making), they’re actual *letterboxes*.  Which means I’m amassing a major load of them to be planted when the snow stops flying and the ground dries out.  I just keep thinking about how awesome it’s going to be when there are a hundred of them here in the Omaha metro area, half of them mine.  I figure it’ll attract in some new letterboxers, which means even more for me to find.  It gives me the happysighs.

Off to make waffles. :)

I made an ATC last night for Jen Worden’s challenge, but it will NEVER SEE THE LIGHT OF DAY.

Y’know how sometimes, despite a great intention and a nice little picture in your head of what you’re wanting to make, the final result comes out looking like a five-year-old may have overindulged on some cherry licorice and puked it all up on your canvas?

Um.  Yeah.  It’s kind of like that.  *shudder*

One of the components of this week’s Worden Creativity Challenge was to give what you’ve made to a complete stranger as a thank you for going above and beyond the call of duty.  Since giving this to a stranger would be kind of like saying, “Thank you!  I hate you!”, I’m giving it to the Ultimate Stranger:  I’m sending it to the White House for Mr. Bush.

After all, he’s  done so much for this country that’s deserving of a little Valentine’s Day love-puke, he should be rewarded with an ATC.

(insert an innocent eye-batting grin here.)

Other than that, I woke this morning with The Plague that’s going around.  Adminnie’s had it for the past week, and I’ve been sidestepping it all week long.  Given that my immune system is weaker than an eight-year-old math geek, it was only a matter of time, and I’m a snuffly, coughing, sore-throated, nauseated mess this morning.  I took some DayQuil; hopefully at least the legal speed will get me out of this chair and into the studio at some point today.

Which reminds me — I was in a bit of a panic last night when I realized that I’ve managed to carve through the entirety of the carving material in my posession.  (Which is why the Rock Star stamp was so small, by the way….it was all the material I had left.)  I have a couple big sheets of rubber that isn’t so hot for carving smaller stamps (no detail; it’s too rubbery for it), and I was resigned to having to do very simple stamps for the next week or so, considering I ordered more PZKut on Thursday from StampEaz.com.

This morning?  Priority envelope in the mail with five sheets of the good stuff.  Talk about good timing.  (And fabulous service!)  I. am. saved.  Friends don’t let friends carve with bad material.

Probably another post from me later (if I don’t collapse into a virus-laden pool of girl-goo) with the results of the day’s spinning and some more artstuffs.

Stupid germs.

I did that, above, yesterday. It’s a carved stamp, of course, and the logbook that will travel around with it, based on a true story of a goose who was born without feet and the farmer who loved him so much that the farmer made the goose some little shoes to replace his feet. Adam, the goose, wore those shoes everywhere, until he was abducted and murdered in 1989, despite a ten THOUSAND dollar reward that his fans ponied up.

You can’t make this stuff up, people.

Normally, I don’t show my letterbox stuff here, but since this is going to be a hitch-hiker (a mini-stamp/book that travels from box to box and has no set location as “home”), I figured I’d out myself. If you run across it while letterboxing, you can totally email me to squee. :)

Other than one stamp a day (today’s is in the gallery already), and The Cooking Of The Dinner, I’ve really been doing only one thing: Spinning.

I have a good reason, though. The Woolee Winder I ordered, that I’ve been drooling over and wanting FOREVER….arrived today. From the minute it arrived and the box was opened, I was ready to chew off my own arm to spin something. I had a moment where I thought I might wait to put it on until after I finished the regular bobbin I already have started. A feeling that lasted, oh, say, about TWO SECONDS.

There was a bit of a learning curve, but now, I’m spinning like crazy. It’s still slow, since I’m doing very thin singles (not as thin as I get with my regular bobbin yet, but I’m learning), which takes forEVER to finish, but not having to move the slider bar is soooo worth the cost. And the bobbins are bigger, so I should be able to get all four ounces of any given color onto one bobbin now.

It’s swoon-worthy. I’m really sensing a week where the only list items being worked on are my netflix queue and the spinning. But since those are both big, fat items with lots of work to be done, I’m okay with that. It *does* mean that I’m a kind of boring blogger, though — most spinning-in-progress pictures look exactly the same. (“Look! Fiber singles!”…..”Look! Fiber singles!”….”Uh, look? Fiber singles!”….”Fiber again!”….”Oh, screw it, you know what they look like.”)

“Collage Unleashed” is still sitting here on my desk. I keep thinking I want to make more of the japanese-style gluepapers, but there have been Big Fat Work Things to do (and spinning, duh…), so it’s beginning to languish. As a result, at some point this weekend, I plan to do some embellishing per the end of the exercise I’m on, and moving on to the next one, considering this one finished for now. The next three are pretty simple — collaging with words (which I do already), collaging with textured paper (which I’m skipping because i don’t HAVE any textured paper, since I kinda always thought it was a little tackylooking.) and collaging with washed photocopies.

I think I’ll aim to do all three (if I can find textured paper tomorrow somewhere around the studio) by Sunday. And I still have Jen Worden’s exercise from last week to do, so that’ll probably end up as some ATCs.

This is kind of turning into a State of the Art post, so I’ll quit for now. Considering my wheel + woolee winder are calling me again. Spinning’s fun again, though, so I want to ride the New Toy momentum as long as I can so I can cull that fiber down a bit.

It’s all good, right?

Stitch & Bitch was at my house tonight, and my sleep schedule is a little wonky.  (As you may be able to tell from the timestamp on this post — it really is 3 a.m. here.)

So I don’t have scans of the last two days’ worth of stamps, and I haven’t updated the list today, but it’s been a productive couple of days.

Pictures, when I’m better rested.  Give me until Saturday or so.  Possibly tomorrow, but it’s a bit packed full of Scheduled Work Items at the moment.  (And watching Lost online, because come ON….a girl’s got to have her priorities.)

So while I’m gone — what are you folks working on?  According to bloglines, there are at least 170 of you reading, so spill it, people!  Inspire me with your projects. :)