creative abandon

I had so much fun making this mess! I also learned something really important - I need to buy a timer for the studio so I don't have to carry the kitchen timer back and forth all the time. I did Julianna Cole's mail art exercise from Kaleidoscope by Suzanne Siminaitis. I really like this book - it's packed with great ideas and exercises and best of all, lots of advice on getting over perfectionism and just getting down to making stuff.

My hands turned out very pretty after my play session.

My postcards turned out very pretty too. This exercise involves gathering a bunch of supplies and then doing each step in a very quick, intuitive way. You have either 5 or 10 minutes for each step and you set the timer and stop when time is up. Ohmigosh is this liberating!

You actually aren't supposed to make anything pretty with this exercise, but I found that when I didn't have time to think, things just effortlessly fell into themes and pretty compositions. It actually would have been harder for me to make things unpretty. Hmm, wonder what that says about me?


I love how fresh these postcards feel. They seem so much better to me than something I spent a long time agonizing over, trying to be perfect.

I also learned that it's much easier to give yourself a short amount of time to do just one step rather than saying "I have one hour to make something." No pressure to make a whole piece, all I have to do for the next 5 minutes is slap some paint down. All in all, a great exercise and a really fun play session.

Hmm, blogger doesn't like titles these days. This little square is 5"x5". I've always been intrigued by the projects where artists make a small piece every day or every week. I've reached a point in my creative journey where I'm feeling the need to instill a bit of discipline in my working habits. I need to just do the work, do lots of it and quit being so precious about it. I tend to procrastinate because I want everything I make to be perfect. This is a really good way to not make anything and I need to get over it. So the idea is to make a little square every week or so, something small and simple that I can carry around and work on whenever I have a minute or two. And just go with the idea, make quick decisions and live with them, don't fuss and fret over it. So when something doesn't turn out like I want it to, like the beads in the center of the flower, just leave them and remember to not do it that way the next time. It was really hard to leave those beads there.

Yes I did have corn and raspberries for dinner. OK, I had some bruschetta too. With fresh garlic and gorgonzola. And I'm having raspberries for breakfast. Oh how I love summer!

The shoveling out of the house means access to lots of places that are usually closed off to the little cat. Here he is luxuriating on top of my shorts and t-shirts on a shelf in the walk-in closet. Wednesday he pulled everything on the first three shelves of the linen closet out onto the floor. And Thursday, when I organized the far-flung bead collection into those little compartmentalized boxes? A pile of bead tubes is one form of little cat heaven!