Your Work is to Discover Your Work

My ATC group recently had a theme of favorite quotes. It was hard to choose my favorite quote, but finally I settled on a Buddha quote. Not that I am a Buddhist...but it spoke to me and my new-agey hippie-wannabe leanings. And it speaks of the fact that I have always loved art, but other people and things kept detouring me from that path because it wasn't a practical choice. Art is indeed the thing that makes me happiest and what I run to whenever I have a free minute, what I lie in bed thinking about at night--planning designs in my head, visualizing colors and textures and remembering the intoxicating smell of art supplies.

August: Rediscovering Journaling

Somehow I got really busy and forgot about journaling...when some of my friends started talking about the journal project, where you get a moleskin journal, pick a theme, and then send the finished journal off to be part of a traveling show, it sparked my interest. No, not to be part of the project--I just couldn't part with my work, museum show or not. But I did make some new journals. Okay, I didn't really make them, I just cover the front with scrappy fabric to make them my own.

Sometimes I write, sometimes I sketch, sometimes I paint, sometimes I design. and not every day. It is a place with no rules, no pressure, no perfection.

Here's what I have been up to lately...A is for Amanda, a tribute to my daughter Amanda and her 22nd (!) birthday; D is for darvocet, which I took for really bad bursitis in my hip and got a nasty allergic reaction to; some of my latest fabric designs and the sketche I made the paisley from; pink eyes and rainbow lips, a two piece face I did one night with some leftover children's watercolors and cheap brush and a snippet of a quote idea for an ATC trade [I ended up using another quote, but I do love this one "The mind is like a drunken monkey, reeling from place to place with no rhyme or reason." Isn't that the truth?

I am having a 'stay-cation' this week, so I hope to spend the week sunning myself and doing art, possibly at the same time.

I finally finished the reiki healing quilt. Took me a while to get around to edging it. I used a commercial batik that seemed to go with the fabric, and patches of my own purple soy batik in the corners. I have been using it when I meditate (well, I don't meditate often enough of course, but having the quilt on my bed inspires me to take more quiet time for myself) and used it when I gave my daughter a reiki treatment recently. I am thinking of putting a sleeve on it so it can hang on a wall, but I like being able to use it as a mini blanket, so I can't decide.

My next plan is to make a healing quilt using my own fabrics. Oh, and I have also designed some reiki healing fabric using the 12 symbols of the world's major religions. It is enroute from spoonflower, the company that prints custom fabric. I made it in purple and white, and tried to get the shade to match my posters of the reiki healing symbol.

July Fabrics

Here's a couple of new fabric designs I have been working on. I am not entirely happy with the purple ones...the pansy layout looks kind of stiff and is smaller than I planned, and the purple batik came out really dark...but one of my SAQA Visioning Project cohorts looooves pansies and wants to [maybe] buy some, so I guess I shouldn't be too hard on myself.

I redid the batik...lightened the color and made the repeat larger...just ordered new samples from spoonflower.com, so I'll see how it turns out.