21 Secrets: Improvisation Station

Because of a paint overload I decided to do Natasha's Improvisation Station course next and it has been great!

First we wrote intros for ourselves. Mine ended up as a huge list of labels, like sister, aunt, nerd.... Qualities such as academic, reserved... things I have done or do including jobs I have done and hobbies.... But all this was not me, it is just the choices I make and how I am perceived. Someone could write the exact the same list and be a very, very different person. Not that it doesn't say a lot, but not the things I really want to say about ME, the person inside....

So it got ripped up.

Then we wrote a second intro under Natasha's guidance and this is what I wrote.....

I am the cool of a Summer's morning. I am the mud between your toes. I am the lines, that meet and play and talk and get knotted together. I am the hug of a cozy jumper. I am the book beneath the bed, the page dropped in a puddle. I am the colours that run, to somewhere new. I am the dream awaiting in the wings for you to just let go and sleep. I am the roots that twist together beneath your feet and the leaves that twist and dance in the breeze above your head. I am the colours smudged across the sky saying hello and good bye to the Sun, the Moon and the Stars as they spin on by. I am the moment before you open your eyes, held awake in the web of the dreaming world.

Which felt alot more like me, but what exactly it means was a bit hard for me to interpret but never fear! Ms Natasha was on hand to help and this is what she said.....

That cool on a summer morning is so refreshing as are YOU! The things that you share are unique and come from a place that is fascinating within you. YOU are inspiring just as you are. Mud between your toes can be irritating or it can be such fun to squish...often when people find others irritating it's because they are shedding some light on the truth that one does not want to see...however the ability to see truth in others and help them to see it is a gift...that's how I see you. I think you have the ability to see truth. I also think you have a gift for fun - you bring such lighthearted goodness to life. GREAT image of the lines meeting and playing and getting knotted - another illustration of the distinctive voice and perspective you have on life. This illustrates your playful side I think and love...when I think of getting knotted together, I think of trust, love and the freedom to be who you are when with someone you enjoy. I think people often feel love from you. Ah the hug of the jumper - you are warm, so warm that people could disappear into your hug and feel safe. These lines are so wonderful - the book beneath the bed..you are the magic that people discover. They stumble upon you like that book and they wonder about the light they have in their lives after they have met you. You are a secret goodness, a secret sunbeam. The page in the puddle - the words may fade but you can still make out that there is an interesting story on it....you are an interesting story with much to say and though some things could be lost in translation all the important things always shine through. Colors - you are FILLED with color, lots of colors and you blend them so beautifully like the emotions and experiences in your life they run together and explore new lands....you don't need to know the destination just the colors are enough to inspire exploration. Dreams are magical...they seem to make no sense logically but they make sense in another more beautiful sense - YOU make sense in all realms. YOU bring the colors and the imagination to all that you do and you do it outside the box, you do it in a way that tears down the limits and allows room to breathe, play and bask in the beauty of the imagination. Whether you are the roots or the leaves you are all connection - you are an example of the beautiful connection that exists between people in your life and nature and the world around you. You are so open that the world exists in the middle of your chest and each of your limbs sprouts love like leaves on branches. You are the celebration of color and the Universe...you allow yourself to grow larger, to be fully YOU and reach up to the heavens...that is a gift! You are the bridge between the world where things are limited and limitless and because you have existed in both you are able to show others how to lose their limits and find the beauty of their true soul. YOU are phenomenal..YOU are the celebration and I jump in to be a part of it all!

And how lovely is that? So worth doing this course just for Natasha's enthusiastic and loving interpretation! *gives Natasha a huge hug*

Then you use Natasha's further guidance and prompts to produce a lovely journal page with the ripped up bits of your first intro as an element....

And here's mine!

I Do

I have time off. Two days either side of a weekend. I have a looong list of things to do. I want to bring some order to my humble house. I want to do my invites - play with paint, smooshed on between the lines of a stencil. I want to make multi-coloured magpies, imbued with their own magpie wings. I want to finish my irritating pallet bed - before I start to scream at those pallets sat everywhere. I am considering the idea of a car boot, but wondering if I can get that far along with stuff in time.... I want to carry on reading the highly addictive and time consuming Game of Thrones...

Presents keep arriving in the mail for me and I love them all. Some have not gone quite to plan... The lovely bouquet I ordered is not really quite the right colour and I am hoping it will be alright with my bridesmaids dress. The buttonhole for F is wonderful and has no lilac... They are both sooo beautiful!

I had new clothes, new books and then new pens as well. I bought a set of Sakura 3D Glaze pens. My aim was to use the beautiful embossed effect on my wedding stationery. Except that what the website I was using did not make clear is that these pens only give the embossed on smooth surfaces. I had a hard job choosing the paper for the inners of my invites and Orders of Service and wedding details. I was looking at a vellum and a beautiful white parchment. I went with the parchment and this is not smooth.... That arrived this week with my beautiful silver shimmer card....

My pens are beautiful and I love them... but.... So I ordered some more. This time the metaalics set and an extra blackmetallic pen because it is not in the set... and a white souffle to complement my Glaze set. And a basic gelly roll pen or two in black and white. And maybe a set of Aquash pens to... *giggle* I love art supplies. I covet Sakura pens..... My wedding is one big art fest and this is a poorly designed excuse to gather new pens to me! (ones I might not normally be able to justify buying....)

21 Secrets has been extended which is great for me, because things seem soooo busy right now and I want to do everything in it.... I have played with the content of about six of the courses, although I have not posted all of them.... I htink I have posted two. I have a almost completed post, waiting for a photo so I can praise the lovely Natasha... I need to get my written stuff so i can talk about Three Little Words. I played with Urban Layer Cake and can see how it would work but I am not prepared to buy the paste I need to make it work properly.... I also need to carry on with Child's Play....

I have a problem with creativity right now though - my table is covered in wool and glass. Mostly glass. I need to find somewhere else to put my purchases. Maybe a box would be a good plan!

I also got my sketchbook through but I don't see much happening with that until the wedding is fully under control.

You know I have to say, blogging changed my life. Writing helps me understand what is going on with me. i gave me courage to do the things I love. My life is all about growing these days and learning and I have so much to be enthusiastic about, to look forward to. Four days off in a row with no work is not long enough! The faint depression that has dogged a large part of my life, sometimes growing like a huge cloud to envelope me, has evaporated, blown away by hte winds of doing....

What are you going to do today?

21 Secrets: Playing with Pattern

So next, I played with pattern with the help of Debra Cooper. And I just love this class soooo much. I like geometry and shape and line and pattern very much. I think it is the science geek / maths geek in me. I remember once I bought some beautiful cloth for a project that was made using batik I think but the patterns were just so lovely and so layered and looked so tricky. It never occurred to me that I could do this, or how.

Now I know....

SO I guess the thing I love most about this, next to how wonderful the results are, is just how many ways you can use it.... A real versatile technique and now I want to buy some medium stuf you can mix with acrylics to turn them in to fabric paints.... and I want more chunky stamps and more stencils........ and spray paints.....

21 Secrets: Becoming Brave

So this weekend saw the beginning of 21 Secrets and I decided to go for it. With 21 classes, it is kinda hard picking what to do first... So I signed up for all of them. Except I managed to miss one. So I decided that I would do that one first and it was a class called Becoming Brave by Erin Kenepp.


The end product of this class is a journal with a cover and four dividers to act as a jumping off point for Becoming bravE. I enjoyed doing this class because it is lovely to see how other people work and create their effects. It was great to look at this because it helped me understand what I should be doing with some of the things in my art stash....


The other great thing is that it helped me become unstuck.....


A while ago I had an idea. I don't much like being fat. Fat is not pretty or healthy so it is sometimes hard for me to love my body. But as I look at myself naked I have begun to see that some of the lines of my body are beautiful in their symmetry. I had the idea of photographing myself and using those lines as the basis for abstract colourful pieces of art. But I never got round to doing it....


I signed up for Jamie Ridler's Sparkles as well and unfortunately the first prompt was to take a photo of yourself. It just didn't happen. And it got me stuck on the whole Sparkles thing too....

So in Becoming Brave, when I got to the Body tab I groaned. Photo's of myself. oh dear..... but I eventually went and took them - sometimes you just have to give in when life is kicking you to do something. So I took F's camera and went to the bedroom and discovered a fun setting that allows you to create blurry photos.


I had a bit of fun and I chose to use a photo F took of me at Watergate Bay after visiting Fifteen and a blurry photo of my face. I also got a stack of photos that I can use for my other project. Plus a few that will definitely NEVER see the light of day! I am so glad that the days of sending film to the developer are gone!


Anyway, I remembered as I was off to bed that I might have just closed my laptop rather than switching it off. So I asked F to check it for me. Before he went to work this morning we were chatting and it seems I had left one of the photos open on my desktop, which caused him to go exploring all of them *blush*

*laugh*
So a good class for me and combined with other things, all good. Got me moving in sooo many ways!