Foxy

I wrote this post last night, and thought I hit publish...but in a sleepiness-induced haze, I apparently hit save instead...so hopefully it will still count as yesterday's post and I've got one more chance to win the class seat!  Anyway, here's the post:

This is the last post for the Blogalong with Effy.  I had a lot of...incidentals...come up, and I wasn't able to achieve all 30 posts in 30 days...BUT I did post a lot more than I would have if I hadn't committed to try.  So YAY!  I've thought about the fact that September has 30 days, so I may undertake my very own version of 30 posts in 30 days and try again...it can only contribute to me being a little more consistent in my posting, right?  I kind of like that I live in a world of infinite do-overs...

And because I am a glutton for challenges, I am REALLY excited about this (If I did it right, you should be able to click on the picture and it will take you to the site...If I did it right...if not, I know the button in the sidebar to the right does work...):

It combines my INTENSE OBSESSION with faces and my love of challenges I will probably fail at! (Haha!)  Seriously though, I am super excited about getting all that face practice in...so even if I don't manage to make 29 faces, I'll still be happy I got the face practice in!  And since it happens to coincide with my do-over 30 posts in 30 days, be prepared for lots of face related art posting in September...

In the meantime, here is what I got done today:

"Perhaps that sly fox had not come to steal her heart away."

Yes, another page in Gregg...I am really liking Gregg so much...not that you can tell... *eye roll*  His beautiful journal-y self makes me ridiculously happy...  This anthropomorphic fox also makes me happy.  Big words like 'anthropomorphic' also make me happy.  Not having to work at my day job for the next three days makes me VERY happy!

I'm saying goodnight at a happiness high!  Happy squishes for you all!!!

I Must Be Heard

Before I got all sickly like, I had ordered a few things (literally a few...two crafter's workshop stencils, a mask and a set of masks from Maya Road, and a trial size bottle of Ranger's Crackle Accents) from Joann's online...probably the last crafty purchase in the foreseeable future.  But they didn't arrive till I was in the throws of sickliness, so I didn't get to play with them until I got out of the hospital...and even then it was just to spray some ink through my new stencils (mini fish scales and mini harlequin) and to use the big wing mask and see what they were like.  For the record, they are awesome...

I kept looking at the page with the stenciled ink thinking how much I really love the new toys...and all of the sudden I wanted to paint a face on...and not really my usual face...a SHINY GOLD FACE.  I don't know what it was about the page, but I wanted to just pour gold all over it...that's not like me!

So here's what I made:

See???  She's very SHINY...I used dylusions in the background, martha stewart pearl and metallic paints for the face, and perfect pearls for some highlighting (lips, eyes, and lettering).

So out came this shiny girl, who I have struggled to define...  She's got wings, but she's not a fairy...she's not an angel... all the shiny reminded me of some kind of ancient idol, but she's not that either.  I didn't really intend for her to 'be' anything, really just to paint a face...but when I was looking at her, valkyrie popped into my head.  I think because in my brain, a valkyrie denotes a powerful woman or a woman who is a protector...I then googled valkyrie, because I wanted to know what they really were supposed to be, and wikipedia had an interesting short little read about them (which you can find HERE if you would like).

I suppose it's kind of fitting, because this face spread has an interesting feature... I had originally done a face with my aquamarkers on the left page, but I didn't like it very much, so I just sprayed over it with the inks, thinking it would mostly be covered up...and it is.  You can see it in the above picture, if you look closely, but I only really saw it strongly when I was playing around with the Picsart app on my phone and used the "Invert" function:

See the ghostly image of the face that was?  I kind of REALLY LIKE TO A RIDICULOUS DEGREE that this other gal is secretly behind the main shiny gal.  I don't want to say hiding...in my brain, it's more like Shiny stepped in front of the other girl...almost to protect her.  I don't know which one of them is demanding to be heard.  And I don't know if I'm the gal in the background, the one who needs protected, or if I'm the valkyrie that's doing the protecting, or if I'm both of these girls...  Yeah, kind of weird, I know, but all this stuff just popped into my brain as I was messing around with the photo app...what can I say...I've been on pain killers...they've clearly affected my mind... (haha)

When I started thinking about the picture, I realized that I've got an intense desire to be...coddled (?) right now.  This is not my usual way, let me assure you.  In my real life...my non-internet, day-to-day life...I've always been the strong one.  I've been independent pretty much since I popped out of the womb, I think.  I've been held accountable for my actions, I've paid my dues, I've been there for those around me in every way it's been possible.  And I don't think there's anything wrong with that necessarily.  I know I can do things for myself, and that's a positive thing.  I want to help people if I can.  But every great once in a while, I need someone in my day to day life to be that person for me.  Don't get me wrong, the love and support from all my friends online is something I am extremely grateful for.  But I need that from the people who are around me on a daily basis sometimes too.  I don't need to be sick, in pain, and hospitalized and then have to deal with trivialities.  That's NOT ok.  Maybe, for once, I need to be cut a little slack.

The problem is my fault, at least partly.  I never ask for this.  I don't think I have ever in my life asked for someone to let me lean on them.  I know what my place is...I am the supporter.  I am not the one who needs support.  Since that's the way I've always been, that's the way I am treated...in basically all the relationships I have.  And it makes me...disgruntled...that no one seems to take it upon themselves to look at me in a different light.  But, people are oblivious...not out of spite or on purpose necessarily, but they are.  And it's not fair for me to expect them to be otherwise...nor is it realistic.  And so all of the angry feelings that are welling up inside of me right now... they're all misguided.  

If I am needing support, I need to ask for it.  I can't keep sitting still and waiting for change to happen, when it hasn't happened for thirty years...that's the definition of crazy!  So it's high time I ask for the things I need. If the support still doesn't come, then, yes, I am totally going to allow myself to be upset over it...and rethink my relationships.   But maybe I'll ask for it and actually receive it.  Maybe, if I speak up, I can be heard.

Inner Excavations Week Four

This week's chapter for Inner Excavations has been "I see me..." and deals with how we see ourselves verses how other people see us, as well as the whole 'body issues' thing.  

In a previous post, I showed the photo I used (of myself) as a basis for this painting, and it was fun for me to see what people's reactions were.  I've done this before in one of the Facebook groups I'm in too.  It's also happened to me at my job, where I talk to people extensively on the phone without meeting them...then when I finally do meet them, it's interesting to gauge the reactions.  I tend to get a lot of "That's not what I thought you'd look like...at all...".  I get that one a lot when meeting the phone conversation type people from my work.  I honestly think that one's due to the fact that I have a phone voice that is what I like to call "high school cheerleader voice"...which does not really match my physical appearance so much.  It makes first meetings a little bit of a let down for the other person, if said person is interested in the ladies...  On the positive side, I could easily get a position as a phone sex operator if times got tough.  

I also get a lot of "cute" and "adorable" comments.  Which I'm totally good with...I mean, I AM cute and adorable!  :)  But it's taken me a really long time to come to terms with that.  One of the ladies I work with likes to tell me "Not every man likes a skinny girl...it takes all kinds."  Which, is true, although I think it comes with a little bit of pity/this-is-the-nice-thing-to-say attached when she says it.  There are totally guys out there who think thin girls are grody and thick girls are made for cuddling.  I'm married, so their opinions are pretty much meaningless for me either way.  But they ARE out there my single thick girls...way more than I realized when I was a single lady...so don't lose hope! 

Three years ago, when I first stared at the job I'm at now, before anybody really knew me/knew I was married, I had three separate incidences of guys being interested in me as a...'lady friend'...bow-chicka-bow-wow.  It was the craziest thing that ever happened to me.  I think mostly because I am oblivious to flirting. You basically have to honk a boob or try to suck on my tonsils before I realize you're being anything more than friendly.  So I never really think people are flirting, I just think they're being nice.  But these were pretty direct advances that even oblivious ole me could pick up on... 

I was telling my sister about my experiences right after they happened (because they kept getting progressively more...forward...and if there had been one more, he would have had to just pull out his wiener and slap me in the forehead with it for it to be any more "forward" than it was) and I remember that the thing I was most surprised about was that 'these guys don't even know me'. 

As I told my sister, I am, and have always been (except for the year and a half of being a skinny girl when I was 19/20 years old), the kind of girl that is friend first, building into more.  ALWAYS.  I mean, I'm not a hideous beast monster or anything, but I'm no prize pig either...and I tend to win dudes over with my personality.  (My personality is really sexy! haha)  I don't just catch somebody's eye when I walk past them!  I'm not that girl!  But here were three different instances in close succession which told me otherwise!  And I was kind of freaked out by it!  They were messing with my reality!  

This was part of my sister's response, directly quoted out of the email she sent me when all this happened (I keep the really important ones!  My sister is a wealth of knowledge/info/hilariousness!): "Obviously, you are not as physically ogre-like as you tell yourself because people do find you attractive even without [knowing of] your cunning, wit, and charm...not to mention your crafty skills..."

This was a big turning point for me, I think, regarding how I viewed myself.  Before this, I basically knew that people could 'get past' my physical appearance because (as previously mentioned) I have a good personality...but here was three separate evidences in short order that some people actually enjoyed my physical appearance!  That was an entirely new concept for me!  I basically learned that maybe that guy isn't looking at me because I have something stuck in my teeth...or a low hanging booger...or whatever.  Maybe that guy is looking at me because he thinks I'm hot stuff!  It was a radical concept for me...

I guess, more than thinking about how I see me vs. how others see me, I have been thinking about how I see me now compared to how I used to see me...because I didn't really have an accurate idea of what others thought of me at all.  I used to think of myself as plain...boring...annoying to others... an acquired taste...a total weirdo that was 'off-putting' to most people.  As I've gotten older (and possibly wiser), I've come to see that I was looking at things in the wrong light.  I'm not plain.  I'm cute and adorable!  In general, I'm DEFINITELY not boring...  I'm not annoying or off-putting, people like to be around me...people choose to be around me.  I might not be everybody's cup of tea, but for some, I'm their favorite flavor! 

The reason I say that this is more about how I see me than how other people do, when all the above things have to do with how people view me, is that, while I'm changing and growing as a person, I haven't completely overhauled my personality.  I've progressed, I've gotten rid of a lot of baggage, and I've matured, but for the most part, I'm still the same person.  Outwardly, I haven't changed a whole heaping huge amount.  But inwardly, the person I am now is vastly different.  I could have felt confident in myself all along, but I didn't.  I could have accepted (what I view as) my quirks and understood that those 'weird' ways are what make me interesting...but I didn't.  I wasn't at that point yet.  

I saw this quote a while ago that says "The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are."  I think that in my case, it should read 'accepting who you are'.  It's taken me thirty years, but I finally am learning that it's ok to be who exactly who I am.  Sure I have faults and flaws that I want to work on, things I want to improve about myself, and ways I still need to grow as a person...I'm sure I will continue to grow and evolve till the day I die...I hope so anyway.  But learning that, overall, at the heart of everything, who I am is just fine, that it's something to be proud of...that's been a real privilege for me.

And so here's the finished spread for Week Four of Inner Excavations: 

"I move forward.  I look at the past with love.  I will not look back with regret, because regret will only hold me back and I am determined to press on.  I am a work in progress and I am moving forward all the time.  Nothing can stop me.  I am a constant work in progress..."  The "I move forward" and the part on the left page are both stamps, the rest is just my (attempt at legible) handwriting.  The "I move forward" letters didn't show up well (there are pretty designs in the letters in the actual stamps)  so I went over and colored them in so that they would stand out.  I like that they are so BOLD! 

Thanks to Mo and Pamikins for the help with the journaling on this.  They both hit the nail on the head with their suggestions, and I really like the message combined with the painting in this.  It makes me super happy!

I did make a few changes to the face in this, including adding some shadow to the hair and changing the nose.  Thank you to Bibi for the suggestion about the nose, I think it is much improved now, and thank you to  Raine for pointing out the angles being different...it worked out much better with that new photo as a reference for the shading.  Now I feel like I've got two new tools in my arsenal of face making skills for the future as well!!!

I had written a lot of this post before the whole hospital stay happened, but just finished it up today.  I am still pretty puny, but am feeling even better today than I did yesterday, so fingers crossed that I will continue in the upward direction!  Thanks for all the well wishes and sweet words from yesterday's post.  I promise I will get back to all the comments, it's just gonna take some time, but I don't want you to think I would forget!  I am sending squishy love in all directions to meet each of you. <3

On and on...

Words can't really express my gratitude for all the kind and beautiful comments from yesterday's post.  Every single on of them made my heart swell  with love.  You can't imagine how much you all lift me up and make me want to just give you gigantic smooches and squishes.  Thank you all so very much.

I was thinking about all the kind comments I received yesterday while I was trying to work on the spread for my BOD (Book of Days) journal.  I also had some music going on in the background, as I always do.  There was this serendipitous moment where I stopped working and looked up at the computer, still having the comments from yesterday's post on the screen, and my eyes landed on my lovely Pamikins comment where she wrote: "please understand, your legacy will live on Your art speaks volumes, it will always live on" (What a HUGE compliment!)  and the song in the background was playing and the lyrics were "She's still got infinity ahead of her".  And I stopped in my tracks, poured some gesso over the page I had originally started and began working on this:

"She's still got infinity ahead of her..."  napkin, Dylusions, stencils, die cuts, Silks acrylic glazes, glittery border stickers, Aquamarkers, and shimmery (I wanted to call it pearlescent...but spell check is telling me that's either not a word or REALLY not spelled right) acrylic paint

Also a moment of awesomeness is that I used a napkin that my darling Pamikins had sent me in a care package...I didn't realize it till after I'd glued it down, but I do believe that paisley napkin came from her!  So Paminkins, you get a whole heap of credit today!

And, to a lesser extent, this song also gets some credit:

Really, all the comments from yesterday and every day before share the credit.  I know I wouldn't be where I'm at know if it weren't for the loving and the encouragement and the keep-at-it's that folks have been kind enough to bestow on me.  I guess what I'm saying is that it takes a village to raise a Sweet Red Clover...and you all are my village.

Inner Excavations Week 3

I 'finished' my spread for week 3 of Inner Excavations today.  Finished gets quotation marks, because I'm thinking I may add a little bit of personal writing in there now that I've photographed it.

I'm a little behind, thanks to my fabulous trip to Ohio and the horrible amount of overtime I've been working since then...but that's ok, it's not a race, right?

This chapter, entitled "I gather..." deals with the things that we collect.  Maybe you saw my cheating post from yesterday...the post I posted so I could post SOMETHING.  Well it was fifteen minutes till midnight when I started that post and wrote in in all of five minutes, so I thought I should go back and re-read it because I doubt the intelligence of my brain when it's almost midnight and I try to use said brain for thinking...

I laughed as I was looking at it this morning, because despite the fact that it was a post for the sake of posting, there is a lot of real life truth going on in the picture in that post.  And by that I mean, WOW what a mess...

But I also mean, in that messy picture, there was a lot of meaning for me.

Someone once told me that the reason I collected my various creative hobbies was because I didn't have anything better to do.  He said that I did these things because I didn't have a life.  Egads, it broke my heart when he said that.  At the time , I did what I always did: I wrote a poem about it.

Analysis

I'm tired of writing pretty words 

and making pretty pictures to pass the time.

I think I must create these things 

to forget myself and that I mind

that I can't feel like others do,

and only to forget a moment.

Things will never be as they once were.

The time for it is lost to me and can't be found again.

I think I finally understand 

actions I could not comprehend before.

To be loved is not enough, 

a person needs to feel it.

My heart refuses to understand.

And friendship isn't going to fix it

and I long for someone to hold my hand

without having to believe it's pity, 

without having to believe it's a lie.

But that never comes.

So I keep writing lines 

and I keep making marks on blank pages

to pass the precious time.

I wish he hadn't said what he did 

because he ruined my words 

and he ruined my pictures

by telling me the truth:

that I wish I didn't have to write

and I wish I didn't have to make marks

but that's all I have.

Even though that's not a life, 

that's all I have.

I don't know if the person who said those things to me realized what he set off in my brain.  I don't think it was said with malice.  It was just an offhand statement.  But for a long time after that, it was hard to do anything creative.  I guess I resented my artistic side.  Because my brain kept adding things to what he'd said: If you were pretty, if you were thin, if you were more interesting, people would want to be around you and you'd have better things to do than waste your life sloshing paint or sewing toys or crocheting scarves.  My brain kept telling me that the only reason I wanted to be creative was to make up for what I lacked in other areas.

But because I don't listen to my jerk brain for long when it starts spouting crap like that, I decided to grab my brushes and an art journal and figure out the real reason I wanted to be creative.

And what I figured out is that I LIKE to be creative.  It makes me HAPPY.  I can't sit there in front of a television for hours a day like 'normal' people do.  I couldn't stand that!  It's not relaxing to me.  It does nothing for me but waste time.  And yeah, maybe I 'waste' time doing my creative stuff.  But here's the clincher...WHAT ELSE DO I HAVE?  At least when I MAKE something, there's an end result!  There's something that I can look at and say "I did that, it made me happy to do that, and I grew as a person while I was doing it".

The over-analyzer in my brain knows that maybe there's a little bit of truth in the statement that I wouldn't do these creative things if I had a life.  Or, more correctly, if I had a different life.  I have a life.  If I had a different life though, in all honesty, I probably wouldn't be creative...at least not as much as I am now.

The big issue for me is kids.  I don't have kids.  It's just not in the cards for me.  I've talked about it before, so I won't go into detail in that regard, but I will say this: If I had kids (a kid, whatever) I probably wouldn't be so creative or at least wouldn't spend so much time with it.  Not because I wouldn't have as much time, although clearly that's a factor...but it's more about the fact that kids are...proof that you were here.  They're your legacy to the world.  When you die, there will be someone to remember you, because you were their mom or dad.  I don't have that.  I'm never gonna have that.  So how will anybody remember me?  Sure I have nephews and nieces and co-workers and all that, but how much easier will it be to remember me when you're looking at a 6 foot long crochet snake that I made?  And you'd know more about me...clearly, that I'm fun...and that I really LOVE my nephew (because I DID NOT want to crochet a 6 foot long snake...but I did...because he asked for it, and I love him...).

I art journal in case this technology is not available at the time of my inevitable demise....

It's the same with art journaling.  If at some point I die...and they haven't perfected Futurama technology (...you know, that whole 'living head in a jar' thing...) my art is still gonna be there.  For someone to look at and say, "so that's who she was and how she felt"...

To quote Edna St. Vincent Millay:  "This book, when I am dead, will be a little faint perfume of me.  People who knew me well will say: "She really used to think that way.""


In the end, you want to know what I really gather?

"I gather wisdom"  

I gather wisdom.  It's not always like picking flowers...it's not all beauty and fun and good times.  I think it's more like mining diamonds...it's dark, its dangerous, sometimes people die, and there are times when you question whether all that effort is really worth it.  But, you know, there's tremendous value in wisdom...infinitely more than there is in diamonds...

Dylusions over washi tape and using stencils.  Then craft acrylic and black sharpie for lettering.

Sometimes I have to remind myself that there will be an end result.  I do enjoy the immediate benefits of the self-knowledge I gain every time I work in one of my journals.  But there's accumulated value as well.  One day, I know I am going to feel like a complete person.  The complete person I choose to be.  And I learn more and more about the person I want to be, the person I'm ACTUALLY BECOMING every time I let myself do something creative.

I think this is quite a comical looking owl for such a serious topic, but hey, I am an mish mash of all kinds of stuff, it's ok if the cartoonish owl represents something deep and meaningful!

Going back to the moral of the story...do I think I "wouldn't art journal if I had a life"?  Not really.  In fact, I honestly believe the art journaling is helping me create a life...helping me reclaim my right to my own life...helping me to live the life that I choose.  

I Gather...Slowly...

I'm 15 minutes away from failing at Blogalong with Effy on the second day...it's NOT happening!!!  I am in the process (so very close!!!) to finishing my spread from Inner Intentions for the third (?  ...no time to look...I'm pretty sure it's third...) chapter.  The "I Gather" chapter.  Should be good to go tomorrow barring random oddness like what happened tonight.  Nail in tire, trip to get it fixed, fixing takes FOREVER, very little time for anything but eating and bemoaning the lack of time...

BUT  I am managing to put up a post with a picture...so that's got to count for something, right?

So what do I gather?  Well, take a look:

Very informative picture, if you look closely...

I gather messes.  Fun messes.  I also gather art supplies.  I gather various creative hobbies (art journaling, working with polymer clay,  crochet, sewing, soft toy making, the list goes on and on and on).  I gather random weird things...why do I have a wooden meat cleaver in the basket on the left?  I don't know...but one day, I'll figure it out...  I gather Happy Thoughts, and you can see the next two almost done, just in need of a type out of the phrasing that I scribbled on the attached post it notes and an attachment of said phrase to the mini paintings.

And now, I'm going to gather myself together, post this post, eat a cold hamburger , and gather some zzz's. And vow to do better tomorrow come nail in tire or high water...

Blog-Along and Second Chances

Hello good people and welcome to day 1 of Blogalong with Effy.  Here's my attempt at 30 posts in 30 days. We're just gonna call it an attempt till it actually happens, ok?  No pressure...no pressure...  To learn more or to join in the fun yourself, please click on the Blogalong link in the left sidebar.

After the relative success of the layers on the last post, I got really inspired to try to fix some of the pages that have been sitting in my journals in a state of limbo.  Ugly, unfinished...both...  Anyway, I've got one to share with you today:

This page started out as an attempt to use Artist acrylic paints.  I have been admiring other people's use of them, so I got myself the basic colors (red, yellow, blue, black and white) to see how I fared.  In my head, they were going to be exactly like craft acrylics...they are NOT.  I can mix colors of craft acrylics with relative ease...getting exactly the color I hoped for in a matter of minutes.  Artist acrylics are not that way for me.  So I had stuck down some of the red and yellow on the page and mixed them a little to a really red leaning orange.  And this page sat untouched for several months because it was so eye-gougingly BRIGHT, practically painful to look at, and I had no idea what to do with it.

So I thought to myself, what bothers me about this page so much...and it was the extreme brightness that bothered me the most.  So I grabbed some Vintage Photo Distress Stain and went over the whole page to tone it down.  Phew...eyeball relief!  So the brightness was gone, and that helped a lot, but what to do next...

I've been watching some of Donna Downey's Inspiration Wednesdays on YouTube (which are SO interesting to watch...I love her "let's just try it and see what happens" attitude).  And she uses ink drops in a lot of her pages.  So I thought I might add some ink drops and see what happens...  What happened was I realized that there is some kind of magic technique to getting splattery drops that I have not learned yet...I really need to watch more closely when she ink drops I guess...  I ended up with pretty uniform circles of ink...not splaterry goodness.  So I improvised and turned my journal in a couple different directions so that the drops would run.  And WHAM!  It suddenly turned into something I liked and I knew where I wanted to go...

I have had that Tim Holtz "Fanciful Flights" die cutter forever, and I never use it, but it popped into my brain, so I grabbed it, cut out the shapes and went over them with some Glossy Accents.  While that dried, I got some Kraft Glassine (which is AWESOME) and crinkled and colored it using Distress Stains.  ...I just realized that this page could be an advertisement for Ranger products...where's my money Ranger???...  (haha...but seriously, pay me...)  I assembled my little butterfly dealie...and before anybody mentions it, I put the wings on backwards on purpose.  Seriously.  Seriously!!!  I think they look cooler that way!  Or at least different...make it your own, right?...  Then I outlined the butterfly in a red poster paint sharpie (I have found that the poster paint sharpies work a lot better for me than the other 'paint' sharpies, by the way!  I really want to get a white one and see if it works as well as the other colors...I have had bad luck with the other white 'paint' sharpies...maybe the poster paint one will tickle my fancy...)  Then I began the multi layered journaling of "If it weren't for second chances..." (a fitting line for this page that I picked out of the song below) I put gold sharpie, the red poster paint one, black sharpie and at last used a Pen-touch white pen which is where it finally stood out enough to be readable...so really, if it weren't for third, forth, or fifth chances, this writing would not have happened...