Studio/ Guest Room

I am so excited!! I have company coming in on Thursday and they are staying in the Studio! It’s the 2nd biggest bedroom and they won’t be as crowded as they would be if they stayed in the room that we usually reserved for guests. Granted this room doesn’t have a TV, so the other room is better for TV viewing.

This room is over the garage, hence the funky ceiling. It also gets extremely cold in the winter and hot in the summer. As you’ll see the A/C unit in the window and the space heater on the table.

Inspiration Board is a work in progress. And a wonderful place to put things I don’t want to lose. No, that’s not my guitar or keyboard. My son has taken a real interest in music over the last few years and this is his first guitar. I’m pretty musically inept, but love to belt out a Song or two as I sing along with my mp3 player. (much to my family’s chagrin….geez I really don’t get that)

My modest fabric Stash! You really ought to see my mother in laws!!! M.A.G.N.I.F.I.C.E.N.T., to say the least!

To the right of the dresser is my Current project. I’ll be appliquéing the flower petals and leaves to a tan pieced background. More later when I finish.

Some of my absolute favorite pictures of Family. The wonders of digital and scanning in old pics lets me have brand new pictures for just 19 cents from Walgreens. (If I really had my act together, I’d upload about 50 favorites and have snapfish print them for just 9 cents a piece.)……But that’s if I had my act together!!

I have had this rack for about 5 years. I had bought two at the time for only about 6 bucks each. I hung the first one right away in my bathroom. I have almost given this one to Goodwill about 3 times, but something inside said, “Wait, you may wish you had it someday”. And now, It’s someday....It’s a perfect spot for those dropper paints I told you about in this post.

I covered one of those big body length pillows about ten years ago with that striped fabric you see on the closer bed. Then my dear grandmother gave me a quilt she no longer uses that she had embroidered herself! I use what I love and I love this, however, so did the dog and the kids, so now there are tears to more than a few stitches and ink marks! Ah, well…..what can I say?? I’m so happy with those Deka Curtain wires from Ikea. I can now put all kinds of fun stuff up. And Look, that same dog has made her way into the picture. Good thing she’s on the floor, huh?

Thanks for stopping by and letting me share with you! Posting this here really helped motivate me to get this done! Pictures are clickable (become larger upon clicking them), if you want a better look. - Eden

Word Art

I got these letters last week at Hobby Lobby, I liked the cool font and hey, they were white!! What better color to embellish than white? So…. off I went to doodle them up. I was a little unsure how the finish would take with the paints I used. But it worked really well. Next time I’d probably lightly sand the letters prior to starting. Just so the ink has something to hold on to.

Oh- and these were 50% off last week! Gotta love a sale!

Below are the inks I used! I really like the dropper inks, I have a couple pearlescent ones (blue and green), which makes a pretty cool effect once dry.

So, I finished the A on Sunday, then on Monday I did the R, rolling right along I thought I’d be all done on Tuesday, with the T until……….

Dropper Danger!

The little blue dropper had a clot in it…..and not thinking I just continued to squeeze that little dropper until…..S.P.L.A.T…..

I tried to wipe it off!!! What was I thinking???

Instead of throwing the letter away, I just painted the bad end with white paint x 3 and thankfully finished up my T today! I’m now proudly displaying them in my Studio (you know, my college son’s room that I’m imposing on). Simple and Fun!!

I know this word isn’t all that original! I could’ve done my 2010 word for the year, if I had one picked out yet. I’m giving myself the entire month of january to decide.

I’d love to see what you make for yourselves! Actually I challenge you to show me what you’ve made for yourself and displayed. I will stop by if you leave me a link!!

Thanks for stopping by, Eden

Just a peek…..

Here’s a little peek of something I was working on this weekend! It’s almost done. I can’t wait to show you. I’m going to put it in my “studio” (a.k.a. my son’s room that I’m imposing on).

I thing I’ve realized something about Art/Artists. I am not really in that category, but I get so fired up when I can decorate with my “art”. When I can make a piece and display it somewhere where I can see it. Growing up and into early adulthood, I never made anything for myself. I’d always make things for others, give them away and not have something that I enjoyed to look at. I usually made things that I’d want for myself (who knows what the recipient wanted!!) Usually I’d have a reason for the gift, so it wasn’t like I didn’t give any thought to the gifts. Then if I made something for myself, it was small and simple. Kind of neutral, I didn’t want to make any bold statements in decorating or displaying. I mean what if it wasn’t appealing to my family? What if what I make falls apart? Or I outgrew the trend? But now that I’m indulging in this other side to my life, I find I want to make things for me, all the time. I want to show my personality in my creations. I also like the way things can be changed as you go, when I am responsible for the colors or the prints. I like that I have more options available to me if I just picked up some paint, or bought some cool fabric.

I think we “artsy” people need to surround ourselves with things that we love! Things that inspire our personal creativity. I think it’s like a pet and it needs to be fed. Visually fed that is! And it needs to be visually nurtured! Yes, it’s risky because it’ll cost some money in supplies or items that make us happy! It’s a little about opening up and expressing myself too! But when it clicks and things in the studio or in my surroundings take shape (even if it has a bit of wackiness), then it’s worth it! At least to me! And so far, DH (dear husband) hasn’t complained! Whew! Maybe that’s what I was afraid of!!

How about you? Do you display your art for yourself? What’s your experience with the people you live with?

Cardinal Embroidery

Do you remember my son (the one i’m imposing on, by taking over his bedroom while he’s at college). Well, he joined a Fraternity his Freshman year, he’s a Junior now. Apparently the Fraternity was trying to turn itself around and it’s ‘07 mission statement was the “Healthy Rounded Man (or something like that) Fraternity”. You had to be there when he said these words to us, i was so biting my lip to stop from giggling. Apparently they had to purge the bad (party) kids, and get good kids, then make some money thru charities to support themselves or this Frat was going to get axed from the school.

They started to get involved in some local charity events, they participated in the Greek intramurals and have even done carpentry/House maintenance on their condemned Frat house (which no one lives in, thankfully). Each year they have a Charity event for gaining funds for their fraternity. Usually he tells me a week in advance and wants me to whip up something to auction off. Sure no problem…eh-huh!! The first year I donated a bunch of fleece hats made with the school fleece, similar to the one below.

The following year I made pillow cases like these below.

I’ve always told him I could make something better if he just gave me more NOTICE! This year he blew me away. He told me at Thanksgiving that he’d like me to make something for the April Auction. That’s one, two, thr… FIVE months in advance. Well, with Christmas and the holidays I didn’t get a chance to work on a thing. I had an idea though!! I wanted to hand embroider his mascot then make a small quilt, like a wall hanging or lap quilt to auction off.

Here’s what I have so far.

My material, look closely the red and the yellow have a little branching pattern that I thought would give it some texture.

I don’t know what I’d do without my DMC floss! Works great when trying to match up colors. Much better than spools of thread and cheaper too!!

Finished this today! Yeah! Now, I’ve gotta go over and browse some flickr quilting groups for inspiration. I want the Cardinal as the main focus and work around him. These weren’t hard to make, I may have to do another cardinal or two.

Off for inspiration! Thanks for stopping by :)

Eden

Twenty-Ten

I follow Christine Kane’s blog and I love the idea of picking a word for the year, instead of making New Year’s Resolutions! I mean really, how long do we really keep our resolutions? I also, would make the resolutions so darn strict and set myself up for relapse and failure.

Last year I picked Start for my word. I think that word really kicked me into gear in lots of ways:

• I started blogging more
• I started following other blogs thru my dashboard on blogger
• I started Commenting more
• I started Art Journaling, drawing, attempting new creative outlets. Like crotcheting, painting, and doodling.
• I started to post my pics/art on Flickr
• I started making my house the way i wanted it.
• I started to jump rope at the gym on the days I did the elliptical or weight trained.
• I started burning Dennis Prager CD’s for my 95 yr old Grandmother
• I started to eat better; more high fiber and low carb meals
• I started to facebook (still don’t really care for that too much), but wonderful way to connect with old friends.
• I started to realize I didn’t have to be perfect to live the way i wanted

Well, it’s New Years Day and I am not sure what word I’m going to pick! I have a couple ideas. I may have to revisit Christine’s list for prompts. I’ll pick one or two soon. I just want my word to be able to seep into more of my life. I want it to be able to hold up to the Spiritual, Physical, Mental, Creative and restless sides of me. I want it to give me Hope and Passion and Growth. Change is good and inevitable might as well self-direct a little of it.

What are your New Years traditions??? Do you pick a word too?

Thanks for stopping by and here’s to a great 2010!

Eden

Taking over….

I’m taking over my son’s room! Well, not totally, but I’m getting there. He’s in college and while he was home last week he hardly noticed all the quilting material, sewing machines and craft items strewn about! Good thing, huh?

I bought these really cool Deka curtain wires from Ikea in November and I’ve been dying to put them up. I uploaded and printed off a bunch of my Art Journal pages to hang on the wire. Printed them out as 4 x 6 pictures, the dimensions weren’t exact when transferring from my 5 x 8 moleskine. But it was close enough. No sweat! The hard part was working with the wire. Luckily I had my handy-dandy husband to help. He has just about every tool known to man so, drilling, cutting and stud-finding wasn’t a big issue for him…..It’s also good to have a second set of hands to see where you want the 12ft wire to hang.

Above: I have to show you how cool Sue Doodles “Cosmic Dolly” looks here too! I adore her doodles and asked her if I could print off one of her creations. Being the sweetie that she is, she then just emailed the hi-resolution file to me. The only thing missing is her siggie!

What’s great is I get to hang lots of things on this wire! As you can see I’ve got a guitar Christmas ornament up there, in honor of my son allowing me to impose! I’ve put a 2 dollar bill in the line up, for New Year’s Prosperity. A couple of favorite notecards in there as well, too. I have 20 extra hooks to go crazy with in the coming months! Woo-Who!

View from sleeping! No worries, quite harmless if they were to fall on you!

Being that I am such a Visual Person, I love looking at all kinds of things colorful and creative!

How do you display your favorite pieces of art? Do you ever get over stimulated if you put too much stuff up? What inspires you visually?

Thanks for stopping by! Eden

ChristmasMosaic

ChristmasMosaic
Originally uploaded by A-dab-adu

Bad Art……

Make Bad Art……Make Good Art….Just keep drawing, keep putting pen to paper, playing with your paint, or cutting or pasting or sewing and designing. Just stick with it, thru the empty times, the unproductive pieces, the what am i going to do with this mess work. Keep searching, when you feel like all of your art is going nowhere, just keep plugging along. Cuz you never know when INSPIRATON will strike. How it will strike or what is brewing inside your so called “empty head”.

You just never know, but I believe we must attend to our “art”. We must treat it like we would other lessons we take to improve. You know like piano lessons, swim, tennis lessons. Or even Spanish lessons, we must be diligent, dontchathink? Why do we expect art to be so different? Is it because of all the gifted artists out there? The ones that produce beautiful piece after beautiful piece and don’t ever seem to go stale. But we don’t ever see their practice pages do we? Maybe we should! I think DaVinci has a whole book published just from his notebooks. He practiced and wasn’t he gifted??

The other day, I was wondering why I seem to want to color so much when I can’t even make an original drawing for the life of me. I haven’t taken a drawing class yet, or watercolor or painting class. I really, really want to, but just haven’t found the right one. But no worries, it’ll come when I’m ready!

While feeling so bored and uninspired with myself I stumbled upon a blog that took me over to YouTube. Before I knew it I was watching papparoc46 on YouTube about drawing Keltic Knots…..I was mesmerized and with the visual aid and thankfully the pause button, I could actually figure this out! You’ve got to check out this vlog, it’s so good. I then checked out her vlog about the 10 things she likes about herself (titled My Ten Things). She is hilarious, I couldn’t stop laughing. She’s got a very dry sense of humor that is just charming!

PRACTICE PAGE 1:

I liked only a couple of things on the page; I liked the word “ART” , and the flowers, the square tiles, but I am pretty lousy at swirls, and i have a hard time making anything with pink look good! But pink and blue go together right????

PRACTICE PAGE 2:

I was inspired by this piece on flickr, but my piece just didn’t do it for me. Possibly it was the pink again???? But pink and green go together right??

PRACTICE PAGE 3:

This was a fun page, but it didn’t have any direction to it, it was like a practice piece, like a warm up page for something to happen in my head later, hopefully, maybe, please!!!!

AH-HA moment Page:

For me, I finally got to a piece I like! I made a piece that let me play with my markers, play with my colors and learn something at the same time. I love this piece. Yeah, I know it’s simple, and I know that it has mistakes, but it represents a turning point. That when I get so bored with my drawing, so bored with my color choices that I must just keep observing, keep reading and eventually I’ll hit upon something that excites me. That gives me that “I can’t wait to try this myself” feeling! Oh yeah!

Thanks for stopping by! And letting me tell you my tale of woe this week! And if you can relate to this at all, just keep on doing your thing out there, you just may stumble upon something you like too!

Eden

Christmas in Kentucky

I finally got the tree up, and the Santa Quilt, and put out my Christmas decorations. The new Ikea furniture takes up the entire back wall, which was where we usually put the tree. This room has 3 entrances, so we decided to block off the hallway entrance by the basement door. I like it here. I made this Santa Quilt in 04, i think! But I never knew what to do with it. I couldn’t throw it on the back of the couch because the Santa’s would be walking sideways. It’s a rather lightweight quilt so I just thumb-tacked it to the wall. Hey, it was easy, and it works for me, why not? Don’t tell the quilt police though!!! LOL!!

Another view of the tree and of the fireplace! I adore our Christmas stockings and wouldn’t know where to begin to make one of these myself. We have a total of 6 (guess I should’ve had 2 more kids!! ) Four were made by my DH’s sister (2 not shown) and the two in the middle were made by my Great-Aunt. She even knitted the names of the kids at the top!! Talk about talent!!! How in the world do you figure that out????

I obviously have a thing for Nutcrackers! Why? I don’t know, but I have always loved them and to me they symbolize Christmas. I love that there are so many different kinds and designs and nutcracker people out there.

And of course no Christmas decorating would be complete without displaying the reason for the season. Our nativity is completely white and very simple, but I love it.

And these are most of the wrapped pkgs that I must get out into the mail (UPS of course) by Monday. My self-imposed goal. Usually I’m standing in line on the 23rd paying the exuberant fees to mail out packages to our dear families in (Chicago, Pensacola, Newport and Iowa). Not this year!

A couple other hand-made gifts which I adore. The one on the right was made by that same DH’s sister. She used perforated paper and cross-stitched this. There are 2 more ornaments not shown that hang off of the strand that Santa is holding.

And the hallway view of our tree, with a rather pouchy hand-made Santa, made by that same sister-in-law. She can make anything I tell you, Anything!! I like him here, it’s like he’s greeting us!

What Christmas decoration do you find you have a lot of? What Christmas decorations make you smile when you pull them out year after year?

Thanks for stopping by,

Eden

Quality vs. Quantity

To everything there is a season! November was my season to explore drawing more by participating in NaNoJouMo here. It was fun. Some of the art journal pages that I made on my watercolor moleskine, I really liked and was surprised at how they turned out. A few I was disappointed in, but not one of them was a waste. I tried different things with just about every prompt and some of the pages the fault was more in the way I laid out the page. The energy or the eye wasn’t pleased. I had a choice and sometimes it gelled and sometimes it didn’t.

I want to share a story with you that has influenced my thinking in the regard of creating or doing art. I wish I could remember where I heard this little story, when I do I’ll give them credit. Here goes: There was an Art teacher who divided his class into 2 groups. For the first group he told them, “I will grade you on quantity. Yes, quantity, the more pages you give me the higher your grade will be, irregardless of what you do on the pages”. To the second group he told them, “I will grade you on Quality. The better and prettier your work, the higher your grade will be. I want to see the very best you can do”.

Which group do you think turned out the better work? The Quantity group or The Quality group????

I thought it would be the quality group, why wouldn’t it be? They were taking more time, probably using the better materials and measuring everything out and deciding what looked the best. They worked really hard on every single piece. But I was wrong, the group that produced the better work was the Quantity group! The quantity group? How could this be? Well, apparently they didn’t worry about perfection and making everything so pretty and precise. They played, they colored, they painted, they did a ton of trial and error. You see this group learned. They learned as they went along and they got better and better at the task on hand. I also wonder if maybe their ego wasn’t in the way and they were able to silence their inner critique. They enjoyed different media and didn’t get bored with a piece. They were able to experiment.

So, this is my take on “art”……I want to just make stuff. Lots of stuff. All sizes, using many different techniques. Markers, paint, fabric, canvas, photography, decorating, collage, digital art, get your hands dirty art! I better get going, there’s a lot of stuff out there to make :D :D

How about you? What are your thoughts on creating art????

Thanks for stopping by,

Eden

My three Elves

The above quote is: Be a student, learn as long as you still have something to learn. (Free Digital element from Jan Hicks at Scrapgirls last year).

This pretty much sums things up for me lately! I drew these three elves yesterday. I love their hats. There is so much possibility in the hats alone! Just think of the patterns and colors you could draw up there, fun! The blue elf looks to me like he could be related to Porky the Pig. The red elf looks related to the South Park family and by the time I got to the green elf, by leaving his/hers eyes closed she looks the most like an Elf. Ahhh, live and learn… live and learn. I did accomplish one goal. I wanted each set of eyes to have some personality. They do have that don’t they?

I had fun coloring in my elves, but I couldn’t stop there. Next was the background; off I went with my ruler and measured off for my default background of diamonds! But, I may have taken it a little too far! It’s a busy little colorful background. I also wish I had made my Calligra-Fun “Elves” word bigger! It got a little swallowed up! I extracted the 3 elves in photoshop cuz I was curious how they’d look on there own. Ahhh, the wonders of photoshop!

I got my inspiration for the hats from this picture from Pam Carriker.

Thanks for stopping by,

Eden

P.S. What are some of your default backgrounds? Do tell :D

Brush Calligraphy

Moving on…..I drew everyday when I was participating in the NaNoJouMo November challenge at www.dblogala.com. But toward the end I couldn’t keep up with the prompts. Bummer! But it was FUN! I must admit I loved following the prompts and thinking up a way to draw or doodle the word. But alas, now it’s over and I must find some other challenge.

This week I signed up for an online class called Calligra-Fun from a very talented lady, Martha Lever . She does beautiful calligraphy with Zig pens, Faber-Castell pens, and LePlume pens. If the pen has a brush at the end then just sit back and watch her magic. She can do loopy letters, swirly letters with a touch of scrolling. Oh to see her alphabet taper! Wow!

I was immediately fascinated when I came across her work. Above is my first flowerpot page with a word that I wrote and embellished per her technique. I have to practice a lot more, and it's a whole-lotta Fun!

What are you challenging/learning for yourself these days?

Thanks for stopping by,

Eden

Sharing

*click on image to see it whole

Ironic that the One Word prompt at NaNoJouMo is Share that I’m working on today because when I went to my blog reading list I saw that I’ve been tagged by Tammy at Daisy Yellow. Her challenge to me was to answer each of these questions in one word (or my version of one word). So I’ll share the answers with you all here. It’ll only take a minute and it’s a wee bit o’ fun!!

Here goes …………………………………………

1. Where is your cell phone? ….purse

2. Your hair?… bedhead

3. Your mother?… young

4. Your father?… hero

5. Your favorite food?… shrimp

6. Your dream last night?… forgot

7. Your favorite drink?… Bailey’s

8. Your dream/goal?… toDrawMore

9. What room are you in?… study

10. Your hobby?… Many

11. Your fear?… snakes

12. Where do you want to be in 6 years?… Australia

13. Where were you last night?…SwimMeet

14. Something that you aren’t?… superficial

15. Muffins?… banana

16. Wish list item?… Organization

17. Where did you grow up?… StLouis

18. Last thing you did?… drinkCoffee

19. What are you wearing?… YogaPants

20. Your TV?…HD

21. Your Pets?… HairyDogs

22. Friends?… Precious

23. Your life?… Evolving

24. Your mood?… Quiet

25. Missing Someone?… yes

26. Vehicle?… Crossover

27. Something you're not wearing?… wool

28. Your favorite store?… Quilt

29. Your favorite colour?… Red

30. When was the last time you laughed?… AnHourAgo

31. Last time you cried?… Movie

32. Your best friend?… husband

33. One place that I go to over and over?… Grocery

34. Facebook?… timid

35. Favorite place to eat?… CarryOut

Now, I’d like to tag Sue Doodles.

Purity Prompt at NaNoJouMo

Well, I went back and did Purity! When I think of purity I think of “all white”, and since I’m not an “all white” type of person, I then moved on to the type of image I should draw.

An angel represents purity…..so, off I clicked in Flickr to find an angel that I could actually draw. I found this image and I thought I’d give it a try.

So, then I added COLOR……ahhh beloved COLOR (*grin*)

*click on image to see all of it

Thanks for looking,

Eden

NaNoJouMo

I’m participating in National NonStop Journaling Month this month at D'blogala . I’ve done just about every prompt.

1. Freedom
2. Purity- haven’t done yet
3. Inspire
4. Beauty
5. Solitude
6. Felicity
7. Compassion

This is really fun! It’s making me DRAW SOMETHING. We then (if ya want) upload our drawings/Art Journal pages to Flickr to the group created for this.

Here’s a little collage of what I’ve done lately.

I can’t wait to see what tomorrow’s prompt will be.

Well….I guess I can go back and do PURITY since I missed that for some reason.

Overwhelmed….

I knew I was overwhelmed today because as I walked around Hobby Lobby armed with my 40% off coupon I didn’t know what to spend it on. First stop was the Art Supply section. I checked out all their markers and some calligraphy inks. Then I went to the stencil section to see if they have any new stencils I liked. Next was the scrapbook section where I checked out the Sakura gelly roll pens I’ve heard so much about. All of a sudden I remembered that I’d really like to get a date stamp where I could roll today’s date in and stamp it on my work. I even asked a nice lady stocking the shelves if they had one. I’m thinking that an Office Supply store may have one. I then got so frustrated, I didn’t know what I wanted! I became so overwhelmed. When I get like this I’ve learned that it’s best to just leave, to not buy anything (you know be stuck with Buyer’s remorse) and so I picked up an encouraging card for an old friend that’s going thru some rough times right now, and left. I saved a whopping 40 cents with my coupon!

I’m participating in D’blogala’s NaNoJouMo this month and the prompt for today is Solitude. The prompt for yesterday was Beauty. I started this Cardinal drawing yesterday and thought I’d journal in the white area of the post. But I got stuck!!! So stuck! Not because of lack of ideas, but because I had too many. I thought a nice quote would work, but would it have to be about the word or the bird? I didn’t know if I should use the 2 prompt words and tie them together in a cute little poem like…. “Cardinals, awww beautiful Cardinals- they seem to like their solitude, like me”. But that’s so cutezy and I’m really not that cutezy!

Then after I got home from shopping I thought how easy it would be to just plug in a digital image from my ScrapGirls stash. It would look so neat and this one would work (see below). It’s positive and expressive. But again, it’s not me!

So, finally I took out my personal journal ( a composition book like these ) and wrote out my frustrations. After a little bit of editing I was finally okay with a piece of me that made it to the page.

It reads: I seemed to have lost my focus today. I have been taking in & taking in- getting excited about new art- new pens- new people- new attitude. I am so overwhelmed.

Oh, before I forget, does anyone know where to buy a date stamp like the NOV 5 09 in the bottom right corner? The one used here is digital.

All the best, [Eden[

Happy Halloween

  How to be a scarecrow for $10 or less…….

• Buy the straw bands (pack of 5)  from Factory Card Outlet~ $6.99
• Buy a black Hat from Halloween Express~ $2.99
• Grab some rope from your Halloween costume bin, detach the fake-bloody orange arm that the kids tied at one end of the rope that was used to scare people as they came to the door to Trick-Or-Treat~  FREE
• Grab old fake Sunflowers put away years ago in the basement box for a future project~  FREE
• Baste scrap fabric onto the jeans and Son’s old shirt in a random pattern~  FREE
• Find Fake Bird kept in Christmas decoration bin and attach to top of hat~  FREE
• Steal yellow bandana from daughter that she was given for a School parade last week~  FREE
• Obtain Red lipstick (that you never wore from Clinique free stash) and do cheeks~  FREE
• Obtain eyebrow pencil from make-up drawer and put a triangle on your nose~ FREE
• SMILE !!!~  PRICELESS

While working don’t forget to have a little fun!!!  Otherwise you’ll go CRAZY!!!  But that may redundant, see below!

Lyrics….”clowns to the left of me….jokers to the right….Stuck in the middle with YOU!!”