Today’s catalyst is: What makes you laugh?
My text:
Family is the one thing that makes me laugh more than anything else in my life. One of the original reasons I picked my husband was his great sense of humor and ability to make me laugh. I am not that easily amused and don’t tend to have a good sense of humor so any man who can make me laugh is a keeper in my book. Not to mention the little boy who is so funny, so sweet and cute that the wonderful man and I managed to bring to this world…
Technique highlight:
This is inspired by an old art journal page by Ali Edwards. It uses two chipboard pieces that I put down before I painted the whole page and then the white and silver sections are created by melting wax. Of course it doesn’t do justice to the original but it was fun to play with and it did make me smile.
This week’s question was " what is the last good book you read?"
Ordinarily, I’m a voracious reader and read two books, or so, a week. However, I haven’t been doing much reading (or anything really) lately and even the ones I’ve read haven’t been that great. The last great book I’ve read that really sucked me in and pulled me into another world was Twilight. I resisted reading it for a long long time since I don’t care for vampires in any way. But this book managed to make me realize that any topic can be made into a great story, so I decided to pick it as my book.
I am not crazy about this tag, either but this week’s technique was using glimmer mist. I put some thickers on the tag and then inked the whole thing. I then sprayed glimmer mist and put some pearl ink. I wanted to create the effect of “night.” Afterwards, I pulled out the thickers and with some glue, put some glitter on the letters. The glimmermist made the tag all soft and wrinkly so that’s why it ended up a bit odd and it’s really hard to take a good photo but you get the gist. This, too, is not one of my favorites.
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I am combining Emily Falconbridge’s art journal questions with trying a new technique each week. You can see the full list: here
This week’s question was "what was my worst (or best?!) hairstyle experience to date?"
This one didn’t really speak to me immediately. In fifth grade, I decided to grow my hair and didn’t cut it until after college. Once I managed to cut it, I had a strong sense of freedom and proceeded to try several hairstyles. I went blonde, black, red and then back to my original brown. During this period, I spent a few months in Japan. While I was there, I had this one haircut which was the shortest my hair has ever been. It was auburn and really short. To this day, it’s the boldest haircut I’ve had, so I decided to commemorate it.
I am not sure I like this tag all that much but the technique I used this week was “printing on canvas.” I took this photo of me from then and printed it on canvas and glued it to the tag and then just embellished around it and put some fabric behind the tag. Not one of my favorites to be sure.
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I am combining Emily Falconbridge’s art journal questions with trying a new technique each week. You can see the full list: here
This week’s catalyst is: Create art around a mistake. The bigger the more therapeutic.
My journaling is:
Since I am the kind of person to harp on little things for hours, days, sometimes months, I try to think hard before I make decisions to minimize the possibility of making a mistake. I am happy to say I have relatively few regrets in my life. One of the very few happened a couple of years ago. I quit my job on Wall Street to join Teach For America which is a nonprofit program where you teach at under-resourced schools. I taught fifth grade at a school in the South Bronx in New York. My regret is not quitting my job but it’s quitting Teach For America before fulfilling my two-year commitment. When I quit my job, I firmly believed that TFA was my path in life. I wanted to do it for two years and then move on to starting my own nonprofit and making the world a better place. So much so that at some point, I even felt the importance of improving education in the United States so strongly that I was surprised more people weren’t prioritizing their life accordingly. After several months of struggling, failing, crying, trying more and failing more, I finally gave up and quit. To this day, it’s something I regret. I know that it was the right decision on many levels but it’s still something I regret and consider a mistake.
Technique Highlight
Since reading Kelly Rae Roberts’ book Taking Flight, I’ve been meaning to try my hand at polymer clay. I took this week’s catalyst as the opportunity to do so. I created a door to represent the new stage of my life TFA was at the time and wrote the words “believe” on the bottom since that was the strongest emotion I felt at the time: a solid sense of belief that this was the right next step for me in life. I then painted the clay and put it in the oven to bake. As it turned out, I overestimated the amount of time it needed to cook, so I burned it and a part of it got distorted. Right before I was going to throw it out, I decided it was an even better fit for my catalyst. As I started teaching, my belief and faith in this opportunity and what it represented got all bent out of shape and distorted so I decided this burned clay only reinforced my theme.
This week’s catalyst is: Tell us about a time you felt unconditional love for someone or something.
My words:
I must say my first experience with true, deep, unconditional love was my husband but then my son was born and the power of loving someone that small, someone whom I carried inside me for nine months and someone who is so much a part of me is indescribable. I will forever love him and my love for him will always be unbounded.
This week’s question was "what are you grateful for right now?"
I read this question at a moment I was feeling truly grateful for everything. The last few months have had their ups and downs but at this particular moment, I am so thankful for life. For my wonderful husband and amazing son. For this life growing inside me. Even for my job and the great people I work with. For spring finally coming back. For the beauty of nature. For getting to teach this class I am teaching. For getting to read books, watch TV, and in general do things I love to do. So I wanted my tag to just focus on how wonderful my life is in general and how very thankful and grateful I am for that.
I wanted to do something vintagy last week so I guess that stuck with me. I was inspired by two amazing people and my art cannot do justice to either. One is art like this by the amazing Rebecca Sower. The other is this beautiful white on white piece by Vivian Bonder. I fell in love with the white on white and have been meaning to do some art that only has tones of white for a long long time. Both of these women are incredibly inspiring and amazing. Besides a lot of lace, I used some machine stitching and that’s really about it.
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I am combining Emily Falconbridge’s art journal questions with trying a new technique each week. You can see the full list: here
This week’s catalyst is: What’s something you wish you could do? (Something you know how but are too afraid to try.)
Here are my words:
This one was easy for me. I’ve always always always wanted to be a published author. Fiction. Reading has always been and will always be my number one passion in the world and I’ve always dreamt of being one of those authors on people’s shelves. I have started several novels and have done a lot of writing over the years but I have never taken it all the way. Never fully finished, edited, and sent out a book to a publisher. In the last six years, I have mostly stopped writing altogether but I still think of it from time to time and the desire to become a published writer has not subsided one little bit.
This week’s question was “what keeps me awake at night?”
To be fully honest, the one thing that literally keeps me awake at night is the baby, of course. Now that I am 8.5months pregnant, between peeing and spinal pain, there’s not much sleep to be had. But since I did a tag on pregnancy two weeks ago, I wanted to focus on something else so I decided to choose another big thing happening to us: the fact that we might be buying a house for the first time ever. Deciding whether to buy or not, finding a house, and trying to do it all in the middle of a baby coming certainly has been keeping me awake so I thought it was a fair one to tackle.
I originally planned to do “vintage” this week but somehow when I started doing the tag, this is what came out. I don’t know that it uses any specific technique except maybe a bunch of stamping and some layering. Nothing major or very new to me. I took a chipboard house and added elements of what I hope to have in my new home: music, words, flowers, sleep (moon), joy (butterfly), togetherness (key) and lots and lots of love.
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I am combining Emily Falconbridge’s art journal questions with trying a new technique each week. You can see the full list: here
This week’s catalyst is Create a piece of art around a memory or occasion that has no photos.
Here’s my text:
When we were planning our wedding, the one thing we spent the most amount of money on was our photographer. We figured the photos were the best way to preserve our memories of the special day. We found this person who looked really professional, had great albums, etc and decided to go with him. He did show up and take a bunch of photos and he even delivered us our proofs and album. The deal was that a year later he would give us the negatives. Except that when the year passed, he went completely awol. We couldn’t get him to answer the phone or email. We were never able to get in touch with him again and, to the day, don’t have one negative from our wedding day. We still have the album we bought but if you come to our house, you won’t see any wedding photos on our tables because we have none.
This week’s question was “name 5 movies that inspire you creatively…”
I’ve had to think about this one for a long long time for some reason. At first, I thought about my favorite movies but then I reread the question and it talks about creative inspiration. Then, the first thing that came to my mind were these set of three movies made by a Polish director called Red, White, and Blue. So I decided instead of choosing five, I’ll just stick to this trilogy.
This week’s technique was fragments. I honestly had no idea what to do with them so it was an interesting challenge for me. I went through all my scraps and picked all the red, white, and blue paper I had and glued them to the back of the fragments and then just had fun with it. I painted the tag with denim distress ink and then embossed it with clear, shiny embossing powder. The fragments I had were the ones with the holes so I tried to align them interestingly. I am not sure how I feel about the outcome but it was fun. I am sorry the photo didn’t turn out that well, especially the butterfly.
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I am combining Emily Falconbridge’s art journal questions with trying a new technique each week. You can see the full list: here
Catalyst fifty-two is Tell us about something you’ve always wanted to learn. A really exceptionally good week this week with a lot of varied and beautiful art.
My words:
I’ve always been a worrier. All the time and about everything. When I was pregnant with my first baby, I put a sign over my door that said “give up that there’s something wrong.” and I looked at it every day. Over the last four years, I’ve gone up and down on this. And this year, I’ve decided to put extra focus on achieving peace and letting go of worry. Though, I must admit the relatively rough pregnancy hasn’t helped a lot, I really have been working hard at letting it go. If there’s one thing I’d love to learn, it’s letting go of worry.
Technique Highlight:
This piece is inspired by the amazing Kelly Rae Roberts. I used several of the techniques she teaches in her book “Taking Flight.” The wings have glitter glue on them that makes them shine and they are made out of wire and tissue paper.
This week’s question was “what was the last brave thing i did?”
It might seem odd but the first thing that came to my mind was my pregnancy. Even though I really want this baby and I am so happy she or he is coming, this has been a long, hard pregnancy. I know it could be much worse but, for me, it’s been a journey in being brave. Trips to ER, a LOT of throwing up, anemia, resulting in more medication than I wanted. But, I’m almost at the end of this journey and can’t wait to meet my little one.
This week’s technique was simple. I drew a profile of a pregnant woman looking down. I put glossy glaze all over it and then microbeads on the glue. I left it overnight and then put another layer of glossy glaze over it so the beads wouldn’t fall off. I made a little heart out of wire with a small flower on it which I glued to the pregnant woman. I then inked the rest of the tag and wrote along the profile. That’s it.
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I am combining Emily Falconbridge’s art journal questions with trying a new technique each week. You can see the full list: here
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projects for twenty twenty-five
projects for twenty twenty-four
projects for twenty twenty-three
projects for twenty twenty-two
projects for twenty twenty-one
projects for twenty nineteen
projects for twenty eighteen
projects from twenty seventeen
monthly projects from previous years
some of my previous projects
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