Creativity, Crafts, Books, Movies, Greyhounds & Favorite Things

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It’s hard to believe, but this was the final week of the e-course, Make Art a Part (of Your Life).  This week’s reading was “information.”  Kaitlyn offers ideas on how to learn more about art.  One of her suggestions is to take an art class.  Thanks to my friend, Amy, I’m going to take a watercolor class later this month.  I’ve never done anything like this!  I’ll post about my experience after the class and let everyone see my painting.

This week’s creative exercise was “painting.”  Kaitlyn and her contributors offer three projects (watercolor, acrylic and oil).  I was inspired by the acrylic painting project but then decided to take it in a different direction.  It’s not finished, so I’ll show it to everyone next week when I wrap things up.  I’ll also share the next book I’ve selected…the final book for 2011.

If you’d like to participate in this e-course, you may register at any time.  Once registered, you’ll have access to the full course for one year.  You can complete it at your own pace.  The cost is $45.00 and you can sign up here.  Kaitlyn also had a wonderful blog, isavirtue.

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Last Sunday, I set myself a challenge…work on my creative space for 1 hour every day for a week.  When I made this room my “creative space,” I gathered all my crafting and writing things into the room.  I made good progress getting things organized, but there were odd bits and bobs that I never found a home for, and then I added some new treasures to the piles.  Last week, I found myself looking at a mess with no idea where to begin and very little motivation to “dig in.”  So, I cleared the room of all the items that had no home and decided to set a timer and work on the piles for 1 hour a day to see if that would help me out.  Cleaning and organizing to a timer is a technique that is encouraged in a lot of organizing books.  I’d never tried it, but I decided to see if it would help me with this particular problem.  Here’s what I found:

1.  My goal was to work for 1 hour a day.  I broke that in to two 30 minute sessions.  I did this for two reasons:  (1) I knew I would spent the first few organizing sessions not really knowing what to do.  I figured spending 30 minutes not knowing what to do would be better than spending an hour not knowing what to do, (2) I knew that even if I didn’t want to do it, I could convince myself to “muscle through” just 30 minutes.

2.  I made myself stop when the timer went off.  Then, I spent a few minutes (only a few minutes) putting away any remaining items.  Most sessions, I wanted to keep working after the timer went off.  By stopping, I didn’t burn myself out and my desire to keep working seemed to transfer to my enthusiasm to start the next session.

3.  During my first few sessions, I spent a lot of time feeling confused and overwhelmed, and I didn’t get a tremendous amount of work done.  I didn’t let that bother me because I found that in between sessions, my mind kept working to find solutions and to plan what was coming next.  With every session, I found myself becoming more and more productive.

4.  If I found items needed a container and I didn’t have an empty one, I found a temporary solution like a box or a bag.  Whatever you do, don’t start piles.  I also kept a pad of paper in the room to write down things I need to buy and any ideas I thought of.

5.  I tried hard not to become obsessed with finding the “right and proper” spot for everything.  I found the best place for the moment, knowing that I could rearrange things when a better solution became apparent.

The verdict:  I’m a new devotee to using a timer to tackle cleaning and organizing projects.  If you’re like me and easily overwhelmed by messes, the timer method is a real help in making a project do-able and giving you a sense of accomplishment.  The timer is my new best friend.

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The Hunger Games is the first book in The Hunger Games trilogy.  It is a futuristic dystopia.  That’s literary speak for a future imaginary world that’s all out of whack.  What makes a futuristic dystopia readable?  Perhaps if it seems like it could be true, and the Hunger Games has all the elements that make it believable…fully developed characters and a culture and society that has similarities to our own.  The United States is now the State of Panem which was originally composed of 13 districts.  75 years before the beginning of the current story, the districts rose up and rebeled against the Capitol.  District 13 was destroyed and the remaining districts, to punish and remind them of the cost of their rebellion, are now required to send two children every year to the Capitol to participate in The Hunger Games, a televised fight to the death, with only one victor.  Reality TV on steroids.  I was transported to a world that was strange but also familiar…everything I love about a good book.

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Stylistically, Blade Runner is a masterpiece…the look, the sound, the story.  It’s science fiction meets film noir.   Set in an environmentally ruined earth, Rick Deckard (the Blade Runner) is tasked to find and kill four bioengineered robots called “replicants.”  The problem is, the replicants look exactly like humans.  While being hunted, the replicants are on a hunt of their own…for their creator.  They have questions, “Why were we created,” and “Why do we have to die?’  They question what it is to be human.  The setting and the story are believable and perhaps even prophetic.

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Inspiration:

A gift my niece made for me for hosting a Stampin’ Up! party.  You can see the inspiration piece at the end of this post.

 

Supplies:

Frosting container

Craft foam

Craft foam decorations

Glue

Scissors (I used a rotary cutting system)

1.  Measure the frosting container.  To measure a round object, take a piece of string and wrap it around the piece.  Lay the string out on a ruler and you have your measurement.  My container measured 3-1/2″ x 10-1/2″.

2.  Cut out a piece of craft foam for the background.  Apply glue to the back.

3.  Wrap the craft foam around the container.

4.  Apply the decorations.

5.  You have a fresh, happy little pencil cup.  Think of all the possibilities.  You can use felt, paper, craft foam or fabric.

This is the inspiration piece.  It has my name on it.

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Who needs a lion, tiger or bear for a mascot when you could have a Greyhound!

 

University of Indianapolis – Indianapolis, IN

 

Loyola University Maryland – Baltimore, MD

Moravian College – Bethlehem, PA

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DIP-IT®

 This is my favorite coffee maker cleaner because it removes stains and oils as well as lime, calcium & other water deposits.

Genie Bra

 This is my new favorite bra.  It’s supportive, the straps don’t fall down, it has a smooth silhouette under your clothes and it’s SUPER comfortable.  Added bonus…very inexpensive.  In fact, they’re down right cheap.

Post-it Notes 

How did we ever live without these things?

Thundershirt

It is horrible when your pet is scared of thunder.  Freedom is VERY scared of thunder and fireworks.  She would spend thunderstorms in the bathroom, shaking so bad it would break your heart.  Enter, the Thundershirt.  The Thundershirt  is a compression garment for your pet…like swaddling a baby.  It works for many types of anxiety, not just thunder.  The best thing, the Thundershirt is 100% guaranteed.  If it doesn’t work, you can return it for a complete refund.  Freedom still likes to ride out storms and fireworks in the bathroom, but she doesn’t shake, she’ll come out of the bathroom if you call her, and she’s calm enough that she takes a nap when I toss in her bed.  I can’t recommend this highly enough.  An added bonus…it can be used as a Halloween costume.  Check out Bunny from Tales and Tails as “Super Pink.”

Freedom:  “I’ll model my Thundershirt, but I’m not looking at the camera.”

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For the last seven weeks, I’ve been working through the e-course, Make Art a Part (of Your Life).  This week’s reading was “exploration.”  Kaitlyn talks about experiencing art when you travel and introduces a contributor that offers great travel tips.  One of my favorites is, “Check the gift shop first.”  That way you can see what works the museum or gallery deems particularly important.  I led a tour at Copshaholm yesterday, and I did just that.  The postcards available were pictures of three of the rooms and an exterior shot.  That advice was right on target.  Copshaholm is particularly important because the home was given to the Center for History intact, just as the Oliver family lived in it; so it is fitting that the postcards were of the outside of the home and rooms.   

After every section, Kaitlyn asks a question that has you consider the material in your own life.  This week she asks, “Where was the last place you visited (big or small, any town or city other than where you currently live).  Were you able to make art a part of your experience?  If not, find out how you could have.  Where would you most like to experience art in the world?  Why?

My answer is West Lafayette, Indiana where my daughter is attending Purdue University.  I have not made art a part of my experience there, but I plan to change that.  When I visit her this year, I plan to take in many of the sights before her time there is up.  I’ll post about some of our discoveries in the future.  If I could experience art anywhere in the world, I would pick Great Britain.  I’ve never been there and would love to see many of the places and things that I have come to love through my interest in English literature and history.

The creation exercise this week was “cooking.”  Oh boy!  I don’t like to cook!  But I gave it a shot and made these cupcakes.  May I say that the “cooking” projects were 1000 times better than my little cupcakes.

If you’d like to participate in this e-course, you may register at any time.  Once registered, you’ll have access to the full course for one year.  You can complete it at your own pace.  The cost is $45.00 and you can sign up here.  Kaitlyn also had a wonderful blog, isavirtue.

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Yesterday, I found myself looking in dismay at my creative space.  It was a mess.  I haven’t been getting any creative work done and progress on the room itself has stalled.  I forgot to post an update in August and with September coming to an end, I wanted to get back on track.   Have I mentioned that I get overwhelmed easily? 

So…I cleared the mess out of the room (an option I have since my daughter is in college) and my plan is to set a timer and work 1 hour, no more and no less, everyday this week. 

Next Sunday (October 2), I’ll post a day-by-day progress report.  Let’s see if the “timer” method helps me out.

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This is an engaging and highly readable book on the fascinating lives of King Henry VIII and his six wives.  Not only do you get insight into the king and the individual, vibrant and diverse women who were married to him, you also get a look at court life with its morals and political intrique, the international struggle for power and England’s break with Rome and the start of the Protestant Reformation.  I lean towards fiction, but once I started reading this beautifully written and researched book, I couldn’t put it down.