a little more creativity

I haven't forgotten AEDM, I just got sidetracked by the holiday and then by setting out Christmas.  However, I did a couple of creative things in there......

For Thanksgiving (hope all of you here in the US had the best Thanksgiving ever!), I handmade the place cards for the dinner table.  I printed photos of each person and then doodled the edges of the card.  A pinecone and some wire completed the place card.

Then, after Thanksgiving it was time to bring out the bins of holiday decorations and get the house whipped into shape.  Traditionally we have a holiday party the first Saturday of December and play bunco (if you haven't tried it, it's a simple, brainless dice game that's SO easy, fun and a great 'forced' mixer for a group of people).  Most of my decor goes in the same place each year, but I do create a different mantel arrangement - and that's a challenge!  My mantel is about 3' deep and the opening is probably 4' tall - it's tough to fill it up and not make it too crowded.....  My creativity was stretched a bit here.....

Then, I tried something totally different in the entry way - it came to me as I was laying in bed trying to summon the energy to get up and get moving.....I went to the local park a week ago and picked up some fallen branches, gave them a light coat of white spray paint and added lots and LOTS of curling ribbon streamers.  I love the touch of whimsy in my entry......

So, no art per se, but creativity none-the-less.....  See what others are doing to wrap up this creative month by visiting Creative Every Day...

By the way, in my email this morning was a nice little surprise.  Stampington now offers a wide range of washi tapes (for those of you addicted or wish you could be) for an affordable $3.49/roll through their Shoppe at Somerset.  Lots of fun, unusual patterns - will I see one of them on a postcard from you?  

AEDM 16-18

Continuing my efforts to show my daily creativity for AEDM.

You know, I realized I feel creative every day, even if it doesn't necessarily result in getting glue and paint all over my hands (and everything else).  I spend an inordinate amount of time thinking creative thoughts (planning a centerpiece, planning an art piece, planning a card design, whatever).  And we all know, we are what we think about, right?  :)  Sometimes creativity takes a more practical or mundane avenue but is necessary in the overall encouragement of our most creative selves.

So, while Leah's challenge is helpful to focus on actual production, I don't feel like I need any nudging to be creative....maybe just to get it out of my head....  In that vein, I focused on the practical on Friday.

Day #16:
As you may remember, my computer crashed a few weeks ago, then the new replacement one crashed a week later (something in the air????).  Yes, I'm still retagging those thousands of photos, but one of the other necessary tasks was reassembling my vast font library.  Which I discovered I can't do.  I didn't keep the original font files and many of them are no longer available or aren't free any more.

Then, because I'm compulsive that way, I had to create an updated reference list of my fonts by style: handwriting, novelty, bold, stencil, etc.  I know, it's a curse.  But, it's done - check!

Day 17:

I went back and finished my first veneer project.  I found inspiration in a quilt book, so this is a simple version of a quilt block on a small canvas board -5x7 or so. 

Here's most of my veneer bits laid out on the floor by color - trying to figure out how to store this stuff.....

Work table filled with veneer bits and quilt book inspiration.

The start of a background......

Glued in place with white glue.  Oops, I appeared to have measured wrong.  No problem.....

I just happened to have this cool button ready to go -  (it's brass toned, not green)

 I had to add more layers to the background to darken it and create more contrast with the wood color.

Day 18:

Started working on a Christmas gift.....an advent calendar -got the idea from Pinterest.  Started with cutting lots of pockets from some scrapbook paper I've had on hand for a couple years.  Then is the fun....embellishing each pocket (which is still underway).

Lots of cutting....

Working on the layout.....

      Are you finding/making time to be creative?  It gets harder and harder as the holidays approach and start to suck up our time! :)

AEDM #13 -15

Catching up with my Art Every Day Month entries.  You can see daily creativity at Leah's site Creative Every Day.



Day #13:
Outgoing mail day - sent out about 25 postcards.....are you on my list?

Stamping, collage, some texture, paint and words and I've got lots of mail art love going out.  My mail carrier at work loves these mail art days and we actually chat for a couple minutes as she's never seen handmade cards going out (guess that makes sense since she's on a business route!).

Day #14:

My creative time today was spent in prep - I took that stack of Christmas cards I've been saving for years and cut them up - cut out the pretty front elements, cut up the words, kept scraps of pretty glittery edges. These are now going to morph into holiday cards.....(when, I'm not exactly sure....)  You can see I retreated to the bedroom to do the cutting while watching TV.  Big Mistake.  Huge.  (remember what movie that's from?  - Pretty Woman when Roberts goes back to the boutique that wouldn't help her when she was dressed as a hooker but now she's a transformed, elegantly dressed woman)  Anyway, my mistake?  Glitter and paper bits all over the bedspread and floor!  Then I had to get the vacuum out.  Sigh.

Day #15
It's so gray here in Seattle, I thought I needed a reminder of warmer, more exotic days.  A little digi art is the answer!  Started with a palm tree photo that was also a little gray but added some background textures and now I'm ready to head back to Tahiti.

We're half way through the month - hope you all are staying creative!

AEDM #10-12

An update for AEDM - check in with Leah at Creative Every Day to catch up on what others are doing.... Saturday I spent the day planted in front of my computer tagging, retagging, more tagging of photos. So, another digital creation.  Since it's the season of gratitude, thought I'd go that direction....

My photo of a yucca plant bloom, plus a couple of blurry bokeh pics as part of the background, some digital scrapbooking elements and my first digi art journal page is created..... :)

A different kind of creativity:  I thought it time to embrace fall more completely, so I moved out my summery candles and sea glass and created a fall display on my sideboard.

I added my wrapped rocks, some wrapped sticks and beach finds to my candle plate and a few silk leaves for bold color.  That's about as much fall decor as I put out because I'm really all about Christmas.....fall is just a holding pattern til the day after Thanksgiving when I can pull out my bins of Christmas decorations! :)

For day 12, I finished my companion piece to the book I won from Fiona.  I'm really pleased with the result of this - I focused on creating layers and trying to forget about the layers I was covering up, just enjoying what was on top.

Before and after (obviously shot at different times of the day):

The brush was a yard sale find with stone disks and bone handle, don't know what kind of hair in the brush, but it's very cool.  Fiona's long narrow book is such a delight of pattern and texture that I wanted something to complement it.....

So, I used similar elements: color palette, black lines, etc. but I added a little teal ... well, because I like the color! :)  There's a button and the circles are from the baby wipe I used when smooshing around the paint, so it's in the exact same tones....I just found interesting patterns on the dried wipe.  Such a great fabric texture.

Keeping my focus and making time to create every day is a challenge this month, but I'm game. Still plugging along!  What path did your creativity lead you down today?

  visit AEDM

AEDM #9

I have the start of a couple of projects for my creative efforts today.....  Working on a 5x7" canvas panel I am just laying down the background starts for a couple of ideas I have.

Started with adhering an Asian book page to one panel (the paper was received in a swap!) with mat medium.  I won a small book from Fiona a couple months ago and have it hanging on the wall, but it needs a companion so I want to make something gently Asian and compatible with her gorgeous book.

The other project is that I want to experiment with working with the veneer pieces I get from work.  My thought is that I'll use a few different veneer colors and make a quilt type pattern on the painted background.

Used yellow, orange and light brown so far....

The Asian beginning is on the right, the veneer will be on the gold one and the left is my baby wipe drying to become collage fodder for another day.


Why don't you join in the Art Every Day Month?  It doesn't have to be a big project - just a little working in your journal, begin a project (like me), take a gorgeous photo, or make a new soup.  Who says creativity is restricted to painting/collage?  How will you be creative today?

AEDM #8

Somehow I missed a day or two......ah well.  Art Every Day Month, hosted by Leah at Creative Every Day continues and there are so many creative participants.....hope you'll take some time to visit one or two.

Since I'm spending so much of my free time glued to my computer as I continue the gargantuan job of retagging my 20,000+ photos, I thought it made sense to create digital art this time.

The original photo is a firework photo and the little hiding people are cut from a gardening book I have.

Add some textures and play with filters and there you go.

What did others come up with?  See the links at Creative Every Day.

AEDM #5

My creativity took a different turn today.  I needed to come up with some quick, easy, cheap fall centerpiece ideas for my decorating website.  (In case you don't know, I have another website full of home decorating advice and ideas: YourDecoratingHotline.com)

Last weekend Dan and I went walking in Lincoln Park (a huge park in West Seattle) and I picked up a huge hand full of these giant maple leaves - they're probably 8-12" wide.

These are some pretty hearty, tough leaves so I wondered if I could sew them into a garland on my machine.  Now that I have it out to sew paper, I think of using it more often (though the needle is going to get dull pretty quickly!). Here's my sewn leaf garland.....

I did have a little trouble with the leaves tearing as I tried to stitch over some of the thicker veins, but once it's hung, you can't see any of that.  Linking this to Leah's list of busy creators over at CreativeEveryDay.

If you want to read about and see my other centerpiece ideas, I hope you'll visit Your Decorating Hotline - the article will publish Wednesday.

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