Semi-Wordless Wednesday – Shadow Dancing!

We and our shadows are having a blast !

Catch you on the re-bound…

Haiku My Heart Friday – She’s almost here !

Pimmy, Bave, Chica,

Hearts waiting for a special guest

Kate arrives today !

 

Along with her wonderful big bro, Thomas, John, the tall and very good Dad, and my sista/the Momma, Kristina, who I love very much ! Makes my heart feel good. Off to enjoy the fun for a few days. See you next week, Beautiful Ones !

Visitors from a strange land…

 

Did a few art journal pages in the last 24 hours that seem to have visitors from a strange land in them.

This one started with a big green ink blob on the left hand side of the page…

I saw the “alien” in it right away, with his strange helmet, made to fit over his antennae…

I added the blue background, then took out that great star burst stencil and added the bright yellow and orange burst that looks like it is coming from behind his head.

Off to the computer to google an “alien” quote and what should I find ?  

  A quote from the Greek playwright, Aeschyus, the father of Greek Tragedy.

I wonder if when he wrote this line was back 500 years before Christ if he had any idea that it would still be used some 2500 years later ?

I am not sure what this visitor is all about, but I sure do like the looks of him.

He is welcome to stay awhile and share his story, even if it is a tragedy…

The next visitor is this Picasso/Matisse/I don’t know-who-else-inspired chick who appeared

right after I had read a Rumi quote left to me in a gift from my pal Kim, The Bodhi Chicklet.

The quote read “We rarely hear the inward music but we are all dancing to it never the less.”

I did the background first – playing with pinks and pastels.

A little unusual for me.

Then I needed a dancer of some kind…

Struggled with that for a long while, shifting through stacks of images and drawing, etc…

I finally drew the body in the same pose as a magazine dancer holding a parasol.

Some painting and pen work later, here was my muscular chick.

I think her name is Francesca.

A name meaning “free-spirit”.

I think Francesca is an unusual character but I do know that she came to remind me

to listen to that inward music a little more.

To turn up the volume if you will.

I am going do that.

You could to.

This song is a fun one to boogie too if you wanna join me…

Mika is a strange creature too, so it kind of all fits !

I hope your Wednesday has you turning up that inner music and feeling like a free-spirit, Beautiful Ones !

Big Love !

(A little reminder that yours truly is featured on Connie’s 30 Journals 30 Day project tomorrow ! Yay !)

At Some Point…

Art Journal Page – July, 2010 – “At Some Point.”

(click on any photo to enlarge)

I have been working with a life lesson this past little while.

It comes from when you draw a line in the sand and judge someone else’s behavior as “wrong”.

I have learned that when you do this,

you make the world harder not just for that person, but for yourself.

I learned that it just feel wrong in me to judge others.

I am not saying that I have perfected this lesson at all yet. ;)

I also learned  that when you apply LOVE in the place of judgment,

you sure can live with yourself a whole lot better.

I hope I develop that muscle in my Heart over time,

so that one day, when someone does something that feels “wrong” to me,

I will prevent myself from shooting flames of anger, judgment, punishment in their direction.

And instead,

realize right away that what they need

is an extra big dose

of

LOVE.

*********************************

I had an extra sweet visit from my friend Kim, The Bodhi Chicket. It was so nice to have her here in my home and let her see how and where I hang out.

Today is about getting some art time in, a quiet Tuesday with nothing on the agenda but time in the studio and a good walk with the Pooch.

Then tomorrow, I will begin the prep. for my wonderful guests arriving on Friday !!!!

  Oooh, I can’t wait to have this Baby Girl boogying at my house !

Happy Tuesday, Beautiful Ones !

And when in doubt, remember that LOVE is the answer to any question !

Sunday Morning Vibes…

  Here’s a few things I have been puttering with this week…

These sweet flower faces are now adorning a $1.00 wooden hook, ready to hang on the back of a door or in the dressing room.

Cute, right ?

I also snuck in some painting time one afternoon during my busy week and created this :

This beauty is a whole bunch of scraps and bits of paper glued down onto a piece of deli paper with gel medium, then painted and stamped and paint brush squiggled and paint pen scribbled over.

I learned this technique from Anne Bagby way back when I went to a 5 day workshop with her and Lynne Perella at Hacienda Mosaico in Mexico, about 4 years ago now…

What I love about it is that the deli paper (I have a box of 200 sheets I found at Sam’s Club about 2 years ago – it is what the deli uses to wrap sandwiches – NO WAX!) is thin but sturdy and the finished painted papers have such flexibility and lightness – they can be added in to any collage and become a part of it, not just sit on top.

Oh, and look at the “sweet spots” (a term I learned from Lynne at the same retreat !) : 

Loving the possibilities for these !

I had a pretty busy week which was wonderful. A great mix of time with friends enjoying the summer, (though I am missing my pal, Colleen who hasn’t been able to escape work yet !) and some really good indoor cleaning time. You know the kind when you get into the corners and get rid of cobwebs, etc…

You see, I have some important visitors coming through in the next little while.

Beginning today with a quick but oh so sweet visit from my friend Kim, the Bodhi Chicklet, fresh from her three day retreat at Kripalu in the Berkshires in MA. It is Kim’s first visit here to the Yellow House on Orange Street and I am so excited  to share bits of my life with her here on my home turf !

Then at the end of the week, my sister Kristina is coming with her husband John, her fair haired boy Thomas, and my favorite Kate on Earth ! We will be hanging here for the weekend and then heading to Wells, Maine for a few days for a family beach side luxury camping trip (big trailer, no tents !) . ! How lucky are we ????

This morning started off mellow, photographing my little bits of art work above and getting this post done. I am feeling so thankful for all that I have today. I am truly blessed.

I have had my friend Patti Digh in my head a lot. She is sitting vigil at the bedside of a dear friend of hers, Nina, who is slowly leaving her body and moving into spirit. Patti promised her friend she would not be alone at the end of her life on this Earth. What a remarkable and beautiful act of friendship. It brings tears to my eyes and such love into my heart. Send them your prayers too, Beautiful Ones, so they both have strength to travel this part of the journey together.

Big Love…

(dedicated to Patti, Nina and to all the ones I Love…)

Haiku My Heart Friday – Birthday Loving

art journal page – May 2009

Celebrating Life

Candles, cake, balloons, Big Love.

You deserve it all.

Happy birthday to Christina at Soul Aperture!

This Blog Party is for you !

Happy Friday, Beautiful Ones !

(for more Haiku my Heart Friday treasures, go here.)

Thankfulness Thursday - Buried Treasure - I Have A Choice

Today is July 15th and I am participating in The Buried Treasure project organized by Seth at The Altered Page. We are revisiting a favorite post from the past year and offering it up to our readers to check it out a second time.

This post was originally from February 2010 and I decided to re-post it as I like the mix of Queen of Arts philosophy, Rock My World love and the lovely bits of art making towards the end of the post.

It is a Thankfulness Thursday post too which works kind of well !

I hope you enjoy revisiting my little treasure from the past !

Happy Thursday, beautiful Ones!

****************************************************************
I Have A Choice...

Any of you who know a Libra,

or who know me in particular,

are aware that making choices isn't always easy for me.

But I have to say that

I am always grateful that I have a choice.

In each and every minute

of each and every day,

I have a choice.

You do too.

How lucky and blessed are we

that we are made this way ?

Now, do we always make the "right" choice ?

No way !

But you know what is great ?

In the next minute, we could choose again !

So awesome.

This morning I am grateful for choice.

I chose to start my day with a big glass of water and a bit of stretch.

I chose to start my day singing a song of Thankfulness .

I chose some of my Rock My World Rocks to set my intentions for the day.

In short,

this morning,

I chose joy.

What are you going to choose ?

(For another great post today about Choice, check out my lovely Seeker friend Kelley's blog, Dragonfly Reflections.)

And now, I hope you choose to look at these amazing sewn papers I created yesterday !!!!

I am so in love with them !!!!

I was inspired by my friend Corrine at dosfishes , who showed me her own crazy sewn papers at Squam last Fall, as well as a post on IHanna's blog about sewing striped papers.

I needed some awesome stuff to create my postcards for the Postcard Swap that Hanna is hosting. (Still a little time to join in ! Imagine getting postacrds from all over the world in your mailbox !)

So I got out the gel medium, the painted paper scraps, and some regular old photocopy paper

and went to town gluing random shapes of the painted papers onto the photocopy paper with the gel medium.

Then I left it all to dry for awhile, fearing what the damp gel medium would do to my sewing machine !

Then I chose black thread for the bobbin and the top thread and went for it !

My final step was to take my Caran D'arche water Soluable crayons and fill in the grout lines, if you will, or the space between the cut up pieces, smearing the color in with some water on a paintbrush afterwards.

On the striped piece above I also took my black and white Elmer's paint Pens and added some scribble writing.

I am so in love with this sheet that I think I may just frame it pretty much as it for a gorgeous piece of art! Too pretty to cut up !

That may be my choice. :)

Or I could always choose to make up another batch for the postcards and keep all of these lovelies for me !

We shall see.

Don't you just love the possibilties ?

May you find the strength to choose joy today, Beautiful Ones !

Happy Thursday !

(Check out the Weekly Gratitude Blog to see what others are doing for this year long project )

Dwelling…

Here is my latest journal page.

Did you know that a 40-something woman has lots of physical stuff to deal with, especially when she is on the round side (okay, very round), kind of hates exercise and loves her sweet stuff ?

It has come to my attention in a big way that NOW is the time to start facing the issue of how I take care of myself, or in many ways, don’t take care of myself. I do know a couple of things for sure about how I will have to go about making some major changes in my life.

I will need to do things in baby steps, changing little behaviors here and there that will add up to bigger ones. While I used the cold turkey method to quit my 20 year smoking habit two years ago now, I think making changes in eating, exercising and a lot of self-care needs to be done in a more gentle, long term goals for me. Otherwise, I quickly get overwhelmed and give up before I have started !

And most of all, I will have to make the changes with LOVE and Appreciation for the incredible Being that I am and for the Vessel that was giving to me to make my way through the world.

Change is on the way, my friends. Necessary change. And you can bet that the Queen will make good use of her Creativity and her Big Heart to make it happen.

________________________________________________________________

In addition to talking a little bit about some new projects of mine, I wanted to be sure and share some of the great stuff that some incredible bloggers I know are up to right now.

Seth at the Altered Page is once more organizing his Buried Treasure project where he links together a whole bunch for bloggers who have chosen to revisit one of their favorite posts from the past ! So cool !

The event takes place tomorrow, Thursday July 15th and yours truly will be digging through the archives today to find something that I would like to re-post especially for the occasion. You can still join in – head over to Seth’s blog and drop him a comment !

Have you been checking out all the great Art Journalers that Connie at Dirty Footprints Studio has been promoting all month ? She is featuring 30 different artists for 30 days in the month of July. Each artist is sharing how they got into art journaling, their favorite tools and materials and giving bits of inspiration that are great for the newbie and the more experienced art journaler alike. (Be sure to check out July 22 post – that’s when the Queen of Arts makes an appearance !)

I hope you have a wonderful Wednesday, Beautiful Ones !

Big Love !

Connections...

Ooops ! So some of you saw my earlier published vague and incomplete edition of this post - it has been a bit of a challenging morning for me and Blogger...

anyway...

This morning, as I often do, I woke up with crazy brain.

That isn't unusual but what is was how quickly some great tools and inspiration came into play to get me out of it !

A whole bunch of things worked together to get me out of that icky place and into a place where I want to BE today.

Present and connected to my life and this world.

Here's how it happened ...

The first tool that came to mind was my art journal. It has been neglected for a bit and I knew I had to get back into that magical practice TODAY !

I also wanted to rejoin the Green Pepper Press Street Team Crusades hosted by the incredible Michelle Ward.

I have missed the wonderful connections and community that comes with participating there !

This month's theme is "Strip Ease" where Michelle encourages us to rip up some stuff and add the strips and elements on our journal pages.

That was in mind as I started this process this morning, as was my desire to join Maegan at Madeline Bea who is hosting Sunday Creative, where she gives a one word prompt every Sunday and links up all kinds of artists who are participating. I had such a great time with Maegan's Creativity Boot Camp that I definitely want to keep playing a long with her !

This week's work was "Connect"....how juicy, right ?

So with all this inspiration in my artist mind, I got the old journal out and faced the blank page with stencils, acrylic paints, brushes, make-up sponges all close at hand and went for it...

I created a background with a stencil and some turquoise paint...

I washed some light turquoise over the center of the page...

I found a photocopy of a journal page from my previous journal and tore that up to make my Strip Ease strips.

I then added an image transfer using a ink jet transparency image of a chickadee and some gel medium.

The transfer actually worked clearly which is a rarity for me !!!

This blurry shot shows how the page looked with my transfer, the strips of my old journal page and some black and white flowers I cut out from another photocopy using my flower punch.

Here is where another bit of inspiration came into play. I follow Sarah Whitmire's daily journal prompt tweets on Twitter. I use them periodically when I need a jumping off point in my journal process.

Today's prompt was to use your favorite poem in a page.

I don't really have a favorite poem. Poetry seems to come to me when I need it to emphasize something that is happening in my life.

I felt that my page had the perfect spot to include a poem though so I headed to the computer and decided to Google the perfect poem.

I googled "poems about connection"...

and ended up on this Springfield New Sun page talking about the poetry of Julie L. Moore and how poetry readers would connect to her recent work called "Slipping into Bloom."

And there, on that page...

The perfect poem...

It brought me back full circle to my crazy brain challenge this morning, and how my "gnawing spirit" was "cooing ultimate questions".

But through this whole thing, I found the perfect answer for my spirit today.

The answer is to stop "gnawing" and to BE Present in this very Moment !

Immersing myself in the creative process and getting inspired by so many wonderful sources in this precious life is the BEST way I know of BEING.

Plus you get a pretty cool piece of art work to admire in the end too.

I hope your Sunday is full of Lovely Being, Beautiful Ones.

Big Love !

Haiku Friday No.1

("Looking for Love" - art journal page, 2009)

Haiku Friday No.1

Body may be bruised

The spirit can still soar high

Kiss-kiss on boo-boos.

Happy Friday, Beautiful Ones !

July 2010 has begun...

So in July 2010, my nephew Thomas is now 7 and just finished first grade with flying colors...

And Kate is now two years old ("Deux ans, Pimmy! "she says, holding up her two fingers in a peace sign) and just killing me with those blond curls and big smiles...

And Auntie Kimmy was luck enough to spend some sweet time with them both at my sister's house last week.

You know there was art making involved.

Thomas and I created these wonderful prayer flags on gessoed linen using some word stencils, Portfolio water soluble oil pastels and acrylic paints.

Tom's magic swimming merman...

my mermaid...

Tom's tree and church...

my Joy Flower

Tom's inspiring words with stars and bricks.

I sewed the flags onto a ribbon and we decided to tie them between two trees that flank the path that leads us to the Petit Cabane (little cabin) in the woods at the back of the house...

Thomas' day with me also included painting some t-shirts. We used fabric paints, some super cool stencils and fabric markers.

We made one for the little Sista...

And one for the Big Yo Yo Yo Bro...

The next day spent with just Katie was equally sweet. We picked flowers, played ball, created all kinds of things with PlayDoh that Kate could squish and destroy all while laughing hysterically and snuggled and played the day away.

You would never know it from the heat wave that is hitting them now( it is in the 90's there today too), but my time up there was actually really cold ! It was only in the 50's during the day ! Crazy ! No swimming at Lac Vezeau so far this year !

That's okay though.

Snuggle time was so very sweet and heart-warming for Pimmy anyway...

(Kate - beautiful at 2 years, 2 months old...)

I did get to catch up for a brief time with my wonderful sweet friend Kim, (The Bodhi Chicklet) , at her cottage in the Laurentians too. She and Riley met me at Lac Clair and we had a magical time together on last Friday, soaking up the gradually warming sun and enjoying the gorgeous treasures of nature.

Not to

mention the great chats, yummy snacks and some good wine...

(Kim and Riley - Lac Clair, July 2, 2010)

I could have spent a week there ! So beautiful, so calming, so fun, and so full of loving vibes.

It was a real treat and I am definitely closely scoping out the next opportunity to head back up there and spend some more time with my Beautiful Friend.

(Lac Clair, Quebec - July 2010)

I unfortunately had to cut my trip a little short so I could go spend some healing/nursing/loving time with my sweet Mom who badly broke her tibia (could any break be good ?) in a fall.

I was so glad that it worked out that I could spend a few days helping her figure out ways to get around her apartment without putting any weight on her leg, feeding her some yummy, healthy food prepared with love and offering her some sweet daughter comfort wherever I could.

The pain is getting gradually better, thank God, and my Mom amazes me with her strength and positive attitude. It looks like it will be a long haul for her this summer but I know she will be okay through it all, thanks to her Faith and with a little help from her friends. If you could add your prayers, positive juju/mojo rising to the good stuff heading her way, I would appreciate it so very much.

(Mommy and Me, September 2009)

I am back home now, feeling a little lost and unsure where I belong or what I should be doing. I do know that some art making is a big time MUST because my artist spirit and my fingers are itching to get some paint on a page !!!!

David has taken Thursday and Friday off so we will have a yummy extra long weekend together which is sure to put me right again. I think a day at the beach in this HEAT Wave will be in order tomorrow ! Bring on the icy cooler drinks, the umbrella, the sunscreen and the freezing cold Atlantic waters....

Here's to July 2010, Beautifu Ones, and living each moment of it to the fullest !

Cheers !