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Archive for the ‘Creativity’ Category

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Posted in Creativity, Honoré on April 16, 2012 | 1 Comment »

Hey there! Sorry I missed our chat yesterday…I’ve had a busy weekend, including today. We’re having top-down convertible weather (and yes, KMG, I know you are mis-er-able ~ so am I! And fearful that the AC is on the blink. The thermostat isn’t registering a temp and that’s scary, but a subject for another post, hopefully more positive…).

But, back to the weekend: Saturday I attended an all-day workshop at the Queen’s Ink – my favorite go-to place for luscious card stock and pattern papers not to mention that  just walking through the shop is a visual feast where all the displays and product scream: try me! try me!

The workshop was on altering books and the product was the beginning of a reference book (just the idea of such wooed this old retired librarian’s heart ;-) ) of techniques, such as making pockets, flip-ups, windows, adding zippers, etc. We had a gay ol’ time and my creative juices  really flowed. By the time I got home, about 7 PM, I was worn out by the endorphin rush.

one of my pages...

Sunday was a very lazy morning…and in the afternoon, I went to my monthly knitting class. We’re making a 16-block afghan, each block has a different diamond motif. Yesterday we started block #4 and after a few false starts on my part, I got into the swing of things.

the empty space is where block #4 is going...

Believe it or not, this class is taught by a librarian…she’s the chief materials’ selector for Howard County Library. And did I mention that yesterday was convertible top-down weather? Not that I have one but I saw several on the road.

not mine but nice...

Again, when I got home, I was bushed and finished the day sacked out in front of the TV – not watching – with a glass of bubbly. I’m thinkin’ a nap ensued…

Mondays are quilt guild day and so, off to Columbia I went for the second time in as many days. Today we had a guest lecturer, Penny Haren (from Ohio) who has created a Pieced Applique Technique that is easy, appears to be fun and results in blocks with perfect points and curves without sewing. She’s doing a workshop tomorrow that I can’t attend – boo hoo – but I did buy one of her books!

Norman started to mow the lawn today and of course, the lawnmower acted up.  So we had to take it to the lawnmower repair people who suggested that maybe there was water in the gasoline. We bought and  poured some stuff in the mower that’s supposed to take care of that problem (as I am writing this post, he’s out trying to get it going and sadly, I don’t hear it …). But you know what? I think I’ll go fix a bite to eat, have a glass of bubbly and watch the news.

Hope you both have a great week and I’ll catch up with you next Monday, April 23.

Cheers~

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I am a bird

Posted in Beauty, Creativity, Just for fun, Laura, Learning, Lifeology, Writing on April 8, 2012 | 2 Comments »

Verb Tribe Too began on Thursday and I was still awake at the stroke of midnight Thursday morning and couldn’t resist peeking at the prompt that was finally accessible, ‘You are a bird’.  I watched birds all day and wondered about them. I listened to their calls, cries, and caws with a new ear attempting to differentiate and recognize them.

On Friday morning I was early to CrossFit and sat in my car with my little notepad and jotted down a few lines and words that came to me during my drive. Later at home after Morning Pages were tucked away I sat with my trusty Ticonderoga pencil and my blank sketch book and captured this poem:

Krak

My body is the night
blacker than pitch.
Imagine the evening sky, stars snuffed out like candles.
I am soaked in black
my feathers reflect iridescent purple.

Bold am I.
Bodacious.
Raucous.
I scream at my crow cousins.
I am mighty—
They are minions in my kingdom.

Raven am I.
Maven of heaven.
My intense inky eyes
blink rapidly
on either side of my head.
Monocular vision—
so foreign to you,
allows a view of ALL.

I am always alert, ready, poised.
The branch sways
I hold my head still
to triangulate.
What buoyant substance is sealed in
these hollow bones?
Which make my body
lighter
than the air that kisses it?

I am not shackled by gravity
my wings spread in a shadowy embrace
my legs thrust
I point my beak to the rising sun.
Close to the ground I swoop and loop
over my crow cousins.
Krak, krak I call
to remind them
I am here.
Always watching.
Their dark master.

I lift on a current like a branch in the sea
and surge
upwards
a black smudge in an azure sky.
My belly is full.
My wings are strong
I beat them up then down
steadily
and feel the wind
shoot me higher.

A thermal!
I bank right.
The heavens are devoid
of other life
I circle the funnel of air
feathers streaming
eyes seeking
my wings stroke the air.
krak, krak
alive, I scream. I am alive.

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finishing touches

Posted in Commitment, Creativity, Gift, Just for fun, Laura, Learning, Lifeology, Productivity on March 14, 2012 | 1 Comment »

Tuesday is a Weight Watcher morning so I wasn’t up until 7am. I peeped my eyes open when my alarm beeped and asked myself with a groan what I did to make me sore all over. I missed CrossFit Monday so I attempted my first half mile jog Monday night and I did it—I even went on for another 4/10’s of a mile and sprinted the home stretch! Needless to say my muscles were talkin’ to me Tuesday morning.

My morning routine is fruit and water, my WW Leader alerted me she was making a green smoothie with mint cookie crisp snack bar in it and would share with me. It was dee-lish. I was home before 11am and had another smoothie with frozen fruit and a mango, mmmmm. I slurped on that while I wrote my morning pages.

My priority yesterday was to put the finishing touches on a gift that has been a work in progress for Jeff and I for the past month. He designed a ‘thought bubble’ to put the quote inside in Mistral font and the results were spectacular! It looks way better then either of us expected. We finally decided to complete it over the weekend and commit to shipping this week.

The sign is made from re-purposed materials—wood that used to be something else. In this case the bubble was made from a piece of an old maple kitchen table. Keeping the stories and conversations alive. And the letters were made from a piece of bed rail off of a broken children’s bed. Jeff wrote an adorable story about the bed-frame and the little girl it belonged to until it broke. I explained how the quote was chosen and the re-purposed wood and we printed it out and attached card on the back of the thought bubble just below the hanger.

I’ll post a few photos of the process today and post an entire image once it has been received. This was a rewarding project and we learned a lot about color and paints by experimenting, the process will be less time intensive next time around!  Jeff and I make a great team and I am always astounded by his willingness to run with an idea—especially some of my crazy ones!

Story glued to the back of thought bubble.

Giraffe card I made to accompany gift...

It's in the box!

Protecting the precious cargo.

It's kinda cool that this photo blurred...it's off to mystery friend :) Project complete!

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3:12 pm on Mon – 3/12/2012

Posted in Color, Creativity, Honoré, Just for fun, Photography, Time on March 13, 2012 | 2 Comments »

The 12th of the month is a day that many bloggers take photos, make  a collage and then post on their blogs and/or  to add to their scrapbook or photo albums. Yesterday, conscious of the date and the fact that I was going to be posting here, today, about yesterday, I kept my trusty camera handy as I went about the day’s agenda:

Quilt Guild in the morning

Lunch with some of my quilting friends

Drive to and fro

As I drove, I decided that I’d focus on capturing green: signage; trees; vehicles; etc. The latter proved to be very interesting – I drive probably 25 miles one way to quilt guild so I thought, why not count all the green cars I see on my way. Literally, during that 30-35 minutes drive, I saw about a dozen cars that could count as green…guess it’s not a color of choice for most car owners ( a quick google search reveals that white, silver, grey and black remain the most popular colors). But I digress. On my way, I was surprised to see a lot of green business signage, more than I’d have thought since red is generally regarded as the top marketing color . Think: red = stop! But again I digress.

On my way home, I thought: Starbucks is on the route and soon it will be 3:12 pm and I have my iPad and wouldn’t it be cool to capture a screen shot of the iPad at 3:12 pm today and Starbucks is known for decorating its door with a monthly theme, I could  also get a photo of my reflection at Starbucks and this would be perfect and, and…  Yep! You guessed it; the rest is history.

So, here you have those two photos commemorating my brilliant idea. Lots of fun.

(if you click on the picture, you’ll see the time  better)

And that’s the way it was : 3:12 pm on Mon – 3/12/2012.

Cheers~

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bookcase blockade

Posted in Books, Color, Creativity, Just for fun, Laura, Learning, Lifeology, Productivity on February 27, 2012 | 4 Comments »

Written Sunday afternoon February 26th: I started redecorating my bedroom between Christmas and New Year’s. I was okay with it not being done quickly. I learned from the process. Now I see that choosing a color for the bookcase had all progress stalled for this past month. I didn’t want to choose the ‘wrong’ or less than ideal color. So I chose not to choose. I journaled the other morning about the few tasks I had procrastinated and why. Usually it was because I feared the outcome so not beginning was an act of self preservation. Once I make the ‘decision’—taking action follows naturally.

This week I put all of my procrastinations on my action board and gave them a day and a time slot, more than one if I needed to revisit the task. Eating a big job in chunks! Painting the bookcase was my Sunday to do. Jeff and I took a piece of carpet to Lowe’s on Saturday and matched the color and had a quart of paint mixed. Easy peasy. I chose and it’s done. Once we were in the action stage of the process I was highly motivated so we started painting after dinner! Today we did the touch-ups and I hope I will have the energy this evening to put it in place and add my books and knickknacks.

Photos of finished room coming soon! Booyah!

Painting the pillars and edges "Burled Redwood"

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creative productivity…

Posted in Creativity, Honoré, Productivity on February 3, 2012 | 1 Comment »

This morning, I  read a post by Todd Henry, Accidental Creative author, on productivity…the essence: in order to be productive, one must produce something. Duh! And therein lies the rub. As Henry points out, the word productive (adj.) results from the verb (action implied) produce. Yesterday was a prime example:

Two years ago I became a career graduate (as in retired) and generally I’ve greeted each day with the best of intentions…often ending the day wondering: where did the day go? and more importantly, why wasn’t I creatively productive?

Yesterday (Thursday), I identified two creativity goals for the day: one was time-bound and the other, I’d been wanting to tackle but had been putting off for the past couple days (probably due to a little insecurity on my part…yeah!). I started with the latter about 10:30 am and before I knew it, the time was 1:30 pm. I had embraced my hesitance, prepared the background and was having a ball selecting papers for, cutting up and arranging 1.5 inch squares. The end result: the beginning of this, an art journal calendar for February.

Eventually, each square will feature  a journal snippet for the day and as the month progresses, I will more than likely add more marks to the overall two page spread. This is so much fun, as I knew it would be when I first discovered it in the current issue of Art Journaling magazine. (You can learn more about this calendar challenge here.)

My other creative product was this scrapbook layout for LOAD212.

During the month of February, we are challenged to create a scrapbook layout a day (thus the acronym LOAD). I first participated in 2011 and had a lot of fun. I didn’t do 28 LOADs and that is A-OK with me; I’m not doing this to meet that goal – my reasons are more internal: I like being inspired by and  interpreting the daily prompt challenge and I like the process of calling up a memory + photo  that results in a page for my scrapbook. I like the learning that comes with each layout I create as well as those of other LOAD participants (we have a group Flickr gallery). And I like the online community that is created as we all join in LOAD.

So, it’s 11:00 am and I’ve got to get busy on today’s LOAD…what are you doing to engage your creative productivity this weekend?

Cheers~

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looking for orange

Posted in Creativity, Laura, Learning, Lifeology, Photography, Writing on February 3, 2012 | 2 Comments »

I went to bed with a scratchy throat Monday night and woke to what felt like glass shards ravaging my esophagus Tuesday morning and that has been my uncomfortable physical state through Thursday. I attempted to find others to work for me at Weight Watchers this morning but no luck, so I had a hot cuppa tea and took a handful of throat lozenges with me and off I went. Later, I tucked myself into bed and decided to use the time to catch up on writing.

My latest and greatest writing adventure began February 1st and will continue for 37 days. I’m participating in Patti Digh’s VerbTribe: Creating a sustainable writing practice, one day at a time. Today is day two: we wrote our writing prompt on a paper bag and we looked for things that were orange and noted them on an index card. We took pictures if we could!

I didn’t read the prompt about orange until I returned home at lunchtime. After writing quietly for a few hours I felt inspired to go on an orange photo hunt.  I was bombarded by orange!  Insight for me: when I look for ‘it’ I find ‘it’.
SO, what do I choose to look for?

orange stripes

orange dishes

orange vision board

orange walls

orange box

orange fruit

orange tool

orange tool 2

orange books

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…baby, it’s cold outside…

Posted in Creativity, Friendship, Gratitude, Kathy, Lifeology on January 10, 2012 | 2 Comments »

...snowflakes gather as I walk to the car...

…well, not really…37 degrees. The perfect Mid-Atlantic temperature for wintry showers. While eating my lunch & listening to Martin’s A Clash of Kings, I was distracted more than once by how the gray skies screamed snow. An hour later, I looked out my window and – ba-zinga – there it was!

...thanks, Mom...

Also, the blue cape has taken its winter place in my car…hate coats but realize I need some sort of cover just in case I break down.

...home...Monday, Jan 9th, 4:59p...

All the planning going on by my cohort Vistas had me wondering…what’s wrong with me this January? Then, it occurred to me that my new office isn’t quite organized yet. I won’t get that creative planning flow back til I have resolution there. Ordered 2 6-tiered desk trays today. Oh yeah. 

Join us next time: Wednesday, Jan 18th to hear about our Tuesdays, Jan 17th!

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Planning 2012

Posted in Creativity, Laura, Learning, Lifeology, Time on January 10, 2012 | 2 Comments »

First I tackled a theme and one little word for 2012, read more here. Next, I followed the Glenda Miles Planning 2012 process to identify goals (some of them surprising) and plan action steps to manifest those goals. Planning is the key word. For me that means going a step beyond writing it down and actually scheduling the time for the task or project. That’s what I say I want to do, now when will I DO it? I still depend on my Outlook calendar (bless its little heart) for appointments and reminders, but I wanted something visual for times when the computer wasn’t handy or I was spending the weekend unplugged.

Voila! Check out my new schedule tracker—a dry erase board in the hallway! It is a bit time consuming but I like how easy it is to rearrange as needed, and mostly I find that the visual is empowering—when I look at it I ask myself what’s most important? Where do I want to spend my time?  I’ve found I’m not as apt to lose my focus. Yes, it takes time to create and manage but week one of 2012 was a flurry of productivity which I attribute a large portion of to this new tool. I’ll keep you posted on my progress. ;)

EVERYTHING goes on the board!

On Monday this was my office-away-from-home-office!

I ate my bag lunch at the tables in the sun outside Starbucks Café  and then worked inside ‘Barnsie’ from a comfy chair for a couple hours. I find a change of scenery boosts productivity!

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beyond whose reach?

Posted in Christmas, Creativity, Honoré on December 1, 2011 | 1 Comment »

Gathering supplies for making a Christmas album and cards and…

hope I make it…

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