pamgarrison

spoiled, happily

I met friends Amy and Jenny for dinner and a movie last week for a belated celebration of my late December birthday. We've done it for a few years now, and always have fun eating, catching up, and seeing whatever movie might be out at the time. This year we saw the movie Big Eyes (the link takes you to a video of director Tim Burton and stars Amy Adams and Christoph Waltz discussing making the movie). We all gave it a thumbs up. My very favorite part was after the movie was over, there is a photo of the real Margaret Keane, well into her 80's, with the actress portraying her, Amy Adams, (the third photo here) and she looks so very delighted and it says she still paints every day. That photo with those words made me tear up. Go Margaret!

Pardon the blurry phone photos, but I just had to share these two and their shenanigans. They thought they were soooo funny, arranging to have the dreaded birthday song sung post dinner. It took me by such surprise, I literally jumped. But not to worry, Jenny has a birthday soon...I'm thinking a singing telegram or something equally as obnoxious. ;)

(Jenny's instagram of the night.We took photos in the movie theatre photo booth too.)

Pretty girls up to no good! 

They spoiled me with gifts and I truly love them all. Jenny gave me a necklace and her self published book (available on Amazon and her etsy) which is so sweet and good, and also wrapped beautifully- I love thoughtful packaging. 

That above is where the AND charm fits in...

And Amy spoiled us both with Valentine presents:

I adore this necklace and keep trying to get her to make some of her one of a kind charms for sale. She's teaching these charms, chain links, connections (like how the arrow is attached above etc.) at Studio Crescendoh soon. I'm going to be there creating away. Seeing hers gives me endless ideas. Last time we had a play date, she was preparing for another upcoming class, and I got to make all sorts of fun charms and my own jump rings:

This time in class I plan to focus on making my own links and chains. But the list of my plan-to-make is ever growing...;) And I've seen some of the behind the scenes things she's been creating and kitting, and as always, she's planning to spoil the students...if you've ever taken one of her classes, you know what I mean. Fun, fun.

One of my birthday gifts from her was this Lemon Head man necklace. I love every bit of it, from the ring chain she made, the little inspire charm, the beautiful ruby and the Lemon Head man with the xo that she somehow placed on his chest!!!  The Lemon Head charm has special meaning; once, when we were in France together she found one and I loved it so and even looked for one when in Paris over this past Christmas with no luck...so for her to have found one and made a necklace really surprised me and touched me both. 

It was such a nice night and a good reminder that I need to remember to say yes on occasion when my natural tendancy is to want to say no and stay home. To participate, be it a night out with friends, a class, jumping in the photobooth, or trying a new creative venture...one can end up feeling both inspired and spoiled, happily. 

 

saturday round up

Happy Saturday! 

Heather gifted me with some of her home made vanilla and oranges from her trees, and they were both so pretty and happy making this morning I couldn't resist snapping some pics. I felt a new appreciation for digital photography, the permission slip that goes along with it to take pictures of anything that strikes your fancy, nothing wasted (like money) if it doesn't turn out. I like taking photos of everyday ordinary things in my life and love having this space here on the blog to post them. (And as always, appreciate your stopping by so I have someone to share with!) 

The boys went to baseball early this morning, so I got to putter around in silence, doing dishes, laundry, picking up and vacuuming. A nice re-grouping for the start of the weekend. I'm going to try to paint the oranges above in oil paints this week. Something similar to the radishes I painted while learning in class with Leslie Duke:

The key word is try. I learned only too well this past week how rusty one can get if they don't practice an art regularly. I mentioned last post I had some time to paint on the previously started abstract acrylics...oh boy....let's just say, it was a rocky readjustment. 

Yikes! I was frustrated because I had let so much time slip by and felt awkward and uncomfortable doing what came so naturally just a few months ago. It's all part of the process and the wonderful thing about painting is there is always the ability to improve with the next layer, but exploring when out of shape is not as fun as when tuned up of course.

None the less, even when practicing an instrument that's out of tune, discoveries can be made, some pleasing notes produced, and good lessons learned. 

The progress on the painted tote excited me the most...I plan to sell a small series of these painted totes in the future, but if you want to paint your own, I bought the craft paper totes at Aaron Bros for $29.99 each...don't know if they carry them anymore or not. 

Thanks to the Santa Ana winds blowing here, it's a lovely, sunny day, which is perfect light for mixing up some paint colors and getting back to practice! 

Hope you have a great weekend whatever you find yourself up to! 

 

around here

It was a lovely long weekend here, which meant that my daughter was able to come home for a visit (hooray!). She brought a great gift with her...a puzzle from Liberty Puzzles! She and I are puzzle lovers, and these puzzles are awesome! Look at all the whimsy pieces...so so fun. 

It's a high quality wooden puzzle with charm for days. We are totally hooked and already looking through their website looking for a special puzzle for next Christmas. Being obsessive puzzlers that we are, we made short work of it:

Our friend introduced us to a puzzler rule: very few and very quick looks at the box cover to make it more challenging. That helped to make it last longer. 

We've already put it away, but we'll do it again in a few months I'm sure. 

Baseball spectating was another family activity this weekend. Teams are getting warmed up for the high school season to start officially. 

When home, the kids decided we should have a family game tournament, different games for one big winner at the finish. We played Yatzi, Rummikub, Balderdash, and Wii golf, but never ended up tallying the big winner. To be continued I suppose. 

I started cutting quilt pieces somewhere in the midst of games and turn waiting and direction reading. I've never done a quilt from solid fabrics, and had gathered a bunch of fabric quarters a year or so ago to make one. Trying to use up what I have! 

I did sneak in some time to keep up with the daily creative projects. (I love it when the brush cleaning water is pretty.) Thank you for all the excitement and sharing on the last post about this project. I'm excited so many are doing their own versions of a similar creative commitment this year! We can do it!!!

Yesterday my husband had to work, and daughter had to drive back to school, so it was all day baseball spectating for me.  I sat where I could see him easily and got out a little sketchbook to try to sketch some of the parents around me. I felt uncomfortable, it was too hard to look at people and sketch without it being obvious, so instead I pulled up a blog post of Mary Ann's on my phone and sketched a couple photos. People are not my forte, but doing it was no less fun for it. 

And today, everyone here is back to work and school, and plans I had were rescheduled, which means an unexpected chunk of time opened up....exciting! Of course there are a thousand things to do, but I'm going to spend some time on the paintings started long ago that I've not gotten back to. I want to finish them, surely they should be on that to do list too! Hope you find some unexpected time in your day to do something fun. 

Off to get messy!!! xo

 

 

new projects for the new year

Hello! Well, I've been trying to write this post in progress for days. Now that I sit down to finish it, I understand why it's taking so long; it's wordy with lots of thoughts and links and photos too. Here goes! 

Shortly after the new year, I shared on Instagram that I'm doing a year long daily creative project this year. Well, actally, 2: a page a day in one book and a pattern a day in another. I loved watching Jennifer Orkin Lewis do her year long daily creative last year which she shared every day on her IG. She's started a new project this year, and writes about both in length on her blog post here. So good. So inspiring. So, last October I started my planning for my own version of this concept. I bought four of these journals with plans to do the same, a page a day. I chose the Drawing book because it had a soft cover and heavy enough paper for me. I intentionally wanted books that weren't special, or expensive, or handmade. I wanted this project to be all about the participation, not the result. Well, the result of the sum of all the pages, yes, but not about any individual page. 

The plan for this set of books is similar to Jennifer's last year. A page a day done in 30 minutes or less. For me, I'm adding the challenge of trying to use mainly gouache, a paint I'm not super familiar or comfortable with, and am excited to learn more about. My general plan is to loosley paint something I see, or something sort of realistic from my imagination- to try different things, to stretch, (like more people and less birds). 

I bought Elise's goal tracker and printed two out at 75% so that they would fit inside my books. I paperclipped them in, so that as I move on to the other books for the year, I'll bring it along. 

As I was settling in to begin this project, I realized I had two other sketchbooks that would work for a daily creative project, and decided to add a second daily creative commitment- one pattern a day painted (? I'm not sure I'm commited to gouache or paint even being a must- maybe pencils, pens etc. will be used in this book, time will tell.) Again, to be done in 30 minutes or less. Ideally, I plan to do these pages at the same time as the other series. 

Why 2? Because I think that 2 totally different books with different pages will help to keep the focus on the participation and not any page or result. To keep it moving, as they say. 

Why do a daily creative for a year project at all? Here's why I am:

I don't have any problem wanting to create every single day. And I usually make time to do something creative. I would choose creating over eating or sleeping or excercising (duh) or housework (double duh) most every day. So, I think fitting it in won't be a problem. Especially because I find it easy to separate out projects where I care about the result vs. creative exploration, and creative exploration is usually a process where things flow for me, so I probably won't use 60 minutes to do these both a day. (So far, I think I'm spending about 30 minutes total.) But, what I'm not good at is structure in my life, and creating habits, and commitment to finishing big projects. I think that using creativity to learn to embrace structure, committment, habit development and finishing vs. something like excercise might be a good way to make real progress on these things. A more gentle method of behavior modification. ;) Will it work? Who knows. I'm thinking it will, and no matter what happens with my personal behavior modification experiment, nothing but good can come of it. I'll certainly love some pages along the way, I know I'll love the sum of all the pages, I assume I'll learn a lot about materials and my skills will improve. So, why not?!? 

I love a project that isn't "precious", ya know? Feel like doodling? Go ahead...

I'm not planning on instagramming every page...but I do plan on sharing them here...at least the painted page book, maybe not the patterns. I'll probably do a big post monthly of all the pages or maybe mid month updates too. Here are some when I started this post way back when:

When this man showed up out of nowhere (I began thinking I'd paint a girl), I got very excited. Not because he's anything special...because he's very atypical for me. A man painted in gouache, that never would have happened on this day if I were just playing in my regular art journal. I love to try and stretch creatively. I love to discover something different in my creating. 

How's it going so far? Pretty good I think. Here are my thoughts so far:

- I like it, and still believe I'm going to love the sum of a year's worth of both.

- If asked, I don't love any of the pages yet. I don't mind a bit, it really isn't about that. And I know that repeating a process 365 times will surely bring some I love as well as some I hate and everything in between if I were to step back and evaluate them objectively.

- I'm finding it more difficult to think of things to paint in my sort of realistic page book. It's much easier to draw from something else, like a page of a bird book. I'm not easily inspired to draw what I see around me, and find drawing things from my imagination challenging (which is all good!). I just think I haven't fallen into a groove, and that I will eventually. 

-It's hard to create complicated repeat patterns on the fly, in paint. 

- I'm still not playing nicely with gouache. Much to learn. Much more comfortable when I use watercolors. 

-I'm not using a pencil to draw first, I want to develop my ability for looser, free flowing drawings.

-I don't think it's helping at all with my embracing structure, as I haven't set a time that I do it every day. I want to do it first thing in the morning, so far, that hasn't been happening. 

- I'm not thrilling at checking off (painting in the dots) on the tracker sheet. Sometimes I forget to do it for days. I don't know if that means anything or not, I just thought it'd be something I looked forward to each time. 

- I'm still totally committed to it. 

So, how about you? 

Are you still with me? I told you it was a long, linked filled, wordy one. 

Are you doing any daily creative project this year? 

I know the concept is not a new one. I've seen so many inspiring artists do these in the past. Like Lisa Congdon's 365 Days of Hand Lettering, or Lisa Solomon's A Domestic Life Project. And I learned about Cristal Moody's #yearofcreativehabits after it was over, but she's started a new one this year, an oil painting a day if you want to follow along. I loved the link she shared with the Jerry Seinfeld's productivity secret. Of course, your daily habit length of time doesn't have to be 365 days, it could be 30 or 7, or whatever you want...

...so, do you have one to share? Inquiring minds want to know, and follow along, and cheer you on...so leave a link in the comments if you do! 

I love the start of a project, I'm hoping I learn to love finishing as well. I totally think it's possible to learn to see sticking it out differently...finger's crossed! xo

 

a little birthday party

On Thursday I made a little treck up to Mary Ann's neck of the woods to celebrate her birthday. I forgot how nice it is to celebrate someone's birthday on the actual day, it so rarely happens much of the time. (that's her darling car sketch above) 

I'm very glad she liked her presents. We share a love of Nathalie Lete's art in all forms. Here it is on a children's watercolor paint set. 

As always, we started with a garden tour. 

Then next, a house tour of changes and new things since my last visit. Love this sweet toaster cover Mary Ann made from fabric gift she received. 

We always settle for a show and tell of recent work in our journals and sketchbooks. Man, so so much inspiration, she's been a sketching machine!  

And then, a favorite part, we got out our art supplies and got busy making and chatting and sharing supplies and ideas. This was the first page I did in my sketchbook. I had to document some of her supplies that I want to get. I'll have to take some more photos of recent pages of mine, it's been a bit since I've done a journal page post! 

The worst part, as always, came the time to wrap it up, time goes so quickly when having fun with friends. Especially a birthday art party! 

 

around here today

Hello! How's your New Year going? I've still got a good attitude (so far). I'm still feeling excited and full of fresh inspiration. Oh, to have enough hours for us to get all we want to done, right? The usual. I'm trying to re-evaluate and re-prioritize and have finally, truly, come to terms that it really is not possible for me to do all I want to and I'm going to have to let some things go. Too bad it can't be dishes and laundry and grocery shopping. I do my best to shirk those responsibilities regularly, but somehow, they are always patiently waiting my attention. 

Hey, look at that sea glass, eh??? Treasure hunting makes me so happy! It has been our family's New Year's Day tradition to go to the beach together. I'm pretty sure we all look forward to it, I do absolutely. This year, we looked up the tide schedules and timed our visit with low tide in hopes of finding more. It worked. My suggestion for finding sea glass or shards (I wish we had pottery shards wash up somewhere near by us, but I don't know of any places that happens in So Cal) is to first do a google search for it near you. Often times people will share what they've found and there are usually pages of beach suggestions. (Google really does seem to have an answer for everything, doesn't it?) We plop ourselves down near the shore and dig in the wet sand, as well as walk around with our heads down looking around as new waves hit the shore. Oh, and if you are a rule follower like me, you might want to make sure you are allowed to take sea glass. In my limited experience, most beaches allow it becasue it is trash after all, but I have heard of some state beaches not allowing the removal of it. My heart broke a little recently when I learned you are not allowed to take it from here any longer, and I've still yet to visit it. (Although the comment at the bottom of the post seems to indicate maybe people still do!) Either way, I would love to just sit on that beach and run my hands through the jewels! For sure someday.

 Our Christmas cards this year. 

My Christmas card fail this year. Here they sit STILL, on the back of my space on the couch, almost a week into January. And I picked a card from here that says Merry Christmas, not Happy Holidays, which would be a big help at this point. Ack! 

So here's the story; I decided that with going to Paris over the holidays and other things going on, that we wouldn't send holiday greetings this year. (And by "we" of course I mean I, right? No one else around here helps with any of that one bit.) And then the cards started coming in, and I really love them. And then I happened to get a card worthy shot with my iphone one day. No convincing the children to have a little "holiday card photo shoot" session with Mom (which may or may not require a second sitting.) And then Minted sent a discount code and bam! I was in. Argh!

I had the best of intentions, really I did. When I didn't get them done before our trip, I thought I'd bring them with me and while we had a long delay for our flight to Paris, address and stamp them and try to find somewhere in the airport to post them from. But then, as with most trips, we were rushing out the door and I was not super organized, and when I mentioned the suggestion, I got a resounding "NO!" back from all three of my traveling companions. Harumph!

I figured I'd do it as soon as we got home, New Year's Eve. And then the exhaustion, and the laundry, the grocery store, New Year's Eve...you know the drill. And here they sit. At this point I'm considering not sending, but I can't get past the money spent. Of course, I could write a note explaining, but really, it's embarassing. Blech!

No action has been taken and the days wiz by.

Have I mentioned that I've finally realized I can't do it all at once? No shortage of examples of that here. I guess I'm one of those people that requires a boulder not a pebble. 

Working on it. (Aren't you tired of hearing that from me? I sure am!)

Well, I'm still puttering around, taking photos of faded tulips that were received before leaving that need throwing out. 

And the other arrangement from the same funeral service attended just before leaving too. 

And the little bit of holiday decor that was out here. 

And so it goes....

Enough about me, how's it going for you? I hope you're greeting the year feeling a little more on top of things ;). 

I resolve next year to spend the entire holiday seaon at home. No traveling for work or pleasure. (Paris was wonderful, of course...it was worth it...but for us, traveling for the holidays is best done every few years I think!) That's a New Year's Resolution I'm 99.9% sure I can keep (gotta leave a little room for "you never know!" ;)).

xo!

happy new year!

Hello and Happy New Year to you!!! I'm super happy to be home and feeling all sorts of excitement and enthusiasm for the new year. This morning I couldn't resist watercoloring a little ode to 2015. The inspiration is flowing and I'm excited to finish up some of last year's projects and move onto ideas that have been brewing for too long. So much possibility with a fresh start! Cheers to you and yours! xo