Hey, y’all.  This summer has been fairly busy around here.

I canned some green beans - this is about half of what I canned.  Thank you to our friends the Stucki’s for bringing over a huge bag of green beans from their garden since they were going out of town.  Woo hoo!

Another small 5×5 painting.  The background is the wood panel with a layer or two of the translucent (clear) encaustic medium.  I will probably do some more of these as well.

The rest of my time has been taken up trying to figure out my school schedule, getting credits transferred, and AP credits applied, talking with advisors, applying to the art program, etc, etc!  I’m registered for 4 classes and on the wait list for one (I decided last-minute and got my registration in the LAST day).  If I get the one class, I’ll probably drop another one, because I’m not sure what the work load will be like.  I don’t want to over-extend myself… I still have to care for children (& their dad), help with homework, fix dinner and be a cauffer occasionally.  And yes, I still do design work!  I guess I’m going to have to sharpen my juggling skills.

Creativity Question:  Do you keep a notebook where you write your dreams?  What about a joy journal?
I have a joy journal, but I don’t use it as often as I should.  I do “morning pages” (which I’ve mentioned several times), and there I write my dreams, worries, thoughts, frustrations, hopes, joys and spill everything, work out ideas and spiritual insights.  I don’t think of it as a journal - I have a separate journal that I write for posterity - with the morning pages there are no rules, except that I shouldn’t think too much about what I’m writing, and that I usually write for about 20-30 minutes.  They aren’t meant to be read by anyone but me.  They aren’t a record of my life - they are just “brain drain”.   I’ve found that when I do this consistently, it really does help free up some of that cluttered space in the ol’ noggin.   When I don’t do it, I tend to stress out more easily and I have a harder time maintaining focus.  Three cheers for Morning Pages!!

You can find out more about Morning Pages in the book, “The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity” by Julia Cameron.   I highly recommend it.  I got a copy at Half-Price Books for $6.

Ok, ok!  I’m updating the blog.  You know how when you don’t get to something right away you fall behind, and then because you’re dreading having to catch up you fall even further behind and the cycle continues?  Yeah.  That’s how I feel about the blog at the moment.

So here are a couple of recents:

Headband I made for a “secret sister” gift for my daughter’s girls’ camp.  Fairly easy with just a few small pieces of leftover fabric.  I did put interfacing inside to give it a little more structure.  Notice how I just cut the fabric straight and then put a little pleat in it to taper it down to the size of the encased elastic.  It didn’t take too long.  Now I need to make a couple for myself.  I want to put a retro looking flower on it or something.  fun.

Front and back of most recent baby announcement design (I also took the photos for this).  I’m quite happy with it.  I’m excited to see it when it gets back from the printer.

I don’t think I posted this one before - a fun little 5×5 encaustic painting.  I just really love this paint.

And, in other news - well, I’m sure most of those who read this already know - I’m going back to school to finish my art degree.  I’m actually pretty excited (and nervous) about this.  I’m also hoping I can convince them to let me explore some more with encaustic in class - maybe independent study or a similar class, since they don’t officially teach it at the school.

Here are some more of the little (5″x5″) encaustic paintings I’ve been working on.  I am more, or less, using the small format to experiment with different techniques and to get to know the medium a little better.

Untitled as of yet.  Here you can see where I carved into the wax, for a textural effect. I left the trees smooth.  This was fun to make, mostly because of the colors and, well, because it’s trees.  I’ll have to try something similar on a larger scale.

“Flower Plot” involved a lot of carving and layering over and over.  I like how the carved flowers, which are actually one of the bottom layers, look closer than the flowers with the translucent over-layer (difficult to see in the photo, perhaps).

“Ornamented” - I was going for opal - turned out more like granite, but I like it.  This one did take quite a while with all the carving involved (even though it is small).

  “Nesting Place” - the goal here was to play around with the depth. I wanted the center of the nest-like object to look deeper than the outer layer.  I did this by layering clear over that part and continuing to add more layers of the incised & filled lines.

It’s hard to do the paintings justice in photographs because it’s difficult to show the depth you can achieve by layering the beeswax.  The irony of encaustic is that so many of its wonderful characteristics which make it so fun to work with, are also the very things that make it so challenging.  But, despite the challenges & frustrations, I’m truly loving it.

Creativity Question:  Where does your time go?  How much went to what you wanted to do (creative pursuits)?

As much as I’d like to claim that a lot of my time goes to cleaning (ha!), it’s not true.  I’ve noticed that I spend too much time on my computer - and shamefully, much of that time isn’t what would be considered productive.  So, I’m trying to do better about varying my routine and balancing things out a bit.  My goal is to discipline myself a little bit better so that  I can get more done around here (I mean DONE), and then I’ll have more time to do what I *want*.