Focus

If we get the weather they are predicting these next few days, I think I will be able to bring out some lawn chairs, unwrap the patio table. Of course if I do that I really should start raking the lawns and cleaning out the perennial beds. All kinds of things are coming up now. Mind you, they are all still green but I expect I will have tulips in another 3 weeks. Now there's a healthy dose of optimism for you.

I haven't been feeling very optimistic this week. I've tried to keep my focus on the things that are good in my life, the things that are working. Sometimes it all just falls apart, though. Luckily this week I have the full moon to blame. Things with Riley have been kind of tense too. I'm not sure why, if it's the moon again or maybe he's just annoyed with me. But he's not been himself. I hope the side I've been seeing of him is not the self he is growing into because if it is, then there is big trouble ahead. I think he's testing boundaries, you know - seeing if some things still piss me off. Yup, they do. Or to see if he can get away with being a disrespectful jerk. Nope, he can't.

I did get quite a bit of studio time today and it felt good. I've got three more tags to show for it. The first one, a question I've been cogitating for quite awhile, "What was the last brave thing you did?" I started with a red background to symbolize courage, and stamped some lion's heads on it. The second one, "Name 5 films that inspire you creatively", was a tough one because it's been so long since I've really watched films that aren't geared toward a much, much younger audience. I did see "Frida" fairly recently and then when I was a university student I was obsessed with Wim Wenders films, go figure. Another film that has always stuck with me was, "Being There", then lastly I listed the Lina Wertmuller version (and far superior version) of, "Swept Away", because of the incredible colors. It's been decades since I watched it but in my mind's eye I can still see it so clearly. The last one was easy, "What keeps you up at night?" because this week was largely sleepless. And I liked putting down in words the things that make me toss and turn, it makes me so much more conscious of them and hopefully able to work some of them out.


Another thing I worked on today came from Collage Diva's site. She suggests making your own paint pages for collage so using some of her techniques, I worked on about four different papers. This was the most successful one, done on bristol board. It begins with free form, stream of consciousness journaling over the whole page, then covering that with an acrylic wash, followed by stamping with gesso, then covering again with a darker acrylic wash. I finished it off by stamping with one of my new Tim Holz stamps. It turned out quite nice. Here's a shot of the whole sheet and a detail.


The other samples need some more work before I would dare to share. But this one is quite nice. I tried all kinds of paper, some inkjet that I use for printing collage sheets that is archival and acid-free, another type that is 100% cotton made for printing CVs and matte presentation paper. They all revealed different weaknesses but it was a marvelous learning experience and I'm glad I did it.