Between Joy and Pain

Since my first craft show a few years back, I had an idea for a card and every year I put it on my long list of cards that I want to make and never got around to it. This year I just had to do it. For the card I needed a drawing or painting of a tea cup and so I sat down yesterday and made it. I have not been painting for a very long time, Painter (the software) has been sitting still shrinkwrapped for 3 or 4 years and it was quite expensive, just as my underused Wacom tablet. So since I did not want to go through installing new software, I worked in Photoshop instead, which I am more familiar with anyway, having painted in Photoshop for 16 years now.

OMG! I forgot how much joy I get out of it. This is what I did as an exchange student in grad school, my best year ever. I would show up at 7 am at the computer art lab and stay until they closed it at 11 pm. I definitely need to do this more.

My joy was dampened though by the fact that I realized in complete panic and horror, that the 160 Gig harddrive I lost last weekend does not only contain all the files from my previous macs, but also files I need for the show in a week, so very urgently needed files. If something is inevitable and just a fact, I try not to get too upset about it, since that will not change anything. I am upset though, but it won't deter me from just moving on (and get a RAID). So whenever I would remember another few files lost, I would go look at this picture and try to take a deep breath. What a roller coaster ride.

So now I will take my pot of German autumnal apple tea and plate of freshly picked apples, hop into the studio and turn it into the card that was so long in the hypothetical making.

Birds, birds, everywhere

"Heaven above was blue, and earth beneath was green; the river glistened like a path of diamonds in the sun; the birds poured forth their songs from the shady trees; the lark soared high above the waving corn; and the deep buzz of insects filled the air." Charles Dickens (Nicholas Nickleby)

No, I am not one of those back yard bird nuts, though we do have bird identification books and love looking at them. Birds are my theme this fall and I am making many things with birds. I found some very nice quotes and beautiful old illustrations. Tonight I was working with some feathers. The funny thing is, that once you have something on your mind, it seems to appear everywhere. All of a sudden there are turkeys in our yard in the morning, my iPod picks all this music with birds chirping in it and my friend posts a fantastic photo of a gliding puffin in the snow. And then there is puffin cereal. And Little Feet wine (the one with penguins on the label), I tried to win a penguin adoption on their website, but did not of course, since I never win anything. One must love birds, and if it is purely born out of envy of their ability to fly, to soar, to be close to heaven.

This cardinal was sitting on our window bird feeder one winter's afternoon.

computers eat time!

I have just wasted three whole days on nothing creative at all. I have been working on getting my laptop to work and that only took two days and I thought I could spend all Saturday printing stationary and cards. What did I do instead? Trying to get my back up hard drive to work, which was not as successful and it appears to be dead. The whole thought of all that data lost makes my head spin and I feel physically ill. I have only 13 days left and the majority of those are filled with non studio related stuff, after all I have to run our family as well! By the time I have exercised, studied the music for the chorus and taken care of all the little things like shopping, laundry, cooking and so forth, there is no time left. I have to admit that blogging takes a big chunk out of my time as well.

I am used to all that though, it is just the wasted time trying to get computers to do what they are supposed to do, that gets me so mad. And this is supposed to be fun!

Shifting priorities

For years I have been so busy working on products for shows or doing special orders, that I hardly worked on the outlying supporting aspects like my web page or a blog. Even my paperwork has been just a big box of 'mess'. It is not that I did not want those things or thought them less important, I just never have enough time. Also, I admit, my perfectionism got in the way. Finally, I had enough! My studio underwent quite a transformation and is well organized. My workspace is redesigned and I can switch between projects without a major headache. Almost everything has its place now - just a few shelfs that need cutting etc. - and it is finally easy to put things away. I am very bad about putting things back, because that never seems to be a priority, but it leads to clutter and disorganization and I cannot work well in a mess.

Yesterday I filed all my papers and every product has its own folder, even ideas and sketches have a place - it actually feels really good. I have a show coming up in less than three weeks at the Spirit of Shrewsbury and maybe this time I will have a web page when people ask, the last years I had huge amounts of offerings, but no web page. After the show I am planning to work on my presence on Etsy, another things that I had wanted to do since years - obviously that is a common theme around here. Last month I listened to Randy Pausch's talk on time management and he speaks about doing the right things versus doing things right. That hit home and I thought about it and made some changes. I hope there is one change I can make successfully, and that is not to stay up all night in preparation for the show (or blogging for that matter).

Welcome to my crazy and creative and sometimes chaotic life and Good Night!