Why Crawl Through Life When You Have Wings to Fly?

If you are coming from My Desert Cottage you are in the right place for the blog hop!  Welcome to my blog.  Pics of my studio, such as it is, are at the end of this post.  But first:
12 Hours of Yoga!
I woke up today with every muscle in my body aching.  Yesterday I participated in the Garden State Yogathon.   Garden State Yoga is is the studio where I teach, and the studio gathered together teachers from all the area studios for a 12 hour yogathon (YES - 12 hours!) to raise money for 3 charities.  My team raised money for Off the Mat and Into the World. The Yogathon was very successful -- we raised over $30,000 for three terrific organizations.  Here are some pics (that's me in the pink top!).

Let's Go Fly a Kite:  

Inspiration Avenue's challenge this week was to do a design inspired by "flight."  The question posed was what do you think of when you hear the word fly or flight?  My first thought was "Let's Go Fly a Kite," from Mary Poppins.  I know it's not a particularly profound or deep association, but I over the years, I have watched Mary Poppins about 30 times (I have 2 daughters - 21 and 11!), so a kite is what immediately popped into my mind.  I had been wanting to work more on auraknot for the Diva's challenge, and this prompt inspired me to create a kite from that tangle.   As for the saying, my yoga philosophy has taught me to look at everyone around me as a holy angel, sent from "command central" to either show me the way or, through difficulties, teach me a valuable lesson.  As my teacher says, once you see everyone around you as an angel, you're an angel too.  (Here's a video link for seeing the divine in your everyday life.) So "why crawl through life, when you were born with wings?"


Here's a beautiful butterfly that was on my buddleia bush yesterday - a reminder that we all have the potential for flight inside of us.

Love Comes in Many Colors:

In 2009, a young man, Codie Blake, came to live with us.  His mother had been our babysitter and my friend, and she died on December 26, 2009, of complications from breast cancer.  Codie has become part of our family.  In a few weeks, Codie will be getting married.  On Wednesday night, we met his fiance's family.  Like Codie, she and her family are from from Jamaica.  Meeting them inspired me to create this in my art journal:  "Love Comes in Many Colors."   Because indeed, it does.  One Year in the Life of an Art Journal had sun in their prompt this week, so this design will be visiting that blog, as well as Creative Every Day and Paint Party Friday.  I also reformatted it for a greeting card for Mojo Monday's sketch challenge.  Let me know your thoughts about putting a mixed media page on a traditional background... I'm not sure if it works...

Where Bloggers Create:

Karen, at My Desert Cottage, has created a blog hop party called "Where Bloggers' Create."  We had until July 14 to spiff up our studios and photograph them.  If you click on the links in the right side bar of her page, you will be amazed at all the beautiful studios.  And Karen's is amazing! I'm embarrassed to say that mine is not spiffy at all -- I just kept going from one project to another, so when I photographed it, it was a mess.  But I create best when I am surrounded by all my materials.  So here it is:

In all the little drawers are designs created from my illustration work.  You can see stencils spilling out from some of the open drawers under my table.  Most of the books are reference books in different styles, and I have a lot of books about Jewish history, art and symbolism since that's a big part of my licensing work.  A big clean up is clearly in order!

Finally, thank you to Scrapping the Music, for naming me the winner in Challenge #202.  I am very honored.  If you haven't done STM challenges, the next one was just posted and involves the song "Somewhere Over the Rainbow," and/or a song your mother sang to you.  I highly recommend visiting them and participating.  Song lyrics are such great creativity prompts!

Thank you for visiting! If you are so moved, please leave a comment. Hearing from you means the world to me.

PS - Here's my itinerary at CREATE New Jersey, starting Wednesday, July 18 (how nice of them to hold an art retreat on my birthday!):
Wed. July 18, 9-4: Find Your Beautiful Self Portrait
Thurs. July 19: 9 - 4:  Mini Masterpiece Canvas Journal
Thurs. July 19 - 6 - 9PM:  Scribble Paint
Friday: July 20: 9 - 4PM:  Carving Stamps for patterning
Let me know if we're in any of the same workshops!

It's Friday, Friday, Friday!

A quick post today before the weekend...

Here are some amazing blog posts I've read this week and videos I've watched:

• Julie Fei-Fan Balzer finding inspiration on a trip to Provincetown and showing how she sees art layouts in almost everything!
• Every single video by the "One Minute Muse" on You Tube;
• Watching this beautiful canvas come together by Christy Tomlinson.

The One Minute Muse videos inspired me to use modeling paste on this design, which I did for the Mojo Monday sketch challenge, as well as for the Run With Scissors Day 27 Prompt, which was "what touched your heart today."  Here's the sketch, and here's my interpretation.  It's hard to see in the scan, but the circles around the main design are all raised with the modeling paste.  It was so much fun and I hope to use it more. (Next time, I'll remember to take some pictures of the process.)

What touched my heart yesterday (and frankly touches my heart daily), was my sweet husband tip-toeing into our room at 4:45 AM to go to bed.  He works four nights a week, and tries so hard not to wake me when he comes home.  He wakes up every day at noon, and then does all he can to give me time to paint.  He does the laundry, keeps the kitchen clean, takes our younger daughter to many of her afternoon activities, and is just the nicest, kindest, most open-hearted person I have ever met.  I learn compassion, patience, and kindness from him on a daily basis.  So yesterday morning, when he unintentionally made some noise when coming into our room, I thought it's fine, because every morning just gives me another day to love him.  (collective awwwww.....)   I'm going to link this up to Try it On Tuesday's Anything Goes Challenge, and the Anything Goes Challenge blog, which has a Polka dot with a birthday theme prompt.  I think this would make a nice birthday card, don't you?  Also, please go to Paint Party Friday and check out this, and all the great work there.   

Day 28's RWS prompt was to "list 10 journal prompts that you could possibly use in your journal, after this class is over."  Over the past few weeks, I have been cutting words out of the New York Times' headlines to use in art journaling.  I randomly pulled out 10, and created prompts based on them.  It's hard to read my handwriting, so I'll write them below.

1.  Taking a Chance:  When did I take a chance - a leap of faith - how did it turn out?

2.  How Well They Teach:  Who do I see or have I seen as important teachers in my life?  What did I learn?

3.  Inventing the Future:  Where do I want ot be 5, 10, 15 years from now?

4.  Sacrifices:  What have I given up in the past to live the life I lead in the present?  What would I give up now to lead the life I want to lead in the future?

5.  Radical to Mundane and to Radical Again:  What once seemed new that now feels old and boring?  How can I see it as new again?

6.  Future Imperfect:  what is different about my life than what I once expected it to be?  How is the way it turned out perfect or imperfect?

7.  Triumphs and Defeats:  What do I see as triumphs and defeats in my life?  What have they taught me?  Have I ever learned more from "defeats," than "triumphs?"

8.  Security:  What makes me feel safe and secure?  Where do I go for comfort and refuge?

9.  Divided by God: What does "God" mean to me?  How does "God" or the sacred figure in my life?

10:  Friendship:  What do I value most in a friendship?  Who best embodies this in my life?

11:  Lifelong Fan:  What have I consistently been a fan of, or valued, in my life?

12:  Sink or Swim:  What challenge do I need to just "jump in" to?  What does "sink" mean to me?

If you use any of these as inspiration (and feel free to do so), please link back and let me know!

As always, thank you for visiting! If you are so moved, please leave a comment. Hearing from you means the world to me.

Adventures in Mint...

This title seems to be an oxymoron - right?  Mint is the color I've always associated with old school hallways and hospitals, cracked  bathroom tiles and my grandfather's 1960s Cadillac -- the first car I ever drove in that had electric windows.  I have shied away from it, and would certainly never pair it with the word "adventure."  But what a surprise to find out that mint green is no longer an old fogey color -- it's been current and trendy since spring of 2011! (Obviously I am behind the times.)

Mint green is the Summer of Color's week two challenge color.  And so I decided to give it a try.  I was influenced in the layout by Mojo Monday's sketch 246.  It is really a challenge to try and let the imagination run free while following the spirit of someone else's sketch and color palette.  It makes you stretch.  As I worked on this, I had no idea what the sentiment would be, and for most of the time, I was feeling like it was a complete disaster!  But in the end, I really liked how it turned out, which inspired the saying:  "Seeing life as an adventure is the best way to learn."  Notice the "cadent" pattern around the design -- I've gotten better at this since the Diva challenge this past Monday, and seeing all of the beautiful work other artists have created in response to that challenge.  So once again - deep gratitude to the community of artists out there in the blogosphere!  (According to Wikipedia, the term blogosphere implies that blogs exist together as a connected community, or as a collection of connected communities, and it certainly feels that way to me.

Today I hit "send" to register for several workshops in Create's Mixed Media retreat in Somerset, NJ, starting July 18 (my birthday!).  I am so excited for this -- it is truly an adventure to look forward to, and I know I will learn so much!

Also this week, I was fortunate to license this design to Leanin' Tree.  So hopefully you'll see it soon in a store near you!

Thank you for visiting! If you are so moved, please leave a comment. Hearing from you means the world to me.

I've Had the Time of My Life

Scrapping the Music's 200b challenge is to create a design based on a song that has a special meaning for you and someone you love.  I chose "I've Had The Time of My Life," from Dirty Dancing.   I loosely used the layout from Mojo Monday's Sketch Challenge to guide the composition. 

Anyone who knows my husband Freddie will tell you that he is an AMAZING dancer.  In fact, we met dancing.  In October, 1998, I went to a singles weekend at Club Getaway in Kent, Connecticut, where Freddie was on staff.  I was dancing with someone else when the d.j. started playing "Disco Inferno."   I asked the guy with whom I was dancing if he could do the hustle -- my favorite dance "back in the day."  "No," he said, "but see that guy over there -- he can really dance.  Ask him."  That guy was Freddie, and as the song goes, we danced all night.  9 months later he asked me to marry him, and we've been dancing through life together ever since.  Because I was the guest at Club Getaway, and he was on staff, the movie and this song kind of reminds us of us.  Check out the video of that great last dance here (the leap is at 3:22).  Above is my sweet husband watching the Gas Lamp Players' tribute with me last Saturday night.  As I said then, he is truly the wind beneath my wings (another great movie song!)  (By the way, the white shading behind the dancers was motivated by this blog post from Balzer Designs.)

The day 8 prompt for the 30 Day Art Journal Challenge is:  If you were able to design the house of your dreams, what would it look like?  My dream house would be a little moss covered cottage with window boxes and lots of trees -- kind of like a fairy house in the woods.  As long as my family is there with me, any house is home! 

Oh -- and here is day 7's piece -- the prompt was to think about what makes you happy.  I LOVE ALL THESE PROMPTS.  They really get my creative juices going!