Day 10

"mirror (I live in it)" by bubbo-tubbo

Love after love

The time will come
when, with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart to itself,
to the stranger who has loved you all your life,

whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desparate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

-Derek Walcott

My Mum sent me this poem last week, after a lovely day together chatting about life, love and self discovery. Isn't is beautiful? It has really made me think about who this is all about and I see now that it's not pleaseing other people, meeting everyones expectations, saying yes all the time. It is about me and my happiness, "give back your heart to itself,".
I know I am only in week 2 of "The Artist's Way", but I am experiencing lots of little syncronicities that are making me really think about what this journey really means. Making time to meditate/ write something which I would never have done before, I'm always about the object. But this and my new writing is just as much creation as earrings. Letting ideas come to the surface with no agenda is scarey but fascinating.

Day 3

"Rose shabby chic cupcake" by Kylie Lambert

"As artists, we must learn to be self-nourishing. We must become alert enough to constantly replenish our creative resources as we draw on them- to restock the pond, so to speak. I call this process filling the well." Julia Cameron, "The Artist's Way"

"Mother's Day birdhouses" by holiday jenny

For me it is my 'refresh file' of images I cut from magazines, brochures from boutiques, interior magazines, food magazines, newspaper articles and anything else that I find that I can cut out and keep. I have a journal on the go all time so that I can scribble down song lyrics, quotes, road signs, and images I see day to day. I have also started carrying my camera with me. So many times I would be somewhere and something and wish I had a way of holding on to an image, like little birds having lunch in my Mum's garden and couldn't capture it in a drawing. I have recently started pinning a new image to my notice board every week to keep me fresh and inspired.

"House of Love" by fleamarketstudio

How do you re-stock your well?

Day 2, the artist's way

Photo by immarkcz "Chopwell- magic view"













Today I have been thinking a lot about my blocks to sucess. Isn't it interesting that we would subconciously not want to be sucessful?

"If I am fully creative, what will it mean, what will happen to me and others?" Julia Cameron, "The Artist's Way", page 30

It is something to think about.
what is holding me back?
what am I doing to hold myself here?
why am I too scared to move on to the greatness ahead?

Today I met with some excisting customers and they were so excited to get the box of delights I was handing in, to see their faces as they rumaged and saying "oh, you are so talented, you're so lucky that you can make things, I could never do anything like this, you are so lucky." Yes these are wonderful but loaded compliments.

My aunt told me a few years ago that people used to say the same thing to her and she advised me to smile with love and grace and accept that we are doing it for all the people out there who can't at the moment explore and realise their creative potential. What a gift! I think about this a lot now. How lucky I am to have the time, space, skills and courage to just make, and not to take it for granted. So why am I stuck? I anticipate many more morning pages will be spent mulling this over.

Day 1, the artist's way

Today is the beginning of my 'creative recovery'. Last night lying in bed I decided that I wanted to work through "The Artist's Way" again.

I am a Gemini and feel the star sign atributes are very true for me. I love having lots of different projects on the go all at once, love being busy, thrive on a challange, love people and chat and activity. But my flaw is rarely finishing something that I start. I was much worse when I was younger, wanted to be a ballerina, went to the classes for a month. Then I decided I would be a champion majorette, I lasted 2 months. Then I realised that music was my path and started to learn the piano, then the flute.

Thank you Mum for never saying no and encouraging me to try new things and being patient until found what my heart was seeking. And after many clubs and no doubt much money I found an art class run in a local church on Saturday mornings. I had found home.

I do still love to try new things, I still have a list of unfinnished business and feel now is the time to complete some of these tasks/ projects. The Artist's Way being one of them. The programme runs over 10 weeks and each time I get to week 7 or 8 and something else comes along and distracts me, or should I say I distract my self! But I never feel defeated and here I am again at page 1 and I am excited. Julia Cameron is inspiring and I have seen the results for myself, but each time I wander off course.

So this morning I got up an hour earlier and did my 'morning pages', and today I felt lighter not carrying all the stuff around like wet cloths. Although today I didn't physically make anything I feel the morning pages ,all but poetic, were a creation, and I look farward to tomorrow morning.

" It maybe useful for you to think of the morning pages as meditation. It may not be the practice of meditation you are accustomed to. You may, in fact, not be accustomed to meditation at all. These pages may not seem spiritual or even meditive- more negative and materialistic, actually- but they are a valid form of meditation that gives us insight and helps us effect change in our lives." Julia Cameron, page 14, the artist's way, souvenir press ltd, 1994

New Beginnings

After much deliberation I have decided to start this new blog. I have been working away on my other one since October 2007 and get a lot of pleasure and joy from uploading images of my current work and projects but I have been keeping it kind of work related, all things craft and design based. But I have so many other things I want to talk about but don't feel that is the place amongst my jewellery and cards! Although my creativity is what makes me me, I feel this blog can be another home for my soul, to explore all the spiritual things I am discovering on my journey. And I don't want my customers thinking I'm loopy!

Here I want to write poems, show doodles and sketches, and do projects for myself not my work. I spent a lot of time over Christmas thinking about what direction my work was taking and I have implimented lots of postive changes, but I felt it was time to explore a kind of emptiness in my creativity. Each day I rise to make things, cards, jewellery, take photographs all to make a living. But for so long I have neglected creating just for me, for the sake of doing it. So many nights I lie in bed thinking of things to make and then dismiss them either because I don't have time or I begin to listen to my inner chatterings of;
'what's the point, that wouldn't sell'
'you have too many other things to be doing'
'you need to make money to eat, not play around for fun'

Having read "The Artist's Way" last year and working through it, I know this is me blocking myself from really looking beneath the surface, and it is this that stops me from truely creating from the heart.

So here I am, ready to find like minded people, learn, read, explore and enjoy my creative life.