creating « KateWares

Tag: creating

Monday, July 5th, 2010

Sleep, Perchance To Dream

Well, as you may recall, I left off last week on somewhat of a sleep deprived note. Take your average, busy life and throw in a few nights of being up every 1-2 hours to comfort a crying baby, and well…it isn’t pretty. Trying to create something (let alone something even remotely inspired) is challenging enough on most days – try doing it when you can barely remember your own name! But, enough complaining. Suffice to say I was brutally tired and feeling rather dejected about the whole creative blogging experience.

Bouncing back from a long night was much easier in my youth.

Luckily, by then the weekend had rolled around and with it, two days of self-granted blog-free living. The way I figure it, if I allow myself these weekly pressure valves of “non-creativeness”, I will come back on Monday refreshed and eager to contribute something new. Kind of like the way an evening away from the kids or a vacation works. Plus, if I feel like I absolutely HAVE to create something on the weekend, then I can…but only if I really want to. So, yeah. Go, me.

Well, Saturday morning arrived and we decided that it was high time to get out of the house – to do what exactly, we couldn’t decide, but we packed up and headed out anyways. Maybe it was my husband’s incessant positivity (his battle cries of “Woooo!” are still ringing in my ears), or the beautiful morning sunshine after a previous cloudy day, or the mere act of leaving the confines of the nest, but it wasn’t long before I started feeling those tinges of excitement again. We ended up driving around a few nearby neighbourhoods scoping out garage sales, and in doing so, we eventually stumbled across what appeared to be somebody’s store liquidations.

$1 and $2 felt bags, a $7 canvas tote, $0.50 ornaments – bargoons!

It reminded me of Christmas craft fairs, and all the good things that go along with them. Pretty soon I was thinking about the aprons I could make and the bags I could sew and the frames I could decorate and so on and so forth. PLUS, as I was leaving said garage, I noticed the coolest garden angel that I may somehow have to try and duplicate. Except for the hair, I don’t like the wire at all. (Funny thing – I have a very similar looking angel atop our front door, likely done by the same artist even. How crazy!)

Adorable garden angel that I want to chase away my rabbits.

Anyway. The other thing I picked up at this particular sale was a stack of wooden letters that spell the word “dream”. Now, I have had a bit of a fascination with wooden letters such as these ever since we went on a quaint cabin vacation where the owners had the letters for “eat” in their kitchen. Far too much fun was had rearranging the letters to spell “ate” and “tea”, and with the addition of other paper letters, a whole host of things. Remind me to do a post on our names shelf one day, will you?

As I have mentioned, I don’t have much wall space in my current studio to display my pretty new letters. What to do, what to do? And boom – there it was, my idea for the day. A little reminder to dream.

Dream a little dream with me, my little one.

At bedtime, Beautiful South’s version of Dream A Little Dream plays. Aw, I love my little monkey boy. And have I mentioned how much I adore Hipstamatic photos? In the future, when I have more time to run around taking pictures, I would love to take these letters and put them in unexpected places – like a grungy alley or hanging from a tree. But for today, I am happy just to dream.

Tags: blog, craft sale, creating, dream, garage sales, hipstamatic, inspiration, letters, sleep deprived, vacation

Posted in Crafty, Musings, Photography | 2 Comments »

Wednesday, June 16th, 2010

One Percent Inspriation

We’ve all heard the phrase “Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration”. (Though several of the people I know would somehow add at least twenty-five percent caffeination to that equation.) Now, I don’t necessarily want to be Einstein or anything, but if you take genius to mean “a person of extraordinary intellect and talent”, then that’s what I want to be. Seriously? Only ONE measly percent? I must be doing something horribly wrong then, because getting inspired is one of the hardest things for me to do.

Now, being a Da Vinci-like genius wouldn’t be too shabby…

Well, as I was sifting through my ample pictures for future posting on the site, I was reminded of why photograph a lot of my work in the first place. In simple terms, it’s to provide a short-cut to inspiration. No, I’m not suggesting that I have found some magical way to instant message my muse through pictures (though, wouldn’t that be nice?) It’s just that the mere act of looking at my past work often causes my brain to start working in a different way. A more successful way.

Maybe that’s what they mean by the whole ninety-nine percent perspiration thing. If we assume that genius and success are interchangeable, then maybe the creations you’ve made in the past somehow accumulate to ensure your success in the future. It’s the whole “Outliers Phenomenon” that my husband was telling me about. Simply put, author Malcolm Gladwell suggests that the key to success in any field is, to a large extent, a matter of practicing a specific task for a total of around 10,000 hours. For me, reviewing my old work helps jump-start my brain to create new work.

But maybe we can also benefit from the 10,000 hours that other people put in. I am reminded of the collection of art cards and such that I’ve gathered over the years, which I will often look at to get inspired. Sadly, with the birth of my two boys and the resulting downsizing of my work space, they have remained boxed up in the basement. Until now. I decided that I wanted to have them handy once more, and though I don’t have the wall space to display they en masse, they would certainly look nice mounted on cardstock and compiled in book form.

Half of the art card collection – the rest are on the reverse.

“Why not just digitize them?”, you may ask. Well, it’s like when writers who spend a lot of time working on a computer change over to a pen-and-paper writing – their brains just start functioning differently. I want to see the collection all together – touch them, flip between them, compare them…and get myself off the computer every once in a while. So…do you have a short-cut you’d like to share?

Tags: 10000-hours, art cards, brain function, collection, creating, genius, inspiration, perspiration, process, short-cut, success

Posted in Musings | 2 Comments »

Tuesday, June 15th, 2010

Journals

You would not believe the number of journals I have going at any one time. Currently, I have a gardening journal, a bucket list journal, a spiritual themed journal, a creative writing journal, a “dear diary” journal, a craft ideas journal, and a day-to-day calendar journal (where I record the highlights of what happens every day). Yes, it is nuts. But I have a swiss-cheese-like memory, and these books help keep me on track. Or so I’d like to believe. Mmmmm, cheese.

The journals, a scratch pad, and various pens for pretty writing.

Anyhow. While catching up in the day-to-day journal, I notice that June 12 apparently marked the start of “a Creative Spin Cycle”. (It’s a fairly new-agey calendar you see – referring to people like me as “womyn”, and being filled with astrological information, folky art, and writing about womyn’s spirituality). What a coincidence. June 12th was the first day I started setting up this blog. How serendipitous.

On the following page there is a poem entitled “Why I Write” by Meredith Heller. Even though I’m not much of a creative writer myself, the sentiment and process revealed in the poem are familiar. This is why I create. This is why I journal. Maybe this is even why I exist.

I have scanned the poem and included it below for you. Apologies for the poor scan quality, but I couldn’t imagine having to retype the whole thing. (I hope the copyright police are out having donuts.)

Ahhhh. Doesn’t that feel good? Now, it is time for a nap. I am afraid that a relatively sleepless night (one son with acid reflux wakings, the other with a horrid chest cough) has left me too drained for working on something else. Ah, well, there is always tomorrow.

Tags: creating, journal, process, serendipity, spirituality, womyn, writing

Posted in Musings | 2 Comments »

Monday, June 14th, 2010

What the Heck Am I Doing?

Before I formally unveil this site to the world, I’d really like to have it pretty much figured out. And I don’t just mean the whole “How do I blog?” thing, I mean knowing what goes where and what exactly I want to focus on. Yes, I want to blog about the creative experience, but is there some aspect or theme I want to explore? Do I include “mundane” creations – like cooking? Should I force myself to be more “arty” than “crafty”? What the heck am I doing anyhow?!?!?

Well, I’m still mulling over all of the above, and I likely will be for the next little while at least. (If you have any suggestions, PLEASE feel free to share them.) However, I did make one decision. In addition to having at least a few posts already up for you to read, I decided to include an unchanging gallery of things that I’ve made in the past. Partly so that readers could get an idea of where I’m coming from, and partly for my own inspiration. There’s nothing quite like looking at things that you love to encourage you to create more of them.

A photography page was a must, seeing as I spent four years earning an art minor in the subject, and considering my lifelong enjoyment of the hobby. A page dedicated to sewing…and knitting…and embroidery…and so on, made sense too as I also spend a lot of time in these endeavours. Next, a papercraft page for scrapbooking and the like, and then… And then what? How exactly should I categorize the rest of my repertoire? And voila, I was stuck.

So, dear reader, I have spent today uploading photos of my various creations only to shuffle them around repeatedly, like an awkward looking sofa. And then there was the whole child-rearing, household-tending, and garden-weeding time conflict. And, as a result, I have had little time to challenge myself today to create something new. Other than this blog, that is. But with a few minutes to spare before dinner, I grab my “spy cam” and make use of the blooming peonies in the garden and my son’s old, rusted watering can to create this.

And this.

I couldn’t decide which I liked best, so you get both. Yay, me.

Tags: arty, blog, creating, embroidery, how do I, inspiration, knitting, papercraft, Photography, photos, Scrapbooking, sewing, spy cam

Posted in Musings, Photography | 2 Comments »

Sunday, June 13th, 2010

And So It Begins

This morning, the “fambily” (our version of the word which includes myself, my husband Dave, our 6–year-old, and our 1-year-old) went out for a walk around our neighbourhood. As we’re walking, my eldest notices a lilac blossom on the ground and joyfully gives it to me. Aww. Being too small to tuck behind my ear (it was a single tiny flower after all), I gently hold it between my lips and snap a photo for posterity. (For those of you that don’t know me, the whole snapping-a-photo-for-posterity thing is like oxygen to me).

We get home. We eat lunch. We go our separate ways – which consists of soccer, the kiddie pool, and nap-land for the boys. And then there’s me. Wanting to get going on my blogging/creating. Thinking about the flower in my mouth photo. Trying to figure out how to translate it into a visual that my sister (whose photos I adore) would love. It needs to be something simplistic. Something with few, but bold, colours. Something that makes me feel pretty.

So I head outside once more and pluck a pink daisy from the garden (exactly like the one on the theme I’m currently working with, I might add) and I start playing. Different angles, different cropping, different amounts of direct and indirect light, even different facial expressions. I love my little “spy cam” (a Nikon Coolpix S10 that I picked up after my friend Erin praised it so). It makes the arduous task of taking self-portraits easy and almost fun.

Once I download the photos, it becomes clear that the majority are heading to the recycle bin (oh, how I loathe the majority of photos of myself), but a few are salvageable. And with the help of Microsoft Picture It! Premium 10 to adjust saturation levels, brightness, and contrast, I whittle down the original image to this.