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Jan 10

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Monday Page Becomes Monday Post, 2011

The old timers at this blog will remember our Monday Page. For three years, the Monday Page was a dedicated section within this blog used for noting our short-term creative intentions/goals/hopes. The Monday Page was designed to help us focus at the beginning of each week and set realistic targets. Writing down your goals and posting them publicly creates a sense of accountability that for some of us is more effective than mulling over our ambitions internally — and continually putting them off as a result.

The Monday Page had its sporadic usage, but this year we’re going to try something different. Rather than using a separate page within the blog, we’ll be posting a Monday Post at the beginning of each week right here on the main page. If you’d like to participate, share your goals as a comment to the post. What can you accomplish during the coming week, given the specific parameters on deck? In breaking down a larger project, what small forward step can you take this week? Feel free to check in a couple of times to share updates on how your week is going or ask for a little commiseration when everything falls apart (as it will surely do, from time to time).

Suggestion: When you’re deciding on your creative intentions for the week, it’s a good idea to think about WHEN you’re going to write those 2,000 words or paint that canvas. Try to schedule the time slots in your calendar (if you keep one), understanding that flexibility is the #1 requirement for any creative mother. If it doesn’t happen when you wanted it to, that’s OK. If you wanted to write three haiku a day but only managed one for the whole week, that’s just fine. Give yourself a gentle push with one hand, but pat yourself kindly on the shoulder with the other if you don’t reach your goal(s) for a given week. Sometimes it’s easier, sometimes it’s harder. Ride whatever you’ve got.

It’s also useful to have a sense of your minimum requirements (come hell or high water I’m going to write 100 words) while keeping a lookout for sudden opportunities to do more. You know, the day that the baby takes a monster nap or your partner takes the kids out to run errands and you find yourself with an unexpected “extra” half hour. Grab that time for yourself. You can catch up on the dishes and the laundry later. If you keep something creative in the back of your mind for those sudden opportunities, you’ll be more likely to use them to your advantage — rather than squandering your precious bonus moments on Facebook or vacuuming out the sofa cushions. Right?

Jan 5

7 Comments

Bonnie Rose: Navigating creativity and motherhood

I’m Bonnie Rose Kempenich of A Life Unrehearsed. I am an artist, passionate blogger, writer, amateur photographer, and card designer — living my best life right now in Fargo, ND. I am growing as an artist, experimenting with new mediums and playing with bright and bold color. Bright colors just make me happy! I am a big believer in sending real mail, the warm fuzzies kind of mail. My goal for this New Year is to grow more as an artist, and to inspire you with my art and my writings. I have so much in store for you!

I have a unique story. I believe in being completely transparent, in the hopes of helping other women out there with similar struggles and stories. Click here to read more of my story in detail. The good, the bad, and the ugly.

No one lives a perfect life.

I live a different life than most of you, I believe. My children live apart from me, about three hours away. They are now teenagers, and honestly, our relationship together and our friendship has grown stronger over the years. I see them about every three weeks throughout the school year, and my ex-husband and I share holidays and school breaks. Negotiating my time with my children has gotten much easier with time. I am thankful for that.

For me, art has helped me so much as a mother who daily, misses her children. In the beginning years after our divorce, art kept me alive and sane. I would create photo albums for my children and fill every hour with creative things I could do for my two beautiful girls.

Now I am coming into my own as an artist, and love sharing my art with my children and with the world.

They see me blossoming and are so proud of me, their mother. They know all the pain we all endured years ago, and we all are happy now. So much happier.

I will always need to be creative. I will always need to express myself through art, through my writings. It’s what makes me, me. I strongly believe as women, we often live our lives being everything to everyone, and somewhere along the way, we lose ourselves. We struggle. We want more for ourselves, but are often scared to express our wishes, because we don’t want to feel selfish. I remind myself of this. No one can make me feel badly about myself without my permission. This is true.

It’s a choice.
Yes, our families and our children give us unending joy.
That goes without saying.

But in the quiet times, we must learn to give ourselves that joy.
Make ourselves happy.

As a mother who spends days and weeks without seeing the smiles of her children, I’ve learned to be comfortable in my own skin. To look around, and give myself snippets of joy.

Joy is everywhere.
We all need to open our eyes and look harder to see it hiding.
It’s there.
It’s there.

Joy.

You can read more about my life and art on my blog. I am a prolific blogger — meaning there is always something new and wonderful to share every day. Please come visit my Etsy shop for unique artist supplies, original art, and graphically designed greeting cards. A portfolio of my creations can be found on my Flickr page here. You can find me on Facebook here. Custom art and card design orders are always welcome! Wishing you all a fabulous New Year filled with dreams come true!


Jan 3

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Jodi: My 2011 Goals — in Polaroids

I am not a “New Year’s resolutions” maker. If I want to change or accomplish something, I just do it. It seems foolish to wait until a certain date to make changes that you could, if you wanted to badly enough, make right now. But, I do look at the turn of the year as an opportunity to reflect on what I’m doing right (house clean, kids fed, husband smiley) and those things that I’m slacking off at (me time, my career, my outlets, my, my, my…). So, being a photographer who is obsessed with all things photographic, I decided to do things a little different this year. I recently discovered Jamie Ridler and her dreamboards and I really like that they put a picture to an idea. To me this makes it more real, so I borrowed this line of thinking and put my own spin on it!

I have a variety of cameras. My Canon 7D, my Minolta-35 mm, 120 medium formats, and 620 film cams. I also have a great collection of actual Polaroid cameras. They are probably my favorite of all of my ‘vintage’ cameras as they give me instant gratification (not to mention the amazing 70’s feel). So this year I set my main 2011 goals and then photographed them with my Polaroid Spectra 1200.

I recently made the difficult decision to close down my current daycare business in hopes of starting fresh with a photography business. 2011 for me is a completely fresh start and with that comes all new goals that could be set. My primary goal is to get my business established and generating some income. The first picture shows a small portion of my camera gear that is itching to be used in my new business. They also represent the vast amount of stuff that is piling up due to the fact that I don’t have a dedicated space.

Goal #1

Open my Photo Studio -- maybe 1/4 of my photo gear.

My second goal is tied to the first. I have always loved to dabble with paint, pastels, chalk, and all things crafty. I recently discovered that I have the desire to make my own textures and possibly artwork that incorporates my photos. I haven’t exactly narrowed this down — it’s a work in progress for now. All I do know is that I have two easels, sketch pads, watercolor canvases, and more paint, pencils, and chalk than one person probably needs. And they are homeless. They are currently piled up on my tiny desk in my room beside my littlest’s crib. My husband is always banging into them. He’s not very happy about this.

Goal #2

Create an Art Space -- it's piling up!

My third goal may be the one I’m looking most forward to. I am a caregiver by nature. I have run a daycare for 7 years and I have four kids. Before the daycare I was/am still a Certified Personal Trainer (ultimate career where you coddle people — exhausting) and I tried once during the 7 years to go back to work. I found work at the Red Cross doing personal care. In short, most of my adult life has involved me taking care of everyone around me. This year I solemnly vow to make more ‘me time’ and, here’s the kicker, not feel guilty that I could be doing something else. My picture shows my fave Aeropostale slippers and many Lush bath bombs that are unused. One is from Christmas last year! Yuck!

Goal #3

Make more 'me time' -- some of these bathbombs are from last Christmas!

Finally, I have always been a voracious reader. Between my cookbooks piling up in the kitchen, novels on my bedstand, photography and writing books in my office, aka the kitchen table, almost every corner of my home has a pile of books. The problem is that when I finally get the kids to bed, usually by 8, I still seem to have a million things left to do, whether for the current day or to get a jump on tomorrow. By the time I finally get up to bed, my favorite place to read, I fall asleep. I have to give myself permission to leave things for the next day and give myself that extra time to read.

Goal #4

Read more! I would love to finish any one of these!

I am hopeful. All the goals I have set are attainable — or I will make them attainable. I want my own business, I deserve more ‘me time,’ and I need to have a creative outlet — artwork and reading. I have posted the Polaroids on my bulletin board in my kitchen. I will look at them every day and when I accomplish that particular goal I will remove the Polaroid and tuck it away. I may even replace it with a new one!

2011, here I come!

Good luck with your 2011 goals — I’d love to hear about them!

Jodi

Dec 30

2 Comments

Brittany: The Top-Secret Christmas Craft

As you might recall, last year, when Sam was three, I took him to the local paint-your-own-pottery studio where he (and sometimes John) painted several pieces for our family members. You can read about that here.

I did it on a fluke, and had seriously low expecations going in because three-year-olds don’t produce asthetically-pleasing art, right? Well, Sam proved me wrong. Granted, his pottery painting technique was more Jackson Pollack than Picasso, but the end result was interesting, vibrant, and better still, utilitarian.

I love making crafts, and I want my kids to share in that love, but to be brutally honest for a second, most of the kids’ craft ideas out there are just plain stupid. I don’t want a tissue-paper-bedecked toilet roll pencil holder and I can’t think of a single person out there who does. Yes, I’m a strictly if-the-ends-don’t-justify-the-means-I-don’t-waste-my-time kind of person, and my philosophy is that if I or my children are going to put in the time and energy to make a gift for someone, I want it to be something well-received. I like gifts that are beautiful and useful, so that’s the criteria I adhere to before I pull out the craft supplies.

Now that Sam is old enough to make handmade gifts for Christmas, this has become an annual event (or at least it will be, now that I’ve done it twice in a row!). I’ve alluded to our top secret Christmas craft for a while now, and I know some of you have been eagerly awaiting my reveal, so without further ado, here is Sam’s Christmas Craft for 2010!

Beading!

Back in September, I got a wild hair that maybe Sam would enjoy making some jewelry-type gifts this year. He seems to have an appreciation for color and fashion (with really specific ideas about what Mom needs to wear in public), and after several years of manpulating a bunch of magnetic trains around, he’s got killer fine motor skills. So it wan’t as totally far-fetched an idea as it sounds.

But when I went digging around the internet looking for kid-appropriate-jewelry-making tutorials, I got a whole lot of foam, a whole lot of pasta, and a whole lot of plastic. Nothing says Merry Christmas like a macaroni necklace. I began to dispair.

Then, around Halloween, one of Sam’s classmates brought in candy necklaces for the kids to make, and when Sam excitedly told me all about how much fun he had making his, the wheels in my head started turning. I’d seen simple beaded bracelets on stretchy cord that he’d be able to make. How different could that be from making a candy necklace?

I wasn’t quite ready to go into this whole hog yet. Beads–the real things–aren’t cheap, and I didn’t want to go buy out Michaels if this was a one-time thing for him. So I went to Wal-mart and bought a hideous foam bead kit and pulled it out on a rainy afternoon. Sam wanted to make one necklace after another…

So I was on to something… but I still had my doubts.

Before I committed to the project, I emailed my friend (and fellow Studio Mothers blogger) Kelly, who’s an amazingly talented jewelry designer in Jacksonville, Florida (and she’s done quite a few jewelry projects with her girls who are a few years older than Sam). I asked her for advice on materials and bead size/type and basically asked her if I was insane to even consider doing this. She gave me the go ahead. My instincts were correct–Sam could do a stretchy bracelet, especially if we used big(ger) glass beads and a product called Stretch Magic (a stretchy cord–we used 0.5 mm).

So then we went to Michaels and Sam got to go bead shopping. I encouraged him to take his time and really look at the beads. Eventually he picked several types that he especially liked and we came home and got started. There are a zillion tutorials for stretchy-bracelet making on You Tube, so I won’t bother posting another one here.

Sam really got into it and would sit down with me and work with the beads–turning out one or two bracelets a day. He does the beading, and all I do is tie them off for him.

Here are the final products after months of hard work:

The bonus is that he’s learning about measurement, sorting by size and color, and practicing counting the whole time. And he says he’s making “really long trains with lots of boxcars,” because everything Sam does is with trains in mind.

After he made bracelets for all the women in the family, he wanted to make bracelets for all the men, too. Knowing that they wouldn’t be quite as keen on jewelry, Sam and I compromised and made the guys beaded bookmarks. This is how they turned out:

Then I started thinking about how best to present these. I mean, they’re gorgeous, right? They should have packages to match.

I wanted to make come sort of cardstock business card for Sam’s “brand” (because I’m actually kicking around the idea of opening an etsy store for our bracelets), so I had him go outside and I took picures of his hand in the fall leaves (this was back in October). It was just a fluke when he made a four with his fingers, but since he was four when he made these, I went with it.

And then, poking around the web, I found the perfect quote to go with it: Love, with little hands, comes and touches you with a thouand memories,and asks you beautiful, unanswerable questions. ~ an excerpt from a poem by Carl Sandberg 

So, I made these little cards to hang the jewerly/bookmarks from:

And then I wrapped it up like this:

Sam really seems to enjoy beading. He didn’t stop after the Christmas bracelets were made, and still asks me on an almost daily basis to make a bracelet. John even got into the act one day when I left our beading supplies on the table. I walked in and found this:

He likes to bead just as much as Sam (but rarely beads long enough to complete a whole bracelet).

I’m so proud of them.

[Cross-posted from Re-Writing Motherhood]

 

Dec 28

2 Comments

Robin: 2011 in Flight


Want to Join Me?
Where do I begin with this new venture? You could blame it on Kelly Rae Roberts e-course that I took during the summer. Or you could blame it on the months of introspection that I talk about over here during the year I spent living and learning to thrive in Germany.
This notion of Creative Peace is one I have gone back to over and over again over the last two years. I know that when I started this “idea” of living more creatively and then trying my hand at a creative business, the movements were always with a twinge of self doubt; as if I was living someone else’s life. Was a creative life one I could actually attain?
The answer is a resounding YES! Now that this is settled in my mind and heart, I would love the opportunity to walk alongside you as you do some traveling yourself.
Learn more here…
[Crossposted from Well of Creations]

Dec 22

8 Comments

Jodi: An Introduction

[Editor’s note: Please join me in welcoming Jodi to the Studio Mothers community!]

I am a wife and mom to four great kids: 14, 12, 2.5 years, and 8 months old. I live up in Timmins, ON, Canada. I have been running a small home daycare for the past 7 years while I dabble with writing, blogging, mixed-media artforms, reading, cooking, baking, and my biggest passion, photography. I am a collector of vintage cameras (Brownies, Hawkeyes, Minolta), toy cameras (4 and 8 lens), and the proud owner of a Holga, a Diana, and too many Polaroids.

I recently graduated from the New York Institute’s Full Photography course and have committed to opening up my own photography studio where I plan to offer traditional indoor studio sessions and outdoor/location shoots. I also have delusions of grandeur that include my own line of fine art prints (check out my Etsy shop), notecards, templates, and anything else I can create in my little home photo/art studio. I love my Canon 7D and Photoshop Elements 9. Whatever would I do without you?

I look forward to being a part of a community that encourages creativity and family.

Where I can be found:



Dec 16

8 Comments

Brittany: The Perfect Present

I haven’t written a blog post here in recent memory. In fact, I haven’t written much of anything recently. A (personal) blog here and there. Two sentences the last time I worked on my novel. And a Christmas letter that I decided not to send when my printer ran out of ink at the last minute.

No matter how you celebrate the holiday season (or even if you don’t), the months of November and December can suck the life right out of you. There’s this feverish expectation in the air that you can make the holiday merrier and brighter for everyone around you. That there’s a perfect gift out there for you to find, that will perfectly convey a bevy of emotions, and reduce the recipient to tears. That if you just spend enough, decorate enough, eat enough, make-everyone’s-dreams-come-true enough, you will fill the gnawing void inside yourself.

And here it is, nearly Christmas, and I’ve hardly bought a thing. I watch all the advertisements on tv and get all the fliers in the mail, hearing all about the latest and greatest new thing, and every store’s once-in-a-lifetime sale and think something along the lines of “pfffffft.” This surprises me a little, because, when I grew up, Christmas-morning-gift-opening was an endurance sport. But I also remember the emptiness I always felt after all the gifts were opened. Not because I wanted more gifts, but because it meant that the season of family time was at an end.

I have very dim memories of the gifts I received as a child. But I remember vividly the family Christmas parties. Sitting in the kitchen with my mom, and aunts, and grandmother as they cooked. Putting up the tree. Watching holiday movies. The family game nights. Traveling and spending time with my cousins each year. Sitting around the table telling stories.

During the holidays my already-close family spent even more time together. That was the part of Christmas that I loved best.

With that in mind, I have spent the last couple of months trying to turn this into a magical time of year for the boys. It’s our first Christmas in New York, as well as the first year that both boys are old enough to participate in all of the things that, as a mother, I’ve always wanted to do with them. We went to see the Canadian Pacific Holiday Train. My train-obsessed boys loved the freight train decorated with thousands of lights. We’ve baked and decorated dozens of cookies, and spent our afternoons making different crafts. I’ve taught them holiday songs. We’ve driven around looking at decorations, and have had fun with our Elf on the Shelf, who frequently oversleeps and forgets to visit Santa, but can always be relied upon to hide in unusual locations around the house. Now that there’s snow on the ground, our family walks through the frequent snow showers have become a new favorite pastime.

I’ve thrown all of my energy into spending time with the boys this season, because to my way of thinking, that’s the only “latest and greatest” gift they need from me. The perfect present is being perfectly present.

Dec 13

7 Comments

Tammy: Art Journal — Goals Irrelevant Unpursued

 

“I live now and only now,
and I will do
what I want to do this moment
and not what I decided
was best for me yesterday.”
~Hugh Prather

collaged art journal page
9×12″ drawing paper

 

A realization.

GOALS ARE IRRELEVANT UNPURSUED.

Lots of writing, to come to this conclusion.

Which seems obvious.

Now that it’s officially concluded.

Pick a goal. Let it go. Or get serious about it.

I looked back at my list of goals for 2010.

I won’t be sharing the pitiful % completion rate.

I did a lot of stuff, to be sure.

But it wasn’t the stuff on the list.

It needs to be the stuff on the list.

Or else I have to re-look at the list.

I’ll re-write the list for next year.

Make sure it’s in sync with life now, today.

Yesterday’s goals only matter if they still matter to me today.

 

[Crossposted from Tammy’s personal blog, Daisy Yellow]

 

Dec 6

7 Comments

Cathy: New favorite thing

Please forgive me if my sentences make no sense today. I had a cahrazy weekend, which included Honey’s birthday, on which I barely saw him. It was a good weekend, a celebratory weekend, but I have been having a cold coming on for a few days, and I think it hit me full force today, when I can finally rest, while catching up and critiquing two manuscripts for tomorrow’s writing group, that is. How’s that for a run-on?

Oh, and for some unknown reason, Captain Comic has decided that somewhere between 3 am and 4:30 am is primo wakeup and run back and forth with lights on and doors slamming time.

Anyway, in time for the December challenge, one of my old writing friends from my Boston days turned me on to a new writing tool. It works like Julie Cameron’s Morning Pages from The Artist’s Way, but it’s online. It’s typed. It’s private, and you can let your mind wander for 750 words, the equivalent of three pages. And you don’t have to find that notebook or pen. I think most of us are sitting in front of a screen these days anyway, right? And it gives me a community of people who are also writing, whether or not I make any more of a connection beyond just knowing they are out there somewhere doing the same thing: http://750words.com.

I am a horrible typist. It takes me about 20 minutes per day to meet the 750, averaging about 35-40 words a minute. all typos are left in place. I try not to go back and correct. I don’t think about what I’m writing, I just let the garbage fall out of my brain through my fingers tips and up onto the screen.

Usually about three quarters of the way in, I hit my stride and there’s at least a phrase if not an idea that I like or that I can work with in something else, later.

Here’s the thing:

When the boys were younger, and I was single and working three part-time jobs to support them, when I woke up in the morning, I put the baby gate across the kitchen doorway of our little condo, got the coffee started, and while it brewed, I started my morning pages with pen and notebook amidst the dulcet tones of Captain Comic hanging on the opposite side of the gate, rattling it and screaming for my attention, Mr. Cynic momming me, and the themes of Blues Clues or Bob the Builder running from the tv in the background. After a few months, they got that I was not going to give them the time of day during “Mommy’s morning pages.”

And that’s when I started writing my almost finished editing this draft manuscript — later in the day, somewhere between job number one and the first school bus arrival, I had 30 minutes in which I wrote the first thirty or so pages of this book. But I was only productive on that if I had been productive earlier by getting through the mess of my daily concerns to hit the subconscious, where the better writing sprung from, like an underground spring of fresh water. First I had to clear away the mud.

So why have I not been writing or editing what I really want to be working on lately?

I think the key is in these morning pages. I think it’s in getting the garbage out of my head. It only takes me 20 minutes, so why not? Here I am, doing it online. And this site has some interesting tools to help you see what mood you’re writing in, for instance. Or what words you repeat, or what senses you are using, and how dominantly you write in one over another. It also has a healthy dose of competition that fuels some of us to write. For me it’s much needed accountability. I highly recommend it: http://750words.com.

C’mon….you know you want to.

 

Dec 1

2 Comments

Cathy: Weekword — pyrophoric

I am hosting the Weekword Challenge this week and hope you’ll join in on the fun. Weekword is a creative challenge that gets passed around the internet and each week a new blogger is asked to host and chooses a new word to inspire others to share their response. You can do anything: from poetry to photography to pottery to pensive ramblings. Whatever happens is good as long as it prompts you to do, to make, to create and then to share.

pyrophoric

I flipped open my old red Merriam-Webster, and found this week’s word. I like it. It’s sparkly. In fact the official meaning from Dictionary.com is

py·ro·phor·ic /ˌpaɪrəˈfɔrɪk, -ˈfɒr-/ [pahy-ruh-fawr-ik, -for-]–adjective Chemistry .capable of igniting spontaneously in air.Origin: Gk pyrophór ( os ) fire-bearing ( see pyro-, -phorous) + -ic

Dictionary.com Unabridged. Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2010.

World English Dictionary

pyrophoric (ˌpaɪrəʊˈfɒrɪk)— adj1. (of a chemical) igniting spontaneously on contact with air2. (of an alloy) producing sparks when struck or scraped: lighter flints are made of pyrophoric alloy[C19: from New Latin pyrophorus, from Greek purophoros fire-bearing, from pur fire + pherein to bear]

I hope it sparks something in you! (I couldn’t resist.) Please add a comment here to indicate if you are participating and I will post a link to your blog on Friday to share with with others.

Have fun!

crossposted from musings in mayhem

Nov 29

4 Comments

Kelly: What Shall You Do?

This little scrap of spelling list has been floating around the house for months. I find it here and there, and for some reason, I’ve just never thrown it away. Today I was thinking about everything that I have on my plate on right now, and when I came home, I saw this on the floor in the bedroom. Shall.

Sometimes things get so crazy that we lose track of all the things we said we shall do. The kids get sick (Olivia). You get sick (me). The cat goes on the lam again (Tink). You become over-committed, oftentimes because of things you cannot control (me, work). You stay sick because you’re over-committed (me, still). You follow through on obligations you make because you committed that you shall do them (me, participating in the Halifax Arts Festival even though I was still sick). You work one very demanding full-time job, one part-time job and try to manage a creative business, for a reason (you, um, I, want the part-time job to become the full-time job so you can have more time with your family and more time for creativity). So you keep going.  What shall you do to pull all this together?

Today, I shall try to remember that all things will fall into place where they shall, in their due time, as the Man above plans. And I shall be thankful that I got to get away for a brief 24 hours to reunite with my sorority sisters Saturday (45 of us), antibiotics and cough drops in hand (and a few beers to help battle the germs). And I shall decide that those custom orders can wait just a little while longer, and that will be okay. And I shall decide that I’ll get to my blog when I get to my blog, which obviously hasn’t been very often lately. And I shall sit on the couch and cuddle with my girls while watching Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy and then lie in the bed and snuggle with DH while watching Antiques Roadshow. And I shall try not to worry about all those things I’ve been losing track of. And I shall decide that everything will be just fine. What shall you do today?

[cross-posted from Artful Happiness…pictures from the reunion there :-)]

Nov 15

3 Comments

Miranda (and Brittany): If these walls could talk….

Last month the lovely Brittany Vandeputte and her husband Tom stopped in for a visit on their way from Salem, Massachusetts, back home to the vicinity of Albany, New York.

Before she left, Brittany wrote all over my wall. Not a display of bad manners, mind you — I asked her to do it. Some of you may remember my half-bath makeover that included a wall of blank “frames.” This wall is a pretty happening place, I have to say. Here, with her permission, is the poetry that Brittany left behind. (Click on the image for a larger view if needed. The frame that Brittany chose was tucked beside the wall cabinet, so I was unable to get a straight-on shot.)

Yeah. I thought you’d like that.

 

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