Rajasthan - an Impulse Buy

 or "Where Do You Get Your Inspiration" (there really should be a space for subtitles on blogger!!).

On a somewhat frantic & rushed Christmas Eve, in an attempt to avoid the larger malls by visiting more out of the way places, I happened upon a book store that I hadn't been into before. Oh dear!!

In my defense I was looking for a particular item that they would have normally stocked - so I wasn't just killing time browsing ;)

A book caught my eye as I entered the store & the thought went briefly through my head that I should buy it for myself, but it looked as though it would be a rather expensive volume, so the thought was quickly dismissed. Searching for the gift tags that I'd gone in to look for I came across the book again & discovered that it was surprisingly reasonable price wise. When I further discovered that there was 30% off store wide it suddenly became a done deal - I bought a Christmas gift to myself ......

For quite some time I took the volume to bed with me each night & lost myself in the panoramic images of a place & culture so very different & so very much older than mine. Conjuring images from a Thousand and One Nights I read the descriptions of each city, of the history, the people, of Maharajas & Moguls - their festivals, their traditions. This kind of thing spins my wheels - I can't help it & I really don't ever want to!!

When I look at the gorgeous panoramic images I cant help but notice the exotic contrasts in both landscape & buildings from the warm earth tones of some through to the refreshing white of others.The shape & style of the architecture is amazing & the hugely decorative detail  inside & outside buildings is something else - especially when you stop to consider how long ago many of them were built.

There is art & colour everywhere in "The Land of Kings"....& it seems I have managed to add another destination to my bucket list.

I find books such as this hugely inspirational, as I find myself tracing certain shapes on images with my fingers, or admiring the way a colour has aged I realise that I am trying to figure how I could include that element in a bead or a painting & before I know it I'm reaching for my sketch book!

What sort of images inspire you?

Need Inspiration?

Or perhaps  you are just after your daily art fix. Either way you need look no further than DAM - DailyArtMuse

I stumbled across this website for the first time a couple of days ago & I was blown away immediately upon landing on the homepage. Of course I am most likely late to the party on this one & perhaps everyone already knows about it. But just in case there is someone who doesn't know I feel I must give it a mention!

Established in 2006 by Susan Lomuto, the website is an absolute treasure trove of talent, ideas & resources.

Images such as this paper and mixed media sculpture by Carol Cole met my eager eye within the first couple of scrolls of my mouse button.

A bit further down the page & I arrived at these breathtaking figurative gourd sculptures by Patricia Boyd

These are just the more recent articles; click on the artist names to go directly to the posts & see more of their work & read about them. With almost 3000 archived posts covering every craft imaginable, I'm sure that there will be something to delight or inspire everyone. Go, look, discover, enjoy!

If you are on Facebook you can join there as well  DailyArtMuse on Facebook

My Saturday Inspiration

I am blessed. Every Saturday I get a break from the somewhat lonely occupation of being 'self employed' & I am paid to go & spend 6 hours being inspired by everything I see.

I am fortunate in that I have a great employer who has a well stocked gallery - set at a constant 21 degree's (70 Fahrenheit). I get to walk in to a warm, peaceful atmosphere (except when I manage to set off the alarm system, as I did a couple of weeks ago) & communicate with adults all day!



I meet new people, consult with & advise clients on framing choices & breath in a selection of art prints & originals that can at times overpower the senses. I wont even go into the 40 plus Art Catalogues that I can browse through if I feel the desire (or have enough quiet time) ....we would be here forever! Believe me though, looking on-line at the same images just isn't the same.

For me the best part is when I get to see artwork & souvenirs bought back from exotic places or groups of images & memorabilia that have a special meaning to a client. These often have a wonderful story behind them, & they are stories that I love to hear.
To see a persons eye's light up or hear the passion in their voice when they talk of an experience, how could one not be interested.

Every item comes in to be framed because it means something to the owner, therefore every item is special & deserves special treatment ... not to just be shoved into any old frame that you may have available. Most of the time my mind immediately conjures up an image of how an item would be best presented. Sometimes getting that 'finished' image across to clients can be a challenge - especially if they are not good at visualising what a frame or mat selection is going to look like when it is around all four sides of the piece being framed.

I love Saturdays! They are fun, often challenging & always inspiring!

The only downside is that because it is just one day a week - I often miss seeing the end result of something I have consulted on & don't get to witness the customers reaction when they see the result.





On being mostly self employed - have I ever mentioned what a drag my boss that I have for the rest of the week is - she makes me do ALL of the work, get my own coffee (which I often have to drink whilst performing one task or another), makes me do her housework as well.....& never ever shouts pizza for lunch! ;o)

What do Indian Printing Blocks & Journaling Have in Common??

In a lot of cases 'not very much' would probably be correct. Until recently I would have said 'nothing at all'.

I have a few Indian printing blocks that have purchased over the years. I'm not sure why I purchased the first one about ten years ago .... other than I liked the look of it. Like anything that has a bit of history behind it - they intrigued me. Purchased at the Trade Aid shop at least I was told a little of the history behind them & knew that when they became worn or too damaged to use for printing fabric they were sold.

So there they sat on my shelves, along with an eclectic collection of 'things' from around the world, looking decorative - but serving no other purpose.

My blocks after finally being used

Then along came Lisa Sonora Beam's online workshop that I have just done on PowerFULL Magical Visual Journals. Within the blink of an eye I changed from being possibly the worlds most useless keeper of journals into a maniac who could be found running around the house eyeing anything that had the potential to turn a blank page into an interesting page without actually having to write anything on it first.

Enter stage left; the printing blocks. Soon long forgotten paper that had been created for use in collage work many years ago had been unearthed & a carton that had remained packed since moving full of acrylic paints & various other mediums had had the dust blown off it.

Lisa has many idea's on how to get started. She has fabulous ideas on overcoming that fear of actually writing on a blank page, or committing to writing every day. I have got to say that even if you one have one solitary, lonely 'creative' chromosome in your body then her methods & can't help but appeal to that side of you. After two months of 'avoidance' (she even deals with that) I finally got started.

My first two completed pages

A "No Longer Blank" Page

Of course the more I played, the more I enjoyed, & the more the idea's started flowing. Not only idea's for journalling , but idea's of other things that I could do with the printing blocks ....idea's involving the fabrics for which they were originally intended.

Of course I just had to go & look up what was involved in the process & which types of dyes they used. As you can tell from the first photo of the blocks - they werent intended to be used with fast drying acrylic paints. I pretty much picked that as I was using them...not to mention later when I cleaned them & noticed that they were losing their wonderful 'old dye' patina.

When I saw how these blocks were made I gained a whole new respect for them & realised that although imperfect I had some absolute treasures in my possession!

Just look at this

Here you will find a video that shows how the printing blocks are used to print fabric.

Playing With Words

While thinking about & playing with words last month, with the CED Challenge, I discovered "Wordle". What fun! You can create & customize little word clouds either using words of choice, pasting in a bunch of text or have it automatically pull words from your blog posts.
To begin with I typed in words that I associate with torching & some of the feelings I experience when I am at the torch.



Next I entered the URL to my blog & saw what it pulled up from recent posts at the time - the most recent post at that point was "Fantastic Finish - Finally"



This morning I visited Wordle again, just to see what it would pull from my blog & the recent posts.....


This really sums up the last two posts perfectly - in fact I think I might just print it out & pin it to my inspiration board out in the studio.

Try it for yourself, create word clouds....go & have some fun on "Wordle"

Inspiration from odd things

I'm the queen of 'odd' - believe me on this. I'm also the queen of 'easily amused'.

Back a few years ago when my nails were long & always painted I discovered what I thought was a really cool product - a colour shifting nail polish. It was imported from Australia, it had to be used over a black base coat, it was expensive & the full effect when painted was stunning.
Like the cars with the various colour shifting paint jobs (Harlequin, Mirage & such) this little beauty became a chameleon & changed it's look depending on how the light hit it.

Bugger the fact that I never wore green, blue or purple (or the hot pink , purple or bright orange of the second bottle...) on my nails, I also happily ignored the that fact most of the nail polishes in my collection were relatively safe neutrals that could be worn with pretty much anything & not scream too loudly - I had to have some of this stuff to play with. After all I'd been drooling over the colour shift paint jobs on some of the newer cars for a while....& this was the next best thing! Right?

Wrong! The nail polish was positively dangerous, I'd have been far safer driving one of the cars at 140kph in the city ;o)
The nail polish was dangerous because I'd find myself attracted to looking at it - especially when driving & every subtle nuance of light would cause those babies to change colour while manoeuvring the steering wheel. I'd find myself flexing & wriggling my fingers just to watch it change, before remembering that 'oops - I better watch the road'.
Yep - easily amused... & distracted it seems.

I eventually restricted it's use to one nail - thereby doing my bit for road safety.

A few days ago I was sorting through my drawers of nail polish bemoaning the fact that they were far too pretty to just dump & I came upon the wee bottles of colour shift polish sitting there amidst the later Holographic & other fancy types of polishes & marvelled at how frou frou this self proclaimed non- frou frou, practical girl really is at heart...in some things. I admired the fact that 5 years down the track this nail polish was still fluid & not set like a sludgy lump in the bottom of the bottle, so I figured I'd paint my nails one last time before trimming them to a respectable length.
I refuse to torch with nail polish on, knowing how flammable the stuff is - & how close I work to the flame. (I also secretly suspect that anyone who torches with acrylic or gel nails on has death wish).

This gives you an idea of a couple of the colours this polish shifts through (it took me ages to get just two reasonably representative shots on camera) & it also shows a cool blue-purple shade. The other colour also shifts, but somewhat more subtly from a champagne to a pale lilac - so the combination isn't as odd as it looks in the photo's. The colours can been seen more accurately on a car here.

All of this, of course, is really just to tell you how the colour scheme for these beads came about.

"Island Haze"

It's the Colour of Life

"Huli Tribesman" - by Toni Duffy

My inspiraition has been somewhat flagging lately - I am sure my muse is on vacation, & can just picture her reclining on a beach in the tropic's somewhere, absorbing the sun whilst slowly sipping at her Caipirinha.....
the daydream actually goes further than that - so all I shall say is that muse better return quick smart, before I start getting antsy!

Today I looked around the house - seeing with new eye's some of those things that once inspired me ....well, enough to pay top dollar for them anyway.
Isn't it strange how after something has been around for a while you tend not to notice it as you did when it was new?
I have a small collection of original art that I have purchased over the years of my working at the gallery. A lesson learned in the early days before I started working there was that if that if something calls you - you only have one shot at getting that piece.

The piece above is a perfect example - it came in destined for an exhibition opening. I had seen it before it was fully completed & even then it sang to me. Everything about it drew me in....subject, colour palette the loose placement of apparently random brush strokes. I decided it was going to be mine & let my boss know whilst hanging it on the day, knowing that if I waited until the opening that evening the window of opportunity would be gone forever. I'm so pleased I did.

At the time most of my family didn't like it ......in fact pretty much all of them from my Mum through to my kids openly stated they didn't, even Allan saw some at the opening that he prefered - lol.

In this house it hangs in almost the setting I had always envisioned for it - against a rich rustic red feature wall. Many have changed their opinion of since we moved...including my Mum ;o)

My tribesman is behind where I sit to relax or create while watching TV - so I don't get to sit back & enjoy him as I should.

When I do take a moment to stop & look at him, I realize that he draws me in just as he did when I first saw him - & I'm always impressed by those few quick, cleverly placed brush stokes that have created the illusion of deep set piercing eye's, wonderfully surrounded by the abundance of colour in his headpiece.

Ahhh yep - even in the middle of this miserable old southern hemisphere winter, while my muse has deserted me for warmer climes, there is still inspiration to be had here ....if I just take a moment to stop & look for it.

**The Huli Tribesmen are the idigenous people of the Papua New Guinea Highlands. For some interesting reading have a look here "Adventuring in Papua New Guinea"

What's not to Love

Christchurch City Sunrise

The other night as I sat here listening to the gentle hum of my Hard Drive…well ok it’s not so gentle, in fact it is irritatingly loud…but hey I was trying to wax lyrical.

So let’s pretend that my Hard Drive, which at times gets a vibration thing going that can only be compared to the roar of a Hot Head as opposed to the quite background noise of a dual fuel torch – is quite.
To some it would be considered quiet ….members of a Heavy Metal Band for instance.

Back on track: – a couple of nights ago I was sitting here at 2.00am in the morning, pondering the meaning of life, the universe & everything (glass, beads & LE, silver jewelry components). I suddenly realised why it is that I hang around so long after everyone else goes to bed….the total lack of sound, the blissful silence – the pure unadulterated PEACE. Being able to think uninterrupted thoughts – map out idea’s while they are fresh in my mind, before sleep & then the subsequent early morning rush intrudes & erases them.

Not that many years ago I used to do almost everything at night – often knit or sew right through until the sun rose. I’d read books until they were finished & the birds were chirping away merrily. Any decorating was done after everyone was in bed & out of my way…. & I’ve lost count of how many Birthday Cakes I’ve still been icing at 4.00am.

Maybe I should try making beads at night – watch the sunrises, be inspired, capture thoughts & idea’s in the peace of early morning before I get the kids off to school & the house empties so I can sleep during the day. What's not to love about that?
I know I’m not a morning person - & really there is nothing to stop me if I want to.
Perhaps I shall think on this some more……