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"

Creative Every Day

Some of you may have noticed the "Creative Every Day" logo to the right of my Blog.



I should have shared & explained far earlier!! The wonderful Leah, a talented artist & a generous, encouraging person has a fabulous website & blog "Creative Every Day" . Here she shares what she has been doing & what has inspired her. She talks about the creative process & encourages others to take part in her "Creative Every Day" & "Art Every Month" challenges. Please click on the links & take a look around.


This is a fabulous concept & Leah's emphasis on 'low pressure' (you don't have to post every day, or even every week - it's open & it's up to you) makes it easy to take part. One of the most significant things is what Leah sees as creativity & the fact that it doesn't have to be art related. She means it in the broadest sense, including anything art related but also activities such as gardening, cooking, playing with your kids, decorating & so on.

Each month there is an optional theme to work to - February's was 'Words'. To begin with I wondered how on earth I was going to work that into my glass beads. January's theme of 'Play!' hadn't been too difficult at all - that's what I seem to do best at the torch!
I realised that I was instantly restricting myself with that thought & that typing here or writing in my journal was in fact still being creative.... so I let the thought of 'words' go for a wee while.

Later I realised that something else I had been encouraged to work on could be put to good use... to gain enough stringer control in this month to actually be able to write legibly on a bead, when I finally had that 'aha' moment. I did it!!