March is the season of BUSY…

Gosh, a moment of guilty blushing for the poor abandoned blog please! Shame!

The last month has been an extremely busy, and pleasurable one…filled with projects, exhibitions, computer-related stress, big news, exciting plans, more work, design and creativity conventions, other projects, strategic planning, more computer-related stressing, extra’s acting for a film…and finally, sunshine, picnics and chocolate flapjacks…yum!

Phew!

Last week saw the completion of an art project run by my friend with the local grade school. The children started out by listening and moving to a piece of music, from there they created an imaginary world based on that music. Using all recycled and waste materials they built these worlds, created characters, and wrote down the story of the land and it’s inhabitants. There were two sessions of about thirty children, each divided into three groups, each group listening to a different piece of music…and only three weeks within to complete the project!

It was a mind-boggling three hours photographing, talking-to, and observing these mini-artists! Thirty children, doing three different projects, with four adults, one special needs assistant, one teacher, one photographer, three large scale installations, and a bucket load of enthusiasm is ALOT to fit into one room!!

These children are normally only assigned ONE HOUR of art, PER WEEK. That’s it. No wonder they went so do-lally!  

They created wildly imaginative landscapes;  filled with lonely telephone ladies looking for their soul-mates, snow that tasted of whatever you wished, kings that travelled by wind power (not exactly the eco-friendly version!) and monsters that protected the gate of their world by trapping their foes in fully functioning cardboard prisons!

Here are a few snippets of the project in action!

Hope you’re enjoying the sunshine our side of the world!

Slap that factor 50 on, and enjoy! ♥

Forget Paris…

…Dublin is the City of Love!

HAPPY VALENTINES TO ALL!!!♥

Valentines Day can be a tough day on our expectations, so don’t sit around waiting for your loved one to treat you like a Princess, or waiting for a handsome knight/knight-ess (!) to whisk you away on a shiny new pony/Porsche/Vw Van….today is the perfect day to practice some radical self-love as Gala puts it.  So buy yourself some flowers, pamper yourself with presents, bake a little cake or simply honor ‘you‘ being enough however you like to celebrate!

Enjoy! ♥

Art deco wedding invitation

We’ve just posted off a new wedding invitation from Good Job

♥

Anna & Ian asked Good Job Creative Studio to provide design services for their May 2012 wedding party in London.

Advertising their party at the Garden Museum in London, the invites were designed with an art deco, garden party theme that entices the guest with a promise of “A fine feast and a little dancing”.

Thanks to Kirstin Prisk for the photography.

♥

Patchwork cushion

A long time ago – lets call it many cups of tea and fruit and nut bars ago, I made a large piece of patchwork with no real final project in mind – it is made of bits of everything I have been working on and some leftover buttons.

I ironed the patchwork onto some interfacing to give it a bit more structure and also to stop it unravelling

I do this with most of my off road sewing so the whole thing doesn’t just unravel the first time it’s actually used.

(…the best bit was hammering in the snap on poppers….there really should be more sewing projects which need a hammer to finish them off…..)

The time lapse from the making of the patchwork, to ironing on the interfacing was cup-of- tea -length:

The time lapse from here to cushion was months.

Sometimes projects like to stew a bit.

We’ve been using the cushion for ages before the light today made me chuck the cushion on a chair, reach for the camera and grab the owl…..

(well, the cushion looked lonely without a prop and the cat is busy bashing the kitten from down the road. Nice.)

Letterpress and fabric wedding invitation

Geen and Sarah are getting married, so the talented Neil at Good Job and I worked with them to create a wedding invitation that suited them.

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥

Sarah has a huge love of vintage fabric and old quirky things, so we designed them a wedding invite to look like a 1950s fabric sample card, with the wedding information on the right half of the card and a space for a fabric sample on the left.

 

Photos by Kirstin Prisk and wedding design by Good Job Creative Studio

♥

The Musings of a Meditator!

The ‘Pat Your Head and Bub Your Belly’ School of Meditation!

Enjoy! ♥

The soul.

I’m getting really excited about the upcoming exhibition in the Back Loft gallery, Dublin, titled ‘Picturing the Soul‘.  I spent this week making a start on putting together my piece for it, and today photographing my friends dance piece, which is looking awesome~!

Working with the idea of the soul has been a fascinating process, and incredibly thought-provoking.  Images to come soon!

What do you think?  Do you believe in a soul?  What do you think it is?  Is it a constant in our lives?

Enjoy! ♥

 

Missing, Creativity. Last seen…

The last two posts from my sister were about her sleeping creativity.

I read them, and breathed a sigh of relief.

It wasn’t only me!

Image source – unknown

How much of the worry and anxiety we face in life would be alleviated by realising that another, if not ALOT of others were going through exactly the same, or similar emotions as we were.  Today I listened to two girlfriends talking about fear, and during the conversation they realised that they were both experiencing the same emotions, on the same topic.  Although neither actually “sorted out” the issue for the other, I noticed that both were visibly lightened after the realisation.

So having avoided my poor blog for the last week, I sat down feeling empty and thought I would attempt another ‘I have nothing much to offer you right now’ posts…and I was greeted with two posts on the same problem as mine!

I no longer feel exhausted.

I no longer feel empty.  I have spent the past couple of weeks painfully sketching in a visual diary, but apart from that feeling as though my creativity had fled me….NEVER to return. (I’m such a drama queen!)

Now I feel as though I still may not have huge inspiration or offer as much as I would like, but it will come back.

I found a couple of quotes that make me feel more assured;

“I haven’t a clue as to how my story will end. But that’s all right. When you set out on a journey and night covers the road, that’s when you discover the stars” – Nancy Willard

”You can’t cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water.” — Rabindranath Tagore.

Now. Stop panicking. Stop catastrophizing. Stop eating that giant bar of chocolate and reach for some paper.

Write these words — slowly.

• I am still creative
• I still have the ability to create
• I will create again

Put them in front of you.  Read them.  Read them until you feel them.

Read them out loud.  Keep repeating the words until you feel the conviction.

Do this every day when you feel stifled, or you feel your creativity has fled you.

Remember these three things, repeat them until you feel them, and you will start to relax. The more you relax, the sooner your creativity and inspiration will return.

And in the meantime…JUST DO IT. (As I,  AND Adidas said!) It doesn’t have to be good, or even interesting.

Keep DOING…it really matters not what you do, as long as you do something!

Now go forth and capture, or draw, or cut, or paint, or play, or dance or sew…

ENJOY!!! ♥

How to make a calendula infusion

I really like this post on how to make a calendula infusion: CALENDULA.

It has been hacking down all day and I have been thinking about what to plant this year…

I’d like a whole bed of marigolds in the raised bed….in and around the non functioning raspberry cane. It knows if it doesn’t kick into action this year, it’s OUT!

I’ve been thinking about my snoozing creativity and where it leaves me…..

I found this quote (here) by Ira Glass on creativity really dinged a bell in my brain:

“What nobody tells people who are beginners — and I really wish someone had told this to me . . . is that all of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, and it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not.

But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase. They quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know it’s normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story.

It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”

….so listening to these very sensible words, I sat down and made something….and I will again tomorrow….and maybe that will coax the sleeping bear out of its cave…..

365 Days

Once again I’m back to keeping a visual diary.  Our lovely Mother bought us lovely black spiral bound notebooks for sketching in, and I’m delighted to be back at it…nothing inspires like creativity!

Page a day…that’s the idea!

No big deal…just DO it!

Enjoy! ♥