sunshine factory – artwork by tracey kazimir-cree

our "garden" gate

Did you hear that sound? It’s the sound of snow falling…which it’s been doing since late last night. Tim works at Colorado State University and was home by 1:30 because they closed early. It’s so pretty, even though it’s the thick, wet icky snow like I used to enjoy in NJ, not the light powdery fun stuff we usually get. Either way, it’s hard to be a sole proprietor with an office in the basement on a snow day like this. Which leads me to procrastination.

Despite my very long task list, including stuff for eeep! productions and my clients, for PRAC, for my studio and Sunshine Factory, for Fort Collins Gallery Walk, for my art and for my little family, I still find time to procrastinate. And this leads me to get stressed.

When I get really stressed, I procrastinate (see the vicious circle?) by playing games on Facebook, taking a nap, watching tv or reorganizing something. It’s that old frozen fear we all get when we’re unsure the task at hand will be done correctly, will turn out as we planned, or will even get finished. It’s exhausting. Not to mention unproductive.

So I took a quick break and opened the new issue of Somerset Studio. I read Quinn McDonald’s Business of Art column — is it serendipity that her topic this issue is STRESS? Quinn reminded me that all of those things I do to relieve the stress or to deal with it are only making it worse. It was quite the wakeup call, so I decided to start writing for my blog. Look at me — productive, not stressed and doing something I actually enjoy. Which (finally!) brings me to the point of this entry:

Today I was setting up a class schedule for my recycled envelope books class and for the composition book journaling workshop that I’ve mentioned to a number of you. I intend to publish that schedule this weekend, after many weeks (ok, months) of fear-based procrastination. While I was working on this, I realized that I had no holiday-related classes to offer!

Christmas Tree Screen Ornament -- oh, so pretty!

Now that’s it’s snowing, I am SO in the Christmas spirit. And with the economy being the way it is, I know most of my gifts this year will be homemade. What better way to show someone you love him or her than by making a wee, lovely giftie?

Enter the Christmas Tree Screen Ornament! To the right is a sample of the ornament. Yours will look different, of course, but the base will be a small framed screen (3×3 or 4×4) and we’ll paint the frame and attach any number of cool doodads and/or images to the screen itself.

Class details:

• The class will be 3 hours
• Cost will be $60 and will include all supplies (you bring your basic tool kit, of course!)
• You will leave with at least 1 finished ornament and the screen and doodads to make one more (additional kits will be available for purchase seperately)

Now, what I need to know from you is if this class sounds appealing and if so, what day works best for you. There’s a poll over on the right for you to respond to. This class is only open to local folks right now. Take the poll or email me or comment here and let me know your interest level by the end of the week, so I can be sure to order enough supplies and schedule the class according to YOUR needs.

The Littlest Rose 5 3/4 x 7 1/2 on watercolor paper.	Bird Lady Acrylic, collage, wax on wood board.
Another Dream in Which I Am Flying Acrylic on canvas board.	Quilted Laptop Bag

I’ve finally had a few minutes to upload some of my artwork from Art Unraveled. It’s always so fun to take a breath and a step back and then look at the work with new eyes. I could tell you everything I hate about these pieces, but I won’t. I will tell you how they came about and what I do like about them, though! Some of them are finished, some may get a little more work — some detailing, or will become part of another piece of artwork. (Yes, that means I may tear things up. It’s ok, I’m brave!) Some of it is here, and the rest is on my Flickr site. You can click on these to go there and see them larger, with descriptions.

Art Unraveled was great. I had missed it last year, so I tried to make sure I really enjoyed it this year. It was so wonderful to

• see my friends
• take a vacation (mostly — I did do some web work while I was there)
• make art and relax.
• I made new friends, too, which was extra cool.

I didn’t really stretch myself in terms of the classes I took, but it was nice to have the extra time to try new things and keep working on the skills I’m trying to improve.

I stayed at the hotel with Leighanna, with the intention to move to Fran’s house on Sunday. That was thwarted when Fran’s husband got sick with a stomach thing and when my doctor called to inform me that my ankle was fractured (something I wish that she told me before I left for AZ!). So, the trip was a little more expensive than I would have liked, but I really do love staying at hotels. I love the soft sheets, especially. And this hotel has the most comfortable pillow top mattresses and soft pillows, I have never been so happy and willing to go to sleep at night! I also love the happy hour and the little kitchen area in the room, where we had a little version of Trader Joe’s to munch on for lunches and snacks.

Katie Kendrick taught us how to look at other artwork and use it as inspiration. Since I don’t do a lot of faces and people, I was extremely frustrated with my first attempt, The Blessed Mother is Laughing at Me! I ended up doing some intuitive painting and the other two I did in this class were a little more satisfying.

From Alex Shur, I learned how to use tube watercolors and assorted non-traditional techniques I can use with them. This appealed to me greatly, because I don’t ever intend to follow many rules in my art. I’ve used pan watercolors since college, so stepping up to tube colors was really cool. I painted a lot in this class and have a lot of works in progress as well as pieces to use in other work.

From Traci Bautista, I learned her method for developing project ideas. This was extremely reassuring, because I already do a lot of what she showed us. Neat!

Judy Wise’s class was GREAT — the Bird Lady (above) is from that class. Judy is a very good teacher and she showed us her techniques for using collage, paint and wax to create depth and really interesting compositions. At the last minute, I decided to add one more class, since I didn’t feel stretched.

Monday night, I took a Crafty Chica (Kathy Cano Murillo) class. I had seen my friend Joanne’s bag, which she made after taking a similar class with CC. I sew a little, but still have some fear of sewing through my finger. It’s great to learn from Kathy because she just eyeballs it and doesn’t use a pattern and “figures things out.” I admire her so much!

OH! I got to meet Joanne, who is just wonderful and was so much fun to hang out with. She makes me LAUGH! I’m so happy about how much time she and Fran and I got to spend together.

And on Saturday night, we watched the 1000 Journals movie, and had a Q&A session with Someguy, the dude who got that whole thing in motion. The movie was a little long, but was really interesting. Then we had a chance to put our own marks in a few of the journals he brought with him. I decided it was a good opportunity to connect my Wreck This Journal experience with AU and 1000 Journals and I brought a page from Wreck This Journal, did some stuff to it and pasted it in. If you ever get 1000 Journals book #742, I’m in there.

Unfortunately, my Palm Centro camera isn’t that great and we can’t read this now. But it was stamped in each of the books and shows the journal number	Cover of the book I worked in.	My page that I glued into the book and doodled on.

…and today I have a wicked art hangover!

This past weekend, I took 5 mixed media workshops from Kelly Kilmer, who was the visiting artist at The Artists’ Nook this month. There are no words to describe how much I love Kelly’s classes and how much I get out of her workshops. Every time I take a Kelly class, I am able to play, experiment and I always get new ideas, either from her, or from expanding on something she or another student said.

This weekend’s highlights, not in any particular order:

• Seeing Kelly and learning from her. She is so creative, free and amazingly supportive.
• Getting to know Allyson better, and getting an awesome ego boost from her. *waves and paints Allyson’s hand*
• Learning more about layering and color mixing and composition.
• Realizing that some of the crazy stuff I do in my journals isn’t as crazy as I thought!
• Seeing my old pals, like Susan and Marcy and Karen and Terry, who I haven’t seen in a long time. I really admire the talent of these ladies!
• Meeting new people! Yes, I’m talking about you, you Ladies From Parker!
• Three full days of making art and playing. Heaven.

Last night, I was so amped up, I made 14 of the little paper journals while we watched tv. I love them.

I think my favorite book was the Reclaimed book. I love the idea of taking old books, gutting them, and making new pages for them.

THANK YOU SO MUCH, KELLY!

Clicking on any of the photos below should take you to my Flickr set of photos from this weekend. I should have taken more of the process, but I was too absorbed to even think of that.

Transcribed	Altered Photos Revisited
Triptych Book	Swatches: Little Paper Books
Reclaimed: An Altered Artist’s Book

I am mostly recovered from the weekend of workshops with Kelly Kilmer. Almost mostly recovered. That girl is such a generous, talented and creative instructor. She’s so clever, too! My brain has been whizzing with ideas since the weekend and when I try to sleep at night, I dream about pens and decorative packing tape. If you are at all interested in bookmaking, collage, journaling or simply expanding your horizons, look at taking one (or more!!) of Kelly’s classes. Here are a few of the things I did over the course of the weekend. There are more on my Flickr photo gallery.

None of these projects are complete. There is still a lot of journaling and collaging to be done (what a bummer…haha). I’ve spent the past two nights ripping collage images out of old magazines while we watch tv. Kelly really has inspired me. She also took a look at an ongoing project of mine and encouraged me to teach a class on it. I would never have thought it would be a good class idea, but once she turned on the light, I could see it! One of the other students said she would take a class like the one Kelly and I were talking about, so I’m going to work on outlining that over the next month or so.

		The Storyteller book was fun. We made a book out half of a parent sheet of cardstock, folding and cutting following Kelly’s instructions. It’s a fun little book and I can see it being a great travel journal or journal for a specific event where you might not need a whole lot of pages like in a regular book or journal. Here is the cover and one of the spreads within the book.
The Storyteller
		Little Book of Faux Monoprints started from sheets of cardstock that we painted and on which we used a bunch of monoprinting exercises. At some point, I just started painting pages and then smooshing them together with another page. It was so freeing. This little book is so cute, but I am not sure what I’m using it for yet. Snippets was awesome. I love the shape and size of this book and Kelly’s methods of making split pages within the book are really cool. I never would have thought of them myself! This is just the cover. None of my collages inside are complete yet.
Little Book of Faux Monoprints	Snippets- A Unique Artist Book
		Goin’ Postal was a 2-hour class where we used 6×9 matboard to create mailable art. I am a big fan of mail art and appreciated Kelly’s input on my compositions. This little girl really haunts me. The other side of this card and the other postcard I started are on Flickr. And I finally learned Japanese stab binding in the Fukoro Toji or Little Bound Book. It’s not as difficult as I thought it was, probably because Kelly is such a good instructor.
Goin’ Postal	Fukoro Toji or Little Bound Book

This past weekend, I took a workshop called “Voluptuous Discards” with Lynne Perella. Lynne is an excellent teacher and takes a lot of time with all of her students. I learn a lot from her and I appreciate the attention she gives to everybody’s work. I had taken this class two years ago, so I felt a bit more confident that last time and I just went nuts and had a great time with my layers. I rarely have this kind of time to spend on one piece, so I really enjoyed the process. At the end of the class, we turned our paintings into “easy books”, with some folding and one cut. My flickr set for this class shows each “page” of the book. The book is rather large (9″x14″) so the whole thing doesn’t fit on my scanner bed, but you’ll get the idea.

I also had some fun with gift wrap this weekend. My sister Angela turned 40 and I wrapped up a bunch of little gifts for her. I also wrote her a letter describing my story behind the gifts and stamped corresponding tags for each gift. It was fun to pull out my funny, off color stamps. I’m hoping my sister will enjoy opening her gifts as much as I hope she likes the gifts themselves.

I’m going to be a woman of few words today. I finally finished these canvases I started in Leighanna Light’s class a few weeks ago. I love them! It was fun to take whatever scraps and randomness I had on the table in front of me to create these little rows of houses. I loved “frosting” the canvases with gel medium to create texture. Thanks, Leighanna, for a great workshop!

I was searching for something clever to say, other than “Hey, look at the Moshi Doll I made in Leighanna Light’s workshop a couple of weeks ago!” But I don’t have anything really thought-provoking. I’m so pleased with the way she came out, though. And, as I found last time I took a class from Leighanna, she really helped me stretch myself during the creation process. I’m still in the process of finishing the other things I made in Leighanna’s classes and I love them all.

So, the big exciting news is that Tim and I spent all of Thursday night and part of Friday moving around furniture in my studio/office and I’ve been reorganizing. I’m rethinking how I work, how I used my supplies, and I’m trying to use what I have, both for keeping organized and for creating new pieces. When I’m ready for photos, I’ll put them up. I did sort through my rubber stamps and found a bunch that I don’t use much anymore, so I thought I’d put them on my shop. Come on, you know you need them!

Second bit of exciting news: I set up a Zazzle shop! As time goes on, I’ll add some items with my artwork on them. For now, I just have some basic t-shirts with silly things that randomly came out of my mouth in the past. Check it out!

In a fit of madness yesterday, I signed up for all three Lisa Englebrecht and all three Leighanna Light workshops at the Artists’ Nook. It feels like I haven’t taken a class in so long and I’ve been working my ass off for so long and things have been SO FREAKING HARD and disappointing lately, that I deserved to do something for me.

So I did.

I am so excited.

I’m finally starting to realize that I’m not the only woman on this earth who’s busy and has too much on her plate. I know a lot of it is my own doing. I can’t help having so many interests! And having a lot to do is the nature of running a sole proprietorship. This is just the way life is. The trick is in how I handle it. My lists go a long way towards keeping order. Now I’m working on not whining so much and getting a handle on the anxiety that a long to do list brings along with it. Mom also sent me some vitamin B-12 supplement drops that seems to be helping a little.

Work has been super busy, so I haven’t had much time this week to make stuff, but I’ve been squeezing in some reading and calendar journaling (see photos below). I’ve finished the current issue of Somerset Studio and can’t wait to alter some cutlery. And the current issue of CRAFT has the most amazing (and hilarious) instructions on how to make little stuffed monster dolls and I cannot WAIT to start making some of those. I am, however, being true to my promise of finishing my unfinished projects before I take on new ones.

Well, mostly, anyway. I got a wild hair (or hare, whatever) about taking an online class for webby research purposes and signed up for Susan Sorrell’s Doodle Designs class. It’s a lot more embroidery than I expected and I am not really good at it, but I’m giving it a go! My first piece is shown here. It’s requiring me to have patience, which I really need practice with, so that’s good for me.

That’s all I have today. I do want to let those of you who are commenting here know that I finally did get your comments. I forgot to check my inbox for a few days and found I had a pile of comments to approve. It’s funny how I remember to tell my clients all of these things, but when it comes to my own sites, I tend to forget the simplest things!

Below is the work I did in my pal Karen’s calendar journal for January. This is part of a yearlong project via the Calendargirlz Yahoo Group. If you click the photos, you’ll be taken to Flickr, where you can see larger versions.

So, I’ve had this item on my To Do List forEVER. The item? Update my blog with the work I’ve been doing. Of course, first I had to finish the work, then I had to photograph it, then I had to upload it, then I had to write something. Well, you can see how all of this could stymie me. This year, except for the part where Tim and I bought our new house, has been awful. I learned a few things that were good, but overall, I tell you, I could have skipped the whole damn thing!

As a result of the little bit of retrospection I’ve done on 2007, I’m more looking forward to 2008. My big goal? No more PROCRASTINATION. The procrastination (brought on by fear, for the most part) is the big thing that’s keeping me on this terrible treadmill. I’m not going anywhere! Well, that’s all over now. Really.

Here are some things I’ve been working on. You can click on the images to see the larger versions on my Flickr account. Tomorrow, I intend to post about what’s up next.

Happy New Year, everybody! *clink*

A holiday-ish altered assemblage screen I did for the Altered Art Divas 12 Days of Christmas Swap I joined. All of the gifts I received are also on Flickr. The screen is available in two sizes at SunSpirit Studio.	My favorite Halloween card ever. Made with (wait for it…) SunSpirit Studio rubber stamps.
This is the finished plaster house that I began in Stephanie Lee’s class a couple of months ago. I’m really pleased with it! There are a few other items I started in that class, and you can see them in their varying states of unfinishedness on Flickr.	An altered composition book I covered for my sister’s au pair this Christmas. The inside covers are done, too, and I added ribbons for a closure.
An altered book assemblage made in a Michael deMeng class. I don’t think he really dug my penguins and non-deMeng colors, but I do think he was amused!	These polymer clay encased hearts are the result of a class with Colorado artist Tejae Floyd. I am so entranced by these, but my patience level for working with clay is pretty low. You can see a photo of them all closed up here.
A lightbox with layers of glass and transparency, created in the Michael deMeng class “Weird Wonderful Windows”.	A fun snowman card I made with SunSpirit Studio rubber stamps.
I made a bunch of background paper and created a series of ATCs with it. Here’s one of them, used for an ATC lottery.	If I had the energy, this would have been our Christmas card this year. I will probably do a variation on it for next year, because I love it. Stamps from Paper Bag Studios.