Don’t buy from my shop today – everything is free!!

Today is Buy Nothing Day!  

I am taking everything out of my shop until Monday New Zealand time and giving it away so you can buy nothing.

Click here to read the rest of this post.

Fat Girl Posing: Happy Halloween!

Beautiful and awfully scary ;)  Fat Girl Posing: Happy Halloween!: This year for Halloween I'm a demon- muahaha! What's your costume?

Art Saves Lives - my book cover

The cover of my book: Art Saves Lives: unique gifts and abundant creative ideas

Click here to find out more.

Design decisions - which would you choose?

When you are deciding on a design, how do you do it?  Do you place the choices together and then carefully compare before you bring other options into the mix?

Backgrounds of pink and green mixed up in order to compare different elements

Do you have a list of criteria or design elements that the new art work must include, and go about methodically checking them off or do you let your heart speak for you?

Two versions of the pink background - should I hide most of the muddle as I have in the second one?

Do you choose according to the most dominant colour, or would neatness and symmetry win over all else?  Do you like clean, or do you like chaos?

Do you pick one design, then carefully pick apart the details - using a process of elimination according to one less-preferred design element?

When I chose the final design for the background image of my new website, artgrowlove.com, I looked for colour selections from my own palette, inspired by my design website at urgentartwork.co.nz, and with a slightly messy but inspiring-to-do "look".  You can see the current background here, but I have the spare backgrounds available which I can change at any time.  I wanted to include a couple of recurring motifs in every background which are mine and have always been a part of my creativity.

The first recurring motif from my life is the vase of flowers (usually tulips), which I have reused in various forms over the years including as dingbats in my julesgirltalk fonts, as artworks from my Food for the Soul series, as illustrations in my home-made gift books, and as a mosaic in my garden.  There are several versions of the vase, but the original was based on a vase my mother made and glazed, which I claimed.

The second recurring motif is a dove bearing a flower rather than an olive branch.  This is something I have used to represent the legacy we all have an opportunity to leave.  My daughter and I came up with a board game a few years ago called Legacy where you moved through life making various choices which lead you towards the kind of legacy you left the world, depending on the number of points you acquired from the choices you made or events which happened to you (turning points) in the course of the game.  It was a fun game and not nearly as preachy as it sounds.  As well as using the dove motif in my boardgame, Legacy, I have also used it as a mosaic in my garden and in my fonts, and in various other creative projects.

But back to the design decision?  What influences you when you choose a design?  And out of the designs I have offered above, which would you choose as a background for my new artgrowlove.com website.  To see them all as larger images, please see them on this pinterest board.

But wait - there's more!

You are probably not wondering what on earth happened to me, but on the off-chance you are, I'll tell you.

I have been working and learning, which is part of my work.  Lots and lots of exciting work.

Then on Saturday, I had an "out-and-about" day, and a very nice woman came up and introduced herself to me as a reader of my blog.  Well, you could have knocked me over with a feather.  Besides my sweetest and kindest friends, I didn't think I had any readers.

So that got me thinking, I'd kind of left my blog hanging.  So I thought I'd better have an update.

So without further ado, here are some Qs and As.

What about my book?  It's finished.  But it may be renamed and further edited (by someone else - yay!).  And there is more exciting news I have which is preventing me from releasing the book to you yet.  Which I can't tell you yet.

What about the app which is related to the book?  It's finished too, but it will never be released.  That is because, after advice from someone I trust, I don't think working on iPhone apps is something I want to devote any more energy to.  I don't think the returns are worth it, plus I don't want to be tied in to any more Apple products or under their umbrella.  

What about my daughter?  She is as lovely as ever.  She still tweets in french, occasionally plays piano and still hasn't become the hideous teenager I was told was inevitable.  So she'd better hurry up with that because as a 17 year old, she is past halfway through her teenage years.

What about the online shop?  That's still going.  But is being redesigned which ties in with the book.  So that is as far as I can go with that.

What about my writing?  I am still doing lots.  I have had lots of articles published online lately, mainly about using youtube in business.

What about Christchurch and the earthquakes?  The aftershocks have more or less stopped and Christchurch is better than ever, especially in Autumn.  I have a spectacular red-leafed tree on the street which I get to enjoy every morning from my upstairs bedroom window.  But today's a very windy day.  Wild is the wind.  (See what I did there?)

What are you reading?  Lots, as usual.  I have several on the go at any one time usually.  Sometimes I limit myself to a chapter at a time then go on to the next book,  like switching from television programme to television programme.  At the moment, I'm reading the following:
Martha Beck's new one.
Finding Your Way in a Wild New World
I hate self-help books nowadays but I guess you could say this is one and I really like it so far.

A biography of Imran Khan,of all people.
By Christopher Sandford.  I'm not a fan of cricket, or even Imran Khan, but I really love reading biographies, particularly about people I have absolutely nothing in common with, it widens my world.  Imran Khan really fits the bill there.  I have to say, I'm finding him quite likeable.

Yikes!  Surely not another self-help book!  Not really, but definitely a meep and deaningful for women:
What Did I Do Wrong?: What to Do When You Don't Know Why the Friendship Is Over
A fascinating read.  As far as the friendship I have had in the last year that has ended, I definitely know why the friendship ended.  It's because I've seen the mean streak and ungenerous spirit which is something I find most off-putting, although maybe I had been naive before then.  In those cases, friendship ending is definitely a lucky escape.  And like the women in the book, both know that the friendship is over, but the reason why never got discussed.  Why go there?  It won't change anything and there's no turning back.

The Oriental Wife by Evelyn Toynton.  Love it!  I could barely put it down from the first page.  I am trying to read more fiction in my spare time.  Here's the synopsis from Amazon:
The Oriental Wife is the story of two assimilated Jewish children from Nuremberg who flee Hitler’s Germany and struggle to put down roots elsewhere. When they meet up again in New York, they fall in love both with each other and with America, believing they have found a permanent refuge. But just when it looks as though nothing can ever touch them again, their lives are shattered by a freakish accident and a betrayal that will reverberate into the life of their American daughter. In its portrait of the immigrant experience, and of the tragic gulf between generations, The Oriental Wife illuminates the collision of American ideals of freedom and happiness with certain sterner old world virtues.

The Happiness of Pursuit: What Neuroscience Can Teach Us About the Good Life by Shimon Edelman.  I just love a good book about the brain.  It's not a self-help book in any way shape, or form and I have to say some of it has been a bit hard-going.  But with the first or second chapter talking about the brain as a computer/calculator, it had me sold.

The Dirt-Cheap Green Thumb: 400 Thrifty Tips for Saving Money, Time, and Resources as You Garden by Rhonda Massingham Hart.  I like to think I'm a bit of a know-it-all when it comes to my garden, especially when it comes to gardening on the cheap.  But even then, I am always open to more knowledge, particularly if it looks like the writer is on the same page as me.  I spend a lot of time in my garden, doing things like working, harvesting, reading, drawing, eating and lately, writing.  And if I am not in the garden, I am thinking about it or planning for it.  And usually one of the books on my bedside table is related to it.  This book I love.  There is enough new knowledge to make it worth my while to read, and the size and layout of it couldn't be more perfect, particularly for sitting in a swing and reading.

So, if you're still reading this - what are you reading in the way of books?

Summer Daze

Karaweko

We went to a magical place on Christmas Eve, the day my grandmother would have been 110 years old if she'd lived. My brother, older than my four other brothers, (who are all older than I), was visiting from where he now lives (Noosa, Australia). So we spent a day at Akaroa, on the Banks Peninsular.

Read more and see more pictures, here.

Christmas is so close! Gift-making tutorial - not!

Fig 1. Paisleys underway. Click to enlarge.

I don't know where the time has gone, but Christmas is just around the corner. And funnily enough, just as I did throughout last year's Christmas gift-making process, I am once again learning a language with Pimsleur as I work. Or should that be play. Because it's not work to me, Christmas is a wonderful excuse for doing what I love, dabbling with art materials and trying to turn a far-fetched idea into a work of art.

Luckily for me during this stressful, crowded and busy shopping season, I have lots to occupy myself with, here in my amazingly beautiful house, as my 31 paisleys in 31 days project is in full swing. I did say they were going to be A5 sized, but as you can see in the paintings, some are quite a bit smaller. I wonder what they could be for? As those are for my Christmas gifts, I can't offer any clues I'm afraid, lest some of my loved ones are reading this blog and cotton on to what mischief I am up to.

Fig 2. More work has been done on each paisley. Click to enlarge.

Anyway, I don't want to sound like I am offering a full-blown gift-making tutorial, heaven forbid, but I thought I would share my paisley painting process.

Fig 1. As you can see, I start off on the first day (of my 3 or 4 day process) with some very basic, soft, watercolour, paisley shapes on high-quality watercolour paper. You can see some of the edges of finished paisleys in Fig 1 too.

By Fig 2, you can see those paisleys after day 2 with a little bit more detail. I can't paint in that detail on the first day, because the background is still wet and could smudge or run in together. Day 3 and day 4, and those paisleys are finished and more started, probably with a different design than the one just finished from the previous group.

That's why I never get bored, because each one is unique, even if it is based on the same design. I hope you're not bored either, with my paisley indulgence - maybe there is something that you love to do (a sheer indulgence) that makes you wonder whether it is difficult occasionally for others to tolerate? Surely I am not the only fanatic with my creative ideas.

Art saves lives.