The Scraps of Life
Monday, July 23, 2018
A Cat in a Kilt!!!
I never knew when I decided to make an "art paper doll" (or whimsical paper doll) that I would end up opening up a Pandora's box! However, that is exactly what has happened for me. I have opened up the gigantic Pandora's box of paper dolls! I am literally obsessed with paper dolls. Granted as a child I liked paper dolls well enough, but after about the age of 13 or so, I lost interest in them...until I created that cat in a kilt! Now I'm finding that I simply can not get enough fashion magazines and catalogs!!
Monday, June 12, 2017
Never Loose Hope
I did not have any texture paste, so for me that was an issue as I began this challenge. However, I discovered that you can do an internet search and find how to make your own...so I did! Granted, my homemade version might not have been as great as the purchased product, but it did the job that I needed it to do. I also did not have gesso, but again you can find out how to make your own online! And one thing that I discovered was that if you just keep adding a bit of water to the homemade texture paste, you end up with gesso! I now have a pasta sauce jar that contains gesso because I ended up watering all of my texture paste down too much! Live and learn, right?
From the prompts that were given, I chose the word "hope" and I began to brainstorm what I could create to go with the word "hope". Ultimately, there was a lot of things that I COULD have done, and there are a lot of quotes that I could have used, but I didn't. The more I thought about the word "hope", the more I began being reminded of times in my life when that simple little word meant so much. And I began to think about all the people in the world who daily lose all of their hope and make often catastrophic choices because of that. THIS is the page I made.
I think that the message in that piece of art speaks volumes. I live with depression and anxiety, and I have for many years. And I'd love to say that I'm someone who has NEVER contemplated suicide, but that would be a lie. Once, I did come close to going through with that. I still remember that day like it was yesterday. My boys were little, very little, my oldest son was 2 and my youngest son was under a year old. My husband was gone for the day with his father and the "demons" in my mind had convinced me that my precious little angels would be better off without me. So, I gave them both a bubble bath and watched as they played, laughed, and splashed in the water. I sat in my bathroom with them, trying my best to fake a smile as I watched them playing but all I could do was cry. I knew at that point that they would not remember me, and I had gotten convinced that they would be better off not knowing me. *Great, now I'm sitting at my PC in tears because this memory is so very vivid* I wanted to lock an image of my angels happy and playing into my mind...I wanted THAT image to be the last thing I pictured when I closed my eyes for the last time. I had gotten a sitter for my boys, and after I got them both dressed in my favorite outfits for them, I walked them over to the sitter with an over stuffed diaper bag. I didn't want to give anyone an excuse to have to come to my house before my husband got home...and by then, it would be too late. BUT, as I put my youngest son down and talked with the sitter (it was a family member), I saw my youngest son begin playing in their floor and it made me pause (like a semicolon pauses a sentence). And then my little angel looked up at me and flashed me the biggest smile that I had ever seen, and that made me pause even longer. I wanted that image fixed into my mind as well. I'm really glad now that I paused as long as I did because another family member came running out of a bedroom of that house screaming, "Don't let her leave, she's going to kill herself". I don't know HOW they knew, I really don't, but I'm glad that they did and that I was stopped because I would have missed out on some absolutely amazing things.
I want to make a point here, IF you are reading this blog and you are where I was at then, let me tell you PLEASE GET HELP! There is NOTHING that is worth taking your life because of...nothing...not depression, anxiety, poverty, the loss of a friend or loved one, the end of a relationship...nothing. If you don't have a trusted friend or family member that you can talk to then find SOMEONE, ANYONE that will listen. A good place to start is National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255) or contact the Crisis Text Line by texting TALK to 741-741. Please take this moment to PAUSE your plans...and keep pausing until you can get through the crisis you're going through or you can get professional help.
Now to talk about the process of how this page was made. Let me also apologize for not taking enough pictures, but I got so wrapped up in creating that I forgot to snap some of the process pictures.
Here is steps 1 and 2. I used blue tissue paper, scrapbooking paper scraps, ledger paper scraps, a coffee filter, and bits of denim for my first texture. After that, I put my homemade texture paste through a "stencil" that was actually a strainer bowl from a microwave meal.
Here are steps 3-5. I chose a blue paint as opposed to gesso, then I lightened it by mixing it with white paint and thinned it out with a bit of water. As for my focal image, originally she was wearing a black and white dress but I wanted to alter that so I colored over it with Bic Mark It pens in yellow and green. I then added the tear drop to her eye and the semicolon "tattoo" on her wrist. The text was all from magazines. I found the word "hope" and then built the rest of the statement with individual letters, sort of like a ransom note. The hand journaling was originally done with a Bic pen.
And once again, here is the finished page which is steps 6-8, and I went over the original writing with a Sharpie Fine Point because it just didn't show up like I wanted. The border that I chose is just a green scrap of scrapbooking paper that I had in my stash. Since I do not own any washi tape, I used scraps of scrapbooking paper to make paper strips. I opted to make marks with paint as opposed to splatters because I didn't want to accidently splatter my focal image or my text.
So, if this looks like something that you think you might enjoy, then head on over to the Facebook group and join us or watch some of the "Mission Inspiration" videos by Mike Deakin on YouTube.
Saturday, June 10, 2017
A Reintroduction....
1. A bad bout with my depression and anxiety. I was doing decent and I got the not so bright idea to come off of my antidepressant. I really don't like the side effects to my medication, I never have liked the side effects and the only reason that I kept taking it was because all the others I had tried had worse side effects! But, within a month of coming off of my meds, my mitral valve prolapse began to act up, which mimics anxiety attacks...which is one of the main reasons that I was put on this specific antidepressant! After trying to get that under control, to no avail I might add, the constant "anxiety" led to a relapse in my depression. And when it relapsed, it relapsed with a HORRIBLE vengeance Ultimately, I had no other choice but to go back on my meds. So, I've not gotten the bright idea since then to once again come off of these meds...but I HAVE thought about it!
2. But, the biggest change in my life since I last blogged is that my family has moved! In October of 2016, we purchased a home on 2.5 acres of land.
On the property sits a shed that will get converted into my "crafting haven" so that I can quilt, scrapbook, etc. to my hearts content. There is also what was once a rather large woodworking shop, that is going to become my husband's "man cave" or whatever he desires to do with it.One of the blessings of this house and land is the peace and quiet that I have craved for so long. I have to admit that I fell in love with this property when I fist sat foot on it, but when we closed on it was when I realized that it was the answer to YEARS of prayers. I had prayed for a long time to be able to live in the country and not the city, this home is in the country. I had prayed to have enough land to garden and raise chickens, well there's enough land to garden and raise chickens! But perhaps more than all of that I prayed for peace in my life, and I realized on my first morning here that PEACE was the only feeling I had as I sat outside with a cup of coffee. And when we lived inside the city limits there were solicitors, etc. that would regularly knock on our door. But out here, Houdini is what has knocked on our door! He's not a magician...heck, he's not even a human! But more than once, he's knocked on my front door!
I love hearing the neighbors chickens, watching squirrels playing in trees, seeing rabbits hopping across my field and front yard (they also play hide and go seek under my cedar trees), listening to birds every day, seeing a neighbor's horses, and hearing cows mooing (still don't know who owns the cows though). I've actually realized that we have quite a bit of wildlife out here...some really good ones and some not so good ones...like this guy...
3. America has a new President. Some people in the country are very happy about this, others are very unhappy about this, and I think there's some who aren't sure if they like the new President or not. If you think that I'm going to discuss politics on this blog, umm NO I'm not. But, the election and inauguration of this new President has happened since I last blogged.
Now, for all of the things that have been on my mind.
1. JOURNALING! It turned out that 2016 was actually a really bad year for me as far as keeping a journal was concerned. I made a yearly "divider" for a 3 ring binder that was meant to hold the journal pages, along with the pages from my 2015 journal. And I made a page about the Presidential election that happened in November...and that was it...nothing else. So this year, I decided to take a different approach to my journal, and I made my very own "Junk Journal". I now have an actual notebook that has been altered and functions as a smash book, art journal, collage journal, and "regular" journal. I'm sure that I'll talk more about my junk journal later ;)
2. RECIPES. I have realized that I am actually OBSESSED with recipes! I totally love the things, especially vintage ones! I've been working on a book of "collected" recipes for close to two years now, and it's a junk journal. But when we moved, I found a rather large box of clipped recipes in the back of my bedroom closet. Now the funny thing about that box of clipped recipes is the fact that it has now been moved TWICE. It is mostly recipes that I clipped between 2005 and the end of 2007, perhaps I added a bit to it after that, but I highly doubt it. There are also several hand written recipes, so all of those definitely need to find their way into my recipe junk journal. I've also realized that I need to begin recipe junk journal number 2 because I have recipes that are bigger than my current recipe junk journal, and I'm STILL collecting recipes. I have a feeling that recipe junk journals are something that I will always be making. And this year, I began a Recipe Facebook group called "Recipe Addicts Anonymous"
Ok, I think that this just about covers what's been going on.
Monday, May 9, 2016
Gardening is Cheaper Than Therapy!
While weeding her flower garden (which I'm not finished with yet), a few realizations came to me. First, weeds are really good things to take your frustrations out on. You can rip them up from the ground, throw them anywhere you want and throw them as hard as you want. You can scream at a weed, get an attitude with a weed and call it all sorts of names and no one cares. No one gets their feelings hurt, and you don't have to watch what you say or be nice to them. Second, working in a garden is a good time and place to talk to God. Third, you can get deeply lost in thought and contemplation about your life and things that are going on. And all three of these things can lead to all sorts of revelations.
One revelation that I've come to is that our lives are a lot like gardens. When properly cared for the garden can be so beautiful, but when not taken care of, things can become just as frustrating as a garden with two (or more) years of weeds.
In nature, there is rain an storms, and the same holds true for out lives. Weed seeds can drop into the gardens of our lives from anywhere, something we hear, something we see, something we think and even things we say. When the rain and storms come the weed seeds begin to grow. And there are all sorts of weeds. Some are easy to pull up and some spread out their roots, creep across the ground and wrap themselves around the plants we want to keep and can choke the plants to death. Often we look for the quickest and easiest ways to get rid of the weeds so we cut them off with clippers or run through them with a mower. When we do that, it looks like we have effectively taken care of the weeds. But in reality we have made our problem worse because "quick fixes" often allow the weeds to drop more seeds and the roots of the original weeds are still there, so they begin to regrow and the seeds they've dropped begin to sprout. Now we have two (or more) times the amount of weeds as we had to begin with! And after a while it all becomes so frustrating that when you take a good look at it you don't really know exactly the best approach to take or exactly where to begin. Sometimes this feeling of frustration and being overwhelmed causes us to try to ignore it and do nothing. But eventually it just gets so weedy and so thorny that there isn't any beauty left in the garden and the weeds are so thick that they become impossible to ignore any longer.
When our gardens get to this point the first thing we have to do is take a walk through the garden and really take a good, hard look at ALL of the plants that are growing there. Then we have to figure out which plants are the ones that are supposed to be in the garden, and which ones are weeds! In the gardens of our lives, the plants that we want growing are: love, joy, peace, longsuffering (patience), gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness and temperance. These are the plants that contain the ability to produce an abundance of beautiful blooms that will make us happy and from time to time, make others take notice of our beautiful gardens.
The plants in our gardens that are weeds are: anger, jealousy, selfishness, resentfulness, impatience, bitterness, deceitfulness, harshness and hatred. Almost all of these have very deep roots and some of these invite other weeds. Some of these are not immediately easy to recognize because they try to hide within the plants we wish to keep or they try to look like a good and beautiful plant. Let's face it, some weeds look pretty but that doesn't change the fact that they are a weed!
When we realize exactly which plants are which, there is only one solution to fixing our garden. We have to methodically remove the weeds by their roots! And yes, that is hard work, it's time consuming and it can cause some aches and pains during the weeding process. However, the end result is that by getting rid of these weeds they can no longer steal the sunshine, water and fertilizer from the plants the we want to thrive.
Also, we have to diligently continue to walk through our gardens and take a good look at out plants because the weeds will always continue to try to invade and take over again. It is much easier to pull a weed when it first begins to sprout than it is to try to pull that same weed if it is allowed to continue to grow for a while.
There is yet another interesting aspect to our gardens. Both the wonderful plants and the weeds are capable of reproducing by making seeds and spreading them. Every person we come in contact with have a garden of their own. Some people don't want beautiful plants in their gardens, they only want the weeds because weeds never require any hard work or maintenance. And sometimes our gardens can spread the seeds of the beautiful plants to the gardens of others, and their plants with share seeds with us whether they are the plants we want or weeds! And once someone decides that they don't want any unnecessary weeds sprouting in their own gardens, they often choose to try to avoid people who grow more weeds than good plants.
I've realized that my personal garden got over rand with weeds, and I decided that I was tired of the weeds hiding and killing my good plants. So, I'm wading through the weeds and struggling with getting their roots out. Some I've discovered have such deep roots that I can't physically pull the root out. No, I'm going to have to get a shovel and dig VERY deep to get the roots of those weeds out.
So, what's growing in your garden? Is it beautiful plants or weeds?