wisp o’ the willow

wisp o’ the willow, originally uploaded by suesviews.

Here’s my latest artwork A photo that I manipulated digitally, making time for some art therapy. It’s been a busy time lately and I can feel myself becoming overwhelmed…

This week there has been someone at the house every day, all day and I find it exhausting. I hadn’t realised how much I depended on the peace & quiet surrounding me, along with a sort of routine that I had begun to build up. I’ve been getting up very early & trying to get through a ‘working day’, but have realised that I am nowhere near ready to do anything for 8 hours at a time! Except, perhaps, taking photographs

Whatever I do, I need a constant supply of tea & tobacco. That’s not good. No willpower, me The only time I can go without either for a stretch of time is while I’m asleep… I could sleep for weeks at the moment. The weather isn’t helping. There’s been a roof of low cloud hanging over the valley for over a week now & I need to see the sun shining again, in a beautiful blue sky….

Having no transport & barely enough money to keep the bills paid is driving me mad, too. SO, I am having this image professionally printed as notecards & hope to start selling them, amongst others I hope, as soon as possible. Probably on Etsy…

We shall see….

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Soul Journal pages

My goodness, these pages inspired by the Soul Journal Group have been a little adventure in their own right already.  I’m going to have to learn to go at my own pace here, as I can already feel a bit of tension building up when I see the new projects being posted, yet am being sent spiralling into deep thought by the formation of the first few pages. I need to take my time here…

I’ve worked on the first 3 prompts more or less at the same time, in a bit of a jumble.  First, I completed the ‘Permission Slip’ page…

I made my envelope the wrong way round (I liked this picture & wanted it to show), so had to improvise when it came to sticking it on the page! Inside the envelope is my actual permission slip.  I gave myself all sorts of permission and got quite carried away! I also sprinkled a few stars that were left over from my boy’s 18th birthday celebrations earlier this year. I love them, they’re so tiny & shiny!

…then I began the Instant Gratification piece which I enjoyed focusing on & found it much easier to work on than the other two! (Which tells you something about me straight away! )

I very much enjoyed colouring this page in with pencil crayons – a soothing process

The most challenging so far, for me, has been the ‘Lost & Found’ prompt. I’ve had this page going on in the background for about two weeks & had to leave it for a while as I got a bit overwhelmed. I came back to it last night & just started writing on it – I’d been forgetting it was a journal page & that I’m ‘allowed’ to do anything I want on it!  Getting uptight about following ‘the rules’ is something that creates unnecessary anxiety & holds me back in Life as well as Art, I realise…

I’m not sure that this is finished yet. I’ll more than likely come back to it again. The subject of Lost & Found really got me thinking, though.  No one gets through life without going through loss of some sort, and I’ve been relatively lucky compared to many, I’m sure.  The loss of an old friend a few weeks ago now had already set me off on a nostalgic, reminiscent train of thought. At the time of loss our senses become heightened, it seems. We are more aware of the fleeting & precious nature of our own lives….

Part of the prompt for Lost & Found was to pick up found objects throughout a day.  I took a walk to the local shop and found so many feathers, I was surprised.  Since then I have noticed feathers everywhere!  I even found the most beautiful drawings of feathers in an old magazine I was looking through and was able to use them to represent all the real feathers I have collected over the last week or so.  Something magical about them, and inspiration for a future project, I think..

This is the most productive I’ve been in a long time, and I love it! I hope there’s something in these pages that inspires you in some way…

For now, have a great weekend all. I’ve run out of puff on this post!

Love to All xXx Suze xXx

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attitude

attitude, originally uploaded by SuzeArt.

at·ti·tude (t-td, -tyd)
n.
1. A position of the body or manner of carrying oneself: stood in a graceful attitude. See Synonyms at posture.
2.
a. A state of mind or a feeling; disposition: had a positive attitude about work.
b. An arrogant or hostile state of mind or disposition.
3. The orientation of an aircraft’s axes relative to a reference line or plane, such as the horizon.
4. The orientation of a spacecraft relative to its direction of motion.
5. A position similar to an arabesque in which a ballet dancer stands on one leg with the other raised either in front or in back and bent at the knee.
[French, from Italian attitudine, from Late Latin aptitd, aptitdin-, faculty; see aptitude.]
atti·tudi·nal (-tdn-l, -tyd-) adj.
atti·tudi·nal·ly adv.

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition copyright ©2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2003. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

attitude
Noun
1. the way a person thinks and behaves
2. a position of the body
3. Informal a hostile manner
4. the orientation of an aircraft or spacecraft in relation to some plane or direction [Latin aptus apt]

Collins Essential English Dictionary 2nd Edition 2006 © HarperCollins Publishers 2004, 2006
ThesaurusLegend: Synonyms Related Words Antonyms

Noun 1. attitude – a complex mental state involving beliefs and feelings and values and dispositions to act in certain ways; “he had the attitude that work was fun”

Currently, I am working on my own attitude, and worrying about my son’s.  Won’t say much as I’m muddled, to say the least. Said goodbye to an old friend this week. She was 41, with two teenage sons.  Here she is, Helen, in her prime, in my journal…

Look at that smile! This girl had attitude in spades! She had a kind heart, too. It upset me much more than I’d expected when I saw this lovely photo of her on the Order of Service at her funeral on Friday.  We had drifted apart over the last 3 years or so. I’d bumped into her once or twice & we’d been pleased to see each other.  I can’t remember ever having a cross word with her, which is quite remarkable, in 21 years.  Our sons were born 2 days apart & spent a lot of time together as they grew up…  There we are, you see I need to go & create this page!

Go tell a friend that you love them!

My Love to You All xXx

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May You Never…

I found this video, May You Never, quite by accident this evening. It’s one of my favourite songs performed by one of my favourite performers. I saw John Martyn live in Birmingham (Odeon) in the 80s. Unforgettable experience… I’m a sentimental fool (note that I left the ‘old’ out, deliberately!)

We’ve had week 5 of Nance’s Collage Challenge and Crowabout herself was feeling ornery this week! (am I right, Nance? ) Testing us, she was, by giving us less help than usual! There was no prominent image this week – up til now there’s usually been a face that jumps out at you & demands to be focused on, but this week there was mostly bits & pieces. I knew what she was up to straight away (yeah, right ), and then my companion suggested that I stop being so uptight & neat & tidy with my attempts. He ripped up & placed the strips that male up the ‘flag’ (or Magic Carpet as Alberta suggested on Flickr! ) on the background that I’d made a few weeks ago and wasn’t too keen on, and then challenged me to rip up other images, while he stuck the couple’s faces on the shapes I’d cut out of the shreddie-looking biscuit things…

By the time he’d done that, I’d practically built my messy church-type building. It came from nowhere. I was remembering something I used to love doing in infants school, when we used to rip up different coloured scraps of tissue paper and create big mosaics of fish, or daffodils, or whatever we were doing a project on at the time. It’s good to remember such happy times My son made a life-size picture of himself the same way at nursery school when he was 4 yrs old. I know I took a photo – hope I can find it one day…

I have to say that this has been one of the most therapeutic pages I’ve ever made.  Never has one single page made me think so much! I’d best go & do some more. I’ll leave you to form your own opinions…

…and look forward to hearing them Enjoy!

xXx Love to All xXx

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If you want to get ahead…

If you want to get ahead…, originally uploaded by SuzeArt.

….get a Hat! Or an upside-down cereal dish, if you like!

Week Two of Nance’s Collage Challenge already! I’m really enjoying myself having a go at this ~ it’s reminding me how happy I can be when I just let myself get absorbed in doing something for Fun

Fun is what’s been missing from my life for the best part of this year so far. I can’t believe how much I needed this challenge to wake me up again, and am so glad that Nance came up with this group idea and put in all the hard work to make it happen… Bless you, darlin’! xXx

I’ve been spending far too much time at The Orchard during the summer months – it’s easier for me to keep up with my work, but I do miss my boy & have an awful lot of sorting out still to do back at home. It’s a real dilemma – spend time at home & be alone with lots of hard work to do, or spend time in the beautiful surroundings of The Orchard, where there’s a huge amount of sky to be seen from every window, beautiful views in all directions, clean, fresh air; where a hammock waits for me to relax in it between rain showers (I’ve had the hammock for many years and this is the first time we’ve had somewhere to hang it), where my dog is happiest, where my significant other of the last 6 years lives….

What’s a girl to do? Cut pictures out and make Art with them, that’s what!

Hope you’re all enjoying yourselves, whatever you’re doing…

Love to All xXx

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Arte y Pico Award

Thanks so very much to dear Judy , and to the lovely Fiona for awarding me the Arte y Pico Award ~ an award for blogs filled with art and creativity ~ there are some rules attached to this award and in passing it on to others they are as follows;

1. You have to pick 5 blogs that you consider deserve this award for their creativity, design, interesting material, and also contributes to the blogging community, no matter what language.

2. Each award has to have the name of the author and also a link to his/her blog to be visited by everyone.

3. Each award winner has to show the award and put the name and link to the blog that has given her/him the award itself.

4. The award winner and the one who has given the prize have to show the link of “Arte y Pico’ blog, so everyone will know the origin of this award.

5. To show these rules.

I wish to goodness I could give the award to Judy – have you SEEN what she’s been doing lately? My breath has truly been taken! Absolutely beautiful work that she is producing as part of her studies. I have never seen anything she made that I didn’t love to bits.

And Fiona, who I have been watching with great interest as she works her way through an Art Foundation course. I have often thought that she should be teaching the class! She is a brilliant artist with the most amazing imagination and I am so glad to have found her & her incredibly talented family online.

It never ceases to amaze me, the people we can meet here on the web who we may never have bumped into in real life! Wonderful!

However, there are many, many wonderful bloggers to choose from, so here goes…

Would the following creative & inspirational bloggers kindly come & collect their award:

Wendy at WindyAngels – Canadian Angel who crafts with words & pictures. Always beautiful & straight from the heart.

Karen at A Scrapbook of Inspiration- whose posts are works of art in themselves! Limitless talent and endless encouragement to be found here!

Nancy B over at Something to Crow About – I love Nancy’s Art Journal pages. They are bursting with energy & real life and have inspired me ever since I was a brand new blogger.

Yvonne at BoxofTrix, who I ‘met’ before our blogging days! Yvonne’s work is so very beautiful. She is a prize-winning embroidery artist who offers her amazing creations for sale on Etsy now. I dream of a studio like her new one! lol

Last but not least, I will not be the first (or last, I’m sure) to give this award to Suziblu, who seems to have inspired the entire world lately! I love my visits to her blog, both for the inspiring artwork and the constant encouragement she gives to all of us aspiring artists!

My thanks to all of you, for the inspiration and your wonderful contributions to the blogging community. Please collect (right click on picture and ‘save as’, to somewhere you can find it!) & distribute your well-deserved award

And just so’s you know, I have been much more creative lately! The moleskine was the catalyst I needed, it seems, and I’ve been sketching like a loony! I have too much to share with you and need to write loads more posts here! We are coming up to my second blogging anniversary this month, as well as another little celebration IRL and I have a proposition for my blogging buddies, inspired by the wonderful project that was Isabel’s travelling journal. Have to try & think it through before I say any more…

Here’s a little something from my camera,

for now..
xXx Love to All xXx

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for being there…

I’ve just changed browsers, to Safari for Windows, and wonder if that’s why I can only see a thumbnail photo on this post? (It also seems to have affected the formatting for the text, so bear with me please)’hope it works for you, and that you can see my Thanks  I drew this in my brand new, first ever Moleskine sketchbook (large, if you don’t mind! ) ~ I had heard of and even seen pictures of these ‘Moleskine’ books for years, via blogs, etc, and had found them to be both extremely elusive and uncomfortably expensive. I gave up on searching and decided the whole moleskine thing was all a tad on the snobbish side (that’s how I convinced myself that I didn’t want one, anyway )Imagine my surprise then, when I go to a big office supplies warehouse to get work-related stuff, only to find a little rack of moleskine journals for sale at a reduced rate! Not only had I never seen one in real life before, but here they were at a price I could even afford! Knowing that Angels were with me, I chose the large sketchbook and couldn’t wait to get home The top photo is of the first drawing I did in it, just after receiving the most amazing package of gifts from our dear friend Karen, who has been on a seriously creative and very generous roll for the whole time I’ve known her! Bless you, Karen xIt is meant for all of you who have stayed with me during this extremely confusing and introverted period of my life. It’s a strange one. I find myself saying very little a lot. Too much thinking going on, but I have become addicted to my moleskine! I am so glad, as I was beginning to wonder about me and creativity…. we seem to be making friends again lately  I have a lot of photo’s to show you, but I’m still feeling a bit shy after my long silence, as well as too tired to wait for them to upload at the minute.  I’ll be back with a vengeance before long, I’m sure!  I’ve been plodding along quietly on Flickr and got a bit obsessed with the beautiful hellebores that are in the garden at The Orchard. My place of work, as it is now. I am so fortunate to have found employment and to work in such beautiful surroundings. It is going to be spectacular in a week or so, I’ll be surrounded by Cherry Blossom soon ) There are hundreds of tiny forget-me-nots flowering in the beds in the garden – I love them. They epitomise the childhood image of a flower, are so very tiny and such a beautiful colour combination.  I must find you a photo ……                          ….. that one was taken on Sunday morning. Beautiful sunshine that day Waiting for some more now…. For now, I need some sleep, and to go play in my journal! ‘back soon, with more photo’s  Thank you xXx  

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Easter Creativity

and a timely message from The Universe….

“Impatience is a sign of hurrying; hurrying is a sign of worrying; worrying is a sign of fear; and fear is a sign, Suzie, that someone has temporarily forgotten that it’s never too late to change their thoughts and therefore their “things.” And for these reasons, time will forever be on their side.

Glad we could straighten that out -
The Universe “

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Happy Valentine’s Day!

Hoping your whole life is filled with Love…

xXx

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still here…

just so’s you know! that’s little me, playing with my camera for the first time in a week!!! I thought I’d go mad!
Now I’m thinking of Thumper and the words that have stuck in my mind ever since the first time I watched Bambi, many, many moons ago….. “If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say nothing at all…” and, as everything I try to say is turning into a negative, I think I should get myself off to bed…

The weather has been glorious here all weekend. Absolutely beautiful. I felt like a newly-released prisoner (after having been stuck indoors against my will for two whole weeks now, and another to go…) and took LOADS of photo’s! Hope to share some with you soon.

Here’s hoping for a wonderful week ahead for us all

Love to All xXx Suze xXx

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