Checking In Before the End of the Year

I've missed two weeks of the Project Thoughtful Thursday posts. I'll pick up next week, after the holidays.

In the meantime, here is a tiny little tree I sketched during my time off.

And another little sketch that I photographed and tweaked a bit before adding the words.

Project Thoughful Thursday Week 16

"Hold fast to dreams for if dreams die, life is a broken wing bird that cannot fly." Langston Hughes

I'm late this week. I've been doing some of the lessons in the online class I'm taking. I've finished one lesson, and one angel, and I've started another one. In between that, I did another face in the style of the first lesson. Only this time I did it on a piece of watercolor paper.

She did end up telling me not to give up! I didn't have any alphabet stamps to stamp the words on so I wrote them on a thin piece of paper and used the gel medium to glue the paper to the board and then blended it in.

This is the one I did on watercolor paper. But this time around I had the better oil pastels than what I had on the previous project. I carefully measured so I could put her in a mat with an 8X10 opening, then I proceeded to make her hair go over my  measuring line. I decided I could just lower her where all her hair would show because it would matter if I cut some off her dress. I forgot about that when I glued the words on tonight. I may have to end up cropping some of her hair off at the top. I think I could have made the letters a bit smaller. Eventually I will break down and order me a set of alphabet stamps just like Kelly Rae Roberts has. LOL I wish I could hand letter them, but my hand is not steady enough anymore.

Also, I made the picture smaller so it would load faster. The words say, "singing lullabies of love and hope for the little ones." 

Project Thoughtful Thursday, Week 15

I've been chatting with a friend on Facebook. I said I was going to bed but here I am writing a blog post. For one thing, tomorrow is week 15 of Project Thoughtful Thursday. For the other thing, tomorrow will make five years that my son has been gone. He's been very much on my mind lately. I read about another friend on Facebook who also lost a son, and how he usually takes the day off. When I read that, I asked myself why I couldn't be smart enough to do that for myself.

I have people whose hearts will be with me all day tomorrow. People in my face to face world, and people in my online world. Because of so many horrible things happening lately, most everybody is familiar with the quote where Fred Rogers told him to look for the helpers in times of trouble. On a very individual and personal level, that's what I've learned to do during the harder times of my grief. I'm very grateful for the people who will be holding me in their hearts on this day.

How serendipitous that the card for week 15 would be this Anne Frank quote about all the beauty left around me. It's true, there is still so much beauty. We can get so distracted by the darkness and the sadness and the tragedy.

My angel I'm working on for the painting class is coming along. I have a list of supplies I will be ordering on Friday. Part of the work we are supposed to be doing is listening to the whispers, the words our angels might be wanting us to hear. I think I hear mine saying, "Do not give up."

I'm trying very hard not to. I hope you are too. We need to be here to share our gifts with a hurting world.

Hopeful Beginnings

I've had a chance to watch the first lessons of the Spirit Wings class. The supply list is daunting. The good news is that I do not have to have everything at once and I have a few things that I can use as substitutes for some of the supplies.

I've watched the first video lesson and an exciting thing for me was seeing her use vintage wallpaper scraps for her backgrounds. For years I've had this thick book of wallpaper samples. I didn't know exactly what I would do with it but I knew it would come in handy eventually. This morning I tore the pages loose from the book and tore smaller pieces to place on my board. So far this is what I have. I would have glued it down but unfortunately I have matte gel medium and I need gloss gel medium.

I don't know how much farther I will go because of a few supplies I will need that I have not found locally. I could try to make do with what I have. I'll see as I move along. But I will be ordering a few more supplies soon.

(To be honest, I glued the pieces down before I left to play tennis. I can tell you that my pieces did not get put on exactly like I have pictured here. I'm going to work on adding a couple of layers. We will see what happens.)

A Most Relaxing and Rainy Weekend

On Friday I went to the student art show and bought my annual piece (or two!) of pottery, one of my ways of honoring my son's memory.

It was one of my favorite kind of weekend, cold and rainy. I stayed in most of both days, reading and writing, and taking a few pictures. I read a book on intuitive painting, collage making, and read parts of another one about writing essays. I also read some in a special edition of Flow magazine. It was an issue dedicated to mindfulness.

And my most exciting news of all, that I almost thought wasn't going to happen is that I signed up to take an online painting class from Kelly Rae Roberts! She had this fantastic sale to celebrate ten years in business and the sale was so good that it crashed her website. It took several days to get it up and running again. I got an email with the new coupon code and the news that the deadline to order was midnight Saturday! We were in the country, where I do not have internet, and only spotty service on my phone. I didn't think I could hold a connection long enough to sign up. We decided to go in to the small town nearby for dinner and I was able to sign up while we were there. I am so looking forward to taking this class!

Here are photos of my pottery finds.

This is a small piece. It's thick and heavy. I'm not always looking for perfection when I'm shopping for a piece. Sometimes it's the pieces that seem to have a few flaws that speak to me. 

I've gotten to where I really like the bowls. This one is shallow and you can see where they didn't get the color all the way to the bottom of the bowl. It also might be just a little bit lopsided but that's okay by me!

This is just a grouping of things I found around the place at different times.

I forgot to mention that I pulled my tiny sketch book out of my purse and did a loose rendering of our tiny Christmas tree!

Project Thoughtful Thursday, Week 14

Another timely reminder, this one from dear old Albert Camus. Having the bendy heart still doesn't get us out of suffering, does it?