Category Archives: musings

random thoughts and ideas

Kaleidoscope Art and Root Canals {new artwork}

Well, my birthday is next Monday, and my gift from the universe turns out to be a root canal.

As sarcastic as that sounds, it really does feel like a gift, because yesterday I was knocked on my ass by the most excruciating tooth pain I’ve ever felt. When I say excruciating I’m not exaggerating…it was inside my ear, down my neck, up the side of my face, all over my jaw….I can honestly say that childbirth was less painful. An emergency trip to the dentist proclaimed the culprit to be an infected tooth that needs an immediate root canal.

…except my molars are so wrecked from grinding my teeth that my dentist had to refer me to an Endodontist (aka root canal specialist) to do the work. He gave me a shot of Novocaine to dull the pain, wrote me some ‘scripts for painkillers and antibiotics (let me tell you, as an official Horrible Pill Swallower these thumb-sized gigantic pills TERRIFY me), wrote my referral, and told me to come back for a follow up visit after the procedure.

….except it turns out that the doctor he was referring me to is out-of-town for two weeks. Turns out a LOT of the local Endodontists are in Hawaii right now for some conference. Yikes. Nobody I called could see me until May 1st. No way. No how. NOT going to make it that long. After about twenty phone calls, I was lucky to find an office who fit me into their emergency slot on Monday morning. Hallelujah. I have honestly never been so excited for a dental visit in my entire life.

So yeah, happy birthday to me.

Anyway, the silver lining in all of this is that I’m home all by myself for a few hours. The pain was so bad at work this morning that I was barely functional, so my boss told me to just go home and rest. Finally, about four hours later, most of the pain seems to have subsided (maybe the antibiotics are finally kicking in), so while I’m able to think clearly, I’ll take it as an opportunity to post this new artwork I finished a few weeks ago. The finished image is up top, details shots are below.

I like this one. I really, really, really like this one. I’ve been able to do a lot of reading and painting lately, and I can’t even articulate how GOOD it feels. Hopefully I’ll get some more stuff up here soon.

Enjoy the pretty pictures, and take care of your teeth ladies and gentlemen. Tooth pain is a wretched bitch.

till the stars fall from the sky {for you and I}

Jim Morrison Quote

Nobody says it better than Jim Morrison.

No matter where my musical tastes take me, there are certain bands I always find my way back to. The Doors are one of them. Dark. Moody. Dreamy. Poetic. The perfect soundtrack for those late night, head clearing drives to nowhere, with no other company but the music. Those long solo drives used to be a huge outlet for me when I just needed to get away from everything.

There were times that I drove all the way to Wisconsin or even Iowa, through miles and miles of farmland and darkness, with no intention as to where I was going to end up. The destination wasn’t really the focus, it was just the act of being alone in my head, out of the suburbs and beneath a canopy of stars.

With the price of gas now, going on a three-hour road trip to nowhere seems a lot less appealing, but when I could fill up my gas tank for twenty bucks it was some of the best stress relief money could buy. In retrospect, thinking back to how horrible and unreliable a lot of my former cars were, it’s a miracle that I never ended up broken down and stranded on the side of the road two hours away from home.

Moonlight-Drive

Anyway, I thought it would be fun to do a couple of really simple lyric illustrations, a bit outside of my usual style. The idea for the first one had been bouncing around my head for a while, and after I finished it the other picture came together in a few minutes. I think they’re kind of in the same vein, mood-wise.

Weird random fact of the day: did you know that the keyboards in the song “Moonlight Drive” were recorded normally, then played back in reverse to get that interesting sound effect? I learned that reading Ray Manzarek’s memoir “Light My Fire: My Life With the Doors.” I would definitely recommend it if you’re a doors fan, or have any interest in the 60′s counter-culture. It’s a great read.

Do you have any go-to bands for when you just need to clear your head? What are they?

Perspective and Gratitude {thoughts on a tragedy}

candle flame

I had another post all lined up, but like a lot of people I can’t get what happened in Connecticut out of my head.

I don’t think a tragedy has haunted me like this since September 11th. It’s not that I suddenly feel like my daughter is in any more danger at her school than she was before this happened. I honestly don’t feel like life is any more perilous than it was yesterday. It’s that I feel this deep, aching sadness for all of the people who kissed their kids goodbye that day and never got to see them again. For all the little kids the same age as my daughter who will never get to grow up. For Christmas presents under the tree with no one to open them. For the families who will now spend their holiday grieving instead of celebrating.

Mass shootings in the news always make me sad, and they are always senseless and crazy and incomprehensible, but this one brings me to tears almost every time I think about it. Maybe it’s because it was a fucking elementary school. Maybe it’s because the children that were killed were my daughter’s age and it makes it so much easier to put myself in their shoes and think about how horrible it would be to lose a child. Maybe it’s because I know how innocent kids that age really are. Maybe it’s because I think about my own daughter, and how scary it would be for her to return to school after enduring an experience like that.

I know it’s because I can’t wrap my head around how someone could do something so gut-wretchingly horrible. It makes me feel sad and furious and helpless all at the same time.

I often joke around here that my kids drive me crazy. They do. I complain that my house looks like a disaster zone, that I can’t get thirty seconds of solitude in the bathroom, or that if I have to watch one more episode of iCarly my head will explode. I grit my teeth when they fight over toys, and cringe when I find chewed up Cheerios all over the kitchen floor. But beneath the layers of everyday parenting stress and frustration, at my core I’m deeply grateful. Those two girls are my greatest love, my pride and joy, my heart outside my body. They are the root that all of my actions grow from. I would hope that if it came down to it, I would walk through fire, jump in front of a moving car, or take a bullet for them without hesitation.

Something like this happening quickly forces things into their proper perspective. Yes, they drive me crazy sometimes, but I’m beyond grateful to call those kids mine, and I love them with a fierceness I never knew I was capable of before becoming a mother. When my first daughter was born I was actually startled and a little afraid of the intensity and power of the love I felt for her. I wondered how I could ever love a second child as deeply, but when my second daughter was born that flame burned equally bright and strong for her. Life is precious, and sacred, and sometimes more fleeting than we like to think about. I cherish those girls, and every smile, giggle, hug, kiss, silly joke, mischievous grin, funny dance, and every other happy moment they bring into my life. I just feel compelled to put that out there into the Universe.

heart

My thoughts and prayers are with those people affected by the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary. I can’t comprehend what you’re going through, but I am so, so, so sorry that you have to go through it.

I Blinked {and it was November}

rainbow kaleidoscope geometric design

Eeeeep. It’s November. Not even early November. Two weeks until Thanksgiving November.

It’s been a while, I know. I don’t know what happened. Well, actually I do. Life happened. Three of the four people living under this roof having birthdays, family pictures in the forest preserve, hockey games, and making beer in our kitchen happened. Day trips to Apple Fest, Halloween, and raking massive amounts of leaves happened. Sick kids happened. My day job, new weekend painting instructor job, contributing to Indie Gift Box, working on my Etsy shop, and a couple of freelance design projects happened. October was nothing if not FULL. Full, but also really good.

rainbow outline kaleidoscope detail shot

Complaining about being busy is really lame. I admit to doing it (more often than I like to admit)…but yeah, lame. Busy is good. It may be slightly stressful at times, and I do have a tendency to take projects on until I’m half crazy, but at the same time, I love everything I’m doing. I love my crazy home life and my family. I adore my new job being an instructor for a BYOB painting studio (wine and acrylics…what’s not to love?) I love working on slowly expanding my art business. I don’t HAVE to do freelance work or contribute to Indie Gift Box, or have an Etsy shop or a blog. But I do these things because they give me a huge sense of accomplishment and satisfaction. I love creating, and I love sharing it. I’m grateful that I have freelance projects to work on, and I’m glad that I have money coming in.

rainbow outine kaleidoscope art detail image

The important thing, and the thing I kept reminding myself over the last month, is that I do all these things because I want to. They shouldn’t be a huge source of stress in my life. So in October, I let life happen around me, caught my breath, and now that things have slowed down for a minute, here I am. I even had time to make this little rainbow kaleidoscope design, which I’m pretty pleased with. It was so nice to sit in front of the computer and create something for myself, for no other reason than because I wanted to make something. After being unemployed for almost six months, starting two new jobs at basically the same time and adjusting to juggling everything again was a bit of a challenge, but I finally feel like I’m back in control.

So, here we go again…

Autumn Love {and new art}

It’s really only been over the last few years that I’ve developed a deep love for autumn.

In the past, I always viewed it as nothing more than a gateway to winter, a precursor to numb fingers, frosty breath, and begging my car to start in ten below temperatures. But as I’ve gotten older, and began to really appreciate the rhythm of the seasons, I’ve begun to love autumn in its own right. I even love the word “autumn.” There’s something so satisfying about the way it rolls off your tongue.

I’m still a bit more infatuated with September (there’s no other month that has such magical sunlight) but this year October is close at its heels. Once a week I have to get up pretty early before work because of my babysitting situation, and this week I couldn’t help notice how breathtaking autumn sunrise it. You truly have every single color popping across your field of vision. The sun creeping up in a pink, purple and baby blue sky, gold and green grass, rust, maroon, orange and red bursts of color on the trees…it truly made me sad that I had to go to work and not spend the day running around the forest preserve with a camera.

But you know what? I kind of did. I realized that there’s a forest preserve just a few miles away from my job, and I have a camera phone. I went on a nice little photography adventure on my lunch break, driving through the trails and snapping photos along the way. If you follow me on Instagram, you can see some of them there. It was a nice little nature retreat in the middle of a busy work day.

There’s so much to be excited about this fall. I’m excited about pumpkin spice lattes, knee-high boots, rainbow trees, Halloween, homemade pot pies, a parade of family and friend’s birthdays, concerts, hockey games, photo shoots in the forest, s’mores around the fire pit, taking on new design projects, and lasagna.

So autumn, even though I’m a bit late to the game, welcome.

Like the design at the top of this post? It’s for sale in my Etsy shop.

Losing something you worked hard on {sh*t happens}

Who wants to hear about something incredibly stupid I did? (It was about a year ago.)

You do? Oh, good.

I’d been working on a series of little drawings for a few moths. They were all 9″x9″ or so, marker drawings of geometric shapes. I’d posted a bunch of them on here, and I’d talked about my plans for eventually hanging them in a cool way. They represented at least 30 hours of drawing time, and I was quite pleased with the collection.

Anyway, I have a habit of leaving whatever project I’m currently working on all over the house. Usually on the dining room table. I like things to be accessible. As per usual, I had a whole mess of sketchbook pads, marker caddys, protractors, micron pens, etc strewn all over the place. Originally the idea when we moved into the house was to set up a little studio in the garage but….we live in the Chicago suburbs. It gets COLD. Which means the garage also gets cold, and I hate putting on shoes just to go into the garage and retrieve art supplies. I know, I know….lazy. Well, my BF got sick of my mess on the table, and relocated everything to our bedroom. Somehow it all ended up in an empty laundry basket, where it stayed for several weeks.

Well, that basket ended up on the floor one day, and my daughter (aka Little Miss Grabby Hands Wants to Touch Everything She’s Not Supposed to Have) dove for it. Sticky little hands going for hours worth of work!!! Noooooo! I lunged for my drawings, grabbed them, and dropped them the first place I saw out of her reach – the bathroom counter, two steps away.

Somehow, as I tried to prop the stack of drawings against the wall, they slipped, and everything dropped into this miniscule gap between the bathroom counter and the wall. And by miniscule, I mean that if it was ANY bigger those things wouldn’t have even fit. This gap was literally no wider than a few pieces of paper. It starts off widest at the top, then narrows down at the bottom.

I was so dumbfounded/angry/annoyed/horrified that I was speechless. Have you ever had that feeling? It’s like the urge to cry and the urge to scream are in such conflict that no sound can escape.

I tried everything I could think of to get them out. I tried unbending a coat hanger. I tried cutting a very long piece of cardboard and placing a piece of double stick tape on the end. Nothing worked. The problem is, the front of the cabinet has this little overhang on the wood, and even though I could sort of shove the papers toward the front, I could never get them around that lip. I could not retrieve them without removing the entire sink. We rent. That was not an option I could pursue.

I admit it. I pouted and sulked for a good two or three hours. I wanted to be furious with my daughter, but I couldn’t because she was small enough to truly not know any better. ALL THAT WORK. GONE. And the worst part was, it was such pure dumb bad luck that it even happened.

The whole incident got me thinking though…it really is just like life. Stupid crap happens. Stupid, unfair, frustrating things. All the time. You can pout, you can cry, you can feel sorry for yourself. You can spend hours trying to undo the damage. You can fashion elaborate contraptions to try and fish things out of a gap between the wall and sink. But sometimes, it’s just easier to forget about it and move on. Just let go. All but one of the drawings had already been photographed, so at least I had digital copies. Instead of freaking out and trying to move Heaven and Earth to get them back, I just had to move forward and get started creating new ones. Use what I learned the first time around to make the new ones even better. And learn from my mistakes. (i.e not leaning a stack of drawings against the bathroom wall, because they WILL fall down the crack). Then, a year later, you happen to think about it, and realize that it wasn’t nearly as big of a catastrophe as it felt like at the time.

At least someday when somebody is remodeling the bathroom they’ll get a kind of cool surprise. Maybe I’ll be famous by then and they’ll be worth some money.

On a Love of Weirdness…

“We’re all a little weird, and life’s a little weird, and when we meet someone whose weirdness is compatible with our own, we join up with them and fall into mutual weirdness and call it love.”

If you’ve spent much time in this space, you might already know that this is one of my favorite quotes of all time. I even illustrated it a while back. And isn’t it the truth? What is love, but finding someone who overlooks all of your weird quirks, and maybe even finds them slightly endearing (or at least, doesn’t run away screaming)? And sometimes, aren’t the weird little quirks the things that make you really love a person? That funny face they make when they’re completely surprised? The goofy inside jokes the two of you share, and that no one else in the word would find even remotely funny?

I skew to the weird side. I can’t help it. The older I get, the more okay I am with it. Weird is interesting. I find Kermit boring. Gonzo the weirdo always was my favorite Muppet.

So what’s weird exactly? Webster’s online defines it as “of strange or extraordinary character, odd, fantastic”

synonyms: curious, eccentric, offbeat, quirky, odd, wacky

I’ve always had a rather pleasant connotation with all of those words.

The tattoo in the photo? That’s on me. I love seahorses, because they’re the weirdos of the ocean. They’re strange, and unique and interesting, and cute in an oddball sort of way. I love weird so much that about a month I had my BF start a seahorse tattoo on my leg with the banner “weirdo” across it. I always wanted to get the quote about mutual weirdness (above) tattooed, but it’s too long. This makes a nice substitute, and even better that the person I’ve fallen into “that mutual weirdness we call love” with is the one to do it.

Weirdness is awesome. Weirdness is freeing. Weirdness laughs at your jokes. Weirdness is okay with the fact that as an adult you still own black and white striped pirate socks. Weirdness agrees that it makes total sense to mix ketchup into your macaroni and cheese, even though you never really put ketchup on anything else. Weirdness gets super excited about things like National Grilled Cheese Day, even when no one else cares. Weirdness loves things that don’t make sense. Weirdness thinks that painting you created is bad ass. Weirdness loves you.

Because you are you, and you are weird, and you love it right back.

Four Tips for Finding Creative Time {when you have no time}

cup of micron pens

Being a mom to a toddler is pretty demanding. You spend a lot of time trying to repair the path of destruction they carve through your home. Even a well behaved toddler, the second your back is turned, will unleash the destructive force of several category five hurricanes. Five angry, petulant hurricanes, that can’t fathom why you won’t let them eat a box of Jello powder for breakfast, and are determined to exact their revenge the second you do something so irresponsibly crazy as take a shower. The second that happens, all bets are off. They’re mixing together the clean and dirty laundry. They’re emptying the cabinet in the corner of the kitchen (you know, the one that it’s impossible to put a child lock on?) and stashing cans of tomatoes beneath the couch like you’re preparing for WWIII. While your head is under the couch they’ve moved into your bedroom and are coloring on the wall with purple crayon, even though every crayon in the house is under Fort-Knox like security.

Not that any of these things have ever happened to me.

Okay- they have. All of them. My point is, I know what it’s like to live in a state of perpetual exhaustion. I’m sure you do too. Between family, relationships, job, school…LIFE…sometimes there’s very little time left for the things YOU want to do. Sometimes (often) life leaves me with little time left over for painting, or baking, or blogging, or any of the other creative outlets.

But there are little tricks for squeezing a little creative time into your day.

If you’re anything like me, when you’re used to getting very little time to yourself, then suddenly you’re presented with a glorious stretch of evening to do ANYTHING YOU WANT (!!!) you lock up. You’re overwhelmed/frozen. The possibilities are too mind-boggling. (I call this the music store syndrome, because when I was younger I would have huge lists of all the CDs I wanted in my head, under the minute I set foot in a music store, when I would promptly forget what kind of music I liked).

So…what can you do?

markers finding creative time

Keep a List

This is different from the “do the laundry, sweep the floor, drop clothes off at Goodwill, change the lightbulbs” list. This list is for YOU. I keep several notebooks all over the house, and a couple stashed in my purse. I also have the Evernote app on my phone so that my lists are with me wherever I go. That way, whenever I have an idea, it’s not problem to write it down, or make a quick sketch. I have a list, almost a page long, of projects I want to tackle, and projects I’ve started and not finished (if I don’t write them down I lose track). The more you record your ideas, the better. You don’t want to waste time desperately trying to remember that cool idea you had when you were in the shower yesterday morning. Long lists are great, because if you go to tackle one of your ideas and aren’t feeling it (it happens) you have several alternatives waiting for your attention.

Keep Your Supplies Accessible

If your supplies are shoved away in the back of a closet and you know you have to rearrange several boxes of Christmas decorations to access them, do you really think you’re going to use them? No. You’ll think about how long it’s going to take to dig them out, and since you know you have an hour (tops) to work, suddenly the whole task seems a lot more daunting and it’s much more likely you’ll end up on the couch watching episodes of Unwrapped learning about how jelly beans are made. I’m not saying your art supplies should reside on top of your kitchen table, but if you keep the materials you need for your current project in a nice accessible spot, you’re a lot more likely to reach for them when you have a few minutes to spare. If I’m working on a new marker drawing, for example, I keep my drawing board and whatever colors I’m using on the kitchen counter. If It’s a digital project, I keep the files on my desktop. Easy access is key.

Speaking of supplies….

tubes of paint

Keep your supplies organized

This goes along with being accessible, but nothing is more frustrating than losing most of your work time to searching for the right supplies. I’m the first to confess that I’m no neat-freak (my bf calls my car the “pit of despair” and my sink is perpetually full of dishes) but my art supplies? Meticulously organized. Pencils, markers, pencils and paints each have their own container, and are rubber banded together by color. Need a mustard yellow marker? Boom. I can find one in two second flat. Paintbrushes are clean and free of hardened paint. The quicker you can get to your stuff, the better. Even the art files on my computer are carefully organized for quicker access.

Working for ten minutes is better than not working at all.

I get you. It’s frustrating to have so little time, when what you REALLY want is an uninterrupted eight hours to paint on a Saturday afternoon. But guess what? You might not get it, so learn to deal with what you have. Let’s say a piece of art takes four hours for you to create (maybe less, maybe more, I’m just throwing out an example). If you work for ten minutes a day, you’ll have it finished in under four weeks, even if you take a few days off. If you wait for the “perfect” opportunity to work, weeks could go by without you touching it, and months later you still have absolutely nothing. Isn’t slow progress better than no progress at all?

And for those of you with kids….

One hour of tv will not destroy your kids brains.

I don’t believe in letting the TV raise your kids, but if an hour of Yo Gabba Gabba or Seasame Street is going to hold my toddler’s attention long enough for me to squeeze in a bit of painting, you better believe I’m going to take advantage of it.

Ask Someone to Babysit. Really. It’s okay.

I’m the worst person on earth for having working mom guilt. Ask anyone who knows me. I always thought it was inexcusable to be away from the kids even one extra hour unless I absolutely had to be. It felt selfish to me. But I’ve slowly come to realize, you absolutely need that time for your mental health. If someone offers to take the kids for a couple hours, don’t feel bad about taking them up on it!

What works for you? Tips? Tricks? Share in the comments!

Every Excuse Why You Can’t {except you can}

It’s easy to make excuses.

There will always be someone else doing what you want to do, who has a much more ideal situation than you.

There will always be that person who can quit their job and start their own business while their spouse’s income supports the family.

There will always be that person who was able to attend school without also juggling a full time job.

There will always be that person who has much better connections than you.

There will always be that person who didn’t have to pay a penny of their own money to go to school.

There will always be that person with much greater raw talent than you.

There will always be that person who doesn’t have children to take care of, and can sink more time and effort into their endeavors than you can.

There will always be that person getting help and support, while you’re going at it alone.

There will always be that person who gets to attend that important event you so desperately wanted to go to, while you had to stay home.

There will always be that person who gets to work from home, and doesn’t have to spend three hours of their day commuting.

There will always be that person who becomes successful much faster than you, with less effort.

There will always be that person who makes more money than you doing the same caliber work.

There will always be that person who has more creative ideas than you.

There will always be that person blessed with free daycare, while you have to pay a small fortune.

It isn’t fair, is it? We all know it.

You have a hundred excuses why you can’t.

The question is, even after naming all the reasons how it could be easier, even knowing all the ways the deck is stacked against you….

Do you still want it?

Good. Me too. Dig in deep. I’m right there with you.

There’s Nothing Quite Like Making Something {creativity is awesome}

I was working on a drawing the other day (because that’s what I do when I get an extra five minutes to fill here and there), and I started thinking about how immensely satisfying it feels to create things. If I lived in a perfect fantasy life, I would spend my days with my family, cooking, painting, doing craft projects with the kids…I don’t think it ever gets old. It’s one of the most gratifying parts of life, and I think most of us have a basic need to create things on some level. When I stopped and reflected on all of my favorite hobbies: painting, drawing, photography, cooking, and jewelry making, I realized that each one of them involved creating something. Capturing something. Assembling something.

In my last job, my favorite assignments were when I was doing design work. Whether it was designing PowerPoint templates, coming up with creative packaging when we sent clients gifts, or designing signage or name badges, I always felt a sense of accomplishment and pride when I was finished. Creating is concrete. You feel it, you touch it, you see your results. You have something physical and concrete to show for your efforts. It’s rewarding.

I stopped and thought about jobs I had previous to my last one. Even when I worked retail, I found satisfaction in merchandising the shore and putting together great wall displays and windows. In fact, my store once won a prize for the most creative window display in a nation-wide company contest. I always got very high marks on my store reviews for the way my displays were created and organized. Why did I do so well at this? Because I enjoyed it. The jobs where I was the most miserable were the ones where I had no creative outlet.

My love of watching people make things even extends to my tv watching habits. I can very easily be sucked into any sort of show where people are building things or working with their hands. Cooking shows, home decorating shows, special effects make-up shows, fashion design contents, even woodworking shows. It doesn’t matter. If you’re turning raw materials into something cool, I’m hooked. I’ve been this way since I was a little kid who loved watching Bob Ross paint and the Frugal Gourmet cook. I guess it’s just in my blood.

Do you love creating things? What do you do? Tell me your story.

Painting Without Rules {adventures in watercolors}

paintbrushes

I was lucky enough to get most of the afternoon to myself today, so after a quick caffeine fuel-up, a trip to the store to exchange a shirt that I accidentally bought in two sizes (who does that?), and a stop at Hobby Lobby where I scored a great deal on a two pack of canvases, I went home and dove right into a watercolor project that wanted to start since….well, FOREVER ago!

Why watercolors? I haven’t used watercolors since High School and for good reason…I don’t like them. At least, that’s what I remembered from the last time I used them. I feel like they don’t give me enough control over tiny details, they take forever to dry (or I just use way too much water) and they just make me frustrated and impatient. So why would I want to use a medium that annoys me so much? To break out of my comfort zone and try something new.

I’ve done so many tight, super-detailed geometric drawings that I have the process memorized, and I almost feel like I’m on auto-pilot when I work. Using watercolors forced me to slow down, think, and make completely different decisions than when I work with micron pens and markers. Working with watercolors was looser, messier….and FUN! I honestly had a blast this afternoon, and the hours completely flew by. I experimented with splatter techniques, layered colors on top of one another, and painted without worrying about all the “rules” I have in my head when I do my geometric drawings. I didn’t have time to finish my painting before it was time to pick up the kids, but I got enough done that I have a definite vision of how I want it to end up. I’m really, really looking forward to my next chance to work on it some more.

The point of all this? Don’t be afraid to try something new! You might not do your “best” work, but experimenting with a different medium can really loosen you up and force yourself to not take it so seriously. Who knows…you might even like it!