I'm back, relaxed and no longer mired in catch-up. If you'll recall I put previous group activities on pause and gave myself permission to quit as long as I needed to. I did manage to get in some creative time during my stay in CA. I knit. I started a doll. I made some floral arrangements. I got to do some sightseeing, pix of which you can find on my Flickr site .
Within 24 hours of my return I had signed up for another class. And maybe a day later I enrolled in another! I know, I know, your're already admonishing me for setting myself up to fall behind again. But understand, both teachers are wonderful instructors and the contents are such that I can work when and as I wish.
I have already gathered in supplies and started on Sharon B's Joggles course, Studio Journals: A Designer's Workhorse . I need this class -- desperately! Before I had a computer I kept art and craft ideas in manila folders. The ideas were magazine clippings or notes hastily scribbled on whatever was on hand while watching TV how-to's. On my lifelong quest toward organization I filed, sub categorized, made new files and labels and soon had a complete file cabinet filled with snippets of ideas now long forgotten. My current computer (#2) has two files with pix and notes for ideas I'd like to work with some day. One I called a visual journal and the other "Concepts".
Both are so long, they're taking forever to load and just as long to scroll down to find stuff. At the same time I've tried keeping journals for each interest one for CQ, one for knitting, beading, freeform crochet, embroidery -- the list goes on ad nauseum. Of course no journal was ever handy when I needed it, and if I travelled the idea of hauling these suitcase-filling journals was absurd. Like I mentioned, this class is a must .
In theory my artistic productivity could increase if I could just corral the ideas. If I could only wrangle them into one place... well, I'm already thinking two, a big one for studio use and development and a small one for thoughts on the go. Sharon told us to just start in the new book, get something on that first page. Mine happened to be a watercolor paper, so I dug out my watercolors to do a simple decorative wash and was aghast that I'd really forgotten techniques long ago learned. Since my overall premise is ideas out of sight are soon out of mind, I thought of lightbulbs to symbolize ideas. 
I soon got carried away and had makings for collages, stitchings and even dolls. Working the exercises from Lesson 1, I have more ideas in the development stage. So it's already happening;
I soon got carried away and had makings for collages, stitchings and even dolls. Working the exercises from Lesson 1, I have more ideas in the development stage. So it's already happening;creative concepts are replacing idle thoughts of a sedentary mind.
Speaking of dolls, I'm very excited about Mai-Liis's latest offering, the Angel Project. I took away so much more from her healing dolls class, I know I won't be disappointed in this one. There's still time to sign up for this very affordable course which is conducted via a closed Yahoo Group. I will shamefully admit that if you mention my name, I will receive a perk in the form of a squishy. That of course is not as important to me as learning ways to make dolls and embuing them with a spiritual essence or intent!
