I have been forced to work out of town the past two weeks, staying in hotels and working long hours at stores that are hours from home. Being away from home just exhausts me. Luckily no going out of town or even any work at all for me this coming week, with the Thanksgiving holiday and all. YAY!! It feels like it takes days to get back to feeling normal once I get back to the ol’ homestead, and this time was no exception. But I feel like I’ve been oh so productive today after sleeping my life away on Friday and Saturday.
I’ve had these paper mache` letters (like the one’s here) spelling our last name floating around my studio for ages but hadn’t made up my mind what to do with them. I love letters and numbers and when Hobby Lobby had them on sale a year or so ago, I just grabbed them (for a buck each, so what the heck) and since then they’ve just sat around. Every once and a while I’d shuffle them from one shelf to another but I just never got around to doing anything with them.
Do you ever do that? Buy something that you like but with no clue how or when you’ll ever do something with it? I do it all the time. LOL Especially at thrift stores or in the clearance section wherever I’m shopping. Guess I’m a girl that can’t stand to let a bargain get away. *grin*
Anyway, I decided this morning, after moving those damn letters for the fifty-eleventh time, that it was time to do something with them…and I did.
With a super thick chipboard sign I scavenged from work (saving it from the dumpster, tyvm), some paint, some coordinating scrapbook papers, Claudine Hellmuth’s Multi Media (OMG, I love that stuff!), and a little time, I made this sign for our living room (or maybe the dining room…I haven’t decided):
The flash from my camera washed out the “S” but all the letters are a light olive green with shapes/graphics in a burnt red, a darker olive green and a lighter burnt red. Our living room sofa and loveseat are a deep olive green so that was my color inspiration and, luckily, I had scrapbook papers to match my color scheme.
Here’s another view, although the colors are much more true in the picture above.
Now to decide how I’m going to hang it but I think that will have to wait until morning. I’m a bit worn out this evening and I need to think on it a bit. I don’t know if I want the hanging wire to show or not…and do I want a border on the piece or not. Yea, I need to think on it a bit to decide.
I just think it’s great to be creating things and hanging my own art in my home. I don’t know why I’ve failed to do this in the past…I think it might be because I didn’t feel like my creations were worthy. HA! If I don’t affirm my own artistic ability and appreciate my own work, how could I ever expect any one else to appreciate it?
While I worked on my little project, I listened to 7 (yes seven) episodes of Ricë Freeman-Zachary’s podcast and absolutely loved every one of them. If you don’t know Ricë (rhymes with Lisa, btw), you should get to know her…she is an awesome soul in every way! She has this way of just sparking my creative energy with her words in her books or on her blog, with her views and, now, with the sound of her voice. Check her out at her blog, Notes from the Voodoo Cafe, and her podcast can be found on iTunes or on her blog.
What creative things have you accomplished lately? Do share, won’t ya?
Now, time to play in my journal for a while before I hit the hay.
Peace & Love,
Barb
I have so many art supplies that I love, it’s hard to narrow it down to my very favorites. But these babies came in the mail today and I am in art supply heaven once again! 
I feel like that feather in Forest Gump…you know the one that just seems to float, willy-nilly, at the beginning of the film and then again, at the end? Just floating on a breeze, unable to control or even have any say in its life but instead, forced to float along on whatever breeze that life may throw its way.
I've decided that my lettering skills need some work and picked this wonderful book up to help me work on it. Talk about some awesome ideas! Now, to work on integrating them into my art journaling.