Tama's album (more divided pages)

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Yesterday's creating...

So after yesterdays read/write/create conundrum (oh poor me spoilt for choice). I raced off and gathered together the above from my fabric stash. And made these.....

 

I made the pinwheely one first before I  had to go grab the kids from Kindy.

It's a pencil roll based loosely on the design in Soulemama's Book, The Creative Family.  The Brown one is for Will and the other for Emily (and then eventually the baby) to go in their 'Netball Bags' which is a kit (books, pads, stamps, stickers and pencils) that we take to Netball Practice to keep the kids entertained when the weather is crappy or they are just too tired to play on the playground.

If you are a scrapbooker and you think that fabric looks familiar that's because it's the Basic Grey Figgy Pudding line which they do in both paper and fabric.

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Little books, loads of possibilities

Way back when (2008?) Kieley's school was clearing out some old resources and she rescued some for herself and kindly gave some to me. I have had them stashed away in a drawer waiting for me to have some time to do something with them... I haven't yet but I have some great ideas.... what would you do?

• Tags
• Art Journal
• Badges
• Pendants
• Magnets
• Laminated Wallets
• Collage
• Paper Dolls
• Inchies
• Altered Books
• ATC's
• Envelopes
• Bookmarks
• Envelopes
• Cards
  
• Canvas
  

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Create Stability

The following quote from a Zen Habits post on Living The Prolific Life really resonated with me. I am often, if not always, trying to refine the systems and situation in our house and family to make life better for us- I always have another project or task to do- not particularly conducive to stability.

Create Stability where it counts. If you're moving all the time and changing your life situation, the single-minded focus required for prolific output can be hard to obtain. Take car of as many external variables as possible in order to allow you to focus on your art.

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Your best work?

Glenna made an interesting comment on a post I wrote the other day

"Some of my best work was done in the early days when I had very little in the way of tools and supplies. Now I seem to be bogged down by "choice" eg..too much."

I only half agree- I've seen her work and she just keeps getting better and better.

But I definitely see her point. I find that I work faster and easier and often find the results more pleasing when I work from my heart and my head rather than some outside influence. I find this quite funny when I think about it- as I am the queen of idea books; see what I mean...


So here's my questions-

• Can you relate to the thoughts of Glenna and myself?
• What resources do you have beyond your own head/heart?
• How do you make the best use of the resources you have and do your best scrapping?
• What resources aren't you using? Any thoughts on what you may do about that, if anything?
  
• What would you do if you were me- sell all the books on trade me (or give them to you)?
• Or find a way to make better use of them (how)?

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Creative Block?

I didn't make this list it was written by musician Brian Eno and his friend Peter Schmidt. Called Oblique Strategies they were originally intended for musicians to help creativity. You can find out more here. I have included the whole list just because, not all will apply to paper arts.

• A line has two sides
• A very small object -Its centre
• Abandon desire
• Abandon normal instructions
• Accept advice
• Accretion
• Adding on
• Allow an easement (an easement is the abandonment of a stricture)
• Always first steps
• Always give yourself credit for having more than personality
• Always the first steps
• Are there sections? Consider transitions
• Ask people to work against their better judgement
• Ask your body
• Assemble some of the elements in a group and treat the group
• Back up a few steps. What else could you have done?
• Balance the consistency principle with the inconsistency principle
• Be dirty
• Be extravagant
• Be less critical more often
• Breathe more deeply
• Bridges -build -burn
• Call your mother and ask her what to do.
• Cascades
• Change ambiguities to specifics
• Change instrument roles
• Change nothing and continue with immaculate consistency
• Change specifics to ambiguities
• Children's voices -speaking -singing
• Cluster analysis
• Consider different fading systems
• Consider transitions
• Consult other sources -promising -unpromising
• Convert a melodic element into a rhythmic element
• Courage!
• Cut a vital connection
• Decorate, decorate
• Define an area as `safe' and use it as an anchor
• Describe the landscape in which this belongs.
• Destroy nothing; Destroy the most important thing
• Discard an axiom
• Disciplined self-indulgence
• Disconnect from desire
• Discover the recipes you are using and abandon them
• Discover your formulas and abandon them
• Display your talent
• Distorting time
• Do nothing for as long as possible
• Do something boring
• Do something sudden, destructive and unpredictable
• Do the last thing first
• Do the washing up
• Do the words need changing?
• Do we need holes?
• Don't avoid what is easy
• Don't be afraid of things because they're easy to do
• Don't be frightened of cliches
• Don't be frightened to display your talents
• Don't break the silence
• Don't stress one thing more than another
• Emphasize differences
• Emphasize repetitions
• Emphasize the flaws
• Faced with a choice, do both
• Feed the recording back out of the medium
• Feedback recordings into an acoustic situation
• Fill every beat with something
• Find a safe part and use it as an anchor
• First work alone, then work in unusual pairs.
• From nothing to more than nothing
• Get your neck massaged
• Ghost echoes
• Give the game away
• Give way to your worst impulse
• Go outside. Shut the door.
• Go slowly all the way round the outside
• Go to an extreme, move back to a more comfortable place
• How would someone else do it?
• How would you explain this to your parents?
• How would you have done it?
• Humanize something that is free of error.
• Idiot glee
  
• Imagine the music as a moving chain or caterpillar
• Imagine the music as a series of disconnected events
• In total darkness, or in a very large room, very quietly
• Infinitesimal gradations
• Instead of changing the thing, change the world around it.
• Intentions -credibility of -nobility of -humility of
• Into the impossible
• Is it finished?
• Is something missing?
• Is the intonation correct?
• Is the style right?
• Is the tuning appropriate?
• Is the tuning intonation correct?
• Is there something missing?
• It is quite possible (after all)
• It is simply a matter or work
• Just carry on
• Left channel, right channel, centre channel
• List the qualities it has. List those you'd like.
• Listen in total darkness, or in a very large room, very quietly
• Listen to the quiet voice
• Look at a very small object, look at its centre
• Look at the order in which you do things
• Look closely at the most embarrassing details and amplify.
• Lost in useless territory
• Lowest common denominator check -single beat -single note -single riff
• Magnify the most difficult details
• Make a blank valuable by putting it in an excquisite frame
• Make a sudden, destructive unpredictable action; incorporate
• Make an exhaustive list of everything you might do and do the last thing on the list
• Make it more sensual
• Make what's perfect more human
• Mechanize something idiosyncratic
• Move towards the unimportant
• Mute and continue
• Not building a wall but making a brick
• Once the search has begun, something will be found
• Only a part, not the whole
• Only one element of each kind
• Overtly resist change
• Pae White's non-blank graphic metacard
• Pay attention to distractions
• Picture of a man spotlighted
• Put in earplugs
• Question the heroic approach
• Remember those quiet evenings
• Remove a restriction
• Remove ambiguities and convert to specifics
• Remove specifics and convert to ambiguities
• Remove the middle, extend the edges
• Repetition is a form of change
• Retrace your steps
• Revaluation (a warm feeling)
• Reverse
• Short circuit (example; a man eating peas with the idea that they will improve his virility shovels them straight into his lap)
• Shut the door and listen from outside
• Simple subtraction
• Simply a matter of work
• Slow preparation, fast execution
• Spectrum analysis
• State the problem in words as simply as possible
• Steal a solution.
• Take a break
• Take away as much mystery as possible. What is left?
• Take away the elements in order of apparent non-importance
• Take away the important parts
• Tape your mouth
• The inconsistency principle
• The most important thing is the thing most easily forgotten
• The tape is now the music
• Think - inside the work -outside the work
• Think of the radio
• Tidy up
• Towards the insignificant
• Trust in the you of now
• Try faking it
• Turn it upside down
• Twist the spine
• Use "unqualified" people.
• Use an old idea
• Use an unacceptable color
• Use cliches
• Use fewer notes
• Use filters
• Use something nearby as a model
• Use your own ideas
• Voice your suspicions
• Water
• What are the sections sections of? Imagine a caterpillar moving
• What context would look right?
• What do you do? Now, what do you do best?
• What else is this like?
• What is the reality of the situation?
• What is the simplest solution?
• What mistakes did you make last time?
• What most recently impressed you? How is it similar? What can you learn from it? What could you take from it?
• What to increase? What to reduce? What to maintain?
• What were the branch points in the evolution of this entity
• What were you really thinking about just now? Incorporate
• What would make this really successful?
• What would your closest friend do?
• What wouldn't you do?
• When is it for? Who is it for?
• Where is the edge?
• Which parts can be grouped?
• Who would make this really successful?
• Work at a different speed
• Would anyone want it?
• You are an engineer
• You can only make one dot at a time
• You don't have to be ashamed of using your own ideas
• Your mistake was a hidden intention

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