Whooping It Up

With my hubby off to band practice, I find myself with a few hours in a quiet house. This is a rare thing when both of us are working at home. I have a long "to do" list, like most of you do, I'm sure. Instead of tackling the garden weeds after a nice rain, I decided to look through my blog posts. This is my version, for today only, of whooping it up!

First of all, I just wanted to say a quick "thank you" to those of you who read my blog, even on occasion. In looking through my own past posts, there is some meaty subject matter there, if I do say so myself. I appreciate my blog readers immensely, especially knowing that most of you, like me, have very full plates in your day-to-day lives. So thank you all for taking the time.

I was going through old posts, because I had a sneaking suspicion that I have left many loose ends. Indeed, that is the case, as I read my own promises of "more to come" in future posts. In reality, I have found that life sometimes interferes with good intentions. Most often, though, I find that I am so busy trying to stay focused on the work at hand, the real, palpable work within my studio walls, that I often don't take the time to "document" what I am doing so I can easily post it here. Sigh. Such is life.

Altered Books workshop I taught in July

In the spring "post wedding" (please see my previous posts on this subject), the summer lay ahead, and promised to be a busy time. Now, as August comes to an end, I can say that this summer was very busy, indeed. Having not blogged about each event as it happened, I can only offer a brief overview of the highlights here.

I had a terrfic group of students in the Creating Altered Books workshop I taught at my local arts center. I brought along a stack of my own altered books to show what I have done over the years in this fun medium.  

Writing in a journal is a great way to sort your thoughts

In early August, I presented a Creativity Workshop at the BayArts Women's Retreat weekend. This is probably my favorite class to present. Students only need simple tools, a journal and a pen, to work with in blowing their minds! I have spent at least a decade devising methods to help my class participants find their way back to their creative cores. The methods have been tested with many age groups and in many settings, and are very effective. It's gratifying for me to see the light bulb going off in my students' heads as they work.

For those of you in the area, I have two fun workshops coming up for Fall 2010, both at BayArts on the lake. In October is a family friendly workshop, The Family Journal Night, in which participants will learn how to hand bind a Japanese stab-stitch journal and consecrate it.

Detail of my hand bound journal and the spine

I customized the spine of my journal by adding spacers made from an old deck of playing cards. Adding spacers prevents thick pages in the journal from interfering with how the journal closes.

In November I am teaching Image Transfer techniques. Transferring images using a half dozen or so techniques is very popular right now, but I learned the basic methods while still in high school in the 1970s, and more in my freshman year of college. I have been using various techniques in my artwork for three decades now. This is another class that is really fun to teach, since the results are instantaneous! If you're around Northeastern Ohio, I hope you will join us!

One of my collages incorporating image transfers

As for the rest of the summer, there was a lot of live music, two class reunions, and lots and lots of sewing. My ongoing challenge for the months ahead is to continue to try to figure out how to balance it all. If you have any insights, I would love to hear them.