My Creative Story

As I peel back the layers and expose my creativity in Kim Klassen's Beyond Layers class one of the challenges or prompts is to tell my creative story. This was our first prompt last week, but it has taken me almost a week to conceptualize this story and sit here to share it with you.

I hope you'll grab a nice cup of your favorite beverage and take this journey with me.

As a youngster I did my fair share of coloring, but I was not one prone to start an art project - give me a book and I would be lost for hours. One of my favorite photos of me as a child is of me lying on the floor with my legs bent at the knee with a book in front of me. At first glance you see a child reading, but if you inspect that photo closely you will find I have fallen asleep!

Now my Mom was one to have you involved in several activities and having studied Early Childhood Education she also had many projects for us that included painting and creating. I eagerly joined in, but I can't say I was pleased with the outcome so I concluded art was not for me.

Early on I did have fascination with cameras and even had a Kodak Instamatic that I used to capture early memories. This would be the closest I came to being creative - or so that's what I thought at the time. I'm not sure if it was my efforts to emulate my Dad or an early notion of recording history, but photography planted itself in my life and has since become a fixture. By the time I was about 13 or 14 my parents gave me my first and only 35mm Nikon FG that I still own and use from time to time today.

As a voracious reader it would naturally follow that I would love the written word and follow some sort of literary path. My path was not literary, but journalistic. I'm not sure when, but I was fascinated with the news and newspapers specifically. So I took all the English classes offered in school including AP and studied journalism in college. While seeking out English classes I avoided Art classes if at all possible. Unfortunately, I came up during a time when Art and Music were still a part of the curriculum so I really didn't have a choice. I toiled through the assignments and my Mom even displayed my art.

Creative - not me. As a journalist with a weekly newspaper I used my camera to help tell my stories, and to document family events and my travels. I never looked at this as being creative. Over the years I learned how to do page layout and design at the newspaper, which I used later to create computer generated cards and invitations - creative, not me.

I didn't take to crafts either. My Mom and sister loved crafts from needle point to sewing and finally knitting - not me. When my Mom took up knitting she and my sister tried to get me to join but my response was "I have two left thumbs." I did give it a half-heart try, but to no avail. Then a few years later my sister announced she was pregnant with her first child and I decided I would try knitting again. I knit a cute, but imperfect blanket for my niece and I was hooked. Creative - not me.

About a year later when I was planning my wedding I created the invitations and a friend of my Dad's - a tenured Art Professor and Artist received the invitation and was so impressed he framed my "artwork" and gave it to me. Creative - maybe I am.

My framed "Art" Wedding Invitation

Since that time I have taken up card making, I knit regularly and I have created wedding invitations for a few people. I have also taken up photography again. Today I still struggle with the designation of "Creative" but I'm working on accepting the "Creative" in me with Beyond Layers and renewed confidence.

Wrist Warmers I knit for a friend.

As I close I want to give a shout out to my "Cyber" friends! Over the past year I have met many women who have offered a wealth of advice for free, but more importantly have given me and many others the confidence needed to continue honing our skills. Also, the many participants in e-classes who have offered their kind words when viewing my work - it gives me hope and inspiration! The ladies I speak of include but are not limited to Shutter Sisters, Karen "Chookooloonks" Walrond, Kim Klassen, Kat Sloma, and Big Picture Classes.

Liberate Your Art...Join The Kat Eye View Postcard Art Swap Today

I have decided to take a leap of faith - faith in myself and my abilities and participate in Kat Sloma's Postcard Art Swap.  So why a leap of faith? It is a leap because, I like so many others suffer from self-doubt from time to time and often  I don't see the beauty in the work I produce.

In an effort to alleviate this doubt I have participated in a number of online classes and workshops aimed at helping artists find their passion, practice their craft and just find the beauty in the world around you. Most of these sessions have been at Big Picture Classes Online, and that is where I first met Kat.

I was drawn to Kat's site after she posted a link for capturing the moon in one of our class forums. After browsing through her site I was hooked and added her to my daily feed. When she first advertised the Swap I just sort of looked at the post and thought 'that's cool', but I never thought of doing it myself. After a few weeks I toyed with the idea and finally I said I would give it a try. In other words I would have faith in ME!

So if you are an artist in just about any medium, you should take a look at this site and liberate your art. Briefly, what you will do is create five postcards send them to Kat who will then prepare them to be sent to five people around the world. You in turn will receive the art of others. Doesn't that sound like fun?!
I would really enjoy seeing some stampers, scrappers and card makers join the Swap!

If you missed the link above, click here to join the fun! Don't wait - the deadline is this Friday, June 4th!

Channeling Your Creative Spirit

I've been on a journey to rejuvenate or positively channel my creative spirit over the last several months - from photography to knitting and adding in a dash of writing along the way. I've had successes and near misses but I'm feeling good about my latest venture Creativity Boot Camp.


What you may ask is the Creativity Boot Camp? Given life by Maegan Beishline of Madeline Bea Photography, the Boot Camp is an opportunity for artists, and folks like me (non-artists) to exercise their creative muscles. During this two-week Camp you are given assignments that work hopefully take you by to your youth when you eagerly attempted to create masterpieces for your parents. You know the stick figures that most of us created and the purple skies!


More importantly you are given the opportunity to just "be". You aren't graded and hopefully you are encouraged. Now I haven't submitted anything for my peers to view just yet, but if this experience is anything like the classes over at Big Picture Classes Online I expect nothing less than enthusiastic encouragement.


Drawing and painting have never been considered pleasurable experiences to me - why because truthfully I don't think I have what it takes. When we feel inadequate we run away from tasks, and that has been the case for me with art and math.

My maiden attempt at painting - no planned creation, just off the cuff.

While thinking about signing up for this class I wondered "is this really for you" well after two days I say YES, because I am being pushed to leave my comfort zone and try something new.


Wish me luck on this journey and stop by this page from time to time to see what I've created over the next two weeks. Now don't laugh at the creation above, just know that I am stretching my creative muscles and throwing caution to the wind!

The Sparkle of Spring

Today we took a look at the "Sparkle of Spring" as part of the Big Picture Online Classes Picture Spring class. Luckily Mother Nature cooperated late in the day as I was able to capture these shots.

Take a moment out of your day to enjoy the joys of spring. I'm sharing my view of spring with you, stop by regularly to see what's new.

Silencing your inner doubts

Reflections - my shadow

If we're honest with ourselves we all a doubting Thomas swirling around in our heads denouncing our abilities, and if you are lucky you take those threads of doubt and tie them into a knot which is thrown out the window. But there are those occasions when Thomas is persistent and you stop creating for fear of failure.

I can say that Thomas has a semi-permanent residence in my head and at times I really let him hang out a little too long. Recently I have found that participating in groups with like minded individuals and having the courage to post what you have created does a good job of ridding us of the Thomas' in our head.

Over the last four months I have had the pleasure of participating in a number of online forums for photography over at Big Picture Classes and the community I have found there is awesome! Just think, you are interacting with hundreds of like minded people and you share your work and you receive thoughtful remarks that give you that little boost of energy you need to keep trying.

In life all things are a challenge and whether you succeed depends on your passion, persistence and commitment to the task at hand.

So today I'll post a few shots from my journey with Big Picture Classes. I hope you enjoy!

Finding your creative edge

I think I am really beginning to find my creative edge. It hasn't shifted over to my writing just yet, but I believe it will soon. The creativity of late has been with photography, thanks to the folks over at Big Picture Classes!

Picture Inspiration has really given me a lot to think about creatively. The weekly prompts from Tracy Clark are really inspiring. As an example, last week the prompt was Rhythm. The task was to find the rhythm in your life and capture it through your lens. I don't know that I truly fulfilled this goal, but it definitely has me thinking about rhythm and how to show it.

Motif was the next prompt, and I was really surprised by the many motifs we pass in our daily lives. The photos below were shot for motifs, but I really think the flaming fence has a sense of rhythm.

I would be remiss if I didn't mention Mastering Manual and Elisha Snow here as well, because without her weekly tips, prompts and assignments I would not have been able to capture these photos.

This is about the third posting on Big Picture Classes and I promise I am not a spokesperson, just a truly satisfied customer!

A Day of Accomplishments

Trying to find time to engage in some of my favorite activities has been a bit of a struggle lately.I love to say 'work gets in the way of life', but we all know you have to work in order to enjoy some of the joys in life!

Work is not always the problem. You see I enjoy a number of creative activities - writing, photography, paper crafting, knitting and reading. Now, each of these activities can be intense and time consuming so actively engaging in th

ese activities on a regular basis can be difficult.

Let's take a look at these activities:

Writing has been a love and a neglected passion for a number of years. I say it has been neglected because I have not quite figured out a good writing routine. I started this blog as a means to find my way back to writing, but as you can see from

glancing at the previous posts lists I have only been able to keep this up in spurts. The problem maintaining this blog consistently is that I don't have a true focus

.

You see truly successful blogs tend to focus on one, possibly two subjects and there are scheduled postings with a minimum of one posting per week. I have really got to get busy on making scheduling regular posts.

Additionally, I think I need to redesign my blog so that I can have sections for my various passions. This is a future endeavor, one I hope will take place in the near rather than far off future.

Photography has been a regular activity since I was about 13 and probably earlier than that, but that is when I received my first 35mm SLR camera. Over the years I

have taken photography classes and dabbled with developing

my own photos, but my diligence waned. This Christmas I received a Digital SLR and the photo-bug was reignited! Below is an example of some photos taken while playing around with my

new camera.

These photos bring us to another of my passions - knitting! I recently completed both of the hats pictured above! The bottom over processed photo was taken as part of my work for my Mastering Manual Mode class at Big Picture Online Classes.

The purpose of this class is to help owners of digital DSLR's take the camera off of automatic and add art to your photography. I can say it's been a bit of a challenge, but a lot of fun. I'm revisiting some of the basics of photography that I left behind when I picked up my first digital camera.

This is another example from class - the focus of this sample is a

perture settings.

Paper crafting really entails making greeting cards and invitations by hand. Utilizing stamps and a variety of techniques I have come to enjoy creating cards, but I have not found much time to create lately.

Finally, I love reading and every six weeks or so I read a new title thanks to my book club The Literary Sistas! My Sistas and I read only African American fiction, and it is usually of the literary variety. Some of the authors we have read include Toni Morrison, Tananarive Due, Carleen Brice, Virginia DeBerry and Donna Grant, Mat Johnson, and Leonard Pitts to name a few.

I read all authors and some non-fiction because I truly love a good book. The race or nationality of the author is not the first thing I look at, but I do have a tendency to read works by authors of color because they are so often overlooked by the masses.

To further my writing efforts I also post book reviews. Check back in the next couple of weeks for new reviews.

Today was a productive day because I dabbled in photography and found the time to write this post. Progress is made one step at a time! I hope you will join me on this journey.

Comments are always welcome...let me know what you think this might inspire a new post!

Photography Links

Today I've spent much of the day just perusing the internet checking out some of the wonderful photography sites. One of my passions that has been pushed to the rear over the last several years is photography, and in 2011 I plan to change that.

Here are some of the links those of you interested in photography might also find interesting:

• Shutter Sisters - A photoblog championing the beauty found with women behind the lense. It is a place for women to showcase their art as well as receive regular inspiration.
• Northeast Kingdom Photography - This specific link is to the ABC's of Photography, but the entire site is worth a viewing.
• 365 Words Through Photos - Looking for inspiration or a unique perspective to jump start your creative juices, then join Jen Hannux on this daily journey.
• One Word Project - Shutter Sisters offers this great tool, similar to the one above to help spark creativity and to urge you to express yourself through photos. This challenge is monthly as opposed to daily.
• Mastering Manual Mode - If you're looking to get more out of that DSLR you received for Christmas, this is the place to do that. The class starts in February, but promises to help you learn all about the new camera and how to use it in other than the "Auto" mode.
• Big Picture Classes Online - Don't let the name fool you, the crew over at Big Picture offer online classes in more than just photography. It is also a great place for scrapbookers too.

There are many more that I'm sure I missed, but these should get the juices flowing. If you know of a cool photography site, I'd love to hear about it! Leave a comment with a link.

Picture the Holidays

The first assignment/challenge was Gratitude. Here is my shot on gratitude.

So you might wonder why am I grateful for myself? Well I am grateful for each day the Lord has given me, but I was also grateful for the opportunity Big Picture Online Classes and specifically Picture the Holidays has given me to reignite by love of photography and to capture this shot!

What A Busy Time of Year

Wow, it's been a very hectic couple of weeks around here lately! I'm feeling a little scatterbrained lately. I have so many things I'm trying to focus on, and it appears as though something is going to be missed or come up short.

So why so busy? Well I came across this great website Big Picture Classes Online and it has really rekindled my interest in photography, which of course led to many more sites and reading as well as admiring the work of many photographers from all over the world.

Then there is Jessica Sprague, who you can find here. She had a wonderful free class, Inspiration Everywhere and of course I had to sign up because I'm always looking for inspiration! Add to all of this the routine Christmas knitting and Holiday cards to make, and you have a woman with a whole lot going on.

So am I accomplishing anything? I think I am to some degree. In a recent conversation with one of my sisters she asked what was going on and my response was "oh just doing too much," and her response was "as usual". Sometimes I do have a tendency not to say "no" to others when they are in need of my assistance but this time around I'm doing things for me. Or at least that's what I'm telling myself, but I really believe this hyperactivity is a coping mechanism. I've also added the reverb10story challenge to my plate.

You see this is the first holiday season without my Mom, and I am trying to cope in the best way possible - stay busy. Now this doesn't mean that she doesn't creep into my mind and my activities, but boy are the days more bearable.

I'll be posting details of all of my new adventures. I hope you will join me on this journey!