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a little fox, with a little help

It was a Black Friday impulse purchase. My daughter loves foxes. I had intended on buying a fox oil painting kit and wound up with a fox felting kit in the cart, too. The paints have not been opened.

felted fox

I read something a long time ago about a mom who straightened her daughter’s knitting rows late at night. Friends told her that was cheating — she was robbing her daughter of something she truly made herself. I’ve never forgotten her response. She said evening out the stitches was just a little boost to help her daughter continue falling in love with the craft while she climbed the learning curve.

I think about that a lot. At our local paint-it-yourself store, there’s a sign that discourages parents from helping their children. If they see parents helping too much, they will charge an extra fee. While I appreciate this sentiment, sometimes my child wants help. I am not about to say no if it will help her stay in love with creating.

felted fox

I always offer and I’m mostly turned down, but my daughter knows I’m there if she needs me. Sometimes it’s adding a sharpie outline to Hogwarts crests because details on round surfaces are hard. Other times it’s saving a felted fox from having a football-shaped head.

When we help children over creative speed bumps, we help them learn to love creating. When they see us struggle, and rip apart, and re-felt football-shaped heads, they see even adults don’t always get it right on the first try. Sometimes your idea can inspire them to fix it themselves.

felted fox

Then, when you’re not paying attention, they’re finished with a fox, a mouse, and working on a little chick. They have dug into your into your wool stash and book collection, and they no longer need your help. Well, maybe a little with the chick beak.

felted fox

stash: This is the bag of wool I had in my stash. The mouse and chick patterns are from Kyuuto Japanese Crafts, the Fuzzy Felted Friends book. We upgraded to a better needle when the kit one broke. Little chick photo to come.

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hi. I’ve missed you.

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Every once and awhile I need a break. I think it’s important to embrace those times and let myself recharge, but afterward there’s always that awkward period of starting up again.

I just finished reading Show Your Work! by Austin Kleon and it reminded me that sometimes you have to just start doing. If you’re not doing, talk about what you want to be doing or wish you have time to be doing.

(I could probably fill post after post with what my daughter is doing. In fact, I just might do that. She’s a creative machine, that one.)

I highly recommend both of Kleon’s books: Steal Like an Artist and Show Your Work! If you don’t know him, there’s plenty on his website to dig into. It doesn’t matter what your passion is, his message is universal: do good work and share it with others.

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cool sandwich bag art

Graphic designer and illustrator David LaFerriere kick starts his creative juices in the morning by drawing on his kids’ lunch bags. This makes me wish we didn’t use bento boxes and fabric snack bags.

Full article here. LaFerriere’s flickr page is here. He’s drawn over five years worth of bags!

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stand and create

I’ve been reading a lot about people standing while they work. Treadmill desks are becoming popular. Susan Orlean writes at one. Standing desks are also a thing. Arshad Chowdury has been using one for the past two years.

This isn’t new. Ernest Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe wrote standing up. (Wolfe was 6'6" and used the top of a refrigerator as his desk.) Winston Churchill, Leonardo Da Vinci, Virginia Woolf, and Thomas Jefferson all stood, as well.

This got me thinking that maybe I should move my laptop over to the kitchen counter for awhile and see what it’s like to create standing up. Of course, I never seem to be in the same spot for too long these days. Right now I’m sitting at my daughter’s Tae Kwon Do class writing this on an iPad in my lap. In reality, I’m more like Agatha Christie, who didn’t even own a desk and worked wherever she could sit down.

The original article that got me thinking about this was 25 Productivity Secrets from History’s Greatest Thinkers.

Some interesting articles I stumbled upon afterward (the first two are long reads):
— The Odd Habits and Curious Customs of Famous Writers
— To Sit, to Stand, to Write
— 5 famous writers who stood while they worked.

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confession: this is not how my desk really looks

faux coffee bean bag sack wall bulletin board

I want to be a clean desk person.

What a Messy Desk Says About You assures me my cluttered workspace is good thing. Messy desks generate more creative ideas. They inspire you to break free from tradition. They produce fresh insights.

All that is good, but secretly I’d like to look like the kind of person who would choose the apple and gym over the candy bar.

Original post about my desk is here.

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caffeine and creativity

bridging to brownies

I love my coffee and green tea. I would drink them all day long if I could. I love the focus they give me while I work. However, it never occurred to me that caffeine could interfere with my creativity. (I know it interferes with my sleep!)

The New Yorker and the Atlantic have different takes on a recent review of caffeine studies. Matt Rodbard at the Food Republic does a good job summarizing the two stories:

…coffee provides creative types more confidence. It also allows them to focus on tasks for hours on end. On the flip side, prolonged concentration doesn’t allow the mind of wander and relax. Also, sleep helps recharge the creative batteries.

If you have the time, both original articles are worth a read. How Caffeine Can Cramp The Creative Mind and Caffeine: For the More Creative Mind.

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10 years

I’ve been writing on the Internet for a decade. Wow.

The first time I realized people were writing online was in 1999. Back then, there were two styles: weblogs and online journals. I loved them both. I had a full list of bookmarks (remember those? before RSS?).

I moved to Nebraska in September 2003 and created a little hand-coded site to keep friends and family updated on our move. It definitely started out as more of a weblog: bits of information, links, commentary, and a few pics. After awhile I started writing more. I journaled about my experiences in Nebraska, becoming a mom, and exploring the creative art of hand crafts.

Then life got busy. My daughter stopped taking naps. My journal entries got shorter and I hit publish less often. When my daughter started school, I thought that would change, but my mind began to wander off topic. I squirreled away things that interested me in pocket lists, twitter favorites, tumblr hearts, secret pinterest boards and facebook likes. I stopped sharing things that didn’t fit the narrative I had created here.

10 years marks a perfect milestone for reflection: What am I doing here? Why am I not doing anything here? How do I start doing more here?

I think for now the best thing for me is to return to more of a weblog style of writing. I miss being here. I want to be here. I just don’t have as much time to be here.

I’ve made a few changes. Don’t worry. Nothing is going away. In fact, I’ve created a table of contents that will hopefully make it easier to sort through 10 years of writing. That kind of rendered the navigation menus and sidebar widgets unnecessary, so I got rid of them. It takes some getting used to, I know, but I really like how the posts are front and center now.

I’m also going to push myself outside the boundaries of my current narrative. I want to explore all types of creativity, not just hand crafts. I want to talk about all kinds of sustainability, not just recycling and reusing. I want to write about smart women and how they can be role models for myself and my daughter.

Seems a little weird doesn’t it? More things to write about and less writing about them.

Change isn’t always easy, but change is good.

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creative confession

You know how sometimes the universe feels like it is trying to tell you something? That it’s been trying to tell you something for awhile, but you didn’t hear it until you were ready to listen? Yesterday when I opened Cloth Paper Scissors, I landed on this article and it hit me.

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I’ve been struggling with my creativity for a long time now, which if you read this blog regularly, you’ve probably noticed. I’ve been thinking about it a lot, and there are many excuses that I can come up with to justify the creative emptiness. But the excuses don’t really matter. I know I can be creative on demand, my job requires it. So what happened to everything else?

Establishing and keeping a routine can be even more important than having a lot of time. Inertia is the death of creativity. You have to stay in the groove. When you get out of the groove, you start to dread the work, because you know it’s going to suck for a while — it’s going to suck until you get back into the flow. – Austin Kleon, Steal Like an Artist

Whatever my reasons, the result was I just stopped doing creative things. I got out of the habit. Being creative was no longer a routine. Instead, it turned into something I loved and missed, but couldn’t find my way back to. Yesterday, that article made me realize that there is no path back to creativity. You just have to start doing it.

It’s going to be uncomfortable. Photos aren’t going to be perfect. Words aren’t going to be eloquent. The only thing I can commit to is documenting one creative thing each day.

I’m jumping back into the flow.

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how to create silhouette clip art in 3 easy steps

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When I was playing around with my TKD Girl idea, I grabbed an image off the Internet to mock up some ideas. Once I realized I was actually going to do something with it, I needed to create artwork of my own.

Making silhouettes isn’t hard. In fact, technology has made it much easier than when I first started my career in graphic design.

1. Find an image.
That used to mean heading to the library and photocopying something out of a book. Now you can just print something off of the Internet.

2. Trace the image.
I like to start with pencil. I trace around the important details while adding some of my own (see the long hair above). Then I outline the edges with a fine point sharpie and fill in the rest with a regular sharpie.

3. Scan and clean up the image.
Before programs like Illustrator, I used to fine tune my images with opaque paint. The elbow that looks awkward? Paint over it with white, let dry, try again with black. Now I just scan my drawing into the computer and edit the vector artwork.

The upside of silhouettes is that you don’t have to worry about details like drawing a face. Without the context of clothing, however, the shape might look lumpy in the wrong places. I had to fiddle around with the outline of TKD Girl’s jacket so her shoulders, elbow and waist looked more balanced and natural.

See? Easy peasy lemon squeezy. Now go make some art!