The things we do for art....

Here I am... up at 6am to go to some garage and estate sales. Every Saturday I am up at the crack of dawn, making snacks and tea for the journey. We go all day and come home with a car packed full. My husband comes with me and keeps inventory. All of it is for an on line store we will be creating soon to sell altered art supplies. I gotta say, some of it is pretty dang cute... I was getting frustrated, because the stuff is taking over our lives... then out of the blue, the universe sends me a beautiful gift... a studio came available to me for FREE at my mom's center. I have been rearranging things so I can move all (ok SOME) of my supplies there and set up a working studio and gallery. I am so excited. Many people have stopped in to see what we are doing. It is a really nice place with great energy. Come by and have a cup of tea. Check out the bookstore. I am there most days working on the gallery and moving stuff around. I will be actively creating art there after thanksgiving, and selling some of the great swag I have collected the past few months. I hope to have old books for sale as well, but a curious problem has developed. Apparantly I have a great eye for rare books. I buy them based on how they look for an altered project... and then we get home and find they are worth between $75 and $150 each. Pascual won't let me alter them, for obvious reasons. So now Pascual has a side business as an ebay book seller as well. He is honking the horn... gotta go. Bargains await.

In Time...

I was waiting to post something until I had something profound and interesting to say... this whole blog world thing is really new for me... I was rereading over some of the things I wrote... and I have been so sad and full of angst lately... I just couldn't put a bunch of random bitchy comments out there... That little voice in my head said "If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all..." But time passes.... days blur into weeks and then months, and if I wait until I am happy, the Easter Bunny will be hopping over the hill and I still won't have posted anything. So here I am, in all my empty, angst filled glory... struggling to figure it all out. Looking inside the dark corners of myself to find that sparkly place. I know it's there, it just likes to play hide and seek with me a lot.

So this is my time... I joined my Mom's mastermind group last week. An amazing group of ladies I just love and respect so much. Many I know, and some I don't. All of us struggling with the recreation of ourselves. In this group, with the love and support of each other, we are able to define who we are. What our deepest dreams and passions are, and we are working toward manifesting them in the world. I discovered the other night... "I am an artist" It was hard to say... part of me still doesn't believe it... and until I do fully believe it, it won't be true. If I am embarassed to tell people who I am in my authentic self... how will anyone ever take me seriously? Everything I do in life has to do with being artistic. I already live an artful life.. and yet I keep yammering on about needing to have more time to express myself more artistically... What the heck is that all about...? Why am I denying this part of myself? Partly because I don't believe I can make money at it... Not like I did as a loan officer... Partly because I feel so uncreative lately... that I can't even make a simple ATC without agonizing over the placement of every single object and wondering if it will be "good enough" to send in for an Art Fest ATC swap... I have to have little talks with myself... that I "Used to be somebody" in the scrapbooking world" and that many of the women I have known in the industry have all gone on to great accomplishments... product design specialists, HOF winners, book authors and professional licensed artists, teachers, editors, freelance artists. What did they do that I didn't? They promoted themselves. They took the leap of faith and put themselves out there. They networked at trade shows, got their work published, and continued to stretch and grow... I took a 3 year sabbatical and spent time recreating my family and traveling with a new husband. We took different paths. I could be there too now if I hadn't detoured... But I also wouldn't be "who" I am now if it weren't for taking that other road. The things I have to share of myself and my work are deep. The wounds and feelings I have are raw... and it isn't all pretty popsicle pages and zoo pictures tied up with grosgrain ribbon and embellished with some buttons and doodles. It is bright vibrant colors bleeding onto the page. It is soft washes of pastels like the most beautiful rainbow bending over me. It is dying plants and green swimming pools and a house so full of clutter and junk that we can barely move. It is all of these things. It is me. So waiting until the "time that I feel better" just really won't help. It is sharing the process, as my group says... that helps others. It is letting those dark, ugly thoughts out into the light, where they dissolve and become less important, that really make me feel like I am contributing something of value. It is then... that I am truly letting my authentic self shine.