Day Five: Letters

How appropriate that the word of the day is recrudesce, which means 'to break out anew or come into renewed activity, as after a period of quiescence.'  This sums up where I'm at exactly.  I grew up in a creative household.  My mom is an artist and was an art teacher.  My life has always been full of craftiness and imagination.  I'm breaking out anew as an artist.  I won't limit myself to comfortable mediums or parameters.  No, I feel like charging forward into experimentation of the best kind where there are no limits to what defines art or creativity.

If I make it - if I put my hands to a task to create - then it will fulfill that need with in me.  Even if its rescuing letters from the recycling bin before my father-in-law takes out the trash and cutting out a plethora of little ticker-tape bits for future creative use.  Yes, today I have fulfilled that need.

Day Four: Coffee Table

This project I started last Thursday but worked on it today as well.  We're moving in a month and we needed a coffee table for the new place.  I scored a great little table from a friend's garage sale for $10.  Last week I sanded and painted it.  I left it at my parents house for the paint to cure.  Seven days for curing paint - excessive - but I wanted to do it right.  I've never refinished a piece of furniture before so I tried to follow the steps from one of my pins.  Tried is the operative word.  

Today I ruined all that careful work.  As you can see in the last picture I added lovely little freehand details and then covered it in satin finish.  Unfortunately, I used a roller and either it was that or the heat that caused the finish to bubble and dry that way!  So either I leave it with the weird bubbled texture (which is pretty cool - just not for this piece) or I have to start all over.  After thinking over it and my dad offering to sand it all down for me - I'm going to just re-do the whole thing.  

Lesson learned and new texture idea filed away. 

Day Three: Quote

Today was so beautiful that we chucked our to-do list and spend the morning outside.  With two boys, 4 and 2, you have to take advantage of getting out all that energy in a healthy way.  Our current living situation requires the boys to be quiet in the house so this was a much needed break for them.  I took the opportunity to art journal.  I feel like my endeavors have been small, tiny steps but, honestly, even just a little foray into the creative world has done wonders with my attitude.  This was a quote that I saw a while back and like a lot.  Around the edge I listed people from the Old Testament that I feel were qualified after they were called - there's a lot of them.  A good reminder that God can use anyone.  

Day Two: Cords & Paper Tubes

This is a two-in-one Pintrest idea.  The first idea is having your plugs labeled with the infamous tabs - so that when they are all plugged into the power strip you know which plug goes to which appliance.  This is so helpful in the tangle of cords beneath our office desk and the one behind our TV stand.  And the second idea is storing your unused cords in paper towel or toilet roll tubes.  I have quite a few more tabs to collect to finish out this idea but its a work in process.  With the plethora of paper tubes we have, all I need to do now is find the perfect box to put them into so I can have my cords properly organized.  Right now I think I'm in a creative organizing mood.  It helps to have things all tucked away to make room for other kind of creative projects.    

Day One: Tape

Don't laugh.  This may be a small - an extremely small - pinteresting act but I saw it on Pintrest and I did it. I scoured the house for one of these tabs, which we usually throw out in lieu of clothes pins, but I finally found one on an unopened, unsuspecting bag of tortillas.  I snatched up this little beauty and promptly placed it on the tape from the communal drawer in the kitchen.  I dropped the roll back into the drawer, proud of my small accomplishment: saving the family from having to scratch up the end of the tape.  Success.  Short lived.  Apparently, someone in the house did not find my ingenuity as helpful as I do; the next day the tab was gone.  So the next tab to cross the threshold of our home was confiscated and promptly put on the roll of tape in my personal craft drawer.

The Quest for A Creative Life

I consider myself an artist, who's soul needs to create or it will die.  And slowly I have been dying inside.  I could blame it on having two kids, ages 2 and 4, with another on the way...but that's the easy way out.  The truth is I haven't been taking care of my artistic soul.  I have been neglecting it because I'm lazy.  Lazy - the word I fear most but there it is: my official declaration that I am also a lazy soul.  One can not be both creative and lazy - to create is to be inherently active.  I must resolve this war within myself if I am to flourish as I once did in the short span of my 29 years of life.  And here is my resolve: to do one Pintresting thing a day - even if it is only art-journaling a mere quote.

I became a Pintrest addict a mere few weeks ago.  My friend introduced me to my addiction not realizing it was exactly what this withering soul needed.  It was like a shot of creativity crack right to my veins. (Disclaimer: I have never done crack and barely have enough understanding of the drug culture to even use that analogy.)  After a few weeks of pinning things on my various boards I realized that it wasn't enough.  I need to actually try the ideas and use the inspiration that I was finding right at my fingertips.  So here we are...my quest to take action against the creeping apathy that has entwined itself around me.