1.  Participation in the Strathmore Recycle Journal Pages on-line workshop.  This week:  cut up old journal pages; enlarge or decrease old journal pages or pictures; pick for color and texture.  My scanner printer isn’t working well so much of what I scanned in came out rather faded.  Nevertheless, I managed to put a journal page together.  I outlined some of the pictures just to bring them forward a bit, and played with the sizing thing.  My favorite part of this picture is here the the right.

  So what I learned was that I can put a full page together and then even cut that up some more to create yet another new page.  It was fun!

2.  Already a get away with hubby!  We went to Rehobeth and got a room on the ocean with a jacuzzi and in walking distance of the (largely deserted) downtown area (4 days, 3 nights).  We like having things to ourselves.  Did much walking; lots of really good food eating; many scrabble games (and OMG he’s now beating me regularly – I contend as a result of playing Scrabble on his iphone with all his buddies); much wine; and more talk than we’ve had the opportunity to do in a very long time.  It is good when, after 28 years together (going on 26 of them married), you can still have lots to talk about together!

3.  Ideas for 2 more workshops (in addition to my January workshop, Vision Mask, which is now full), and for the retreat weekend they are leading up to.

4.  Ideas for new creative work, including a 6 or 7 ft tall yard piece Wylde Woman

5.  The name (finally) for a women’s artisan and art lovers group for Southern Maryland (to be revealed once I put the program for it together and introduce it at a get together…I’ll let on-line folks in on it after the local gathering).

6.  Some much needed new pants:  cords instead of jeans just because they were on (way low end of year) sale and a new purse.  And hubby bought me an outfit too (this in addition to being spoiled rotten at Christimas).

7.  Waking up with ideas – so many I have to grab a notebook and jot them down so I don’t lose them – the creative genie is out of her bottle.  Do I have to tell you how great this kind of energy makes me feel?

8.  Outreach to two community ventures; we’ll see which one comes in first.  It’s been a while since I ran screaming from community work swearing never again (I have to do that periodically).  Hopefully this time I’ve got the boundaries and release of need for a specific outcome firmly in place (I always think I do.  Apparently I’ve needed more practice).

What has your new year blessed you with so far? 

Wylde Women’s Wisdom

One of the rules of the class was that each participant was to treat her drawings as if

they were personal diary entries of her inner life, not for publication or display.  As the women became startled with the freshness and newness of their visual pieces, I reminded them that these images hadn’t come from another world to visit them.  Rather they were part of the interior landscape with which the women lived all the time and had not noticed, or just barely noticed, or had erased…Making a visual diary will help you uncover the forms that are yours.  Nancy Azara