Thought for the day

Tags

humor, Mae West, photography, quotes, snow

Scavenger Hunt and Online Retreat

Tags

100 Mandalas, art journal, gratitude, humor, Kathryn Costa, poetry, Retreat

This week and next week I am participating in an online retreat with Kathryn Costa of 100 Mandalas. I am really enjoying it very much and she has lots of fun activities intended to help participants live an Inspired Year. I feel like I am off to a really good start. It is not too late to sign up if you are interested! We are not yet halfway through.

These journal pages have a couple of layers to them. The first layer I did this morning. It is a practice called “morning pages” that Kathryn encountered from another artist whose name I cannot recall. The idea is that you write 3 pages of notebook paper full of whatever, but you have to write 3 pages. I figure this book is much larger than a notebooks and I tried to write kind of small. It is only day 1 of this practice, but I really found that I enjoyed it and it made an interesting background for the rest of the stuff.

The next layer is the mandala that I created for the February meeting of the coloring club. Here is my sketch and color auditions of a torus mandala full of love. The colored image is from one of the flyers for our club. We will meet February 4 & 18th. One of the participants in the online retreat used Tim Holtz’s Distress Markers for one of her mandalas and I really loved how it looked so I have ordered some for next month’s coloring club meeting. So excited!

The top layer is from an activity from earlier in the week. Kathryn directed us to go through magazines and cut out words and phrases that spoke to us and then see if there were groups or topics that arose from these selections. The left hand page is my more serious groups and they seemed to have some synergy. They have to do with social justice and race issues in our country, my health problems, working together, and the healing benefits of coloring. I like the juxtaposition of the issues of people of color with the current fad of coloring – it seems like there might be some healing that can happen here – I will need to think on this one some more.

The right hand page is a little bit more silly. I love the way found phrases come together to make “poetry” and it usually tickles my funny bone. Some combinations that I like on this page are:

Serendipity     Answering your questions

The promise of      Wonderful Wacky Women

The carefully crafted    artists in the village   work wonders

Get a move on!   add a little zip   Pops of color and pattern    In bloom

I liked putting “Seize the Moment” next to the dates for coloring club. 🙂

And I had to include “Need Warmth without overheating?” As a woman of a certain age this has become a VERY IMPORTANT TOPIC. Unfortunately, I did not buy the product that was associated with this phrase.

And what collage of mine would be complete without a cat so I included “I love cats” which indeed I do.

What tickled your funny bone today?

Cee’s Odd Ball Photo Challenge: Mr. Potato Head

Tags

Cee's Photo Challenge, humor, Mr. Potato Head, Odd Ball, Photo, photograph, Whimsy

I hope this photo makes you laugh as much as it did the day I encountered this tableau. There is a turn in our stairs and then 7 more stairs to this hallway. My younger son was upstairs entertaining himself quietly one day. When I went up to investigate this was what I saw when I turned the corner. My laughter was his reward. When I first came across the Odd Ball Photo Challenge I thought of this photo but I had no idea where it was. Last night I was looking through old photos and came across it and had to share. Have a whimsical day! Check out more odd photos here:

Dark Humor, Red Shoes, and Hamsters

Tags

100 Mandalas, acrylic paint, altered art book, art journal, gratitude, hamsters, humor, journal52, Mandala, Wabi-sabi

The book I am altering as my gratitude journal is Roots of Art by Lyonel Feininger. It is a gorgeous book of photographs. And it is bigger than my scanner. While I have a new and larger scanner/color printer on my wish list, I will have to make do in the interim. That has led to some Wabi-sabi practice on my part. Wabi-sabi is the Japanese term used to describe my life. In this case in means that some of my images are a little wonky. I wanted to provide an overview of the 2 page spread that covers the last week. It came together nicely on the page. The photograph is a little sideways.

I have started numbering my mandalas so that I will know when I get to 100. I am seeing them in everything these days and really having fun with this project. I am so pleased with how the Red Shoe Mandala turned out. The red shoe is a metaphor for one of my good friends. She took me to a day of doctor’s appointments and we has such a lovely lunch and shopping excursion. I am so happy the mandala reflects the playfulness of our day.  I’m including some individual page scans for a more detailed view of the individual mandalas.

My younger son turned 18 this week.

“The trouble is you think you have time.” Buddha

That quote was on the

website and seemed so appropriate for an 18th birthday, both for my son and for myself. He thinks he has all the time in the world and I can see how fleeting it is.

We got him a pygmy hamster (one of the cutest animals ever!) and a hamster on a hamster wheel is so clearly a mandala in the making. It also ties in with this quote so, so well. It made me think of the Buddhist idea of this precious human life. How are you using the moments of your life today?

The center of this mandala was pretty Wabi-sabi, too. Apparently gel pens and acrylic paints combine in strange and unpredictable ways. I had to paint over the mess a few times and it still was odd. I added the stencils and journaling at the end of the week upon reviewing the Journal 52 prompt. I wanted to tie the whole page spread together. The Journal 52 prompt was Conversation Starters. My intention for this year is to work on kindness in communication so I thought this would be a good opportunity to give you an update. I still have a lot of room for improvement. One of the really challenging ways I speak unkindly is when I’m trying to be funny. In my aquacize class yesterday I was discussing this with a friend of mine. We were having a blast laughing and poking fun and then I had to go and toss out this loving kindness in speech idea. We really had a great conversation. I have had conversations with others about this too. So many comedians are mean in their humor and I have used some majorly dark humor to help me through difficult times in my life.

My question for you for this week is what funny things are you grateful for this week? Are you able to keep kindness in your humor? How do you do it? Seriously, I’m looking for tips if you have any! IN any case, I hope you have a beautiful day.