Exhaustion and Count-Down

I am exhausted. Pure, simple. When I feel like I'm running on empty, all I want to do is sleep. But sleep is a luxury that I won't get until Thanksgiving Day and again Christmas Day. Every other day has an alarm clock waking me up at 3:30am Monday-Saturday and 7:30am on Sunday. Icky! I really need some concentrated sleep!

One of the reasons I can't indulge in sleep is because I need to get going on my holiday gifts. I'm pretty poor this year, so money will be spent for materials, not finished product. I will be starting work on Chickie's holiday gift today - I have all of the materials gathered and ready to go. Since hers will involve some enameling, I want to get going on that - get the design done and ready to put into the kiln next week. Plenty of work to do. I am on a hunt for the perfect fabric for my DH's short cape. He wants one in a granite grey and I'm finding the fabric very difficult to find. If I can find it, I can pull the cape together in a concentrated day of sewing. I'd like to have it ready for one of his holiday gifts, so I'm going to check the fabric store again today on my way home from my morning errands.

What are you going to gift people during the holiday season? Are you going to be making things for some of them? I always love making things for people - it's so much more personal. Well, I've got to get moving - at least when I'm creating things, I'm not tired anymore - a bonus!

Stress Can Kill

Stress. It seems to be something that we are all dealing with now in various ways. I usually am pretty good about letting it slide off me, trusting that all will turn out well in the end and that we are all watched over in a fashion. I still believe that, but obviously my body didn't get the message that my head did. So I have a stress-related illness that will annoy me for the remainder of this year and I'm not happy about it.

But, I really don't have the time to deal with crap like that. I have holiday gifts to make and design and larger projects to get going with. So, enough pity talk - back to creative talk. It makes me much happier!

I got notification from Lark Books last night that a pair of earrings I made for an upcoming book's "Gallery" section was accepted. I'm very happy about that - now to find the next thing that I can make something for and try again. You don't get anywhere without trying, and this month I'm batting 500 - LOL. One rejection, one acceptance. Not too bad :-)

Holiday Season - Ick!

I have decided that I really don't like the Holiday season. Since I've had the shop, it is a season of long days, extra work days, deadlines and general intensity that I really could do without. I used to love the holidays. I would take the bus to downtown and wander through the shops, trying the find the perfect gifts for each person with my very restricted budget. I would look at the lights, hear the holiday carols, hear the hand bells for the Salvation Army red buckets, and generally I would be in high spirits. Sometimes I would treat myself to a lunch or a dessert, sometimes I would go at night and skate on the rink that was next to the May D&F downtown store. On rare occasions my folks and I would pile into the car and become one of hundreds driving by the City and County Building to look at the holiday displays and the lights.

All of that has ended now. Not just because of my really icky work schedule, but also because of people in government being unable to have holiday displays any more for fear of alienating some segment of their population. No, no manger scenes, no lights, no animation. Instead, the holidays are becoming a mandatory shopping time, a time to score sales, and a completely sterile time of the year with money quickly becoming the only diety. Now, I'm not a Christian person, but I still loved seeing the displays and hearing the music. Christmas was a time for those who were Christian to celebrate the birth of Jesus. It was great for them. They were happy, and I didn't have a problem with the celebration because they represented the dominent religion in the country, as well as the religion of the Founding Fathers (and Mothers). But with the watering down of Christmas, the joy has also gone out of the holiday, leaving it sterile and lacking meaning. I think it is a shame, and even if I don't believe in the Christian doctrine, I think that the celebration was wondrous and led to great childhood memories.

Coupons and Projects

Is anything better than a coupon from a well-loved store? I simply live for my coupons from Barnes & Noble Booksellers and from Dick Blick's Art Supplies. Last night, to take advantage of a Dick Blick's coupon for 30% off a single, standard priced item, DH and I made a night of it. We were originally going to have a quick dinner at home and then go to the store. But DH phoned me at work and suggested that we go to the store first and then he would take me out for pizza. Hard to beat that! So I picked up the supplies that I needed for Chickie's holiday gift, he picked up some modeling clay for his sculpting, and we had an awesome pizza afterwards (which reflected on the scale this morning-so it's time to be careful about what I eat again for a few days). Now I can get to work designing the works for Chickie's gift. It'll be fun!

I showed my almost-finished cloisonnae disks of Telperion and Laurelin to DH last night. He says I have something to learn about the anatomy of trees (LOL), but I'm very happy with them. I hope to get some photos up here for people to see within a week or so.

I have two projects in the works for when the disks are complete. I have the piece for Chickie's holiday gift, and I have a much larger piece that I want to do in pierced copper called "Vision of the Straight Road". DH printed out a reference photo for me last night and I also downloaded lots of reference pieces to look at before I sit down with a sketchbook. I've actually sketched a couple of possible versions over the past few days, but I need to start getting a bit more serious about the layout. I think I'll be putting this into one of the mahogany frames that I've acquired, so that gives me my dimensions. It's fairly large, though. So piecing will be necessary since I have such a small kiln. Have a wonderful weekend!

Progress and Brain Sparks

So, since my enamel disks are so close to conclusion, I spent my "lunch" working on designing the setting for them. I think I made some good progress on that. The setting needs to be sturdy so that it can handle the strains of being used as a cloak boss, needs to hold the disk securely, needs to be decorative - not just functional, and needs to have an attachment feature on the back that will allow it to be attached to the cloak. I have been mulling this over for more than a month and have decided to make a pin-style structure instead of sewing the boss onto the cloak. This will allow me to switch sides from the embroidered side to the satin side, and it will also allow me to remove the boss easily so that I can launder the cloak. But because I want a pin, I also have to make sure that I design the setting so that no undue pressure will be placed on either the pin back itself or the cloak fabric. It's a fun challenge and I think I've figured it out. Now to make sure that I am finished with the enamel work and then I can start scribing and sawing out the silver, turn on the torch (gotta love fire - yippee!) and get the front and back soldered together.

I also was a good girl yesterday and set up all of the doctor appointments that I should have set up four months ago. My December/January is now filled, but I was able to get early morning appointments for each of the appointments and that makes me very happy. The only question is whether I will have a conflict with any dental appointments (since I didn't check my main calendar when setting up the appt. Guess I'd better check that out when I get back to the shop in a few hours. Hope you have a productive day today - I would like you to look back on your artistic production for your Friday as happily as I have looked at my day from yesterday.

Efficiency Has Rewards

Efficiency has its' own rewards, and yesterday I was very efficient. Oh, I still wish I had more time, but I got a lot done in the time that I did have. I had all of my run-around errands finished by 11:30 am and had the kiln turned on and pre-heating by noon. Then I sat down with my new enamels and jars. I got all of the new enamels transferred to their jars, labelled, and those that I needed right away washed and ready to use by 3:00 pm. Then I started working.

Laurelin got a new coat of some darker colors. Then I stoned it down and finally flash-fired it. Laurelin's enamel is finished and now I need to design the setting. Telperion got two more coats of color - it is so delicate and beautiful. I'm absolutely thrilled with this tree. I now need to stone down some parts and assess whether or not I want to just flash fire it or whether I prefer to just put a clear coat down. Either way, they both should be ready for setting by the end of next Wednesday and that leaves me the ability to work on my next project design this week. I'll try and take some pictures within the next week or so. Yippee!

I've been trying to work on my drawing every day. I didn't have a lot of time yesterday, though, so while I was waiting for Chickie to arrive at the Theatre for "Where The Wild Things Are", I pulled out my sketchbook and a pencil and drew foreshortened tables for a while. They are getting better, but I'm still not totally instinctive about them, so I still need to work on these for a while longer. (And the movie was wonderful!) Happy Thursday!

HOW many Hours?!?

The list of things I need to do is arm's length, and to top things off, I'm meeting my friend Chickie for dinner and a movie tonight to celebrate her birthday. We're going to see "Where The Wild Things Are" on the IMAX screen followed by a late dinner. I'll be dragging tomorrow, but it's worth it. Birthdays MUST be celebrated in an appropriate manner.

My new enamels from Coral at Seattle Enamelworks arrived yesterday. I'm very glad that I ordered 30 empty containers from her - I had forgotten that the Japanese enamels come in a baggie instead of a container, so the first thing I get to do when I get home from my morning errands is to get the enamels transferred from their baggies into their new containers. Then I can use some of the new colors on Terperion and Laurelin and get one step closer to finishing those. They are really turning out nice and I can't wait to get to the kiln and see the next firing.

I hope that all of you have a fantastic and creative day today. I've been working on my drawing every morning for the past few mornings - time to get comfortable with my pencils again. What have you been doing for your personal creative outlet lately? Choose something to do for the next seven mornings - it doesn't have to be anything major, but should be something that you will do for at least 20 minutes. Then stick to it and see, next week, what you managed to accomplish in the week. I'm sure you'll be amazed by your progress even though it was over such a short time. Live creatively!