GREAT QUESTION!!!  I follow Lisa Sonora Beam’s blog and today she asked the question:

How Does Art & Creativity Heal?

My reply is:

If I didn’t have ART in my life, I don’t think I would have survived my bout with Cancer in 1998, the death of my sister (10 mths. younger than me) in 1999, the death of my father in 2002 and the near death of my husband in 2007…..oh and my kidney removal surgery last October.
ART is my constant – some place I can go when I need time to think or get away from worries, etc.
ART is my thermometer, my compass – its always there when I need comfort or to be uplifted.
ART is ME!
I am me because of ART!
I make Art because it brings me JOY every day!!!

THANK YOU for reading!

I have been talking about my Strategic Plan #1…..first I have to tell how I came to this.

While I was recuperating from the kidney removal surgery, I had LOTS of time to think.  When thinking about my goals for 2010, I wanted something I could be accountable to weekly or monthly.  So, when I read on Lisa Sonora Beam’s blog about making a Strategic Planner.  I thought this was perfect!  It just took me awhile to do it!!!

So on my Strategic Plan #1 is organize and simplify!  The whole house, but mostly my studio as I was starting to be overwhelmed whenever I went into it.  So, have been purging alot, sorting things to sell or giveaway and basically moving things around.

Already I can feel its better!!!

One of the things in my studio that was making me feel overwhelmed was my row of Iris carts that sit on top of old dressers.   These are good for me to organize all LIKE things together but see the mess inside was not.

I read on Sharyn’s blog about what she did with her cupboard and thought I could do something like that with my drawers.  I had saved all the white cardboards from all the packages of scrapbook paper and cut them the size to fit in each drawer.

It took many hours to get the old stickers completely off – some were very old as 2 sets, I have had for 9 years.  LOVING Goo Gone!!!

No fancy pattern or anything just white with the black marker words!  LOVE IT!!!

Soon, I will have the whole studio organized and will photograph it.  I am doing this all between projects – SOON Strategic Plan #1 will be done and on to #2 which I will tell you about in the next month or so.

THANK YOU for reading!

I am totally LOVING this idea from Lisa Sonora Beam.  More & more  I NEED something to keep me on track as I try to weigh out life challenges and my ART life.  I have some decisions to make this week, so a sleepless night thinking of pros & cons of everything.   (note to self: I so need her book! Moving it to the top of my want list…)

All I want to do is MAKE ART – why are all these decisions making me feel like I’m banging my head against the wall.  So, at about 4 am this morning I decided that SIMPLIFY was going to be my INTENTION for this NEW MOON Intentions page. Living with INTENT can be different for everyone, here’s a good article by Christine Kane.

Tomorrow – March 15th is the NEW MOON for this month.

My word for 2010 is ACTION, so I am using that as part of my main intention to SIMPLIFY my life.

This journal page started with using a light coating of gesso, then pastel chalks, I used a wet brush to blend them.  Had to do a light spray of matte finish to set the chalks.  Then, I had to find a pen that would write on the page – a Pitt pen worked.

I didn’t intend to highlight the words by using white paper hand printed words, but I spelt Simplify and simplifying wrong….one too many “y”s so I re-wrote and glued down.  Then, I thought ACTION needed to be highlighted also and I never like to have even amounts of anything….so for the 7th white paper, I highlighted “NO”.

The gold partial circle was in the bottom of the pizza box of scraps, and was calling to be used.  I cut “A QUIET VOICE” out of an old book, and Imagine was printed many years ago when I used to have a scrabble font on the old PC…..should find it again for this Mac.  Been wanting to use some buttons in my journal for awhile, so this side edge worked out perfect to add some (7).

I am typing these actions, printing them on a couple pages so I can have them glued to index cards for the computer area, to beside my sewing machine and on my cutting/craft table.

THANK YOU for reading!