Monday 22 June 2009

lady bird and bumble bee....

After dropping Bantam boy off at work I had a couple of hours to myself so I thought I'd have a little lie down. As I lay there I started to drift off not to sleep but to that other place- you know the place and as I did all the things I'd been looking at and reading about (I've had a thing for old embroidery of late) anyway as I lay there my head started to clear and finally it became empty- in a good way! All the clutter left and I knew what I wanted to make. I have been thinking of miniature embroidery brooches on linen. And finally today I knew what and how I wanted to do them.
So I raced off to "Art Mart" fortunately they are open 7 days a week and I got some unprimed linen. It has such a lovely coarse weave and it has nice body too.

Chicky babe finally made me understand how to find the micro focus function on my camera so I was able to take a couple of close ups, with thumb to illustrate the scale.
Here it is almost finished, I don't have a brooch back to finish it off with. (Oh and this is a short scarf I'm working on at the moment, I've also almost finished a Chevron cardigan I started a couple of weeks ago, I've finished it enough to wear it I just want to make it a bit longer, I forgot to take a photo of it!)


Close, close up!

The most important thing I realised today was that to relax is not enough. To create properly and connect with your ideas and what you want to do you need to be able to clear your mind to allow space for the ideas to flow into. And this makes timetabling 'creative time' a bit tricky.
Obviously for me I need to find a way to clear my mind of the day to day rubble to allow my imagination space to "percolate' (It is a bit like a coffee dripper, my imagination has to flow through all the things in my head until it forms a creative puddle, hopefully into some sort of "cup" and not a messy puddle!)
Oh gosh! I just realised it's not sunday anymore no wonder I'm a bit tired it's after 1am!

8 comments:

Sarah said...

Lovely embroidery, the brooch will look great once it's finished. And I agree with the bit about "creative time". I don't really have any time to do anything creative for fun these days and I think I would go crazy if I didn't do art at school.

Jacinta said...

What a gorgeous brooch! Definitely worth a lie down if that was the result! It's lovely.
Have you heard of The Artist's Way? They do an exercise called morning pages that are intended to remove all the 'unnecessary' stuff from your mind and allow for clearer creativity. As you said though, it all takes time...

fifi said...

That is SO sweet!

You seem to get such a lot of craft made...brooches, shawls, scarves...unstoppable!


yes, I look forward to be able to clear my head. Soon I hope.

flossy-p said...

That's the sweetest, most tiny and cute embroidery I think I've ever seen! Well Done.

P.S. Thanks so much for sharing your story of changing your name, feeling as though you'd lost yourself. It's a big decision isn't it? I'm so glad we live in an age where we are free to make these choices though. :)
Anyway, Thanks so much, it's great to have different people's experiences and wisdom to give me more to think through when making this decision. :)

Anja said...

Lovely!!!

Oh, I need to clear my head as well.

Melanie Gray Augustin said...

That's really sweet. With those lovely frayed edges, it's like a little postage stamp.

I totally agree about finding time not only for "creative time" but also time to let those ideas flow. Like One Little Acorn, I started on The Artist's Way, and really should get back to it.

Oh, and yes, I'm still around, been busy unpacking, napping and socialising, not having the baby yet :)

fifi said...

oh, I have to send you something, have you read the "Right To See" report.I'll send you the link, abiout the arts and visual learning etc. fabulous.
I'm just setting it up as compulsory reading for my primary ed students.
f
x

urban craft said...

This is totally my favorite little flower and bee! Well done!