Christmas Ornament Workshop at Inspire

...the first in a series of Get Your Artistic Groove on workshops

You've been to the craft fairs, you've seen the ornaments and you'd love to make one but don't know how….come join our two-hour workshop and learn how to make them yourself using polymer clay (lots of colours to choose from).

They make a great gift for your family and friends who are adding special, unique, one-of-a-kind ornaments to their collection.

$45 for two-hour class (includes instruction, materials and completed/baked ornaments to take with you.)

We'll take a 1/2 hour break while they cook and when you come back they'll be ready to pick up.

During the half hour break you have the option to create a gift card to go with it, create another ornament to take and bake or enjoy a hot cup of coffee and sweet treat across the street at Oma's and the coffee shop or head up to the Village Chippery for some yummy fish n chips.


Presented by Lindsey Henderson

Synthesis and clay

I struggled with this exercise from my Creativity, Innovation and Change course. I could see the individual pieces and how they work. I could see the whole. I just couldn't see how to put them together and relate it back to my experience with this course. I've spent all week thinking about this and started to stress about not meeting the deadline (today is Thursday) (fear of failure) I couldn't come up with anything. I had no ideas no visions in my head so IFF wasn't even working for me. But I kept trying to come up with something (tenacity).

Art Camp plan for feedback

As women we tend to take care of everything else around us before we even think about our own needs. But we actually need to take care of ourselves first so we CAN help those around us. Just like on an airplane….if there’s an emergency, we’re told to put on our own oxygen mask first before helping someone else. It may sound selfish but think about it…. If you’re travelling with children and you pass out from lack of oxygen while trying to help them first how can you help them at all?

All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up. ~Pablo Picasso

Junkyard Jewels

My humble offering to the "junkyard war" - an exercise from the Creativity, Innovation and Change course I'm taking. 

Background that lead me to create this.....

We currently have a big issue going on in my neighbourhood right now (which is turning into an environmental law suit) so I've been talking a lot about reducing our consumption of plastics and man-made things. 

In a nutshell...a company applied for a permit to dump contaminated waste in their old quarry site (sounds like a logical thing to do instead of just dumping it just any where). The problem is the site is RIGHT on top of an aquifer and a creek that runs into the lake just 1km away from the site. And the lake is, you guessed it, our water supply (oh, and this area was declared a water protection area 12 years ago by the government). 

The ministry of environment has approved their permit to dump stuff that contains some of the most toxic junk you can imagine. I researched each of the contaminates listed and most of them are chemicals used in plastics and oil products. 

I'm super upset about the permit being granted but after thinking about it more I realized we've actually all contributed to the problem. We drive our cars, buy pre-packaged stuff and we throw out so much waste it's no wonder there's a problem with needing places to dump our contaminated waste. 

We need to stop the issue here but we also need to really take a good look at the bigger picture so it doesn't keep getting worse. So, instead of throwing out all these "useless" bits and pieces (old watches I took apart, an old computer mouse and a bunch of other electronics....I think there's a cel phone in there) I put them together and created my junkyard jewels which hopefully will last for much longer an not become part of the problem.

I freakin' love this!

creative critter

Here's a great project I learned this summer. It starts with a couple of random blobs of paint and morphs into fun critters.

You can do this alone or with others which is really fun because then you add on to what the others start.

One your paper randomly paint a couple of blob shapes....they don't have to be any shape in particular just use fairly thin paint. Alternatively, you can use colour markers or pencils.....just get a couple of blobs onto your paper.

If you're working/playing with others pass your blobs to someone else to do the next step.

Next step: rotate the paper around until you find a form you can work with and add some eyes. Then outline the shapes using a black marker. Make it rough and fluid - keep your arms and hands relaxed. Then you can pass it on again (or keep working on it yourself) for the next person to add details. Keep adding details until you're happy with your critter. You can add some words to express how you're feeling or write a poem or add a quote. Pour your emotion into it so if you're feeling cranky make it a cranky critter. By the time you're done you won't feel so cranky anymore!

inspiration

I've collected a whole bunch of ideas and images to help give me inspiration. It's a big collection and I haven't really done much with it except collect. So, in my efforts to keep pushing myself, I'm taking the images and making my own versions. The more I do this the more practice I get which in turn makes my ability better. It may be rough, it may look simple, it may not be a work of art (it probably isn't) but it's something which is better than nothing.....

these are two of the pieces that inspired me

 




this is my version.... done using Photoshop and a tablet.

soapstone hearts and pendants

all of these have been carved by hand

jade hearts

ice sculpture

The owl is from the photo I took at the Brandt festival. The background photo is one Laura took in our front yard.

ooak angels

some of the angels I've made from polymer clay....


Special Ooak angels are 1 - 2 inches tall.

more of my paintings

road trip to the beaches in Sooke

Every trip to the beach presents different patterns and possibilities. Every day is different. The beach constantly changes. Waves, wind, other people, wildlife, rain and debris. Flotsam from the Japan tsunami is starting to wash ashore so we thought we'd take a trip and see if we could find any treasures. Nothing yet from Japan at Jordan Beach or French beach but still there's lots to see.....

Sunday afternoon in the conservatory

this is one of my paintings.... acrylic on canvas and mixed media

some of my Photoshop work

Teaching Photoshop over at the Shawnigan Lake School since September 2011 has inspired me to keep learning and practicing and playing with Photoshop...so I have more project ideas to share with the kids. I saw a camouflage image several months ago and thought I'd try and figure out how to recreate it. The nice thing about Photoshop is there are several ways to accomplish something and each project can be achieved in different ways at different times. This is what I came up with last night....

For the last couple of weeks we've been taking care of Cleo, a French bulldog, whose parents were on vacay. Lots of pictures later I decided to play with a couple of them to make it look like she was following them on their trip....fun images....

she has a good grasp of the absurd

playing with animation

collage created with another photo from the ashes.... this is my great grandmother Margaret Marie (MM) Ginge

took a walk on the beach...

tried to organize it.....

in the tuscan sky

ethereal
soaring
beautiful
warm
inspiring
calming
refreshing
life

springtime

a selection of photos taken today on a sunny March day....local textures

italian textures

textures seen in Italy....

1962 ~ a good year

images from Italy

A couple of years ago I had the great fortune to be able to travel to Italy to meet my daughter who had been travelling for several months. These are some images I captured while there (a few of several hundred).

stone wall in Tuscany

Seascape Soapstone

This project started with a 50lb block of soapstone.

Nugget of Truth

art from space

Cmdr Hadfield is a Canadian astronaut, scientist, photographer and artist. His photos of the planet are almost mind-blowing. Painterly and abstract these images serve as a reminder to us that the simplest images can be so beautiful. They also serve to remind us we NEED to take care of our home!

For more images from the ISS and Cmdr Hadfield check out his Twitter page

Fear of failing. Fear of creating

Most people's first reaction when they hear the words 'art' or 'creativity' is to say "I'm not artistic. I can't draw. I'm not creative." My response to that is baloney, I laugh in the face of the naysayers! I used to say exactly the same thing, and believed it for years. Now I AM an artist.

Everyone of us is creative, and at some point in our lives we were all artists. Remember the drawings we did every day as children? Bubble gum pink taffeta Princesses, fire breathing dragons, ancient mossy dinosaurs, our houses and families. They were beautiful and creative, and everyone knew exactly what we had drawn.

What is creativity?

Dictionary.com defines it like this:
cre·a·tiv·i·ty  [kree-ey-tiv-i-tee, kree-uh-]
noun
1. the state or quality of being creative.
2. the ability to transcend traditional ideas, rules, patterns,relationships, or the like, and to create meaningful newideas, forms, methods, interpretations, etc.; originality, progressiveness, or imagination.
3. the process by which one utilizes creative ability: Extensive reading stimulated his creativity.

In other words....

Back to basics

The other day I was looking for something to help me get back to some real basics with being creative. Still being in a serious block I needed some ideas and prompts to jump start me. I like the idea of combining art, doodles and quick sketches with words and writing. I've been keeping journals like this for years but didn't even realize that's what they were. I thought they were just notebooks I filled with notes, reminders and memos to help me remember day to day stuff. But when I look back at them I realize they're more than that and they already have my "perfect" combination of sketches and words and lots of doodles.