Week 8 Black and White 365 Challenge

50 Steep stairs

51 Workshop shelving

52 Fallen toy soldiers

53 Gloves

54 Stairs

55 Wire netting

56 Barbering

Another rainy week so I spent it mostly back in the workshop again. 

The highlight of my week was when my husband and I went in as models for my son in his barbering course. That was a lot of fun. The barbering photo was shot with my cell phone (a Samsung Galaxy J5 Prime) as I didn't take my camera out with me that day. All the rest were shot with my camera as usual.

I'm going to be taking a little break from shooting for a week or two while I have other house related projects going on. There just aren't enough daylight hours in the day at the moment, especially as it's winter here. 

Have a great week :)

The Way We Use Our Spaces

Recently I've been wondering whether we really still have too much stuff or whether some of the cluttered feeling in our house comes more from a misuse of our available space and a lack of storage where it's needed.

Hubby, when he's home, spends most of his time between his workshop and his office off the lounge. Which to be honest is a bit of an eyesore with not enough storage space.(see pic below) . 

Did I say, ' a bit of an eyesore?'

I spend my daytime hours when I'm at home either at my desk, which is also in the lounge, or in the kitchen, laundry, or garden. Our current office spaces don't have any real storage. Hubby has a few drawers, otherwise everything's all over his desk and I have files stuck in boxes in a cupboard off the lounge that are a pain to get into when you need something in a hurry and a few art supplies stashed in a drawer in the spare room.

The picture below is of the office space we built for me in a corner of the dining room just after we moved here. Hubby built my desk for me. It had lots of positives like great lighting, lots of space and close to the kitchen for working while keeping an eye on things cooking but unfortunately the cold draft from people going in and out the back door (out of sight to the right of this picture) and the constant disturbances from everyone coming and going decided the fate of this office space. So I ended up moving into a dark, out of the way corner of the lounge for the last year or so. 

Looks great but has too much through traffic and cold drafts in winter.

Another problem has been a lack of linen storage. The previous owners of our house had removed the linen cupboard from the hallway and extended the bathroom into the space. They had then created a cupboard in a corner of the dining room, I suppose to replace the missing linen cupboard, but it's in a really silly place and the door opens over the doorway into the lounge. Blocking traffic flow through and around the main hub of the house. It turns out that they must have built the whole wall between the lounge and dining area as it doesn't show on the original house plans at all and after removing the wallpaper from the wall you can see that that whole section of wall has all new wall linings. Effectively they took an open plan house and partitioned it all off. 

Our problems; 

• We had a cluttered lounge filled with office stuff and overflow from my daughter's room. 
• A large master bedroom space with more floor space and storage than we needed and all the best but unused light.
• My daughter's room with not enough closet space or floor space to play and so her things were spilling into other areas of our house. 
• We also had no linen cupboard as the people that lived here before us thought it was a good idea to take it out and extend the bathroom and then partition up the lounge and dining areas and squeeze a cupboard into a random corner. 
• No proper storage for office related things and a messy office just by the front door and my desk in a dark corner.

Our solutions;

• Hubby and I decided to swap bedrooms with our daughter. We gave up the master bedroom to her as she has far more need of the storage and floor space in her room for playing and dancing with her friends than we needed just for sleeping. We had the largest room with the best natural light streaming though huge windows and yet the room remained empty most of the day. All that light and space was wasted on us. Now she has storage for all her books and toys/board games. She has plenty of floor space to spread out with her friends and the low winter sunlight in the room makes it a sun filled, warm, pleasant place to be for her. She loves it!
• We moved our bed into the spare room. It has ample space for us and a great large wardrobe so we haven't lost any space. It's on the South West side of the house so we don't get much sunlight until the late afternoon but that's fine because we're rarely in there during the day.
• Our daughter's bedroom we've turned into an office, it only has a single wardrobe so we've converted that into the linen cupboard. All the towels and spare sheets are in there and it's close to all the bedrooms and the bathroom where we need it.
• The office space is large enough to fit two desks and some shelving with room to spare, so all the files I have stashed in boxes will have homes as soon as I pick up another shelf unit. That also means that Hubby's desk can be cleaned up.
• Which leaves the lounge. I haven't taken a picture in there yet as I've got a large pile of things to be donated growing in there at the moment. I can also say that we've moved our home library in there too (it was in the spare room before) and it's so much better having the books near a comfy, well lit, place to read them.

So it looks like we had a mixture of problems. Some of it was due to too much stuff but a good bit more of it was due to us not thinking about how we could better make use of our available space.

The master bedroom doesn't have to be used just for the adults. I'm not sure where the idea came from that we have to have the largest bedroom in the house but it seems a waste of space to me. If I want some quiet time I can go to my room, lie on the bed and read or listen to music. I don't need loads of space for that. I've also discovered that if the kids have a nice space of their own to be in, they're more likely to spend their time in it. So the lounge is then quiet anyway. 

If you have a spare room you can turn into your office, do it!

This removes all the work thoughts to that room, where you can walk out, shut the door and leave them when you need a break. Having the office in the lounge just encourages working at stupid o'clock or when you should be having family time.

Storage is best placed where you need it. Linens and towels near the rooms you use them in. Files and office stuff in the office. Your home library is best placed near a comfy chair and a window for good light to read by.

Week 4 Black And White 365 Challenge

Day 22 Tree Fern

Day 23 Interior Painting

The undercoat is on the walls and I thought I'd shoot it while waiting for the paint to dry. Better than watching it I guess :) 

Hubby and I decided to go against the norm this week. We moved out of our 'master bedroom' (above pic) and once we had finished painting we moved our daughter in there instead. Our daughter's room always seemed cluttered and messy and her stuff was in all the rooms all over the house. She only had a single wardrobe in her room so there was never much room to store more than her clothes in there. Moving her into the largest bedroom with the best storage seemed like a good idea. It's not like hubby and I were holding regular gymnastics competitions and dance parties in there with lots of other friends like she does. Now all of her toys and things have a space in her room and she has room to move. We also have a much clearer idea of what things she has now that everything's in one place. Which is making things easier to sort through. The room also has lots of natural light and lovely winter sunshine. Perfect for someone that spends a lot of daylight hours in their room, not so much for those of us that only see it in the dark as we stumble to bed lol.

This has had a flow on effect throughout the house. The lounge is now less cluttered. The messy office that was just off the lounge is now moving into my daughter's old room. Which gives us plenty of space for two desks and I'll even have room for some shelving for files that I didn't have before. So that's sorted out another storage problem too. There's also the added bonus of being able to close the door on the office and know we've finished for the day. No more sneaking in a bit more work before bed because we can see the work beckoning us from across the lounge.

Hubby and I are happy with the smaller room, all our stuff fits fine and we still have a large wardrobe space so we haven't really lost anything out of the move, though to be fair, all the upstairs bedrooms can comfortably fit a kingsize bed so it's not like we moved into a closet.

It's been a win, win, win all round!

Day 24 Wood Texture

Day 25 Monarch Butterfly

Day 26 Sparrow

Day 27 Palm Shadows

Day 28 Busy Bee

I guess that's it for another busy week.

Have a great week :)

Finding Peace in the Mayhem Part 2

"The easiest way to organize your stuff is to get rid of most of it" ~ The Minimalists

Way back in October last year I posted about trying to keep my art and craft supplies under control without being "an organized hoarder". It's taken me eight months of steadily going through things, assessing and reassessing them, to finally feel like I have it all at a level I am comfortable with. 

In fact we sold the bookcase in the picture above along with another large pine bookcase and a pine sideboard this week and I love the extra space we have without them. 

The picture below is of the same wall minus the white bookcase. I've started a family photo wall there to display some of the pics that would otherwise rarely see the light of day. I still have some other photos to add but I haven't picked up frames for them yet. The small three drawer storage unit doubles as a charging station for our mobiles as well as storing place-mats, tablecloths, etc for the dining table. It's small but efficient.

The cookbooks that used to live on the white bookcase now live in a new space I created in the kitchen when I donated a few kitchen appliances and things we no longer used.

I went through all the box files and shredded a lot of the unnecessary paperwork and just kept the essentials. This took longer than I expected but I can now store the two box files that are left in a cupboard in a different room.They're still easily accessible but now live out of sight.

The photography magazines are no longer a problem. I put some into the collage box for cutting up (my daughter and her friends love the animal pictures in them) and I no longer purchase photography magazines unless there's a really, really, interesting article in them that I can't find online. I discovered that I could find a lot of really great information online and some of the magazines share their articles online too.

I still accept the home and garden magazines that mum gives me and I sometimes buy one if I see something I like. I've created a series of mood boards for our house in a hard-covered exercise book. I cut tabs down the side and made separate areas for the different rooms that I'm going to be working on. I then glue in any pictures, paint samples or articles that appeal to me for those rooms. See images below.

This has made it so much easier for me to pin down a style that I like and I don't have to wade through stacks of magazines trying to find an idea I liked a few weeks ago. The rest of the magazines go into the collage box.

As for the art supplies that were all on the shelves. I've really pared back on them. I only kept the paints, pens and pencils etc that I used regularly and I gave my daughter the felt tip pens and some gel pens that I didn't use much if at all. My daughter and her friends color in their adult coloring books with them.

Most of my art supplies now fit in a secret compartment I had my hubby build into my desk. (see pic below) Clockwise from the top we have my back up external drive for my photos, my phone charger cord, 3 pencil cases all inside 1 yellow one. I use these when I'm going away somewhere and want to take art supplies with me. I can build 3 different kits for travel. The yellow pencil case holds my small watercolor kit, brushes, watercolor pencils and a pencil for sketching. The tartan case (not visible) holds my sketching stuff and normal colored pencils. The blue case (not visible) holds my gel pens and whatever else appeals to me for working in my journals. Under the pencil cases is some bluetack, then comes my watercolor paints, below that is a small tin with business cards in it, below that is my gel pens, next to that are some markers and pens I sketch with, then a cluttered box of miscellaneous office supplies, some envelopes and supermarket sellers cards on top, then above we have my mini camera flash and a box of mints, above that is a box of memory cards, my headphones, a charger cable for my Sony Walkman and some usb drives, then we're back to the hard drive. In the centre are 3 lettering stencils that my daughter uses for school projects and a couple of bookmarks, also my compass set. 

When my desk top is down you wouldn't even know that compartment was there. (see pic below) On my desk top lives the phone, a pencil cup and pad for messages etc. My camera lives here mostly and in the right hand corner I have my colored pencils, paintbrushes and watercolor pencils. I also usually keep my work diary here but I had it in my bag when this pic was taken. My tablet doesn't usually live here but it was charging at the time of the photo. I also have a small statue of Guanyin near my pencils. (not sure if you can see it in the photo) Also not shown in these photos are my acrylic paints, art paper and journals storage. They're still a work in progress and I'll show you that some other time. 

I have also pared down all my art books. I cheated a little in this though. I gave them all to my mother-in-law. She has a large studio and a large collection of art books that she regularly lends out to friends and family. I figured if they lived there they would be used and appreciated more than if they lived on my shelf gathering dust in between occasional uses. I also make frequent use of our local library which saves me having to purchase art books.

So as you can see I've really had a good clean out of my art supplies, books, magazines, and old bills and have a much cleaner and clearer space to work in. I could probably still pare down the stuff in the miscellaneous office supply box but it's not bothering me and I do use what's in there.

My Favorite Apps

My laptop desktop is always clear and uncluttered, usually with an inspirational quote of some sort on it.

This is a post I've been wanting to write for a while and today is the day. 

 I thought I'd share with you a couple of apps that I really love. They've really changed the way I work, in good ways and I thought I would share them here so you can maybe benefit from them too. I have no affiliation to any of these sites or apps and am not making any money from recommending them to you. 

Now that's all out of the way, my first favorite app is Feedly.  

Feedly is a marvelous tool for keeping all of your favorite blogs, websites, podcasts, Youtube channels and RSS feeds altogether and it has totally changed the way I work. There are probably other apps out there that do a similar job but this is one I saw mentioned in a favorite blog once a few years ago and after giving it a try I really liked it so have never felt the need to try something else.

This app has allowed me to keep all of my favorite friends blogs, photography, art, tiny house, Buddhist, and minimalism blogs together in one place. Where before I used to have bookmarks all over my Chrome toolbar I now have just one. 

The app allows you to customize the layout, so I have different categories set up on the left hand side with the various blogs listed inside. On the right hand side you can have the view set up as title only, magazine or cards. I like mine set to card view. See above. They show as three cards across each with a picture and a short snippet of the blog post. I find this most helpful when I declutter my feeds. 

Which I'm actually well overdue to do now. 

As with anywhere else clutter can accumulate here if you don't keep an eye on things and with the kids being home for the school holidays I just haven't had an opportunity to do so yet. On top of that I've added 4 new bloggers in the last couple of days that sound interesting but have added a lot of unread older posts to the list most of which I probably won't read. So 900+ posts is way, way, way more than I usually have listed there.

I find that the secret to keeping it all under control and down to a healthy limit is to go through each section monthly/bi-monthly (depending on the need) and check out whose blogs I've stopped reading and then remove them from the list. I haven't done this with the themes/subjects for a few months and I know that I have a lot of photography themes/subjects I'm no longer interested in and as much as I love tiny houses, I only read the posts that catch my eye. So most of those posts will disappear quickly too.

I love that I can read posts from Feedly on my phone when waiting at the doctors and I especially love to curl up with Feedly on my tablet on a cold and rainy day. When I'm really in the mood to read blogs I hate it when I quickly run out of posts to read so I try to keep my limit to no more than 100 unread posts total at any one time. This is spread over all topics and gives me some variety. 

This brings me to my other favorite app, Evernote. 

I first found Evernote when I was going through the Google Play Store looking for a note taking app. I downloaded a couple that just didn't work for me before I spotted Evernote mentioned in the 'similar apps' section at the bottom of one of the pages. I downloaded it and haven't looked back. 

Evernote is set up as a series of notebooks (see above) where you can keep any webpages, notes, PDF files, copies of bills, photographs etc. You get a 60 mb upload limit each month on the free version which I'm using at the moment. In the near future I'm looking at upgrading to Evernote Plus. It costs $29.99 a year and has a 1 gig upload limit per month.  There is also Evernote Premium which costs $59.99 a year and has a 10 gig monthly upload limit but that is geared more towards business users and not so useful to me at the moment. See the picture below for more details on the differences between the three versions.

 Evernote has also helped to streamline my Chrome toolbar. Now any web pages that I need to refer back to are 'clipped' to Evernote where I can access them easily later from my laptop, tablet or phone.  I can type in my own notes. Make shopping lists. I can save copies of bills to Evernote so I can keep the paper clutter to a minimum. I keep Blog posts from Feedly that really speak to me 'clipped into a notebook in Evernote. The two apps really compliment each other well.

Both of these apps have helped me to cut down on paper clutter and keep my computer desktop clear and my Chrome bookmarks down to a minimal level. My Feedly is usually easily kept under control with a bit of regular editing as I read. You just happened to catch me on a really bad day today ;) 

Anyway, I'm off to edit Feedly now while the kids are still busy.

Have a great week :)

Finding peace in the mayhem

Lately I've been following Joshua and Ryan the minimalists on their Instagram 31 day autumn clean out here and I've really been enjoying reading their tips on minimalism.

On day 13 two sentences really stand out for me 

 "The easiest way to organize your stuff is to get rid of most of it."

"Ultimately, organizing is nothing more than well planned hoarding."

I have to say here that I'm guilty of organizing and reorganizing my art and craft supplies and other areas of our home. In the past year I purged art supplies before we moved and then again a couple of months ago but it seems that it needs to be done again and much as I'd love to purge everything and have nothing to organize and continually tidy, I do love my hobbies and they come with a certain amount of stuff. Sometimes determining which stuff should be kept and which stuff isn't really needed is difficult.

As you can see in the picture above, I try to keep the clutter down as much as possible and create peaceful pauses in between the mayhem on the other shelves but somehow the shelves become overfull and the peaceful shelf starts to look like a great place to put the over-spill. (I should mention here that there are another two levels of shelves below this that are full of box files and paints. I couldn't fit them in the picture because of the dining table but the table doesn't disguise the mess in the shelves above) 

Part of the problem could be that I'm storing my cookbooks in one of the shelves now when I used to have them stored in the kitchen at our last house. Unfortunately I have nowhere to do that in the kitchen here, yet. 

Another part of the problem is having no spare shelves to put new art supplies when they come into the house. The 'one in one out' approach doesn't really work if, like me you buy a new tube of paint or art pad etc before your old one runs out so that it's there ready when you need it.  

Magazines are also becoming a bit of a problem on my shelves. I only buy 2 Photography magazines, one is monthly and the other bi-monthly, but I keep them for a while and Mum reads them too before they get cut up and used for collages and school projects. I started pulling out useful Photoshop tutorials and keeping those in clear file folders but as you can see on the top shelf on the left, I've collected far more files than I intended to so they too have become another area that needs to be sorted through. They've even displaced some of my photography books now. 

The magazines in the top right shelf are house and garden themed and were given to me by Mum when she had finished with them. We're currently doing up our house so these are a great source of ideas for now. Eventually they'll join the other magazines in the box for cutting up.

Add to all of this the seemingly continuous flow of paperwork coming from my children's schools and the steady stream of bills and other assorted junk mail that comes across my desk and it seems increasingly hard to find peace in the mayhem.

So, somehow I have to find the middle path between total clear-out and organized hoarding before I run out of space to work :D

I'll let you know how that works out. Have a great week :)

Big Life Changes

The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, 

move with it, and join the dance ~ Alan Watts

I can't believe how fast time has flown by since I last posted here in November 2013! Such a lot has happened in that time but I'm very glad it all has.

Shortly after my last blog post my husband was told that the company he had worked for, for the last 20 years was being sold. We were okay with that as it had been sold a couple of times before. However this time turned out to be different. Early in 2014 the company was sold to a group that only wanted the recipes and brands but not the buildings or the 120 odd people that worked there. My husband was okay with that at the time. He felt he was stuck in a rut and fancied a change of career. A couple of months down the road though it started to get difficult when Hubby still hadn't found work and we then decided to sell our house and move into the city as the commute from our small town was becoming too expensive. So we tided up our house and put some things in storage to make the house look more saleable and waited and house hunted. I was kind of excited, I'm a Gemini and love change, so the prospect of pastures new invigorated me. A few months later though the strain of keeping the house tidy for viewings and worrying about finding somewhere else to live for the 6 of us became very stressful. I couldn't focus on my art and I lost all enthusiasm for photography. I had a creative death. Nothing interested me and I just couldn't rekindle my creativity. So all posts stopped here. Thankfully Hubby had found work but he'd dropped a third of his pay in the process which made the new longer commute seem even more expensive. We needed to move and fast! As for house hunting, I hated it! The houses we liked sold before we could do anything and ours sat waiting for the right buyer. Looking back now I can see that I was depressed. I couldn't see a way forward at all but it worked out in the end. Our house finally sold and we moved on Halloween.

In the end we didn't buy in the city, we found a nice house in a bigger town with just a short drive to Hubby's new work. The house is old and needs updating but we've made a start and it's now feeling like home. The pic above is of my new work space in my dining room. The table we bought cheap and sanded it down and refinished it.

The corner desk was built by hubby and finished by me. I love it! I have loads of light but without direct sunlight shining on my workspace.

On the creative front, I bought a new camera, an Olympus OMD EM5 and I've started to come out of my creative slump. It has taken a while though. To further my recovery I've started a 365 photo project with a new theme each week. I'm in my 4th week and things are looking up.

Art and hobby supply cleanup part 3

The secret of happiness, you see, is not found in seeking more, but in developing the capacity to enjoy less ~ Socrates

This is the last part of my supply clean out and the toughest for me. The scrapbooking stuff, tools and misc stuff. As I mentioned in my last post, scrapbooking is my kryptonite. I collect ephemera and papers etc but I don't end up using them and have a hard time parting with them because they're pretty and they might come in useful one day. It's also made more difficult by the fact that I also like to make mixed media collages which can also use some of these things. The thought of separating the two is a headache on it's own.

Something that makes it a bit easier to part with them though is copyright. Printed paper, other people's photographs, fabrics and I'm sure some postage stamps have some kind of copyright protection on them. I may be able to use them in personal images but maybe not in images I want to sell. (It looks like a minefield when you look for information online). I'm not 100% sure on how this all works together when you add these items into your mixed media work but I prefer to err on the side of caution and create my own textures and background images either photographically, hand painted by me, or created in photoshop or illustrator by me. This all takes extra time and effort but at the end of the day I know that when I put an image online, I created everything myself so I don't have to worry about someone else's copyright. This in the end, made the paper collection much easier to part with.

As for the rest, it was time to roll up my sleeves and start going through the boxes.

• I love old postage stamps and will keep them for use in my private work in my journals and smaller canvases.
• I'm keeping the lino pieces and carving tools. The only reason I haven't used them yet is that I can't make up my mind on the logo I'm trying to create. I'd like to be able to print my logo on things. So far I've created lots of different logos and have lots of ideas for new ones but I just can't seem to be satisfied with any of them. I'm too fussy I guess or fickle maybe?
• The playing cards are a bit like the scrapbooking stuff really, I want to try making ATCs (Artist trading cards), but have never gotten around to it. On the plus side they don't take up much room and we could always play with them. I've kept them for now with a six month expiry date on them. If I don't use them before the six months are up then out they'll go.
• The ink and stamps are used mostly by my daughter and occasionally by me. (Copyright again in my mind). I've found them a new box and put them where my daughter can easily reach them.
• The lettering stencils, plastic set squares, protractors, and rulers etc, I've stored in a desktop file box. Much easier to reach and keep tidy. (See image above).
• The wire and solder has moved down to the garage where the soldering iron and vice etc are. My son wants to try making metal sculptures out of scrap metal and bolts and my hubby has agreed to help him with this. 
• I've kept the buttons and various paper fasteners. They might be useful when I start making my own journals.
• One other large thing that I got rid of was an old wooden table that I was using sometimes when working on larger projects. It had a chipboard top that water had ruined and was too low to work on without getting a sore back. It also took up a lot of space when I wasn't using it. This will be replaced by a plastic topped table that folds away for storage. It will save space and my back. I'm lucky our town is holding it's annual inorganic collection at the moment. (This is where the council allows us to put old furniture and appliances out at the kerb for collection for free. Many people drive around the neighborhood and pick up free bargain furniture and the council cleans up what is left at the end of the week).
• Everything else left, tools and metal fastenings mainly, I've put into a large plastic tool caddy on wheels. This gets them out of the way but easily moved to where I need them.

That seems to be the bulk of it all sorted out now. I've cleared a lot of space (magazines and scrapbooking papers mainly plus the table and a few canvases), and organized what's left so that the people that use it the most have the best access to it. It looks much better now. In six months I'll review a couple of things and maybe prune things a little more but for now I'm happy with the results.

I'll finish by saying that it's well worth the effort to go through your art and craft supplies every now and again. You may find that like me you have been storing a lot of supplies for a hobby that no longer interests you or one that you will never start. It's also amazing how many old broken rubber bands and solid liquids in bottles and other broken things that you may find too.

Have a great week :)

Art and hobby supply cleanup part 2

Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler ~ Albert Einstein

In the first part of my art and hobby supply clean-out I went through the 'easy' stuff first, such as the hobby stuff I knew I wouldn't be using again and the photography and computing stuff that I knew wouldn't cause me too much trouble. Tip- Anytime I know I've got 'sentimental' or ' I'm sure it will be useful when I do decide to do this hobby someday' type clutter I work through the easy stuff first. That way I get the positives of seeing an easily cleaned and organized space to help boost my confidence in working on the harder more sentimental stuff later. If I started with the hard stuff first I'd keep things I don't need, make bad decisions and end up getting discouraged and not wanting to continue. Start easy. Start small.

• Art Books. I share a love of art and an art space with my two children so the art book section needed to be looked through by all of us. We have a number of beginner 'how to draw' books that used to belong to my son before his skills outgrew them. However, my daughter is now starting to enjoy using them so they are all staying for now along with two origami books that she also enjoys. There was only one book in this section that no-one wanted so out it went. I'm new to watercolor and my son draws cartoon characters and usually colors them in pencil but has expressed an interest in trying to color them with watercolor instead. So it makes sense to keep these books and the books on how to draw animated figures. The book on perspective is also staying, as is the calligraphy book and my daughter's favorite book on using rubber stamps. The woodblock printing book also got a reprieve as my husband was interested in it. He's the woodworker in our family.

• Scrapbooking. This left the largest section of books on scrapbooking. Scrapbooking is a particularly bad area for me. It's my kryptonite. I really like the idea of scrapbooking. I love looking through and collecting the goodies that go hand in hand with this hobby but that's as far as it ever goes for me. I collect papers and supplies and books on this subject in the hopes that one day I may give it a go but honestly I'm fooling myself. If I was really going to start working with this stuff I would have already. So as hard as it feels to part with these books, I'm going to. Now you might be thinking that I should keep these books, that I might use them now that I know they are being wasted but I find them to be a nagging distraction. Whenever my eyes glide over the art books looking for inspiration or a new technique, my eyes catch on these books and the little voice in my head says "What a waste of money. Why did you buy these books you don't need? You could have bought blah blah with the money you wasted on these books!" and then I feel bad instead of excited and inspired. I guess it's like walking into a cluttered room to look for something and your brain scolding and nagging you for not cleaning up the mess. It's unpleasant and distracting from the people and things that really do matter, besides, there are enough people in the world shaking your confidence without you doing it to yourself too.

• Art journaling. Art journaling is something I really do enjoy so I've kept all of those books and wouldn't mind adding a few more to that section. I love looking through other people's journals. You get to peek into their inner world for a little while. I guess this is why some of my all time favorite photographers are street photographers. They capture little glimpses into other people's lives and worlds. I've also kept the book on how to bind your own handmade journals. I haven't made one yet but I hope to soon. 

• Magazines. This brings me to the magazines. I've kept stacks of different types of magazines to use in collages etc but they're getting in the way and they weigh a ton.(most of them were given to me so at least I didn't lose money here) I'm halving them for now and may reduce the number again if there's still too many.

• Paints.This is one area I'm not too bad in. My watercolor paints are all fairly new and in good condition as are the brushes. Even my acrylic paints and brushes are good so just a quick tidy around and a new container for the paints worked a treat. I've created space in a cupboard for the paints, gesso and other chemicals etc. Somewhere safe and out of sight.

• Pens. I replaced my gel pens and felt tip pens recently so they're all okay. I did change my storage of them to horizontal instead of vertical though because I read somewhere recently that they work for longer if you store them that way. Apparently the nibs can dry out if they are stored point up and they could leak if stored point down. So horizontal seems the way to go. I'm now storing my tech pens this way too.

• Colored pencils. All of my colored pencils are in good condition and I don't have huge sets as I don't use them a huge amount. I changed their storage to a pencil tin made from an old cocoa tin wrapped in wallpaper scraps. (See picture above)

• Paper and journals. The spare journals are new. I buy a couple ahead before I finish the old ones incase they don't have what I want in stock when I want to buy them. I decided to store the watercolor paper inside the tilt-top box I paint on instead of on a shelf. It just means that it's closer to hand when I want to use it.

• Canvases. My daughter painted on some of the spare canvases that I had which only left two 12" square canvases to store. I'm planning a couple of inspirational paintings that will look great on the wall above my desk area. From now on I'll only be buying canvases as I need them. I want to paint bigger on canvas but don't want to be storing oversized canvases in my lounge/art space. With kids and a dog it would be too easy for them to get damaged.

I think that's enough tidying for today :)

Have a great week :)

Art and hobby supply cleanup part 1

“Let your boat of life be light, packed with only what you need – a homely home and simple pleasures, one or two friends, 

worth the name, someone to love and someone to love you, a cat, a dog, and a pipe or two, enough to eat and enough to wear,

 and a little more than enough to drink; for thirst is a dangerous thing.” ~Jerome K. Jerome

Over the past couple of years I've been busy decluttering our home. I've gone through every cupboard and wardrobe, every bedroom and bathroom and every bookcase in our house at least twice. Removing all the unused, ill-fitting and unwanted items I could find. Now that I've gotten rid of all of the 'easy' stuff such as outgrown toys, clothes and books I'm now left with the 'harder' stuff. Children's artwork, sentimental items and the art and craft supplies. 

I've avoided going through the art and craft supplies up until this point because I figured that everything in there was important and useful and so there would be no point in going through it all unnecessarily. I mean really, who's heard of an artist minimizing their art supplies? It just doesn't happen does it? Artist's are known to be messy and have large collections of books and supplies, it's in their nature right? Well, that's what I thought so the idea of sorting through this stuff was pushed to the back of my mind and I tried to ignore the quiet little voice that said "Oi, wait a minute!"

That was, until a couple of weeks ago when I finally took a good look around our lounge/art space and realized that all of the 'clutter' in the room wasn't regular household clutter. It was art and hobby supplies and some of it hadn't been used in years. It was taking up valuable work and storage space so something had to be done.

• I had two shelves in my bookcase filled with painting, art, photography and cross-stitch patterns and computing books. Also my finished journals.
• I had loads of cross-stitch supplies. Spare material, tons of threads in plastic boxes with a bag to fit them in, bags for 'current' projects and the threads for them, and loads of finished designs waiting to be framed on one shelf.
• I had acrylic paints, gesso, brushes, spare canvases and texture paste on another shelf.
• Watercolor paints in tubes and pans, brushes, watercolor paper, spare journals, and watercolor pencils on another shelf.
• Scrapbooking papers, assorted 3D embellishments, buttons, old postage stamps, old magazines, assorted paper for mixed media in various shapes, sizes and textures, wire, solder, tools, ink and stamps, lettering stencils, felt tip pens, gel pens, colored pencils, art pencils, charcoal, various tech pens, spray fixative, carving tools, lino pieces, picture frames, eyelet kit, packs of unopened playing cards for making ATCs, compass set, plastic triangles, flexi-curve, knives and cutting board and lots of other misc stuff.
• 2 cameras, film and digital and various bits to go with them, tripod etc.
• Lastly there is the computer side of things. The computer, scanner and printer, printer paper and also the drawing tablet etc.

Yikes! No wonder I felt like I was making no progress in cleaning up, I was ignoring a huge amount of stuff!

Then came the tricky part, what to keep and what to get rid of? I decided to start with the easy decisions first. All of my cross-stitch stuff hadn't been used in about 3 years and I have no plans to go back to it again. So I rang my sister-in-law and asked if she would like it, she has three daughters and said yes. Starting out in a new hobby is always expensive so if you can share what you have with family and friends it works out great all round.

• Never dump your unwanted supplies on people without asking first though. There's nothing worse than having a lot of stuff dumped on you when you don't actually need or want it. Always ask first.

Next came the photography stuff. This was easy as I got rid of a lot of spare bags and things when I sold my SLR a couple of years ago. I mostly use my Canon G11 now and occasionally my film SLR. I went through my photography books and pruned down to four favorites.

The computer stuff just required a tidy up of the printer trolley and photo paper and a quick dust around the rest. I sorted out a shelf on the trolley for the graphics tablet and spare drives etc. I only had one book on Photoshop and decided to keep it.

There ends the easy part. 

The art supplies and books are going to be much more difficult and I'm going to save that job for another day. I first need to decide what kind of art I like doing the most and what equipment I need to keep for that. I tend to work smaller now with only the occasional larger canvas. I'm also doing more with watercolor but I still like my acrylics so I have some soul searching to do that will ultimately help me decide what to keep.Wish me luck :)

Have a great week :)

A bright new future

Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful ~ William Morris

The image above was one of the break through moments I had recently while working in my pocket journal. I've been struggling for years with clutter and over the last couple of years I have really started to look at 'stuff ' in a different way. It took a long time though for me to realize that my stuff owned me more than I owned it. This may sound strange but I've found it to be true. My stuff rules my life. I have to pay for it when I buy it, then spend lots of time and/or money looking after it, and even then it's not finished with. I may have to pay someone to take it away, or spend time listing it to sell, or spend money dumping it or donating it. Then there is the inherited stuff that has the emotional ties to it, you can't just dump 'great whoevers' stuff can you? Not to mention wedding keepsakes, birthday presents and other gifts etc. Add being an artist into that mix and suddenly you have piles of art and craft stuff added to the house as well.  Don't get me wrong I'm not a hoarder like you see on tv with stuff piled to the ceiling and no room to walk around. We can see the floor in every room but the cupboards are full and there are lots of books, toys, art supplies etc stored in extra storage spaces around the house. The kitchen cupboards and drawers are full and I won't even mention the garage/workshop area.

I've had enough of clutter and I want to make some big changes starting from today. So from now on my blog is going to be a bit more of a mixture of topics. I hope you don't mind. I want this blog to be a record of my art learning and decluttering along with sharing some links to other interesting art and minimalism blogs and any tips and tricks I find along the way. I really enjoy these minimalism blogs Becoming Minimalist and Zen Habits and also Miss Minimalist and the art blogs that are listed here in the side bar in my favorite bloggers list. There are loads of other great blogs too but I haven't yet found an artist minimalist blog. I guess it is a hard niche to fill because you have this urge to declutter things but it can be hard not to collect things to add into your mixed media or other art works. I'm not sure if this will even work but I'm willing to give it a try. 

So I think with new beginnings should come a new blog title. Say goodbye to "My first artist's journal and blog" and say hello to "Simple Life, Simple Art"

Have a great week :)

Good Intentions

The road to hell is paved with good intentions

Have you ever noticed that when you are sure about something and make a statement about it, for example "Hopefully this will be the start of weekly posting from now on" that life has a way of making a liar out of you? It did for me lol. My last blog post was in July. I got as far as painting the boys birthday cards that I had drawn and then went down with a nasty case of flu. I spent a miserable week moping around the house and then another two weeks stuffed up with a head cold before it hit me with it's final blow and gave me a sinus infection. It's been a really nasty flu this year, everyone that I know that's had it, has had it for weeks with it morphing into various forms before they have finally gotten rid of it. Autumn and winter are usually my favorite seasons but this year I welcomed spring very gladly. Anyway, I'm back again and I'm going to post on here anytime I feel like it :D That should fix the life making a liar out of me problem lol.

The image above was painted today in my new Stillman and Birn Zeta sketchbook. I've never tried one of their books before but I love this one! I ordered it months ago and had to wait because the Zeta wasn't available here in New Zealand yet. It was well worth the wait. I love the smoothness of the paper for my pen work and the pen didn't bleed on the paper when I wrote, like it has in some other books. The paper didn't warp or buckle at all no matter how wet it got from the paints either. I think I have a new favorite journal. However, they don't make this journal in the 4" x 6" size that I prefer for my go everywhere pocket book so I think that when my small journal is finished I'll try the Stillman and Birn Alpha series out. I can't wait!

Speaking of my small journal, I've been working in it a lot while I've been sick but at the moment there's more writing than images in it. I had a couple of break through moments in this journal during my illness though. The image below was one of them. 

I realized that I wasn't anymore productive in my new large work space than I was before I got it. In fact I was probably less so. My huge desk seemed to be a clutter magnet and I had taken over way too much of the lounge. I also found that it made my art space very business like and I really needed it to be more fun and inspiring. Great for business type things but not so good for getting my mind into the creative play zone I need to draw and paint. I did learn that I prefer an "L-shaped" work space so I traded my large desk for a couple of smaller ones. Luckily I'd bought cheap 2nd hand so I didn't lose out on the deal. I've also worked out what work zones I need and what works for me. 

Work zone 1

My main work area. This is a 4' by 2' (1.2m x .6m) desk no higher than 29" (.73m) high so that I can use my angled work surface on the top for my watercolor paintings on flat sheets of paper. I work flat on the table top in my journals. For larger acrylic paintings I can use a table easel on the top. I have this situated at right angles to a window so that I have good light. I also have my paints and brushes etc on a shelf near by in work zone 3.

Work zone 2

My computer area. This forms the other half of my "L-shaped" work space. I pay the bills here, blog, photoshop, scan paintings etc from this desk. I have a shelf underneath to file things straight away, this helps to keep the clutter from this area from overflowing into my art space but ensures that I can find anything at a moments notice. This area also houses my scanner and graphics tablet on a wheeled trolley that My husband built for me. The desk is against the wall to cut down screen glare. The only thing here that doesn't really work for me is my chair, I really need to replace it. 

Work zone 3

My storage/thinking/relaxing zone. This area has a large cubby type bookcase where I store all my paints, brushes, art books, camera gear, spare canvases, craft supplies and finished works and journals. This is situated just a scoot on my wheeled office chair away from my other work spaces. Because I work in a space between the dining/kitchen and lounge rooms I have easy access to hot drinks or cold and a comfortable seating area to sit in while I sketch out plans or read through my art books. It's my storage/work and relaxation space. If I really want to chill out I can watch my tropical fish from this area.

That's my three work zones and they seem to be functioning a lot better now and I have the added bonus of more lounge space when family and friends come over.

Hope you all have a great week :)

I'm back

“Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.” 
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

I can't believe it's been nearly eight months since I last posted here. I was only meant to take a short two week break, maybe a month max but, things happen and here we are eight months later.

A lot of things have changed in my workspace. I'm still sharing the lounge but I invested in a good sized second hand desk and a cubby type bookshelf to store my growing collection of art and reference books. I still need to look for a decent office chair though. I also picked up a second hand medium sized wooden box with a tilt top lid to paint my watercolors on. The space inside it is handy for holding my desk sketch/idea book and small works in progress. I even managed to pick up a second hand three drawer mobile unit to store my art supplies in. I've put little trays in the top two drawers that I can pull out to use their contents when needed. Ideal for colored pencils, felt tip pens, gel pens etc. and it all tidies away to keep my desktop clutter free. Well it works in theory anyway, my desk now seems to be attracting school papers and bills etc instead. Grrr. The paperwork of life is such a pain.

Art wise nothing new has happened really. I haven't painted in a while. I started creating business cards and letterheads etc in Photoshop for my Zazzle store and that snowballed into opening a separate store for business items. Then I created a number of new photographic and computer generated designs for elsewhere in my store and that's kept me busy for months. Right now I have three boy's birthday card designs waiting to be painted and some more half designed cards for girls that I haven't quite got right yet. Once I've finished these designs I'll have them to paint too.

Elsewhere I've been going through our house again and getting rid of unnecessary clutter. This seems to be an ongoing process. Some things I donated, some things I sold, which paid for my desk, bookcase and mobile unit and some things I threw away. So between all this and keeping up with the kids I completely forgot about my blog.

I've decided to try to plan out my week a bit better and make sure I leave myself some painting time so it's not all full on computer work all week cos that gets tiring after a while. Perhaps alternating days will liven things up a bit. I've also got to get rid of this idea in my mind that if I don't produce a finished piece of art at the end of every art day that I've wasted my time. I'm not sure how many of you have the same nagging voice in your mind, but I find that it stops me enjoying painting when I'm forcing myself to up my output and sometimes it stops me from starting a piece of work. I need to relax more and just let it all flow out as it comes. My morning walks are always a good way to blow away the cobwebs and get new ideas coming. Time spent in nature is never a waste of time. Anyway, hopefully this will be the start of weekly posting from now on.

Take care and have a great week :)