My Creative Space – 5.30am

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Almost every Thursday morning I am woken around 5 by the noise of the rubbish trucks. As soon as I hear that familiar rumble and clunk I immediately feel a rush of addrenalin and panic as I think “Did we put out the rubbish bins?”. Every Thursday – without fail, and I think we have forgotten to put out the bins maybe twice in the last ten years. So I immediately remember “yes, we did” but by then I am awake and my nerves are fried. This morning, instead of lying in bed for an hour cursing the stupid rubbish trucks, I got up, made a cup of tea and sat out on the couch and wrote 1500 words. Brilliant.

I’m leaving my trashy adult novel for the time being and have started some writing for the Middle Reader age group which is the 7-12 year olds. I am writing fast and furious and the ideas are flowing. This is surely the best bit of the process – characters unravel and situations appear on the page seemingly from nowhere. I guess my Muse was sipping rooibos on the couch next to me this a.m.

(Many) More creative spaces over at Kirsty’s place.

My Creative Space + Links

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Kokeshi dolls slowly but surely covering the ironing board.

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Reprinting my moon print on the gocco. One more colour to go. (more creative spaces over at Kirst’s place)

I have been pleasantly busy with all my artwork at the moment. Printing, sewing, painting, designing, drawing. It’s all wonderful fun but it takes up the time I would otherwise dedicate to writing a coherent blog post.

But lots of things are making me go “weee!” including:

1. Fiona’s doll pattern. The dolls are so beautiful – and the pattern is a joy in itself.

2. Pip. Always Pip. And her fabulous list of gocco links.

3. Stephanie’s tooth fairy pillow from 2005 (ah, the good ol’ days) because Amelia’s tooth is finally in need of a tooth fairy pillow.

4. This video of the 2nd largest aquarium tank in the world. But you know? Click on it and watch it in a larger version – if not full screen.

(via we love you so)

5. Looking up photographs of the Loch Ness Monster for the wee bairns only to find a National Geographic (old) news article about the theory that the sighting of Nessie in 1933 may have been a circus elephant! Too cool.

6. Celeriac. I have fallen in love with the ugliest vegetable on the planet.

My Creative Space – sunshine

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After a huge amount of rain (for Melbourne anyway) in the last 24 hours we now have lovely clear sunshine spilling in our windows. The studio is especially good on such mornings – lots of light and floorboards. I have already done some gocco printing and now have to wait patiently for my new supplies to arrive next week. This week I have also been painting more wooden dolls (I am especially happy with the little traditional shaped doll in her red stripes) and sewing the skirts on rabbits.

I have hit a bit of a roadblock with the wooden dolls. I have used water based inks to paint them which is crazy, I know, but I have had previous experience with these inks (Art Spectrum’s Artists’ Pigment Ink) and they have always dried with a kind of plasticky, water resistant finished. I expected the inks to dry similarly on the dolls so I could coat them in a varnish to seal them and finish them off… unfortunately when I started to paint on the varnish (Atelier’s Satin Medium and Varnish) the inks ran… I am hoping I can find some kind of spray on finish which will help waterproof and seal the dolls. Off to the art shop for advice!

My Creative Space

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School is back and Lily has decided to start afternoon napping again which is kind of her, so I am getting a little bit of creative time:

1) painting wooden dolls

2) getting back to those marshmallow bunnies

3) piling stuff on my sewing table

4) reading “On Writing” by Stephen King but not actually doing too much writing. It’s good! I haven’t read much SK before but even his memoir is a page-turner.