This week Darren and I discuss inspiration and following it’s lead.
Plus a quick check in on our current planners.
Creative blessings to you,
-di
YouTube Video
Monday Vlog – on a Tuesday
….and sharing on a Wednesday
A bit of a vlog update about my week of struggling through a hard day to new creative stirrings coming to be.
Here are my photos of that pesky, musk thistle I mention.
So, so beautiful but apparently quite the trouble maker.
The colors and texture of it is what drew me towards it. And why I took it’s photo.
It looks like something you would find on another planet.
And after my experiences with sharing this photo at a Nebraska photography Facebook group, many people wish that it was on another planet and had stayed there.
It spreads quickly and takes over farm and cattle grazing land rendering it unusable and is a lot of hard to work to get rid of and keep under control if one decides to sprout up.
I emailed the vice president of the Nebraska Weed Control Association and superintendent of weeds at Douglas Country Environmental Services and shared with him the location of the musk thistle and that it was on city land and he responded that he would let the proper City of Omaha officials know.
Creative blessings to you…
-di
Art Studio Tour
I have been promising this video for at least 11 months and I an happy to say that I finally did a video tour of my new studio space.
Whew. What a relief!
My studio and supplies takes up a good piece of my bedroom as well as my closet. My work area is made from two, lower kitchen cabinet units with a piece of kitchen countertop placed on top. The countertop is not connected to the lower units, so it is easy for me to completely move, if I ever decide to switch the wall it’s against, etc. I have been using this set up for several years now and it was very cost effective for what I needed and could afford.
Beside my main work area, I have several drawer units. This is where I keep the images that I use for collage and ephemera. I have a few other items in the bottom drawers, like my die cuts and stencils, but these are mostly full of paper items. If you buy several of the same units, you can remove the top and combine two or more together to create a taller unit. This is what I have done for a couple of these units and I also have a different brand stacked on there as well. I don’t worry about them moving around too much, because they are secure between the wall and my work area. In the video, I share how we had to cut part of the inner shelf inside of the cabinets so they were able to accommodate the depth of the drawer units. I have two units inside each cabinets which hold all sorts of embellishments, which are all organized by color.
I am repurposing my china hutch to hold supplies and journals. Before I moved, I wasn’t sure if I was even going to be able to keep this piece of furniture and then I discovered it fit along this wall just perfectly. I love having my supplies inside, because it looks pretty holding my supplies and while the rest is contained behind closed doors. Since my studio takes up most of my bedroom, it was very important to me to have things set up and displayed in a pleasing way. It is my sanctuary and having a peaceful and calm space is very important to me.
In the past, my studio was in the formal dining room of our house and I also had a large amount of supplies in the basement. Now that I am in an apartment, I had to find a way to make all of that fit into basically one area. I keep my main supplies in the buffet or at my work area and the rest are kept in my closet on bookshelves that I was able to fit inside. Many things are stored in plastic tubs, including all of my rubber stamps, fabrics, printed tissue papers and napkins, etc. I also keep books that can be used for journals and all of my art business supplies in there as well.
Please be sure to visit my YouTube channel to find the video of my walking through my studio and showing you my set up and how I have things currently organized there. From time to time, I move things around on top of my work space, but the rest has generally been organized in this way for many years. For me, drawer units are a life saver! I can have things sorted nicely by type and things are kept contained well without causing a lot of clutter and unneeded “noise” in my visual space which can cause me to feel anxious and that impacts my creativity and ability to work well.
If you have any questions, please feel free to ask and I will do my best to answer them for you!
Take care and creative blessings to you,
-di
Darren & Dianne Discuss – Current Journals & a Big Announcement!
Darren and I decided to change the scenery a bit and sit outside for this weeks Darren & Dianne Discuss video.
We have had many long talks while sitting “together” at my little, red table on my balcony about everything you could imagine and our conversations always end up circling back around to our need to be creative and planning in some way or another. We both tend to switch from digital planning to paper planning, back and forth between the two and both at the same time.
Last week we both decided to set up our planners and check back in this week, so that’s exactly what we did and we share what we have done in this weeks video. Darren started a new set up in two different Midori Traveler’s notebooks and I started back in my bullet journal, but after seeing him setting up his Midori, I couldn’t resist and had to get mine out and decided to set up a planning system in mine as well.
During our talk, I would say the biggest thing that came out of our conversation for me was realizing that it is okay to switch planning systems. For some reason, I have always felt like once I have moved into a planner or started a new system, that that was it. Do or die. Make it work no matter what, even if what I’m doing is not working at all. That’s not the case though. I am seeing how where I am in life greatly affects how I am able to plan and it is totally fine for me to switch around to whatever system works best for me at that particular time in my life.
As far as my big announcement goes, I share a little bit about how came to be the new hostess of NaNoJouMo (National Nonstop Journaling Month) this coming November. I have a page started on my website that is devoted to NaNoJouMo and I will begin to start adding more information to it in the next few months. I am so excited that Dawn Sokol has given me the opportunity to reboot this project she created and hosted for years and I can’t wait to share with you all that I have planned for it!
Until next time…
Creative blessings to you!
-di