Creating on the Fly

They seem to like the attention and more progress is made. I guess we will have to play to figure out the next step. mmmm.....

Flitting, flighty and Fun.

This page is moving right along for me. The dragonflies know what they want and tell me. They are happy that I am including them in the journey. The mood of this piece is more carefree than any of my previous pages. I have beaded bezels for each of my dragonfly "cabochons." The next step will be to edge come of the yellow flower petals from the large photo. I am working on making some herringbone vines that I will add on to the page. I love texture and dimension and it is showing some in all of my pages. You can see why my original theme was "Details" I have always loved taking photos and sketching the details around me. I adore detail work which is probably why beading is such a good fit, and why I love 15/0 seed beads.

The Seeds Have Been Planted

I have been mainly focused on Septembers page this month so far but I did plant seeds in my flower pot and you can see here that they have started to grow. I wonder if this is symbolic of the growth I am experiencing or just my love of plants (even if I have a brown thumb)? It is interesting how different my two pages feel to me. This page is calming, slow paced, and meditative while September's is more carefree, festive, fun and ever changing. Which page I work on depends slightly on my mood at the moment. This page is coming along slowly but I don't feel that it is ready for me to finish it yet. It already speaks volumes to me, what all will it have to say when it is finished.

Birthing a Dragonfly

My pages until this point have only included photos taken during the month they represent, they could be from any year. September started out this way but from the start I had bugs on the brain. As the Dragonflies flew into my consciousness they also decided that they were claim this page as there own and thus they appear to one and all ready to guide us through our transformations.

I chose one photo to be my 4"x6" photo and while I was figuring out how I wanted to do the others and how many others where going to visit I remembered the 2" x 2" glass slides I had bought for this as well as the clear round slightly domed stickers that I had gotten at Jo-Ann's Fabrics and Crafts. I had printed out all of my choices in 2" x 3" size so that I could think about them and realized that they were already the correct size for what I wanted to do. I ended up with more dragonflies than I might have originally chosen but they all clamored to be on the page.

For the moment there are 12 dragonflies but I have a feeling a 13th one will show up before the page is through. When you are born on Friday the 13th in October it is hard to feel that 13 is an unlucky number. Since my 40th is just over a month away maybe this page has significance. Maybe this transformation is my form of midlife crisis, not so much a crisis as a taking stock of where I am at and finding my way into my future.

As for the title of this post it comes from the photo of the dragonfly in the upper right hand corner. When we were in New England camping one time, we were taking down our tent where we had been near a lake and right next to the tent was a brand new dragonfly. They live for 2 years in the water before becoming the winged wonders we so enjoy. On a weed was this dragonfly just free from it's casing with new untried wings waiting to dry in the sunlight. I think that in many ways I am at that point in my life brand new wings that I am getting ready to try out.

Blessings to you all and remember to fly high and reach for your dreams. Love Angie

Ready to Plant

I have added some more details to my August page and am now ready to start planting my flowers. I am not sure if it will need any thing else once the flowers are added but they will take awhile to do. I am not sure what they will look like but I am sure they will be wonderfully luxurious and happy plants full of blooms. I have not worked on the page much this last week as I have been getting a start on September's page.

Needing a place of calm

Life has been a bit hectic of late and so I am running behind on my August page but I am fine with that. Since this is my place of calm maybe it was appropriate that I was working on it as life got hectic with good and bad news (see my Artistic Kreations and Passions blog for details). Since this is an important page I want it to feel right and don't want to rush it. I will probably see about starting September's page and work on both of them this month. I am thrilled with how my page is coming along.

The photo above shows one of the pots I made in the stages it went through (yes there are 3 pots in different stages in the photo) I wanted to add a couple of pots of flowers to my porch since I love flowers, I was unsure of how I wanted to do the pots although I wanted them somewhat dimensional. I found the 1/2 pots made of wood at Michaels and decided try them. I covered them with double stick tape and added EZ-felt to that. I colored them with a permanent marker so if you could see between the beads it wouldn't stand out as stark white. On top of this I added peyote stitch using the felt as a place to anchor threads and the first row of beads. I occasionally ran the thread along the back to help keep the beading tight to the shape and supported. Now that they are stitched onto the main piece you can only see the ones near the opening and those will be covered once I add my beaded plant.


This photo shows the pots stitched on and bricks and flooring that I added. I want to add more to the brick wall but haven't decided what yet. I am definitely letting this piece guide me and tell me where it wants to go. I have a feeling this page will be one of my more elaborate and time consuming which is fine. Dragonflies are coming out to play for September and I expect that page to be a bit quicker and more flighty.
This last picture is how the page looks as I write this.

An update on my "Physical Enablement" I am sticking to my goals and am still not fighting the exercise which is a refreshing change of pace for me. I am putting in around 40 minutes on the treadmill 4-5 days most weeks at this point and have recently added some strength training to that. I can't honestly say that I feel more energized afterward but I know that I am improving my health and endurance. A nice bi-product of the changes I have made since the beginning of the month is that for August I lost 5 lbs. Although weight loss is not specifically one of my goals I am more than happy to accept as a bi-product of the changes I am making.

I want to say thanks to all of the people who are supporting me on my changes and to those of you who are also going through this kind of change and who are taking charge of your life, your health and your happiness keep up the good work.