The Nutcracker

In honor of Willow's dance school doing its annual production of The Nutcracker Suite, I played with some collage and paints, then added some shiny stamping, et voilà! The Nutcracker and the Rat King, previously seen here in their unfinished state, are finished at last! I've posted them in my Etsy shop - my first paintings to go in there!

I have to say they were a lot of fun to create, and they've given me a taste of what it would be like to be an illustrator - one of my fantasy jobs. I really enjoyed doing the hand-lettering, too - something I used to do a lot of in the past.

A c-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-l-d wind is blowing today, but it's sunny, so I decided I'd better get the holiday lights put up outside. I do love turning on those lights when it gets dark so early in winter. Time for some warm cocoa and thawing my toes in front of the fire. Happy Sunday!

xoxo lulu

Getting in the Spirit

'Tis the beginning of the Season...

My college girl Miss Em is home for the holidays, all the way through New Year's. It's such a joy to have her home and be caught in her whirlwind of activity!

Thanksgiving was warm and wonderful this year, spent at my sister's beautiful home, enjoying the family with lots of chatter and laughter. The celebration included lots of birthdays for all the fall babies, including my Willow bean. Seventeen! I can't stop thinking of the song Leisel sings in the Sound of Music: "I am sixteen, going on seventeen..." So grown up. She's been busy practicing her part for the Nutcracker next weekend. We look forward to that.

Projects of my own: these little peeks are a set of ornaments I'm making for an artist ornament exchange. I think I'll make a few extra to send to some special people, including Barbara Babcock. She's an Artfest gal - I think I actually met her my first year and did a trade with her - a wonderful artist and a spunky gal. I just learned tonight that she's been in a terrible accident and was severely burned - 3rd and 4th degree burns! Her sister put a call out for people to send cards. I'm thinking, wouldn't it be great to send the word out through our blogs to help cheer up one of our art sisters during her recovery? If you'd feel so inclined, please send her some mail art or something jolly to make her smile and brighten her spirit. Her p.o. box is: Barbara Babcock, HC 62, Box 3868, Thoreau, NM 87323.

Addendum: I checked with her sister and she says it's ok to post this, so pass it on to other bloggers, too, to help spread the good cheer during a difficult time!

the winds of change?

Gale force winds shivered our timbers last night. Deck furniture blew to the left, blew to the right, crashing against the walls, but every time I ran downstairs to look, everything was calmly sitting in its place. Or so I thought.

I stayed up much later than I expected to, not actually making anything, but holding and looking, joining things in my imagination, seeing what they could become. Finally at 11:41 I drifted off to sleep to the stormy sounds of the wind and rain.

I was awakened once again just as I had entered the sweetness of REM time. Was I dreaming about water? Plop, plop, plop. Not only was the roof leaking, but it had decided to let loose directly over my head, and the rust colored water splattered onto my pillow. I ran to get the big spaghetti pot, ping, ping, ping, then I dragged my blanket and pillow (the dry one) off to Emily's room, burrowed deep down under cover like a Peter Cottontail.

I was awakened yet again at 4:00 a.m. by an insistent pounding on the door or the front window. It sounded like the ghost of boyfriend past, impatient and demanding. Was it him? Or some neighbor come to tell me that my chimney had flown into his patio. My heart echoed the pounding downstairs, but I waited, frightened. By the time I dared to creep downstairs, whoever or whatever it was, had gone away.

By morning the leak over my bed was slowing down, but the one coming through the light fixture was picking up speed. I phoned in my absence due to emergency, called up the condo management company, and waited for a roofer to call me back. While taking Shoobie for her morning constitutional, I saw what had been making all that noise the night before: a wide swath of my roof had been busy prying itself off the top of the building during all that wind. It now lay defeated and worn out across my garden bed.

Despite the damp dormitory and the lack of sleep, I was in a strangely good mood. I thought of my inheritance from Great Grandma Farrell - a framed, hand-lettered quotation she had hanging on her dining room wall:

Guest, you are welcome,

be at your ease.

Get up when you're ready,

go to bed when you please.

Happy to share with you

such as we've got -

the leak in the roof

and the soup in the pot...

Ah, yes, I thought, I should make soup and invite some friends over! There's just something about this episode happening now, in conjunction with the other recent events, that makes me wonder. Time to get rid of some of the tired, worn out parts of my life that no longer serve, and move on to the new! (It's all a sign!)

And now~ Excerpts from this week's horoscope from Astrology.com (that I just read):
November 16: New Moon in Scorpio
What is your passion? Is there something you want so badly that you feel like if it doesn’t come true you will have missed out on something important? Few signs are as intense, driven and powerful as Scorpio; now is your chance to put everything you’ve got into furthering your goals and dreams. This is a time of new beginnings. But to get what you want, you need to let go of whatever is not working and anything that has outlived its usefulness whether that is an attitude or a life situation that no longer fits who you are today. Invest now in something you want to grow and become more important in your life. At the full Moon later this month, you’ll have a chance to stand back and take a look at what you’ve accomplished!

November 21: Sun enters Sagittarius
You’ll feel restless as the Sun travels though this nomadic fire sign! Use the energy and enthusiasm of Sagittarius to break out of old routines. And since you are likely to be in a questioning mode as The Archer is known for being quite philosophical, ask yourself some of the bigger questions about the meaning of life and what your purpose in it is all about. You will receive some interesting answers. It’s time to be inspired –- and inspiring!

How's that for some cosmic synchronicity? (God is working in mysterious ways...)
: ) lulu

synchronicity and the journey

This morning Michelle Allen led me to Aimee who led me to Jennifer who wrote in her blog exactly the kinds of questions I had been thinking about yesterday before I attended Optimisto. Is the purpose of synchronicity to show us that we are on the right path? (Or are there just a lot of us out here who are unsure and trying to find our way?)

art-o-rama day

[Note #1: Thank you SO much for the comments you've been leaving for me. I am in awe of your insights and your kindness, and I am so happy to get to know you as I click on your links. I also feel like I have all these wonderful guides to accompany me on this journey!]

[Note #2: Yesterday was Veteran's Day. As I worked in the studio yesterday, I was accompanied by some very gorgeous music on the classical station in honor of Veteran's Day. It was very moving. To all the veterans and families of veterans: I cannot even imagine what it would be like to be so far away from loved ones and worried about their welfare. I pray for peace and happy reunions when all are safely home again.]

No school on the holiday yesterday, so it turned into an art-o-rama day here in lulu land. But it's so funny how things go. I had an urge to journal about how lost and undecided I feel, not sure whether to take the dive in this direction, or into another pool all-together. That page would have looked dark and sad, but this is what came out instead:

I have no idea where this big-eyed skinny Minnie girl came from, but she was so much fun to doodle that I kept on going:

And then I had to do just one more:

I plan on having fun coloring them in with different media, but I really should get back to work on my shrine for the Oaxaca Strret Children Shrine project. Here is one little part of what I've done so far on my shrine:

Hmmm... I think one of my problems is that I like the way things look when they're still unfinished!

I also started a couple of commissioned pieces that will be in celebration of Westside's The Nutracker Suite:

I hope you had a wonderful day yesterday and today, and that tomorrow will be richly rewarding as well.

: ) lulu

Journal pages - inner journey

[Tech note: I have no idea why sometimes my photos won't open to a close-up view when clicked on. It's frustrating. If anyone out there has had this issue and resolved it, I would love to know! Anyhoo, the very last image is the only one that opened when I clicked on it.]

I have three different journals going right now, each with a purpose. I've had written journals over the years, but I'm finding it so much more valuable, meaningful, and purposeful now that I'm doing visual journals. It might be the level of maturity that I've finally reached, or the self-awareness I've gained at long last, or it could really be the process of working through issues using art materials that leads me to believe that my journals are helping me more than ever.


This is a page I did in one of my journals this week. It's a drawing of my mother when she was a little girl. It's interesting that when I flipped the page up, I noticed that the drawing on the previous page showed through when backlit from the window light. There's my mom, fitting snugly into my hand, like I could hold her and protect her - like I could give her everything she needed.



One of the journals I'm working on is for the work I'm doing with the book The Creative Entrepeneur, by Lisa Sonora Beam. I am more and more impressed with how motivating and eye-opening the assignments are. Whether or not one has the entrepreneurial bug, I think it's a great book for moving you toward what you really want in life.


You know how so many of us creative types are our own harshest critics? This page shows some of that negative self-talk that I play and replay over and over. [This page has actually morphed since this photo was taken thanks to Peggy, who asked, "What else is holding you back?" There is now a gilded birdcage in the upper left of the page, and a little figure of me trapped inside it. On the bars of the cage are words like mortgage, student loan, kids' college, car loan... all the stuff of life that we feel like we need to take on. Some of it is without a doubt important, but one can prioritize, and let go of that which is weighing you down, n'est-ce pas?]

Although the following spread is from a third journal, my experiment and play journal, the theme of this spread goes right with the Creative Entrepeneur work.

Back inside my CE journal, I worked on these pages to figure out my "structural tension" - when you think you know where you want to go and you want to take that step, but you are still stuck in the here and now.

Yeesh! I really was stuck. I made that page a couple of weeks ago, and it took me forever to figure out what the dream/goal page would be. Of course I had the idea, but how to make it truly representative, how I really wanted it to feel in contrast to the tension page? It could go a thousand different ways. Just sit down and do it, do something! Ahhhh, I feel much better now!

How is your journey? Are you going where you want to go? May we all find our way to that which will fill our hearts with joy.

: ) lulu

photo class

LK Ludwig started doing a monthly online photo art journal class last month. I found out about it late, signed up for it late, and then didn't manage to hustle quickly enough to post on the flicker group, but there's always time to eventually get it on the blog, eh? LK has fabulous ideas and techniques to share. The November group is under way, so check it out!

These are photos I did for one of the assignments based on the theme of a journey.

Unconsciously the currents of my life guide the impulse of taking an image and then the writing. The meaning is slowly revealed. It all becomes clear. A portal to self-dscovery, I'm seeing my path open out in front of me.