I was recently described as a frustrated visionary. That sounds a bit on the pedestal for me but it is how I feel at times. I tend to come up with big ideas and end up having to reduce them down to about an eighth of the size. I always feel that much of this has to do with limitations - location, current stage in life, contacts etc… but then I meet amazing people who have these limitations and more but still manage to put their ideas into action. Maybe its got more to do with my lack of knowing where to start than my limitations. Maybe that lack of knowledge is the ultimate limitation. Anyway, recently I’ve been feeling more and more like putting my love of art and design out there much more.
Before I discovered polymer clay (as an adult anyway in 2005) I used to paint, draw, sketch etc.. in almost any medium. Whether it was oils, acrylics, pastels, watercolour, goache, ink, pencil or a combination of these, I would be doing that all the time. I have a whole studio worth of supplies in this area but they rarely see the light of day at the moment. I even did an art degree and graduated in March 2005 at ECU (BA Arts (painting).
Here’s a mosaic of some of my artwork from before and during uni, you can see pastel, pencil, oil, acrylic and etching there. You can see more of my artwork here at my flickr set.
After uni I think I had that painted out feeling. I’d just spent three years painting, drawing, coming up with ideas and presenting them and maybe my brain needed a change. Not long after uni (Sept 2005) Keziah was born and out went all my interest in painting. Its not that I lost interest in creating, just in painting. These days my hands do get that painting itch as soon as I see or smell oil paint or visit a gallery so I know its all still there, hibernating.
I have a LOT of paintings and drawings from my uni days just sitting here in storage and my newest aim is to get some of these printed into posters and sell them. I know that they would sell, I know they are quality enough for that but I think my current ‘limitation’ is simply not knowing where to start (again). Questions such as ‘what’s a good price for printing?’, ‘what quality would they need to be?’, ‘how many should I reasonably get printed at a time?’, ‘how would I post them?’ etc.. all run through my head. Having baby brain at the moment is not helping when it comes to working this out logically.
I did manage to put some of my illustrations to work when Suki over at Tamptation created some stamps for me using my designs. As some of you might already know, I stamped these onto felt and have been selling them as pincushions. I have been very busy hand stitching (embroidery of sorts I suppose!) onto these stamped designs lately, getting a bit more intricate with each one. My newest dilemma is what to do with these other than create pincushions? Appliqué? Stitch them to t-shirts myself? What? I’m really after some suggestions in that department so PLEASE if you look at the images below and think ‘I would use that for….’ could you let me know. My poor ol’ baby brain really needs a bit of help! Thank you in advance. : )
This many still to stitch!!
Stumble it!
