This is...

This is... is brought to you this week by Pip at Meet Me at Mike's. These are my concept boards.

They run side by side in front of the main part of my desk. They have a few things that I like to look at, patterns that I am using frequently for my plaques...

Mostly just things I like to look at. Eli also adds to my boards. He has been visiting me downstairs so that he can paint and draw me pictures. Notice the painted butterfly and the hand-drawn Valentine below. He wrote Love using a heart for the O. He is a very talented heart = an O artist. He knows I like flowers so I have one in my hair in his picture.

I will admit that I am horrible at tearing things that I find inspiring out of a magazine. I don't want to ruin the whole effect. So I usually keep the whole magazine, along with others, in a file on some cabinets. But then what is the point of that? I never see them again. But if I were to rip them all out, not separating then from the whole article or layout, my walls would begin to look like some obsessed stalker and I might be committed.

I also look at a lot of different blogs to stimulate some creativity. A lot of times they give you a little jump start.

I am including a picture of my "studio". If you remember from here what it used to look like, I have finished a good portion of it and kind of had to just start using it and complete more later. This is what it looks like now...

I have a lot of paper strung up so that I can see what I have to work with. I did my best to just use what I already had, which I am glad I did. I can roll from my work area to my sewing machine and I set up a card table in the corner for the kids to draw and paint on. Then I don't feel quite so guilty if I work on it during Joey's naps.

The Frozen Tundra

Lucky for me, I find snow quite beautiful or else all this snow would just suck. Today's snow was a mixed bag of large fluffy flakes and the kind that looks like tiny styrofoam balls.

We have icicles upon icicles, everything is either varying degrees of white or varying degrees of greys, browns and blacks. It is actually all very pretty, we haven't had much of the dirty, muddy snow.











D has officially kicked me out of his office. I usually set up tables in here and night and paint or sew. Then I have to make sure it is all down before he comes down to work in the morning. The good things is, I have to clean up regularly, the bad? I have to clean up regularly. We have a whole basement the we need to gut and redo but in the meantime, we are cleaning out a room that used to be George's (the previous owner) wood workroom and became our storage room. I have been going through tons of boxes, getting rid of precious memories and useless memories. Narrowing down the nostalgia. All this to make room for a workroom for me. This is the before. Hopefully soon I can show you the after. And then hopefully the paints and the fabrics can come out again. Have a good weekend!