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.