Creative Therapy: Catalyst 85
SO over at Creative Therapy blog, this week’s catalyst is “What’s the most daring or scariest thing you’ve ever done?”
When I left my first husband, I truly believed that if I didn’t get away RIGHT THEN, I would die. He had been drinking and hitting me all afternoon as we drove down the coast from Sydney on our way back to Albury. When he eventually passed out drunk in a caravan park somewhere on the coast I grabbed my bag (no money, lots of cassette tapes, since that was where he insisted they be carried) and ran to the nearest phone box. (This was waaaay back when mobile phones were the size of besser bricks and were rare as hens teeth.)
I remember somehow getting connected via the emergency number to the only local taxi driver – it was a very small town – and he got me to the police station and waited with me until the police came back from patrol (two man station) and left me with them.
Long story short – the police got me to the next biggest town, then their police got me to the next biggest town and bought me a train ticket to Sydney, where my sister rescued me. (She was always the brave one.)
Now you know that back-story – leaving my second husband was scarier. Not because I was afraid of violence (although he did put on quite a show for the police and neighbours) – but because I was so ashamed that I was leaving another marriage. I was hurt, angry, miserable with snot and tears running down my face as I drove away – but I knew that if I stayed I would keep slowly dying, becoming less me every day.
It was absolutely the right thing to do.
This piece took me ALL DAY to make! I really wanted to use the birdcage because it’s such an important symbol to me – but it was from an image I’d torn out of an old magazine, and the cage was hanging over a background of quite blurry leaves and tree limbs:
So it took me AGES to extract just the birdcage from the photo. (For those who care – had to do it ALL with the polygon select tool in small sections, some of it while viewing the image at 200%. Magic wand tool only works when there is a solid colour to select!)
Then I had to learn how to use a torn edge mask over the paper I wanted to use. EASY in photoshop, apparently, but I’m pov and therefore open source and therefore use GIMP. So it took me a while to work that out too (but geesh, I’m getting much faster at doing this stuff!) – and after the second time I mistakenly saved the resulting image as a JPG (low information, doesn’t play well with other layers) instead of a PNG file (saves all the layer information, like saving something as a .PSD in Photoshop) I got even faster!
And so to bed. Ahhhhhh!
Credits:
Background paper: Thao Cosgrove paper from Simple Life Paper Super Mini collection (part of the October Scrap Girls Club package)
Thao Cosgrove paper (used under journaling) from Beautiful Life Paper Biggie collection (part of the October Scrap Girls Club package)
Birdcage extracted from magazine image
Thao Cosgrove leaves from from Beautiful Life Embelishment Biggie collection (part of the October Scrap Girls Club package)
Torn edge from Curled Edges Five kit by Anna Aspnes at Designer Digitals
Header font Angelic War
Journal font Andalus
DigiDare #152
I’m lovin’ how The Digi Dares push me forwards! Oh yeah!
The Dare:
YES, NO, two simple but powerful words, each with their own meaning. Have you ever had a moment where you said, or at least thought, “yes” but meant “no”? Or the other way round? That you said “yes” only because you felt pressured? Or said “no” to that job offer because it was on the end of the country? Or maybe when you had to tell that little white lie because you wanted someone’s day to be a little brighter? I want you to tell about one of those moments.The Flairs:
- Photo or not, that is up to you
- Use both YES and NO at least once on your layout, in your journaling, your title, anywhere
- They can not be written in the same font or alpha
- I want you to use neutral colors and a little pop of color
- Go ahead and grab a brush/stamp, be it a doodle, an alpha or swirl
So – the template is ChrissyW’s Freebie #32, and the paper and all the elements are from ChrissyW’s “Sew Cute” mini kit from Elemental Scraps; except for the sitting skeleton which is a new brush I made from an old illustration out of the Encyclopaedia of Illustration – no, I’m not getting up to check the details, grrrmph. And the “Fragile Don’t Crush ” brush is from somewhere on the interwubs, fair dinkum, I don’t know HOW anyone manages to keep all this stuff labelled and organised!! Sorry whoever it is, when I remember I will give you proper credit. (Obsidian Dawn, perhaps? Oh crikey, must get my shit TOGETHER!!) Fonts are Inked God and CatShop.
Me, working in neutrals – yeah, I’m shocked, too! It was really hard to get going because of that. But once I decided to include pictures from the Chiropractor’s report, I had the pop of colour I needed to work with .
My heart (and body!) are saying YES to chiropractic treatment while my mind is saying NO… but my compromise is that it’s worth trying. ANYTHING is worth trying if I can get my pain levels back to manageable and get back to exercising – ewwwwww that photo of me makes me CRINGE!
What do you think? I really like that I used a digital kit that I bought to use for sewing layouts for something so NOT sewing related!
Digital Card for my baby brother
[clicky for biggy - reduced size and pixels for web, unfortunately, the original is MUCH clearer!]
All papers and elements from the Steampunk kit by Maya from ScrapbookGraphics.com; except the fish, which is from Itkupilli’s Steampunk & Skellies digital design kit. (Why did I add the fish? I don’t need – it just needed to be there!)
Hard to believe my baby brother will be 37 on Monday… he was so very very sick when he was born, had his first major operation at just 8 hours old (and that was after being flown in the air abulance from country NSW to Sydney). He developed cardiomyopathy a couple of years back after a severe bout of flu (who knew that flu could trigger an underlying condition? We didn’t!) But these days he’s doing ok – it helps that his wonderful wife is a specialist nurse in echocardiography (I hope I got what she does right…)
My brother was always very close to our sister – they were “the little two”. He’s a brilliant man, very smart, funny, clever with his hands, and does a great job being Dad to his 18 year old son. Did I mention musical? He’s that too.
LOVE YA, GORDY!
(I don’t think he reads the blog, but the sentiment remains.)
A DigiDare
So I’m stretching myself, trying to make interesting journal pages etc DIGITALLY.. I used Digidare #151 (they give you a topic, colour to include, etc) to kick start this one.
(I’m still working on how to get this to looks ok online – tell me if it’s unreadable, please?)
Hoping to paint some backgrounds later today – we were woken this morning by the koels (still no sign of rain, dammit, stupid birds!) and the incessant barking of the bad neighbour’s @$!%&^#!! dogs. AGAIN. Grrrr.
The fine print: Background is a scanned section of what Mr Beloved calls my “splat boards” – the paper I keep underneath the current painting project – often these turn out cooler than the page I’m working on! I knocked the colour right back so it wouldn’t intrude. Template was a freebie from Designs by Sine, and the papers were mine except for the pink one (from the freebie mini kit Girl Time by Meredith at Elemental Scraps) and the green graph paper from Katie Pertiet’s Notebook Pages #2, available at Designer Digitals. Butterfly brushes (stamps) from Blah Blah Blahg (*mwah!* Love that blog!)
Ahem…
Mmmm… ahem… cough cough….
The article is from the September issue of Artisan Notebook. Fabulous (digital) magazine – if I only had the bandwidth left, I’d be getting the October issue too!
Must. Learn. Patience….
and to clean up my MESS! I am trying to fix the digital piles of stuff first, with hope that will inspire me to tackle the physical layers that seem to accumulate wherever I go.
(Am I the only creative type that battle this constantly? How do YOU manage all the STUFF?)
A digital ATC for Collage Play with Crowabout, shopping in Brissy
(clicky for VERY biggy if you want to..)
An entirely digital ATC made from elements that the lovely Nancy shared on Collage Play with Crowabout this week. I might try printing out some of these if anyone wants one…
So yeah, I’m still kind of obsessed with this digital image manipulation stuff. I’m learning HEAPS! Not least that this can be a total time sucker – I think “I’ll just try doing this” and I look up to find half an hour has passed. Oops!
What I’m really looking forward to is getting hold of the family pics – Mum said she’ll post some boxes of slides up, then I’ll scan them and put the scans onto disks so Mum and Dad can watch the disks on the TV, and choose which pictures they’d like to get printed. And I get to keep digital copies of all the pics I want – talk about your win-win!
I’m still very tired today after the big trip to Brissie yesterday – had a brilliant time with Sue and Lynn (who has just started a blog but I can’t find it!) – and fell asleep (snored!) on the way home in Sue’s car. The highlight of the day (apart from being with good sewing buddies!) was spending time looking at FANTABULOUS fabrics at Beth-Wyn Couture Fabrics – upstairs in the Brisbane Arcade, just off the Queen Street Mall.
[click for big, and sorry about the red eyes!]
We all got some bargains – utterly GORGEOUS fabric at such-a-deal prices… I restricted myself to one piece of silk for a little cami top. (I haven’t washed the fabric yet because of the dreadful dust here again today… and yes, I will wash it in the super-special-Seri Care wash!)
Back to bed for me very soon, I think. The thyroid medicine has made a big difference but doesn’t fix the other underlying conditions…
Another Digital Scrapbook Page
My BFF Sue and I had had a terrific day at Dalby (about an hour west of here) with other members of the Australian Sewing Guild and Felicity from For Frock’s Sake. We were there for a fun colour and style workshop at the home of one of the Dalby girls – Thanks, Lesley! I got quite worn out, but it was a great day. Turns out I’m NOT one colour season but a mix – there ya go!
Tomorrow we’re off on a little shopping trip to Brissy, where we’ll meet up with a friend from Pattern Review. (Hi Lynn!)
So anyway, I wanted to make something to say thank you to Sue: I don’t know if she’ll like this or HATE it, but here goes:
I think I might print this out and mount it on a cream background to give all that pattern some breathing room:
(Template:Pattie Knox SpeedByte No. 114 from DesignerDigitals; All papers and elements: Shabby Princess: Happy Go Lucky (free kit!); and I nicked the nice pic of Sue in her LBD from her blog – Probably Sue’s DH took it,so I need to credit him, too!)
What do you think? I hope this isn’t one of those layouts where I look back and cringe – for today, I’m pretty happy with it!
OMG! Caity made…
… a digital scrapbook page!!
I AM SO DAMN PROUD OF MYSELF!!
Obviously I’d like to thank the Academy Mr Beloved for his patience as I swore and muttered… and more importantly, I’d like to HUG AND KISS AND SQUEEZE (ok, was that too creepy?) the wonderful Liz of Paislee Press, without whom this layout would not have happened. Not only did she write a comprehensive and clear tutorial on getting started (Layered Templates 101) she also made the “press plate” (the digital template you slot your bits and pieces into) available – all for free.
How cool is that?
Now, I know the protocol: I have to acknowledge all the things I used here, this is not all my own work, obviously! (But it’s a wonderful way to get started.) Usually people seem to do it like this:
Press Plate No. 13 by Paislee Press from Oscraps.com; Background paper from NatashaNaSt Designs Fantasy Minikit (another freebie from Oscraps.com, go buy stuff from them, ok?) and the font is “Euphorigenic” from fontstock.net.
I know I’m not the word’s best photographer – in fact, I may be among the worst - but I’m trying to get better. I have nowhere near enough photos to play with. I am itching to get my hands on family photos but that will have to wait til poor Mum and Dad get time!
Also I have nowhere enough bandwidth – sheesh, some of those digital downloads are GINORMOUS. (Don’t Americans pay for the amount they download or something? Maaaan, they’d FREAK on our 20 gig per month quota!) I don’t think I’ll be getting any more (even if they are free ones) until I see how much quota we have left at the end of the month…
Tomorrow I’m going to a “social scrap” at the local scrapbooking shop, if I’m up to it. I’ll be taking my digital page printed out onto a transparency and playing around with real life stuff to enhance it. (This is called “Hybrid” scrapbooking and I think that it’s very cool. I like to be able to touch stuff, and nice as purely digital designs are, I need to be able to feeeeeeel them.)
Depression – meh. I have managed to keep busy today and get myself tired. I’m hoping when I wake up tomorrow things will look brighter – this morning was Not Good.
Oh I LOVE this…
Today’s Story of the Day from Story People
I used to be pretty clear on what was real & what I made up, but with everything going on in the world, none of that seems to matter, so I just decided to talk less & smile to myself more, so as not to add to the general confusion.
I could just about have that TATTOOED on me. Yep. Talk less and smile to myself more, that’s the ticket.
I’m starting to feel better about my memory – today I remembered an author’s name to recommend a book to someone! (Kay Redfield Jamison’s “Touched With Fire: Manic Depressive Illness and The Artistic Temperament”, an interesting and useful read.) So I’m thinking that MAYBE the thyroxine is starting to work…. because this was one of things that I was finding quite distressing, not being able to call up names and book titles (and I can usually see the cover and where I saw it last on my bookshelves if it’s a book I own.) Fingers crossed, eh?
So far though, I am still exhausted and don’t have the energy of a slug. Spent most of the day in bed.
In between sleeping, I have been reading. You might remember that back here I raved about two books by Barbara Cleverly. Well, I’ve been reading her other series, featuring Detective Joe Sandilands, and they’re even BETTER!! Set in India and the North West Frontier (what we know now as the area around Afghanistan/Pakistan, so very topical) in the dying days of the Raj, beautifully plotted, with great characters. If you enjoy those, do check out an old favourite of mine – Peter Hopkirk’s “The Great Game: On Secret Service in High Asia” (I think it had a different subtitle for the American market). All very Kipling but without Kipling’s – ummmmmm – tendency to be tedious?!
Also just read “The Monsters of Templeton” by Lauren Groff. (I can’t remember who recommended this one (it was one someone’s blog …) – well worth the read.
And I’m enjoying reading *gasp* scrap booking magazines and blogs! (If you have favourites, please let me know.) Seriously, my admiration grows daily for the clever design work some of these women do. I don’t understand why the 12″ square is the default page size, especially since SQUARES ARE HARD in design, but wow – there are a lot of really well though out, funny, clever pages being made out there.
It’s really making me think. I mean, my art journal pages tend to be rather – instinctual. Thrown together. Serendipitous. And while I really value the spontaneity of working so freely, I think there is room for me to be more thoughtful about the design of pages. (Have just dug up an oft recommended book on this:”Design! A Lively Guide to Design Basics for Artists and Craftspeople” – such eye candy, this time I must read it instead of just looking at the pretty pictures.)
Also, I’m being nudged shoved towards learning how to do more digital stuff – of course, Because We Are Pov I don’t use a closed source, commercial (ie big BUCK$$) program like Photoshop or Photoshop Elements. I use an open source program (GIMP) which does all the same stuff (as far as I can see) and is FREE and works on my computer (which is also running a FREE open source operating system, based on Linux.) And you know what? I can still use all the juicy tutorials online which people have written for PS or PSE, I just have to find where the same tools are on my screen. Brilliant!
Only problem with all this is that when I am up and online, I am looking at far more graphic intensive pages than I used to – oops! Time to think about re-working the budget so we can buy more bandwidth… that or stop LOOKING at so much!
