The Artist Creed

I wanted to share this video made by Jan Phillips with you. I found it not on youtube but on the Fabulous Threads blog. Listening to it made my belief even firmer that everyone can be creative and that exploring your own creativity is important even vital maybe. Apathy kills!

So go create something

Jeanette

Hot lava

This amazing bowl is my favorite Christmas present. It was given to me by two dear friends and I look at it everyday thinking about hot lava….and passion. Passion can be a bit like hot lava don’t you think? When passion runs through your veins I think it`s a lot similar to lava pouring down a volcano. And you can be passionate about so many things......I haven’t really found the perfect spot for the bowl yet so I tend to move it around with me in the house. Yesterday it was a really grey winter day so I took it with me to my workroom drinking its warm, beautiful colors and dreaming of warmer days. Now that Christmas is gone I can’t wait for spring to begin. I really dislike this period between January and March when everything is grey, cold and rainy. Do you know what’s so special with rain in the south of Sweden? It rains horizontally! And therefore you always get wet whether or not you are using an umbrella.

Because of the cold weather I was planning to do a scarf or a shawl in wool and in doing so I was going to A) cheer me up and B) do a little trial and error. I used to be a real coward! I never wanted to try out anything new until I was absolutely certain that I could master it. Life isn’t much fun that way I can tell you! And you lose a lot of opportunities to learn something new. As I grew older I got more confident in myself and more adventurous and my life is much more fun now! Yeeez, I’m babbling on today. Lets get back to the felting. I had read about a wet felting technique that you could use on bigger objects that couldn’t be hand felted in the sink and I wanted to try it out. As I stood there looking at my bowl I suddenly noticed that I had wool in matching colors. And what could be better colors for a winter scarf than hot lava? What you do is that you place the wool on a big piece of polyester fabric, wet the wool with water and soap and role everything together. Then you work it all on a table like you are rolling cookie dough. I wanted the scarf to be like a woven net. As it was a trial and error thing I did a small piece first and this is the finished result.

The technique was easy to use (although I had water all over my kitchen floor) and the result turned out quite well so tomorrow I am doing it full size.

Brown paper packages....

My heart is beating and my fingers are trembling when I eagerly rip the package open. Suddenly my worktable is filled with sunshine, sky, flowers, bleeding hearts, green grass, lushness, dew drops, thunderstorms and rain. The lousy weather outside my window doesn`t matter. I`m in heaven and back in 10 seconds. A return ticket to paradise. This is the best moment. When a whole world of colors and opportunity’s lies ahead of you and the ideas in your head is spinning so fast that you can`t quite catch them.....Under the brown paper a rainbow was hidden ! Or a genie in a bottle. The smoothness, the softness, the colors! I can`t stop myself from smiling. Brown paper packages tied up with strings ..... theese are a few of my favourite things !

Snow

Yesterday we had our first snow. I just love snow! I love the way it changes the whole landscape and makes everything all fluffy and white.

Yeeees, snow at last!

Oh bother......

When I woke up this morning it was all gone. Just a few patches with grey slush were left. This is typical south Swedish winter weather so I don’t know why I still get my hopes up…..maybe this year it will stay….I should have known better! Finding the snow all gone made me feel disappointed and I decided that I might as well get rid of winter ( and Christmas) altogether. Two hours later the Christmas decorations were all back up on the attic and not even a little fir needle could be seen lying about the house.

The cleaning frenzy left the house looking a bit sad and empty though so I went to the florist and bought tulips. Tulips are my favorite flowers and they always make me long for spring.

With all the cleaning done I sat down to enjoy myself. I finished one of the wet felted pieces that I made a few days ago. Inspired by my tulips I needle felted a flower in the middle and finished it off with some embroidery and pearls. Finally I mounted it on black wool and made it into a pillow case.

On the back of the pillow case I ironed on a message…..in every corner of your heart let loves own flower grow.

Postcard

There I was lying under a blanket on the sofa feeling sorry for my self. The stomach bug had me in its grip and the long longed for party that same evening had to be canceled. Not a good start to the New Year and life felt unfair. Then came the postman…..and he brought me this beautiful postcard from my dear blogfriend Val. It has lots of layers with paint and then lace and beads added. It`s gorgeous and the picture doesn`t do it justice. Suddenly I felt so much better!

Thanks Val you saved my day.