No Such Place

My husband and I had an interesting conversation during dinner last night.  He was telling me that while listening to the radio, the host of the show stated that people today seem to be less inclined to take a risk because "it might not work."

And then he reminded me of the scene from Eat, Love, Pray when Liz (Julia Roberts) was telling her friend that she was going to take off for a year and her friend replied, "What if it doesn't work?"

He said to me, "I think you're the only person I know who doesn't think that way."

Huh? I wasn't sure what he meant, so I asked him if he meant that I don't say that to other people or I don't think that way when it comes to my own decisions.

He said, "Your own decisions. It's like you're not afraid to fail."

Oh. I see.  Well, I'm not. . . and that's because I don't think anyone ever really "fails."  If you decide to do something, whether it's completely change careers, or open your own business, or even take off for a year, one of two things will happen.

1. It'll work, or
2. It won't work out quite how you had thought it would.

Either way, you have succeeded simply by gaining knowledge, experience, and sometimes even learning a hard lesson.  I told my husband that. And then further went on to say that it's the pre-conceived expectations that f*ck people up.

He smiled and shook his head.

"What?" I asked, "It's true. People come up with these ideas and "expect" things to go a certain way and when they don't, it seems that's all they focus on. . .the bad.  Instead, they should focus on all that was learned."

"I agree with you . . .but your delivery . . ."

Well . . . sometimes my delivery is a bit blunt . . . okay fine, it's very blunt most of the time. . . . but why sugar coat anything?  Just get to the point.

Hm. . . I think I have made my point.

How about you? Have you done something that worked out just right? Or didn't work out just right? What lessons did you learn?

Thanks for stopping by today!

Vibrant Hearts

I never really know what direction a page in my art journal is going to go.  I usually just start by spraying ink or smearing paint . . .and then it begins to evolve.

Sometimes, I finish a page in an hour. . . sometimes I have to walk away and come back to it. . . which is why I almost always have three pages in progress at one time.

This particular page was one that I had to walk away from.  It started out just how I was hoping, but then it started to get muddy.  More gesso, more layers, more stencils . . . walk away . . . more paint, more ink, a few stamps . . . and finally I felt that the page was "done."  And I'm quite pleased how it turned out.

Items used: SEI Tumble Die Spray Ink, Golden Fluid Acrylics, Claudine Hellmuth Studio Paint, Crafter's Workshop Stencils, Dylusions Stencil, Punchinella, Stabilo Pencil, Sharpie Poster Paint Pen, various stamps 

It's a process . . .and one "lesson" I'm beginning to learn is that I can't really "hope" for a page to turn out the way I want it to.  I just have to let page turn out the way it's going to turn out.  I'm always much happier with the results when I do that. . .

How about you? Do you keep an art journal? Or any type of journal? Do you find you're most pleased with the art/words when you don't overthink it?

Thanks for stopping by today!

Star Light, Star Bright . . .

Well . . . I was going to do some really long elaborate post about something super fancy, but the words just aren't coming to me.  So, instead, here's a journal page for you. . .

What I used:
Sunburst Stencil by Crafter's Workshop
Star Stencil made with my Cricut; cut from cereal box
Golden Fluid Acrylic Paints
Sei Tumble Dye Spray Ink
Old Book Pages
Punchinella
Gesso

Thanks for stopping by today!  I'm gonna go paint now . . .