Embroidered Collage

This post should definitely be multiple posts but I just don't care tonight. Phbbbt to the "blogging and readability guidelines".

Stitching Feels Good

  I finally got/made time to do a little stitching last night while watching CSI.  This little butterfly is less than an inch square on wool felt and mounted on a collaged card.  This was a test piece so you'll see more of it later.

I'd actually been contemplating not stitching in future artwork!  It just seemed like it would be so much easier to not be trying to think in layers of what had to be done before what and stitching is usually the most time consuming part, too.  But sitting down and actually doing a bit of stitching again wiped that idea out.  This is right.  Combining stitch and other media is right for me.  Always nice to have a little internal affirmation...

I Wrote Good Stuff

During my lunch hour I was perusing the archives on my blog.  I'd been having a case of "clean journal syndrome" and was thinking about ditching the whole thing.  As I was browsing through various categories I started thinking, "I did good. Wow."  Somehow, with the distance of time, it seemed so much less worthwhile to keep, until I looked again.  I think I want to recombine the archives and the recent posts and do a bit of updating.

I Need to Be Journaling in a BOOK

  After my frustrations with the Overgrowth page I decided to try to apply the journaling anything goes mental attitude to a loose page of 9x12 paper and failed miserably.  Even though I was enjoying the way I was working and had great ideas for developing the composition the whole process was taking me off track mentally to places I didn't want to go.  Besides, if I really want to stitch on a page and it's too awkward I can always tear it out, stitch on it, and then tip it back in. 

The background is watercolor, with some of Marissa Lee's paper from when she sold collage packs on top, and then a collage image.  I started adding lines with colored pencil as well.  I'm not sure at the moment if I'm going forward with it or setting it aside.

Self-Expression DOES Matter to Me 

I was looking at many of the websites of a group of mixed media artists that I belong to as well as at my Etsy favorites and I realized how much my work reflected me.  I didn't want to make something like what they made, even if it met all my other criteria.  I wanted to make it like me.

And that was my Doh! moment.  Of course I'm doing art for self-expression.  Oops.  I got tripped up because I was thinking about how I don't approach my art with something to say. But I do want to create it my way.  And then because it is my way, it is my self, expressed.

Thinking back, one of the reasons I was thrilled when I first discovered collage was because I could create something just out of my own head without having to have the precision and intent that words require.  A visual piece could just be.  It didn't need to say.

Conclusion - Revitalization

I may be moving along more slowly than I did in the last few years because of the changes in the rest of my life, but I'm still on this journey.  I still love it.  My original vision is still important.  I can't let going slow trick me into thinking that I don't care as much or let slowly become slower and slower and stop. And I won't.

Postscript

Can you tell I've been doing a little more struggling than I've been letting on?  *grin*  And the baby hasn't been sleeping well this week either - so neither have I - which has definitely not helped the mental state.  I feel better now though.  And maybe she'll sleep tonight...