Archive for ‘Inspired Life’

May 18th, 2012

Creative Space: Spring Tulips

I decided to change the name of my creative posts because 1) creativity doesn’t always come on a Friday 2) I love Oprah’s Breathing Space – a place where you can just be present and breathe. Don’t we all need more of that?

I think true joy comes in noticing the small things.

Take this, for example:

{photo by The Inspiring Bee}

It’s the inside of a beautiful tulip. See all those tiny strokes of red as if someone took a paintbrush and hand painted each individually?

It’s so awe-inspiring even on the outside.

It inspired my latest painting.
When you take time to observe the small things, you open yourself up to inspiration.

What have you noticed lately?

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May 11th, 2012

TGICF: Thank Goodness It’s Creative Friday

It’s been a long time since I’ve felt crafty. I think my last crafty stint was compiling that free craft e-book over there on the right.

But I’m happy to say that after a long break, it’s baaack!

Because I’ve been hibernating for awhile, I chose a super duper easy project to ease into.

Basically, I took an old canvas with a painting I wasn’t too excited about and repainted over it in white.

 

Then, I reused leftover French Toile fabric I had from one of my favorite projects-a recovered antique typewriter I talked about here and here.

And I wrapped it up like a little present using fabric glue to keep it in place. {love that thing!}

It works either as a hanging fabric wrapped canvas or as a frame. If you look close you can still see my original painting through the fabric. I think it looks pretty cool.

DIY Frame

Here they are, my two French toile covered projects side by side:

What have you been working on lately?

{It’s graduation season! Wanna know the 5 things I wished someone had told me when I graduated high school? Check out my Beliefnet post here.}

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April 13th, 2012

Creative Friday: A Mix Bag

Like some of you, I’ve been here and there and everywhere lately. I haven’t had a ton of time to devote to my art. But I hope to pick it back up soon.

I have done a few fun things this week, however. I blogged about one thing that soothe’s my soul on Beliefnet and I’ve also created a free e-book of 8 creative crafts I’ve done over the years. It’s just a handy dandy little guide with how-tos and photos on everything I’ve concocted from faux flower balls to frames made out of pencils. Most of them are fast, easy and all are inexpensive. It’s free and fun and just something I’ve created for the few of you who have been so loyal, kind and sweet to me over the years I’ve tried to maintain this blog.

Just fill out the contact form on the right and I’ll email you the pdf.

Thank you all for supporting me and encouraging me to keep writing!

Hope you like it and please feel free to share to your loved ones. Have a great Friday the 13th!

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March 30th, 2012

Creative Friday: Coral Necklace

I traveled to Greece, Mendocino, California and Arizona and brought back this little ditty of inspiration.

I love ocean inspired things and seeing red coral always brings back the fresh, tropical, sea style I’m drawn to.

In Arizona, I noticed a lot of women wearing and selling necklaces with red beads.

When I returned home from my trips, I went straight to Michael’s in the hope that I could save the $100 it costs to buy a coral red necklace and make my own instead.

DIY coral necklace

And I did.

This was one of the easiest DIY projects ever. I just bought two separate beads from Michael’s. [I think it was about $6 total.]

Then all I did was string the red oval beads in between the coral ones with fishing line and then added a spring ring and a crimp tube (leftover from a decade ago) to one side.

That’s it! Practically a no-brainer. And that’s important since I’ve been having blogger’s block lately. You can imagine how grateful I am for easy non-wordy projects like this.

How about you?

Did anything visually inspiring and text-less lately?

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March 27th, 2012

What If I’m Not There Yet?

{taken with my iPhone during a mindful moment while walking}

Some of you may be just like me. Working hard, living hard, trying to do everything you can to fit meaning and purpose in your every day. If you’re like me, then you know the anxiety that sometimes comes when you feel like no matter how much you do it’s just not enough.

You may be sitting in the void right now. Waiting for hope to come like rain after a long waited drought.

Whether it’s a job, a home, or someone you want to spend the rest of your life with, I understand that pain of not knowing what to do next. I empathize with the fear that comes from worrying that you’ll never get what it is you really want.

There have been many times in my life when I was unemployed or alone and ample times when I was confused and filled with self-doubt. I’ve been on the road of envy, anger, and jealousy.  Looking back, it’s those times that have taught me the most about having faith. It’s also the moment that prepared me for what was next.

I would never be able to go straight into writing, had I not gotten a degree in Counseling first. And had I not spend a few months unemployed, I wouldn’t have the courage and the motivation to finally go to graduate school.

The pauses in our lives feel like failure. They feel like it because we’ve gotten so used to the constant barrage of activity-our iPhones, iPads, texting, etc. We’ve forgotten that life unfolds in its own time.

Sometimes I need to be reminded of this too and only need to spend time in nature, observing how the season changes, the way birds tease the wind and how the clouds move, to know that our time will come too.

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March 16th, 2012

Creative Friday: Recovering a Vintage Typewriter

Thanks for returning for part II of this post. This week I’m tying up loose ends and revealing all of the brunt work it took to recover my recent true love-an antique 1950s Royal typewriter. Let’s get started shall we?

Since I had no way of knowing how to update this ugly outside cover, I had to do what I know. And what I knew was 20+ years wrapping presents. I wrapped that sucker like it was a gift I was giving someone for Christmas.

Vintage typewriter case

That took care of the first side, which was pretty easy.

I just cut the fabric so that I’d have extra room along each side of the case.

Then, I glued the case and pressed the fabric onto it. To create a seamless edge, I flipped and folded over the fabric as close to the edge as I could get it. I used painter’s tape to seal it in good and tight.

The two sides and the bottom of the typewriter case were easy because they didn’t have any hardware. I just folded them like presents.

What was hard was doing the sides that had hardware on it. Because I couldn’t figure out how to loosen what looked like old metal staples inside of the case, I had to work around it. I was a little freaked out at this point. It’s like any hurdle you have to overcome – you doubt whether you’re doing the right thing, you wonder if you have the insight to keep going. Okay I know it’s just a typewriter cover, but these things swarm in your head when you’re crafting and trying not to mess up something you’ve wanted forever and spent $30 for.

Vintage typewriter hardware

Type A personalities and perfectionists look away.

Because I’m not all that precise or scissors savvy, I placed the fabric over these rubber stoppers and drew a circle with a permanent marker over them. I did my best trying to make as small of a hole as I could (you know because you can make small holes bigger, but not the opposite right?). In the end, they were a little small and I had to pull apart the fabric a little so they got frayed. But if you don’t look too close, I think it looks okay.

The hardest part was the front with all its difficult hardware. I made a lot of mistakes here-holes were too big so I had to recover the holes with extra fabric and the edges were not nearly as seamless as the sides. It was a struggle to cut out the fabric exactly where the handle was and it shows. But in the end, it wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it would be. And as I’ve said before, imperfection is sometimes a good thing. Since this one is going to sit in my home for a long time, I’m going to appreciate it just as it is. Flaws and all.

Have you done anything you’re particularly proud of, flaws and all?

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March 13th, 2012

Cultivating a Garden of Patience

Garden of patience

{photo by The Inspiring Bee}

It’s not easy to wait idly while the world goes by. It reminds me of being a kid, stuck in the house, angry and resentful as I watched drops of water fall literally raining on my parade.

It’s that same impatience that plagues me. There is a part of me that wants to stomp on the ground and say, “Now! I want it RIGHT now!!”

Is it just me or do you have a little kid in yourself like that too?

Do you wish that you already knew what you wanted to do with your life? That you could press fast forward on your life to get the good stuff. I hear you. I’m the same way too.

These last few weeks I have been teetering on the unknown. Not sure where my future was going. Plagued by the uncertainty of the presence. It’s not that I haven’t been busy. But behind the appointments, the writing, there has been an underlying feeling dripping with fear.

What’s next?!

Did I make the right decision?

And why can’t my future get here a little bit faster?!

I hear it. And I know it’s my ego. I also know that patience is something I’ve been wanting to work on for awhile. And you know what happens with those pesky wishes right? They come back with a vengeance, testing you to see if you really meant what you said.

I can’t say it’s been easy. But like all the hard stuff in your life, they’re just teachers with lessons they’re hoping you’ll learn. And if you don’t? They’ll just come back again with a new test, same lesson.

Here’s the thing. You want to cultivate more patience in your life? 

You need to know you are not 100% in control of everything.

You need to take this time as a gift.

You need to remember that there is always a greater force out there with a purpose higher than your own.

You need to sow those good intentions, have faith that they’ll grow and forgive yourself when they don’t.

If you can learn to let go of the hold you have on a certain outcome, an expectation, a belief that things have to go your way or else, you will begin to see the gift in front you. You will realize that there is a purpose for the time you have. That all we have is time. That what you really want isn’t like that trench coat you have on backorder or that iPad 3 you’re on a waiting list for. Your purpose isn’t limited. There will be no “sold out” just because he or she got it before you. Your time will come. You just got to believe in it.

Eventually you’ll find that the time you used was part of the path, that you needed to go through it in order to get to where you wanted to go. Maybe you weren’t ready. Maybe you needed time for self-healing and reflection. Then, just when you start to feel like you don’t really need whatever it is (job, relationship, etc.) anymore, you’ll get it.

Don’t believe it?

Well that’s kind of what happened to me.

After a month of waiting, my Beliefnet column is finally up. You can check out my first post on positivity here. Please share it if you like it. Let’s spread positivity. =)

CategoryDealing with Fear, Inspired Life | CommentNo Comments »

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