This weekend I tried and failed with a few creative things but that’s part of the game, right? On Friday I swung by my favorite art supply mecca and picked up a few things – acrylic paints, a metallic watercolor pan, empty markers, fabric medium. All lovely things to settle in to a creative weekend.
Saturday I decided to try out painting on some of the tie-dyed shirts I’ve been making over the past few months. Most weekends to wrap up the weekend with a final burst of creativity I’ve been tie-dyeing a shirt or two. My intention was to make some new shirts for sleeping and morning walks. Some are great and I wear them as part of my work from home uniform with a pair of leggings. I mean what else do you wear during a pandemic? Some I’ve worn to bed because they’re alright but not my faves. Others have been neatly folded up and set aside because I wasn’t quite ready to throw them into the rotation of either sleep or WFH couture. The ones that were set aside were sorted through and I chose a few to try out as new canvases for painting. Try #1 was ok but I wasn’t happy with the way that the paint just had a mind of its own and spread. Try #2 I just lost control of what I was making because I kept swooping to fix something and just kept making things worse. Try #3 was going to be a stencil of stars with splattered gold paint sprayed into the stencil. I had no control over my dollar store spray bottle and ended up with blobs on the shirt and sprayed hands and arms. One out of three ain’t bad plus I learned a little about what I shouldn’t do.
Try #1 of acrylic paint mixed with fabric medium on a tie dye t-shirt canvas
Today was the 15th annual Smorgasgourd celebration that was started by some friends back in Scranton. Some have moved to Philly and have kept up the tradition but a handful of past regulars have ended up all over the country. With this year being what it is Smorgasgourd went virtual. It was so lovely to see faces on Zoom that I haven’t seen in a bit as well as friends of friends I haven’t met before. We chatted and laughed for hours while we each ate our own gourd creations. There was pumpkin hummus, pumpkin brownies, a lemon squash loaf, raviolis, stuffed mushrooms, and other lovely creations. I decided I wanted to make a chocolate and pumpkin pie. After looking over a variety of recipes I decided to combine some ideas and make them mini. Well, as I watched the smoke billow from my oven I knew it was a fail. Fortunately, due to my lack of reading details and doing math I had some extra ingredients and adjusted to make a full size pie. My recipe here is after one test run. So, try it if you dare!
This weekend was also the new moon. I use the lunar cycle as a way to set intentions for 4 weeks at a time. On the new moon I journal, consider what’s going on in my life and what I’d like to do next. Sometimes I make some art. This time around I painted a mandala – after coming off of Julie Gibbon’s 5-day Magic Mandala Workshop it was the obvious choice. I used some Golden Fluid acrylics on the inside of a while paper grocery bag highlighting some shapes with a metallic watercolor paint. I never would have thought that watercolor came in metallic but lo and behold it sure does (this was also a takeaway from Julie’s workshop).
One more creative project for the weekend and then settling into planning for the week ahead.
New dyes for some Sunday night tie dye.
Create More Often - encouragement for you and me 