12 City Project – Tallinn & Creative Encouragement

 

The completion of the 12 City Project is still continuing. So in the meantime another image , this time from my final city – Tallinn in Estonia. I was very taken with the Baltics and will definitely try to make a return visit in a more leisurely manner.

I know I’ve mentioned it before, but have  you done the Artist’s Way ? If you are an artist or writer and are feeling “stuck” , then doing the Artist’s Way ( by Julia Cameron) would be my top tip. If you are in central Scotland you can do one day taster sessions in an Artist’s Way style with Mary Gordon of www.creativevoyage.co.uk  – Edinburgh and Glasgow sessions available in February. If you’ve already gone through the AW then what about one of her follow up volumes “Walking in this World“. I’m currently working my way through this with 2 creative buddies and it just helps to provide a sense of tribe and encouragement to keep pushing forward creatively.

Where do you find encouragement to keep pursuing your creative goals ?

(*  By the way,you can sign up for my “soon-to-launch” Ezine from the link on the right or from here – and receive two downloadable postcards*  With a bit of luck I’ll be launching in the next fortnight )

Monday Moodboard

  Sea Urchin Collection – Grey Necklace  by StaroftheEast

Rowena – Simple heart with rowanberry   by Birribe

Happy – 1 – Mini Art Feeling  by Artmind

The Kindness Pears  by LaPomme

Very grey and misty day again here , which inspired this palette. After  a couple of weeks with  lots of things happening, normal blogging will resume this week.

Monday Moodboard

 Starting the week with another Etsy Europe inspired mood board.

 The Winter Wren  by Mirthquake

My Heart is Red by Nafsika

Vintage Pod Ring  byLittlellama

Climber Leather Journal  by Kreativlink

Monday Moodboard

Monday Moodboard -

New Sheep  Brooch  by Helis

If you want the rainbow by Dindi

Waterdrops Necklace  by Vadjutka

Seafoam Green Heart  by Sigmosaics

A small but important change occurred during the week. The UK is now part of Europe  – at least as far as the Etsy European Street Team is concerned.  I’m looking foward to participating in their activities and one of these is a Monday Mood board . This week I’ve gone for a bit of a a watery theme – and the sheep is included because they are very resilient in the rain !

Giveaway winners ,New Work and a Request for Help.

Giveaway winners ! Using the tried and tested method of drawing names….the Polaroid Calendar winner is Annette and the mini City Calendar winner is Cynthia. If you let me know where I should send it, I’ll get them away to you.

Now that what seems likes weeks of snow is fading into the distance its time to get down to work. Though hibernating still feels like a much better idea. Still, I had a new batch of Polaroids test printed over the holidays and I’m already listing some of them in my Etsy shop. Although I can’t get the fabulous sx70 film anymore, fortunately I do have quite a large stash of images that I’ve never had printed up, or shown before.

Quick progress report – I’m still working on pulling all the elements of my “12 City” book together and starting to do some test prints of the images. In a dream world I’d set up a little touring exhibition that could make its own journey round these cities.  In a couple of cities I have some ideas of places to approach, little galleries, cafes or other spaces that host exhibitions. But if you have any suggestions I’d love to hear them..the cities are…Florence, Prague, Gothenburg, St Andrews, Venice, Paris, London, Amsterdam, Istanbul, Budapest, Sibiu and Tallinn.  I know it is a huge idea and probably will take a few years to see the pictures go everywhere. But if you have any ideas for me, I’d love to hear them .

New Brooms and Giveaways….

(Image is of some of the fire installations placed on the Royal Mile and around St Giles Cathedral the night before Hogmanay. Slightly strange, but very striking and created by the French street theatre group Carabosse)

January – month of new brooms , clean sweeps and fresh plans.  I used to dislike January , as it seemed to symbolise all the things I hadn’t managed to get done during the last year. Since I’ve managed to reframe things and look at it as a whole fresh year, I like the month a lot more.  Even the extra long snowy period we’ve had , and are still having , seems to symbolise fresh starts and a clean slate.

Of course, it helps to have a few tricks up your sleeve, to  get things moving. Along with a lot of other people, I’ve shifted my idea of new year resolutions, opting instead to choose a word for the year. Christine Kane  has written a lot about this , and even created a tool for helping to decide  what your word could be. I swithered a lot about my word for 2010 but have gone back to my initial choice which was “Bold”. It feels a little out of my comfort zone, so that means it is probably about right ! Have you chosen a word for the year ?

For years I’ve done what I simply called collages, but that are now more often called “Vision Boards” – but a new idea has been to join in with creating collages in line with the phases of the moon . From the new moon onwards collecting images that appeal and then making up a collage on the full moon. As there was a full moon on New Year’s Eve this all tied together very nicely.

And in the spirit of  cleaning up store cupboards and refreshing inventories I’m going to do a few giveaways over the next little while, as I change some of the focus in my Etsy shop. First up I have one Polaroid Calendar and one mini 12 City calendar  to give away. To be in with a chance just leave a comment telling me  which is your favourite item in my Etsy shop ( and which calendar you’d prefer if you’re a winner).

I will also ( finally) be launching my ezine this month, so if you’d like to be in the know, from the start , you can sign up  from the link on the right or from here – and receive two downloadable postcards* )

Best of 2009 – Gift #best09

In the spring this year I was listening to a recording of a Christine Kane  phone call . And one of the questions she asked was “What are you doing without, that would make your work easier ?” , or something along those lines. Straight away I thought to myself ” A big screen” . I have managed to do a lot of my photo work on fairly small screens and a really large one seemed a bit of a luxury.  Actually its not a luxury at all, and makes all my work, both photo editing and the art work so much more enjoyable , not to mention easier on the eye. What are you doing without that would make a big difference to your work/ life ?

( This post is part of the Best of 2009 series inspired by Gwen Bell’s post here )

Carrying on the gift theme – from now until the end of the 1st of January, anyone purchasing either my City Calendar or the general Polaroid Calendar will receive a complimentary mini sized City Calendar ( 4×6 inch) – so you can keep one and give one.

(And after a bit of a delay, I am finally getting ready to launch my ezine later in January , so if you’d like to receive a copy of it , straight to your inbox you can register  from the link on the right or from here – and receive two downloadable postcards* )

The best of 2009 – Project #best09

Although not strictly 2009 only, as I completed the first third in 2008 – I still have to  choose my “12 City Project” as the project of 2009. ( If you are not familiar with my blog then a quick scan through previous posts will fill you in, but basically over the course of 12 months I visited 12 European cities for about a week each, photographing them with the last of my Polaroid film.) It has really dominated my year – and in the months since the final city, Tallinn at the end of August/ start of September, I have spent a lot of time finishing off the processing of images and working on formatting everything into a  book.  I’m not finished with this yet, but hope to have it completed fairly early in 2010, because I have another couple of projects that I am “cooking” for next year.

The photo with this post is a reworking of my dogwood heart from a couple of weeks ago, jazzed up in winter finery and with lights to celebrate the Solstice.

( This post is part of the Best of 2009 series inspired by Gwen Bell’s post here

The Best of 2009 – Car Ride #best09

I couldn’t initially think of a particularly remarkable car ride – I seem to have spent much more time over the last year in trains – or on foot. But one trip was particularly beautiful. After collecting my exhibition from the gallery in Ullapool  I decided to make the most of a beautiful day. The north west highlands is amongst the most dramatic scenery in Scotland – and this route took me north of Ullapool, following the coast road up to Achiltibuie, with a detour to a really beautiful secluded beach. If  this were further south it would be mobbed – but there was hardly a soul about.

( This post is part of the Best of 2009 series inspired by Gwen Bell’s post here

The best of 2009 – Place #best09

 

Almost as hard as choosing best trip is choosing best place. There were so many spots I visited in the course of the year. So many cosy cafes, interesting streets, perilously high view points, to pick  just one is a tall order. But if I have to, then my “place of 2009″ is the Haghia Sofia. My whole visit to Istanbul was  full of  a lot of very vivid sights and sounds, and though I am used to travelling on my own, stretched my coping reserves somewhat.

So it was a pleasure to visit the Haghia Sofia on my last morning, in the company of a new friend who immediately removed all the hassles that otherwise confront a solo female traveller. Haghia Sofia itself is a rather surreal experience. Completed in  AD 537, it was the greatest church in Eastern Christendom for nearly a thousand years until the Ottoman Turk armies took the city in 1453. This creates a foundation of familiar Roman architecture  with the Islamic elements superimposed on the top. In one building it sums up the different historical eras of Istanbul’s past.

( This post is part of the Best of 2009 series inspired by Gwen Bell’s post here )