September review

We have reached the end of the month and the first week of my school holidays and I am thrilled that I can share a newly completed handmade book project. I began the month with my studio still in a mess, my head knowing I should tidy and do some art, but my heart just wasn't in it. And then I had an epiphany. I've been overwhelmed by choices and all the possibilities of what I could do. I needed to tidy away everything in the studio and pick just one thing to work on. In my previous post I shared school holiday inspirations, including beginning to tidy my studio and a decision to focus on one creative project this past week.  

You know how much I 💜 Fodder School. July was the Free Fodder Challenge to introduce us to all our teachers for FS3. These lessons were only open until August 4, 2023 but Fodder School 3 students receive continued access to all Fodder Challenge 2023 lessons. Register HERE. I've been involved since the beginning and highly recommend this collaborative course. My project this week was inspired by Megan Quinlan's Free Fodder Challenge tag book project. You can see hers HERE and a variation using her new art stamps HERE. I knew that to make progress I needed to go back to micro-movements = a little but often. I discuss micro-movements here but the essential point is that you use every 5-15 minutes you have to do just one step - gather your materials, arrange your work space, thread your machine, add a layer of paint, add a layer of collage, find the mask/stencil, add another layer of paint, cut out found words....The effect of the micro-movements idea is 2-fold. Firstly, 5 minutes here and there can quickly build to 1/2-1 hour in a day, which is 7 hours in a week....Secondly, if I feel in a bit of a creative slump, I can trick myself by saying "I'll only do this for 5 minutes" - often after that 5 minutes, I'm sucked in :-) Once you light the flame, it's going. 

This process worked with this project. You also should walk away and do something else if the next thing to do isn't suggesting itself. You just need a break. Above is the project in process a few days ago (you will see some elements didn't make the final project), and yesterday I finished.

So I've started from the end of the month, but my September also included

a play day where 4 of us shared some of our favourite art makings. I shared these handmade books created from Fodder School lessons over the last couple of years.

If you are stuck, looking back at your own work is a really good way to remind yourself what YOU love to create. Then I had a play with lessons from August's fodder school with Ricki Midbrod

and while the collage papers and glue stick were out I also altered some dress tags

I just got in the zone and enjoyed the process so much.

Last monthly review post I shared some of the cards I'd made from this set of mixed media bases 

I've completed a couple more although I can only share this one until the other is delivered next week.

I've got another week of holidays, but I'll be having a few days away so will have to make sure I keep using micro-movements to make the most of any time I have out in my studio. I'm very hopeful that now we are back to daylight savings and longer days, you'll see more art from me. I post more regularly on my Instagram and Facebook Artist's page. Hope we can all get creative in October 💜