Small Changes Can Encourage and Inspire

Last week we rented dumpster to get rid of all of the broken and worn out stuff in our house. We hadn't done a full scale clean out in the fifteen years we have lived here. As is often the case, we still had boxes unopened from when we moved. Those were interesting little time capsules. We emptied the storage shelving in the basement laundry room. We emptied the garage. And now I am looking to smaller spaces. Like my sewing room. 

Thirty years ago my husband and I banged together these particle board shelving units for necessary storage. We were poor and they were cheap. They were a kit you could get from JC Penney. Long before IKEA, long before the internet, there was the Sears catalog and the JC Penney catalog. Oh the books and the projects they have held in those thirty years. 

As I am trying to reduce all my possessions by 50%, I am also looking at how can I make this space work better for me. Before, the space where the dolls are in the middle unit, second shelf was a basket of patterns I had purchased over the years. I decided to move patterns to the bottom and make that 2nd shelf a showcase and reminder of my present project, which is making Izannah Walker inspired dolls from a mold taken of my antique Izannah Walker doll Hope. Now when I walk in that is what I see, front and center. Small changes can encourage and inspire. 

P. S. Keep an eye on my FB Business page as I will be offering for sale some good and interesting craft supplies. Because I am going to reduce all the books by 50% and all the supplies. I sent all the wood carving tools to a friend  who may actually use them. I am going to stick to making cloth and paperclay dolls, and 2D paintings. Maybe I will do some miniature quilts to go along with the dolls. 

"But I Can Make Something with That!"

There is an old saying that Mainers are known for living out:  "Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without." Many beautiful things have been made with the make-do approach. We think of quilts, hooked rugs, tramp art, many make-do dolls. But it only makes sense to save bits and bobs if you are truly going to use them. Otherwise, it just clogs up the works. 

We are doing a huge clean out at our house. The Izannahs were a little concerned! We are pretending we are moving (but we are not). It's just time to shift some things out. Anyway, cleaning out my creativity zones mercilessly is opening space for future works. I cleaned off the painting zone and now am moving to the sewing area. While cleaning out, I am asking myself questions:

What do I want to do?

Answer: Doll making and fiber arts, maybe quilting, maybe shibori.

More questions, as I sort through supplies:

Do I enjoy doing this?

Do I have space for this?

Is this a past craft I tried but will not to continue?

How old is this paint? Is it dried up?

(Goodbye 2006 prim staining solution)

Is this a path I want to continue or did I learn what I needed to from it?

Since my time and space are pretty constrained, there are certain things I will choose to not pursue. Molds I made from antique china dolls are out. It feels good to accept that I have a certain amount of space and a certain amount of time and to identify which pathways will best use that time and space.

The Izannahs make the cut, of course.

The Heart Is a Container : Reading Dana K. White

This year (understatement) has been a doozy. The pandemic hit  and we ALL are feeling the effects on some level. It turned the world upside down in a way that hearkened back to when school ended for my oldest son, who is autistic. He was just getting to the point where he was more involved in the community. And then my dad passed away in July.  And then there's all the other chaos in the world. Before all this I had gotten back to creating in my sewing room. I had my antique Izannah Walker doll 3D scanned and printed and am making reproduction works from that. But I haven't been back in there since my dad passed away, other than to put something in there. My dad would say, "Come on, get going!" 

So decluttering is my first creative step. I need room to work and create again. I'm reading Decluttering at the Speed of Life by Dana K. White. This is an easy read and is very helpful! Here is her blog: A Slob Comes Clean. She's a kindred spirit, too, because she also could see the possibilities in everything. If you're an artist of any sort, you have to see the possibilities. But sometimes it means you collect too much stuff and it clogs the creative arteries. There is definitely a balance - enough stuff to create with but not so much that you trip over stuff!

The stuff I'm getting rid of is "something I tried and decided not to do" rather than failure. As I'm looking at things, I'm asking myself, "Have I just been moving this around? Would the space it creates by getting rid of this make it easier to live and create?"  

Dana White writes about letting your "container" be the limit for what you keep. You can only keep what reasonably fits into the container.  My time is a container. I have to make some better choices in what actually fits in it. My heart is a container, too. I can choose to let some things go. 

Day Two

This is an OLD post from 2011.

It doesn't reflect the realities of my life now.

There are far fewer choices available right now.

And much less free time.

Then I was learning html and how to change colors, etc. 

I haven't changed a color on this blog in 6 years.

I do try to add occasional written updates, though. 

And I still try to evaluate choices. 

Have you heard this saying?

If everything's important, 

then nothing's important. 

Yeah, I thought so.   I like to do a lot of things.   I didn't even list all the things I must do, just the things I like to do.   I'm talking to myself here, but if it helps you, then great.   Dixie, you can't do everything.

Life is about making choices.  The constraints of our time and our space help us in making these choices.   In fact, psychologists propose that constraints contribute to creativity and inventiveness.  That's good news!   I only have so much space and time, just like the rest of you.

Some questions to help me in my choice-making:

What will I wish I had done (next year, in five years)?

What would I do if I weren't afraid?

Which things fit with my creative personality?

Which activities are most practical for my life?

Which activities contribute to the family budget?

Some things I need to cut down on:

Playing around with the colors and backgrounds on the sites that I write for.   It's fun but it doesn't necessarily make the sites function better.    In five years will I wish I had made a painting instead of switching the background of a site from pale ochre to yellow?   

Pleasing people.  I really, really, really like to encourage other people and help them.   But, and this is tricky, am I ignoring the needs of my family and even myself to please another person?  Sometimes the other person isn't putting forth as much effort to help themselves as I am.  I'll still help people who need it, but I won't worry as much about pleasing people.

The online checking loop that takes up a lot of time (ouch!)....first check email, then check news, then check facebook, then check groups, then check twitter.   Then start the loop over again.  Will I wish I had made a painting or created a folk doll instead of doing some of those things?  

Side note.  My family hates the picture above.  It was taken by my photographer friend Danielle Pease. I was modeling for a project of hers about women of a certain age and what we've learned. She took a lot of great pictures that day!  I was goofing around for this one.  But she caught something in it because it got ALL kinds of reactions from my family.    I put it on the fridge before the kids got out of school last year and my son with autism went right to the picture and threw it away even before he had his snack.   It looks like the face I make when he is being told he's lost a privilege.   My husband said, "Don't post that picture."  My other son said I look mean.  And yet here I am posting it.   It's a great motivational poster for ME to hang in my studio while I do the sorting of STUFF.   I mean, really, if I try to keep the 3" piece of string, do you think that woman will let me?  

Are you still with me?   

You're probably a friend 

or family member. 

Or you need to clean your slate, too.

XO

How to NOT Be Featured on Hoarders

I've watched the show Hoarders once.  People joke a lot about being featured on that show.  Usually you sense that they might be a hoarder in embryonic form, and think that joking about it makes the problem go away.

I know this is a blog about art and folk art, but in order to get anything created, I've got to deal with my mess. Recently I started a little project to get my house in order.  I took pictures of all the rooms in my house.  But before I could do that I had to clean out some spaces.  Admittedly I didn't get to them all.  Anyway, while I was doing this I was muttering to myself about my hoarding ways.  Sometimes it makes sense.  But most of the stuff should have been sent to recycling or given away a long time ago.  While thinking about this project, I have decided to reduce my stuff by half, which means making decisions about what's most important.  I've found a lot stuff in my hoards that don't fit in with my goals.  And what was interesting was that by getting rid of the cluttery stuff, I like my house a whole lot better.

My guidelines for what to keep:

1. I love it.
2. It serves a purpose.
3. It has historical significance for me or my family (this one is tough!)

In thinking about how NOT to be a hoarder, I've read some awesome posts by other bloggers, and thought I'd list them here. 

Small Notebook's Posts on Simplifying

Unclutterer.com 

Organizing Your Way

Becoming Minimalist

There is very little chance that I will become a minimalist.  Better chance for a snowball surviving in Ecuador.  But at least I can ward off a feature on Hoarders.

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Works in Progress Storage

I was in the closet organization section at Target
and thought "Aha!" Here's a closer look to a few of them.
Heaven knows when I will get to them all and what they'll become.

My Studio Makeover

My "studio" aka painting area is a hallway at the bottom of the stairs in the cellar. A few weeks ago I posted my before picture of this spot. It's a 6 x 8 foot space that is a pathway to the laundry area. All of the things I was using for storage were leftovers from when we moved into this house 5 years ago. My painting table was a metal garage shelving unit with various crates and closet organizer shelves stacked on top of it. It wasn't working really well for me. So I decided to study what was working and what wasn't working and to fix it up as a reward for working really hard for several months on my Izannah Walker Workshop.

What was working:

• Having a dedicated spot for painting that is separate from sewing.
• Keeping items like paint, colored pencils, gesso, etc at hand near the table.
• Plastic drawer units to organize pencils, markers, etc.
  

What was not working:

• The tower of shelving units on top took up the working space on the table.
• I was storing things in this area (quarts of paint) that did not need to be stored here.
• I needed to make some decisions about what I was going to focus on art wise. You can't do everything (although I like to think I can).
• Things were getting lost at the back of the shelves in the metal storage unit
• I needed to throw some things away (packrat alert!)
  

My $75 plan was:

• Hang two shelves above the shelving unit/painting table and get rid of the tower of make-do shelf units.
  
• Clean off the metal shelving unit and only store there what I actually use.
  
• Hang a shelf on the right wall to act as a painting easel for larger works.
• Skirt the shelving unit
• Get some boxes or baskets or bins to act kind of like "drawers" on the metal shelving unit. So if things were in the back of the unit I could get to them by pulling the bins out a bit.

Here's before and after together...

What I actually did:

• Cleaned off the metal shelving unit and only stored there what I actually use.
• Hung two shelves above the shelving unit/painting table and got rid of the tower of make-do shelf units.
• Hung a shelf on the right wall to act as a painting easel for larger works.

Mission Creep:

Then came a moment of decision.

After I had hung the shelves I realized how much I hated that metal painting table. It did not inspire, truly. I was constantly catching my clothing and hands on the metal edges of it. It was wobbly, and I wasn't even sure it was going to survive moving back to the spot it had been. So I decided to replace it. This went beyond my $75 plan, but imagine how happy I was to go to Lowe's and see they had butcher block rolling carts at a deep clearance price of $79. The red cart below was also on clearance and I bought it for $35. So all told I spent about $280, which includes the three carts I purchased and the shelving and hardware. All the other storage items were ones I had on hand. And I found lots of rolls of tape! It is so much better and brighter!

My easel area below:
a shelf on the wall as an easel,
a rolling veggie bin as a painting cart.

It is so much more workable

I am a happy girl!

So now to get working!
Notice the closed door
in the picture below
at the end of the hallway?

That's my sewing area.
My mom told me
not to show that
on the internet.



At 47 do I need to obey my mama still?

Cleaning House (Studio)

One of the reasons I have postponed cleaning my painting area is that it requires making some decisions. Am I going to use the mica dust/flakes that I've had for 3 years and used once when I made a snow-woman creation? What about the wooden 70's canisters I was going to use for some mixed media project? And the old lamp base that doesn't work?

At the heart of these questions is "Where do I want to go with my art?" This led to thinking about what kind of creations are/will be timeless. There's a lot going on in the art world that makes me think "Cool!" and then I wonder if it will be sitting next to an 80's country geese collection at a garage sale sometime in the future. It's not that trends are bad, but you can get lost in them. I do think there is value in really studying the historic traditions in art and folk art. And there's also value in paying attention to what's going on around you.

As I clean my work area I am asking myself "Which items will I use to make a creation that is timeless and uniquely Dixie?"

Worth Repeating

"Start by doing what's necessary;

then do what's possible;

and suddenly

you are doing the impossible."

~ St. Francis of Assisi

I Finally Finished!

I finished cleaning out my Creativity Zone. Yippee!

The book Where Women Create was definitely an inspiration in the final stages - it helped me focus on getting the cleanup actually done. I will show a a few before pictures - I should be embarrassed, but the before pictures show the amazing changes.

They ought to have a decorating show called, "Designed to Stay" instead of "Designed to Sell". I don't know if the show "Clean Sweep" is still out there but the process was a little like that! I really tried to think about function in my organizational process, but truthfully weeding out is really what made it more functional.

As you come down the stairs to the cellar you turn left and my painting table is right at the bottom. Just beyond the painting table through this door is my sewing room.

Now, I used to live in a teeny-weeny house and all my creativity was in bins that I hauled out and cleared away and hauled out and cleared away and hauled out and cleared away....I know many of you know what I mean. I LOVE having a dedicated space for creating. And YES I know I'm blessed, and I am so thankful.

Another shot of the painting table...
this is where all those Tomato People are born...

I'm thinking of skirting the table above with fabric...

As you go inside the sewing room this is the wall to the left of the door...this room is 8 1/2 by 11 feet. There is just enough room to stand between the sewing table and the ironing board.

Here's the evil box of stuffing I was determined to banish...

I decided to divide the stuffing into 4 green soft fabric bins. I can pull one out when I'm working on a doll and it's so easy! Also I added a phone down here (the jack was already there and the phone was $12). I used to hear the phone ring upstairs on the 2nd time and race to get there. Having a phone here is definitely convenient!

This is the wall that's adjacent
to the ironing board wall...
with the stuffing in the green bins below!

Here's what the floor in front of the bookcase looked like before



Here's my sewing table - opposite the door - from BEFORE!



And here's my sewing table AFTER:

My sewing table - which used to be my kitchen table at my old house. I love this table. It has little permanent marker "gifts" left by one of my kids. I bought wooden cubes on sale last year to put things I like to look at in the cubbies while I sew, etc.

I'm messy, aren't I? And this is cleaned up! I am constantly touching the fabric, laying one piece on another to check for contrast, etc. I do very occasionally refold everything but I really resisted refolding the fabric for the picture. This is how I really live. Hey! At least the fabric is IN the bins now. :-)

And here's a sign I made as a gift to myself in this process:

I've designated this 25 cent yard sale chicken as
The Creativity Zone Mascot, to peck me when I leave things messy...

Well, that's it folks. I AM going to change my ways. I think somehow I had associated messy with being CREATIVE. And sometimes that's true. But a cleared space makes room for ideas, too. I want to remember that.