Love, Love, Love!!!!
Be still my beating heart!!!
This past Monday was a day off from school for my kids. Maddie and I often declare such days, “A Making Day”. Sometimes we work on something together, sometimes we work on our own projects silently, with music going, but nevertheless together. These are sweet memories I will always cherish.
After making lots of other things, like origami, and crocheted rosettes, she disappeared to her room in the afternoon. Hours went by and the only time I saw her was when she came down to ask me to tie the knot at the end of her needle and thread. I didn’t think much of it, as I too was busy making stuff.
Long after dinner, she came downstairs asking me to close my eyes, hold out my hands. And this is what she gave me. Oh my heart. Bursting. Hugging. Exclaiming. Praising. Wonder. Amazement. A plushie gift made from beginning to end…FOR ME. Oh my.
I thought at first it was an elephant. But it is a Koala Bear. Then I remembered her question to me that very morning, “Mom, tell me one of your favorite animals.” I named my pink gingham Koala Bear Kaylee. Kaylee the Koala Bear. I. Love. It. So. Heart-to-bursting. Much.
It wasn’t until I was tucking her in, that I saw her little pattern she had hand-drawn. Oh. My. Heart. I think it might just fly apart with wings of sheer joy at the artist-maker in her…conceiving an idea on paper, drawing it out, choosing fabric she thinks I might like, hand stitching it together, stuffing it lovingly, sewing all the parts together, drawing the super cute eyes and ears on because, as she says, she forgot to SEW the eyes and ears on. I much prefer the drawn ones!
I asked her to sign the back of it for me and date it. She said, “Why?”
Because it is a lovely piece of art that needs your name on it. And because i always want to remember this day. <sigh>
Baby Steps #3-8: Happy Day Birthday Boxes
Birthdays as a kid were always a celebration…as they are and have been in my own family. Sometimes we refer to our Birthday Month since the celebrating often gets sprinkled throughout the person’s birth-month. My idea for these Birthday Boxes was to offer something to be sent to loved ones in the mail…a celebration in a box in their mail box! I send it directly to them, with your message hand-written on the card enclosed. A cupcake that never disappears into one’s tummy; nor does it show up on one’s hips!!
Each cupcake is a different color combination…check out all six of ‘em here!
My Blog in review: 2011
Here’s an excerpt:
The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 17,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 6 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.
Un Grand Merci!
At the end of 2011 I was delighted to receive from WordPress, the year-end review of statistics and what-not about this blog, Drawn2Life. When I clicked on the link they sent, there were fireworks and all kinds of delightful and amazing stats that I had no idea this little blog had garnered.
If you’d like to see the fireworks too, click here. (This will take you to another blog post of mine, and you can click the link there for the report.)
But the most amazing stat, was the list of top commenters. WOW. Alex Tan logged in 88 comments last year! Timaree posted 62, Raena and Nancy 52, with Sandra close behind at 49. WWWOOOWWW!!! What a gift these folks are. And I know for a fact these dear ones post comments all over our EDM friends’ blogs! They are so faithful to encourage us, to send a note of praise, or just their thoughts. They are amazing!! And I do not know how to thank them other than to say…Merci. Merci de mon coeur!!
As a gift to Alex, I have drawn his portrait here. And I’ll be sending him the original by mail. Thank you Alex, for all you do in our EDM community to 1) lead the way with your own wonderful drawings and 2) cheer us all on in our drawings and paintings! You are dear to us all!! If you have benefitted by Alex’s comments on your blog, why not send him a note via email or comment on his blog your thanks for his faithful viewing and commenting. His kind words have meant so much to me, and I know to many of you as well!!
And to ALL of you who took time out from your busy lives to send a few words…I am truly grateful!
Un grand merci a tout le monde!
Origami Craze!!
I was recently loaned the video titled Between the Folds, A PBS Independent Lens movie. I fell in love…again.
When I was a child I had several origami books (which I wish I could find!) and spent hours folding and folding and trying to figure out the diagrams for creating all kinds of animals, boxes, people, etc. I have continued to enjoy origami as an adult, buying a book here and there to share with my kids. Currently in my art classes at school, I’m teaching tesselations. To my delight, I discovered in this film that Origami is a kind of 3-Dimensional tesselation! How cool is that!
I was enrapt from the beginning of this video to the end as it expounded all the heights to which origami is currently taken. An exquisite art form, a way to teach geometry and other mathematical subjects, a practical problem-solver for industry, as well as huge scientific strides being made through Origami. If you can get your hands on the full, hour long video, PLEASE DO SO! It is hugely inspiring!!!!
But here are links to a couple of mini segments from the film:
An amazing origami artist who makes his own paper prior to folding it.
My favorite origami artist in the video whose work is breathtaking and whose personality is equally delightful! I’m sad to see he is deceased…what a wonderful artist!
The above photo is of all our creations this past weekend. Maddie, Catherine, and myself made lots of cool things from butterflies to swans to boxes, to a person and on and on. This is too much fun! You should go pick up an Origami book and some square papers (I’ve often seen very inexpensive books with papers in the Bargain section of Barnes n Nobles) and you will have so much fun!!
Sometimes I think I must be as crazy as Eric Joisel about art…sure wish I could say, as he does in the video for his excuse, “…but, of course, I am French!” 
**To be noted: the first three letters of Eric Joisel’s last name, are the French word for Joy. He indeed brought a lot of joy into the world through his art!
Just Yesterday
Just yesterday I stopped in my hustling-n-bustling to watch and listen to my youngest practicing piano. It was a must-be-drawn moment.
I find myself saying Just Yesterday a lot. “Just yesterday, you were yay-high.” “Just yesterday, you used to say Wavy-blue instead of Navy blue.” “Just yesterday you called your brother Warnie, ’cause William was a bit too much of a mouthful.”
I’m doing the same thing with my oldest girl who is a senior in high school and with my son, a freshman.
How did all those yesterdays even become “yesterday”?
So many lovely yesterdays make one feel full, rich, and just a little old.
I’m so glad I have my sketches of the yesterdays of my life. Aren’t you?
A Wonder-Ful Evening
Hang onto your hats…fasten your seatbelts…be prepared to feast your eyes on some incredible artwork by the students of Redeemer School. Our music teacher’s wife took these photographs and wow! They are works of art in themselves…so…
The evening began quietly as parents and students attended a brief meeting.
Artfully delicious food awaited…
Windows and tables were bedecked with art…
And they began to come in…
Soon the place was packed…
They came to see their student’s artwork created from the beginning of our schoolyear…
They came to see collages…
And Zentangles…
And clay works…
And bowls made from cereal boxes…
And fish made from empty water bottles…
And so, so much more…
But the stars of the show were the students and their families…
The wonder on their faces…
The comraderie of fellow artists…
The musicians who played beautiful music in the background…
And the smiles of a shared love of art…
As their Art Teacher, I could not have asked for more.
Thank you students. Thank you Hazel. Thank you Linda. Thank you Janice and Pinkney and so many others who helped hang the show. And thank you to all the dads who helped break it down at the end of the evening. I hated to see it come down so soon…it was truly Wonder-fulllll!!!
Baby Step #2: Wonder!
A new print for my Etsy Shop! This one is titled, Wonder in the Weeds. You can read the posting that went along with it HERE. The watercolor painting was created eight months ago and since then I’ve been humbled to hear of how this little image has encouraged many of you. Life certainly has a way of feeling like the weeds are crowding out the beauty. But a little bit of searching, sometimes on our hands and knees, can reveal wonders untold even in the midst of the overgrown weeds.
The date of this little sketch of Genevieve in my writing journal is April 3rd of last year…Creatively speaking, I was feeling way overwhelmed with the overgrown weeds at the time. Life seemed to be choking out a lot of the ideas I was dying to get out, so many of them Genevieve related. I began to take some baby steps even then, which resulted in the opening of my Etsy Shop.
Each little baby step I take is like a little seed gently planted out in the world. These seeds take root and begin growing immediately, even if it is only in my heart, giving me cheer. But it is my hope that it will bring cheer to others as well. I’m learning a lot about this practice of taking Baby Steps…it really is good medicine! Thank you all so much for joining me and receiving these little steps as I go along.
Thought for the Day: Baby Steps Make Glad Heart
**P.S. If you’d like to be notified via Facebook of all things related to Genevieve and My Etsy Shoppe, then CLICK HERE and “like” this page. I have so many more “seeds” to be planted in the Shoppe…more cards and prints of Genevieve, Original Artwork by me, Happy Day Birthday Boxes, more knit & crochet patterns and so much more!
Drawing & Emotion
One morning last week, I made this drawing in the early hours. I usually write before dawn, before anyone is up. These journals do have doodles and drawings woven in and around the words. But on this particular morning, I pulled out my somewhat-neglected-of-late sketchbook…and drew.
It didn’t matter WHAT I drew…just that I put pen to paper to render the lines of something, to whirl around on the page rather than in my head. I’ve said that life has been full-tilt lately. The past month or so I’ve worked furiously to make a school Art Show happen, there’s been the normal everyday concerns and activities of a family with three kids, and two dear ones in our small congregation being laid to rest. The last, just this past weekend, was a four year old boy. Sadness, grief, exhaustion, concern, fretting, weariness, confusion, mingled with moments of joy have bubbled up and over in what felt like a very long month.
As I sat with my three children in the little boy’s funeral service, my husband conducting the service, I turned to my youngest in the first moments of singing. Her eyes were brimming over and red. She asked me if I had a pen.
Towards the end of the service, she showed me the bulletin. She had drawn all over the backside of it…flowers, people, seahorses, mermaids. As I nodded, she whispered to me, “I got out my sadness in drawing.” It didn’t matter WHAT she drew, she just drew.
Just like our EDM leader, Danny Gregory, who filled sketchbooks in the wake of his late wife’s paralyzing accident…It didn’t matter WHAT he drew, he just drew.
Just like my mom years ago, who experienced horrific events, found herself unable to write in her daily journal at all. She picked up a paintbrush for the very first time and she painted. It didn’t matter WHAT she painted, she just painted.
My husband loves to ride a bicycle. He and his cycling friends often encourage one another to “leave it on the road.” This is exactly what happens in creative endeavors…we’re leaving it on the paper, on the canvas, in the yarn, in the clay or whatever it is you like to make. Somehow, our emotions get appropriately “left” on the page. Not bottled up. Nor exploding in harmful ways. Expressed. It doesn’t even matter the final product of that expression…just that we engage in it.
In the midst of all of this, someone posted THIS VIDEO on facebook and I watched with a joyful brimming. Please watch it. It is beautiful. I hope it will inspire you to get out your emotions in some creative way…
P.S. The above drawing was colored with the actual crayons in the box. My apologies for the photo of it…taking pics of your sketches at 6 am does not give optimal lighting!
Baby Step #1: All Under One Roof
Though I’m not fully recovered from the Art Show (last year’s and the year-before-that), (at the school where I teach), Tuesday evening, or from teaching all day yesterday…I AM SO EXCITED to share with you a little step forward in some of the things I’ve been dreaming about for quite a while! My website, jenniferedwards.com, has been in renovation-mode for a while now. This is not due to the wonderful friend who creates my website, but due to my lack of direction, of which way to go, of how to use that site. Somewhere around the end of 2011, I had the idea to use jenniferedwards.com as a portal, from which you can jaunt to all the crazy places my creativity goes on the web!
Click Here to go the actual website! The above is just a screenshot from my ipad to give you an idea of how it looks. The screenshot crops it at the top and bottom, so you’re not seeing the whole page as you will when you visit jenniferedwards.com. I hope you have fun clicking around all the lollipop trees/flowers in my little web garden!
There are so many other things in the works…I’m about to pop to share! But I won’t until they are fully ready. It won’t be long, maybe a day or two, maybe next week, or both! And so many to roll out…it will literally be weeks and months of Baby Step posts here on Drawn2Life! So I do hope you will pop back by for a visit!
But before all that, I need a good nap! Whew! Putting on an Art Show for 150+ students, each displaying 6 pieces of 2-D and 3-D artwork, complete with reception and music, is quite an energy zapper! I’ll blog a little post to show you some pics from our wonderful evening! See you soon!
