Today, I am taking a break from recounting my adventure with A and E. The pet projects want you to know just who and what they are.
They live in my mind in a sort of zoo called the creative to do list. The to do list is always expanding in order to accommodate them all. Each pet project varies in size and type but they all have one thing in common. They all feed off the excitement of art supplies, color palettes, and creating things. In fact, working on one project often results in a pet project hatching an entirely new pet project. It is a life cycle that is never ending and something I really don’t mind at all.
As is the way of most creative people, there are always a variety of pet projects in various stages of their life cycle scattered throughout my creative space. The project pictured above is one of the current pet projects I am pretty excited about. I started silk painting last fall and recently, I have started adding my own mixed media flair to my silk painting projects. This piece still has many layers to be added to it. So far, I have only had 10 minutes here or there in a given week( if I am lucky to have time at all) to work on it.
Homeschool has been a BIG thing over the past 8 months or so of my life. I literally have two weeks left until my son is finished with high school. It is bittersweet and that is really understating things. On the one hand, I will miss homeschooling my son. This has been an amazing journey and has been a huge part of my identity for the past 16 years or so of my life. On the other hand, the pet projects are waiting and as several of my friends have wistfully told me…there will be a lot of time on my hands.
The thought of upcoming available time was all the more reason for me to update my creative to do list. There is no particular order of importance, although I do try to arrange the pet projects by type. Usually, I just keep the list in my head. I needed something concrete-ish. Something I could add to and cross off. Since I don’t have a planner right now, I just made a google doc. Here is a bit of the list ( though I am sure something is missing or there is another pet project who wants to be added):
- I want to scrapbook more. There was a time in which I was able to make 15-20 pages a month. With my art journaling and other pet projects, I might not hit that number again. Still, I have a lot of photos and I want to scrapbook them all.
- I want to continue with my portrait and figure studies.
- I want to take more art classes with my creative local friends.
- I want to crochet more. I have a ton of patterns saved and waiting.
- I want to do more Vitrai painting.
- I think I might actually like resin now after working with the new art resin. So now I want to resin all the things.
- I want to learn punch embroidery. I did something like this when I was a kid. Is this the same thing? The tool certainly looks similar to the one my grandma and I used. Not sure if it is the same, but I want to do it.
- Clay. Because there is something to be said for how mentally grounding it is to work with this material. I took the one pottery class last fall and I want to do more.
- Jewelry making. I used to make so many gorgeous bead necklaces and bracelets when I was in high school. I want to do it again.
- Art challenges. Because I always sign up but never have the time to finish. Kind of like this blogging challenge that I am so behind in ( like hello, it’s already the 20- what of the month and I am only on post 5). I want to finish at least one ( an art challenge and also a blogging challenge).
- I want to sew clothes. I have grand visions of the clothes I will make and wear. Grand visions. Not sure whether they will be any more than visions because 1. I always plan more than I can do and 2. I tend to wear the same 3-5 tops and pants over and over again.
- I want to do a round robin art canvas or art journal swap thingamajig. It’s always so hard for me to do these because usually this is through the mail. I live abroad so the postage cost is too much. Maybe, just maybe, I have enough local friends that I can talk them into it.
These are just a few of the pet projects. The biggest ones. It would take a million blog posts to share them all. Maybe I exaggerate a bit but there are a lot. They whisper. They shout. They want to exist. And so, for now, we find small bits of time that we carefully protect and save for them. Soon though, the time may be plenty. Soon, I hope to finish quite a few. And so I carefully log them into my creative to do list full of hopes, creative visions and a growing zoo full of pet projects.
Thanks for listening to my rambling. Don’t forget to stop by Effy Wild’s blog. She is the host of this writing challenge. Her day 5 post is here.