Ispirato

Yesterday. Dec 21st. By some strange whim, I decided early in the day that the Go-Make-Art.com email list monthly newsletter - the fancy html one with pictures and projects and articles that I was planning to launch in January 2008 - should be created and posted before Christmas. In fact, it should have been done a week ago. Too late for that. It had to be done today. From scratch.

So I worked like a Trojan pulling it all together. I sat hunched in front of my computer, pounding the keyboard … till just after lunchtime when the storms we have been experiencing for three days here in Melbourne finally took out the electricity in my part of town. The computer, lights, washing machine all suddenly closed down. Silence. Did I mention my computer went down? Slowly the realization hit me. I could not use my computer.

The three teenage boys in my son’s room were strangely quiet. “Are you still alive?” I called out to them. “Mum, does your computer work, because mine doesn’t,” came a reply. They’d been playing some LAN game against each other using one desktop and two laptop computers. Though the laptops had battery power, the router had stopped working when the electricity died. No networking, no internet. Three teenage boys in a house with no power. Now that’s weird. Maybe it wouldn’t have been weird ten years ago, but it sure is weird in 2007.

They had a pillow fight. They jumped on the trampoline for awhile, in the rain and got soaked and had to change clothes. They played a board game. Imagine. Just like in my day, when I was a teenager and my friends came over!

 In the meantime I started cleaning out my studio. You know. Something I’m always threatening to do and when I DO take action it is always celebrated loudly here on the blog.

I kept thinking, the power will surely come back on soon. It didn’t. I kept cleaning. I should have been pleased to be doing something so productive. Truth is, it was kindof overwhelming. I kept thinking, “I have so much stuff in this room. How did I accumulate all this stuff? I’ll have to live another 100 years to use up all this paper/fabric/beads/crafty bits I’ve collected.”

By evening I was down to just one boy in the house, sleeping. George was not home yet - he was off at some Christmas party. It was too dark to continue tidying, but I’d made good progress, in all those hours of powerlessness.

Just before 9pm, the electricity came on. George came home to the lights and tv and life per normal. I was on the computer madly finishing my email newsletter. By golly I did it and emailed it out to over 3,000 people, right after midnight.

Now that you’ve suffered through my story about yesterday, you can read my newsletter here. This is in case you aren’t on the Go-Make-Art email list and didn’t get it delivered to your email inbox. (In which case I hope you enjoy it so much, you rush back to the homepage www.Go-Make-Art.com and subscribe to the email list so you can get all future “mid-month-make-it” newsletters. Bonus: You’ll get issue 1 of Astarte’s Mega-Zine if you do. And it is all free, free, free!)

And you’ll find a link in the newsletter to download instructions for making a brooch like the one above. Or the one below.

 Merry Christmas!

A collage paper doll: This is my grandmother helen who was born in the 1890’s. She is probably around 14 years old here, in this old school photo - you can see her with her classmates and teacher in the image on her skirt.

The body and wings are lightweight cardboard and there’s lots of stamping with some embellishment from a gold gel pen. The little fabric trim glued onto her bodice is old, claimed from her fabric box, I think, when we cleaned out my grandparents’ house many, many years ago.

I am sending this in a package of gifts to my sister, Sherri for Christmas.

I’d love to make a whole bunch of these using old family photos. Even recent ones! Wouldn’t a big family of angels - living and dead - make an impact strewn across the mantle piece … or even as tree decorations?

I haven’t blogged in two weeks till today. That seems incredible. I’ve been so busy with work and family stuff. If you are an Australian papercraft lover you’ll want to check out the Paperific Expo website I recently updated. I’ve been booking exhibitors into the two Melbourne expos. Our first is in MARCH - so soon! Wow.

Usually at this time of year people wind down. I feel like I’m just winding up and up and up, tighter and tighter because there’s so much work on my plate. To UNwind I do a little craft, watch some tv, and I’ve been out to a few Chrissie parties with my various craft groups and friends. (Parties result in constant winding and unwinding.) Tomorrow I’m having an hour’s massage. A whole hour!

U-N-W-I-N-D!

It’s December! That time of year!

I have made a little tree ornament to send my nephew, Cormac for his first Christmas. Okay, actually, he is my great-nephew. But, gee, it makes me feel old to think I have a great-nephew! In fact he is the second of two great-nephews and I have two great-nieces as well.

I read last week that the average age a person becomes a grandparent for the first time is 47. I am 47 … and with a 14-year-old, let’s hope grandparenthood is still several years away for me!

I don’t do a lot of traditional stitching but I DO like crazy patchwork, and have made a lot of these little stocking ornaments over the years. I patched together the bases for about 20 stockings six or seven years ago and have completed and given away just over half of them. When there’s a new baby in the family I can pull one out and embroider the child’s name and add a bit more decoration. After that it takes next to no time to stitch it up as a little stocking ready to hang on a Christmas tree.

Crazy patchwork can be oh-so-OTT (over the top) and I have a little box of brass Christmas charms and tiny ready-to-so patches just for these ornaments. (In fact, I have enough supplies to make little crazy patchwork stockings well into my nineties … maybe by then I will have not just grandchildren, but great-grandchildren to give them to. (But will my eyesight be good enough to stitch on their names, I wonder?)