But Will It Make You Happy?

On the bright side, the practices that consumers have adopted in response to the economic crisis ultimately could — as a raft of new research suggests — make them happier. New studies of consumption and happiness show, for instance, that people are happier when they spend money on experiences instead of material objects, when they relish what they plan to buy long before they buy it, and when they stop trying to outdo the Joneses.

This was a very timely article in the New York Times, considering the new mattress and refrigerator that I have craved and really needed for so long and bought just this week. I spent a pile of money, but I’ll pay it off in one or two months from my savings, since I try very hard not to carry any credit card debt.

And it is a nice segueway into my other pieces of life this week. A little over a year ago I wrote this post about how I planned to live out my life. And I’ve held myself true to it. I wring out all the goodness I can out of this life, although it has not been as easy as I would have hoped this past year or so. Regarding the statement from the article above, it is possible that I spend a little too much time anticipating the future rather than living in the present moment, but so be it! I’m pretty happy, happier than many people, I think. Much, much happier than I used to be.

I signed up for Albie’s class at An Artful Journey in Los Gatos, California in February 2011. I’ll be able to spend three whole days working with her at a beautiful retreat in the redwoods. This is a done deal. The first night there I will be celebrating my 50th birthday!

And I signed up for Art & Soul Hampton again in early May 2011, although I’m just going for the weekend this time. I wasn’t planning to, since the Embassy Suites screwed up my billing so bad the last trip and staying there is expensive. But I’ll see if I can find a cheap hotel nearby for two nights, drive up on Friday night and come home on Sunday. It is a terrible time for me to take off work, and there is almost always a family reunion that weekend. Still, I really wanted to take this class and this class, and since it is within driving distance and I won’t miss work, I decided to go ahead and do it!

Because anticipation is spicy and juicy and keeps my energy and hope alive!

Oh, there were other things that went on this week that I was going to write about, but writing this made me want to get up off my butt and do something else.

When I left Melanie Testa’s class Soy Wax Batik on Monday, the last day of Art and Soul, I felt like I had made a friend. This class was so much fun and stress-free. I rolled my pieces of wet painted fabric in a roll of freezer paper and brought them home to finish off. But, honestly, if I had not HAD to leave, I could have gone on doing this for hours more.

And I will, because I bought soy wax, a fry-daddy to melt the wax in, and I’ve already trotted out my potato mashers and have been seriously trolling eBay for rosette irons. Anything that you can dip in hot wax is game for this activity. Pieces of foam, wire, cookie cutters…one of the class’s favorite tools was a ravioli cutter.

Unfortunately, once I got home and ironed the wax out and washed my pieces, the colors were not nearly as vibrant. I am still happy with them, but I understand Melanie’s complaint about not being satisfied with her results with acrylic paint now. I threw out my Procion dyes a few years ago in some kind of insane fit - don’t ask why, I was in a very bad place - so now I need to reorder some to use for batik. I used to dye ikat for weaving and I’m kind of looking forward to having purple hands again. I found a very inexpensive web site for Dye-na-flow and Procion dyes at TN Art Supply so I think that I’ll use them.

I just love Melanie’s blog, Every Single Day, and her book “Inspired to Quilt” will inspire you to quilt! I just need to make friends with my sewing machine again and get over this tendinitis. Until then, I can batik and dye fabric though. Wheeeeeee!

Here are some of my samples. Each of the first three pairs have a before and after photo. The last two are just the finished products. I learned a lot from this class, even though I have worked with batik before. It was a long time ago and it turns out that I needed the refresher.

Saturday night was vendor’s night at Art and Soul. I don’t handle a crowd well, so I got in and out of there pretty quickly. Dan Essig was vending (not teaching) and he said that the company near Asheville where he bought his mica had gone out of business. I bought some very translucent sheets from him, and I hope that he bought enough from that company to sell mica sheets for a long time! I just started using my hoard of mica to make books for sale.

I also bought some colorful yarns spun from recycled saris and banana fiber. Don’t know what I’ll do with them but I’m tired of resisting the urge to own them. If I just hold them in my hands it will be worth it.

And I bought a small book made by Albie Smith, whose class I would take on Sunday. I spent an hour and a half cutting bookboard and tearing Stonehenge paper in preparation for the class that night, since I waited until the very last minute and almost forgot about it altogether!

Albie is a bookbinding instructor who is much in demand, as I found to my dismay when all her classes were filled early. I had heard so many people rave about her that I was thrilled when she opened up more seats in her classes, and I managed to nab one in her Episodic Journal class. Her use of fearless rich color is breathtaking.

Again, I spent the morning painting paste papers, but with the different tools and items available to us my results were quite varied from Diana’s class. Albie and Christine, her daughter, circled the classroom and offered advice and help when needed. We designed papers for the covers, inside and out, and four signature covers to go inside the text block. The text papers were painted with a quick acrylic wash. I swear that the papers I spent the least time and effort on were the most beautiful! I guess that there might be a lesson in that, but maybe it was just luck.

We made spine covers with bookcloth, which I had not done before, and it made me very enthusiastic to make my own bookcloth when I got home. Doing so at home this past weekend, I recalled a very important lesson. Be very careful to keep the glue off your hands and your work surface so that you don’t get spots on the bookcloth. It is much easier said than done. In the class, Albie called this mistake “a collage opportunity.” I spent Sunday trying to salvage what I screwed up on Saturday. Next time I will have a cleaner workspace and be more mindful of my process when I do this.

Anyhow, here are photos from the class. Albie is an awesome teacher and I will try to get into other classes of hers one day! Her blog is Adventures in Albie Land.

A classmate binds her book.

The books above: all from the class!

The book above was Terri’s first book. Ever. I loved her patterns and textures.

Another beautiful creation from a classmate.

I think the book above was my absolute favorite of all my classmates’ work, although I was blown away by nearly everything done in this class.

This classmate’s binding is still in progress, but aren’t the covers gorgeous!

MY book from the outside above, and from the inside below.

Albie and me!

Traci Bunkers’ class was Friday night after the flag book class, but I’m waiting to post about it later. I was pretty sick on Friday, and although I thoroughly enjoyed the class, it took all my stamina to get there and make the printing rollers. I didn’t take photos, but I will when I start playing with the groovy printing tools I made and I’ll blog it then. That night I seriously doubted that I would be able to do the Saturday class, “Vintage Metal Deck,” and my suspicion seemed to be confirmed when I awoke at 5 a.m. with a migraine.

At 8:30 a.m., I dragged my ass out of bed, swallowed a bunch of pills, slogged my way to the coffee, then stopped in Leighanna’s class to tell her that I wanted to get any materials and handouts, and I’d try to stay a little while and watch, but I highly doubted that I’d be able to stick around.

Then I saw her samples for the class.

“Let me go upstairs and get my supplies,” I said.

My headache dissipated after a couple of hours, and it was totally worth sticking it out. At the end of the day, I was feeling great and had more energy than I have had in weeks. To think that I almost skipped this class. Wow. I can hardly wait for a chance to take another class with Leighanna Light, Thingmaker.

The best thing that I learned from this class was that working with metal is not hard and I wouldn’t need to buy a lot of extra stuff for it. Although I did order a Crop-a-dile when I got home. That thing is da bomb. I lurved it and I can’t wait for it to get here. I will be making some very cool little metal-covered books with the inspiration that I got from this class.

Leighanna’s demo

Above: One of Leighanna’s sample decks. Next two photos, my classmates’ workstations.

My work area. Another reason I am thrilled about this class - suddenly I feel comfortable with working with found objects in this manner. I haven’t felt that way, except in Dan Essig’s classes, and it is definitely a direction that I’ve been wanting to take for some time.

The bottom photo is of some of my cards. I have to tell you about the one on the right. I have been haunted by the children in Lewis Hines’ photographs of child textile mill laborers from the early 20th century. I felt good about this little girl because I removed her from her spinning machine, gave her a teddy bear (albeit a crude clay one hanging in a wire hoop) and on the back, a cute boyfriend.

Later I’ll make an effort to photograph these cards front and back and post them again. There are a lot more photos of my classmates’ work at my Flickr site.

Oh, how I love this lady with the wry wit and down-to-earth vibe and cozy friendly demeanor. Every person I meet who has met Diana Trout raves about her. I feel so fortunate to have taken her class and had drinks and dinner with her and Melanie Testa. Oh, it was not a surprise - I have her book Journal Spilling and I listened to a podcast interview that she did with Ricë at the Voodoo Cafe.

On Friday, I took her Flag Book class. We spent the morning painting and stamping and scraping and stenciling paste papers for the book, and then the afternoon was spent making the covers and spine and attaching our pages. The book is not only a feast of color but makes a satisfying fluttery noise as it expands to its full glory. I will definitely be using this structure to make some photo albums.

Diana’s blog is Hub Bub. Here are some photos from the class.

Oh yeah, I like that book verra much indeed.

Hmmm, how do I blog this art retreat? Because I can’t find words to fit the experience. It was a particularly successful and inspirational trip for me. All of my classes were amazing and I would take classes again from any of these teachers in a heartbeat! One day at a time, I suppose.

Thursday, my first class, “Junk Mail Artist’s Book,” was with Carla Sonheim. The concept was simple - take pieces of junk mail, roll them with thick gesso, paint a watercolor wash over the gesso, make pages of irregular sizes, and bind them. Then doodle over them in “Exquisite Corpse” style. In the Dada game “Exquisite Corpse,” one person would start a sentence, the next would add a word or phrase building on it, repeating until you have a complete, nonsensical sentence. When playing with drawing, the drawing would cross two or more pages, and then the page with the partial drawing would be completed. Oh well, it is simpler done than said. We did drawing exercises to loosen up our whimsy and our penstrokes.

This was some serious, inner child channeling fun. Here are some photos from the class. I didn’t finish mine, so all the artwork here is by my fabulous classmates. But I have almost finished mine, I promise!

Check out Carla Sonheim’s blog. What a lovely woman.

Update: here is my book, perhaps infinitely in progress. It is just too much fun to play with abandon in this book.

I’m here in Hampton, Virginia, getting ready to go to my first class at Art & Soul. This year the theme is Alice in Wonderland.

Roomie Stephanie got in late last night, and our suite is filled with art supplies. I gave up trying to carefully organize and pack and chose to throw most of my studio in my car. So I spent a couple of hours last night sorting through and getting my supplies ready for class today.

Finally got to meet Ricë and the EGE of Notes from the Voodoo Cafe fame. The first thing she commented on was my Southern accent. And she’s from TEXAS! Then Stephanie commented on not being used to hearing it. It’s weird because I spent a long time obsessing over my accent, and then, thankfully, embraced it. I don’t really notice other regional accents - I guess because of almost fifty years of watching TV and working at a university that enrolls a lot of out-of-state students. Apparently mine stands out, and I’m going to take that as a compliment.

Today’s class will be with Carla Sonheim, making “Junk Mail Artist Books.” Doesn’t she look like fun? Hopefully I will have good photos and will blog it later.

Coffee pot posts are the posts where I write anything that comes to mind until my little coffee pot is empty.

Today will be soup day, since I didn’t get around to that yesterday. I will be using the last of my onions and only one last clove of garlic. Why, oh why, did I not make a list when I did my grocery shopping earlier this week? Fortunately, I do have some delicious dried seasonings and rubs from Cornerstone Garlic Farm from the Greensboro Farmers Curb Market. Natalie says that she will have green garlic at the market this coming weekend. In a pinch, I could dig through the snow to my own green garlic. A day without fresh garlic is like a week without sunshine.

The sun is sparkling off the snow and casting lumpy shadows. The pair of doves were sitting in the fig tree, and one looks heavy with eggs. The rabbit is back. S/he is over in NDN’s yard this morning. A very small cardinal is darting crimson, singing its little heart out.

Gah, and they are already predicting a chance of rain and snow for NEXT weekend. I don’t wish to complain, but…how about during the week for a change, Ma Nature?

I don’t have to feel a pinch of regret for choosing home over church this morning, since services were called off. And my “church” services are way more fun than the church of my childhood ever was, so it is more of a regret than you might realize, considering that I am not a religious person. At least as far as any rules and dogma goes.

I’ve decided to go off birth control pills for the first time in thirty years. At 49, I think that I’d like to see how my natural cycles run for a while. If I go crazy or drive everybody else crazy, then I’ll see what my options are.

I’m excited that I was able to add a class taught by Albie Smith to my lineup of classes at Art & Soul in Hampton, Virginia in May. I really wanted a class by her but they filled up right away. The plan had been to stay there from Wednesday to Friday nights. Now I will stay through Saturday night and drive home Sunday evening after her class. I have a roommate to share the room. The hotel is quite expensive but has a really great free breakfast in which I can fill up and then squirrel away some fruit and yogurt for lunch. I tend to keep going through lunch at these workshops because I never want to stop in the middle of the day. Since I am driving I can bring a cooler of food for dinner too. Then in the evening there are free drinks. So far I have not scheduled anything for Saturday, so I might drive down to the little state park beach nearby, then come back and soak in the whirlpool. I have the money saved in my fun fund to cover this. Now I have to start on saving for Prince Edward Island.

Oh my, just saw on Facebook that Natalie lost her father and Cat lost her grandmother yesterday. The end of January is proving to be a rough time for many.

Yes, I wore my Danskos out in the snow. Nice things are wasted on me.

Oh, have I been looking forward to this morning. No real plans, other than to study for my exam on Monday and to get materials ready for this week’s trip to Journalfest in Port Townsend, Washington.

Guido is galloping around the house like a racehorse. He is 13 years old and still a kitten. Lucy has become much more of an attention-seeker and purrs very loudly often, which is nice. Miss Jazz is Miss Jazz, queen bee, petite and haughty to the other cats, insistent on constantly sitting on top of us. I saw a cat at Petsmart yesterday that was the exact image of Squirt, face, size, coloring, everything. It was hard to walk away. I still dream of Squirt nearly every night and think about him every day. I wish that I could let him go.

My hand is not broken, and my arm and fourth finger feel much better. It is the pinkie and the muscles on that side of my hand that are still painful, and pain relievers have not helped, even strong doses. I can type without too much pain but I’m not going to push it today. I wanted to make paper but I decided that I’d better wait until this gets better.

Sandy found his wedding ring. He had taken it off his ring finger and put it on his pinkie because it was getting too tight. When he was packing to come home it must have fallen into the suitcase.

It is supposed to get down in the high thirties here this weekend so I’ll make a serious push on the butterbeans and field peas to get the last of them. The field peas slowed down a week or so ago but the butterbeans keep going until the frost gets them. I had a delicious second wave of figs but not nearly as many. My carrots were very disappointing, and almost all that lettuce seed I planted was carried off by ants or the seedlings eaten. I dug up a handful of small Yukon Gold potatoes. I’ve harvested a few very small heads and side shoots of broccoli, enough to make a few dishes from. I have a little patch of tatsoi and other greens, Tuscan kale, lots of parsley, and one lonely golden chard in a pot. The tendergreens that I planted in the spring made a comeback. I’ll have to pick some for Lucy and Miss Jazz. They love them.

A lot of these failures could have been avoided if I had put a bit more effort into it, but this has been the year of the lazy gardener at my house.

I realized that if I wanted to get any classes that I wanted at Art & Soul in Hampton, Virginia in May, I’d better go ahead and sign up. So I contacted my roomie from last year, and signed up for two book classes under two teachers that I haven’t had before, as well as a fun printing technique class from Traci Bunkers called Roller Printing MacGyver Style. I’ve taken a couple of Traci’s classes before and I enjoy her funky free-wheeling style.

But this coming week IS THE WEEK! On Wednesday morning, I will be flying all by my little lonesome to Seattle, where I’ll get on a shuttle bus to Port Townsend, to take a class from Daniel Essig and two classes from LK Ludwig, two book artists that I greatly admire! Journalfest is all about art journaling and takes place at Fort Worden State Park, a former military installation on a spit of land sticking out into the Puget Sound. All I’ll have to think about is making art and I’ll meet a lot of like-minded artists at this one.

Made in Traci Bunkers’ “Revival: Restoration to a Visual Life; An Awakening” class at Art & Soul, Hampton, Virginia, May 3, 2009. This recycled book cover is filled with all kinds of groovy papers and stuff, including a pamphlet from the 1956 Pennsylvania Dutch Festival in Pottstown, PA, music from a 1923 gospel book, and a kid’s atlas. I love this book. I want to cuddle up and sleep with it.

I love Traci Bunkers’ style, and I admire how she puts herself out there. I can’t share that much of my personal life, but I like it when others show their humanity because it makes me feel better that others share my emotions.

She does some really interesting things with photography too…

Website: http://www.tracibunkers.com/

Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tracibunkers/

I’ve also put the link to her blog in my ever-increasing “Idea Farm” on the sidebar.