Hair New Era

While I was still living in Germany, my favorite clothes were made by the Swedish company Gudrun Sjöden. I love the high quality of the clothes, the material and unique cut. Gudrun Sjöden didn't care what was trendy (still doesn't). Her designs have always been unique, colorful, flowing - simply beautiful in my eyes.

Then I moved to the US and had to say goodbye to my beloved Gudrun style (except for the pieces I still own). However, the last time I went to visit Germany, I stocked up on Gudrun clothes and I also got on their mailing list. Yes, they send their catalog from Germany to California! And only a few weeks ago I found out that the company actually sends their clothes to the US from Sweden if you order them there, and the shipping is FREE. Of course you have to pay in Euro - kind of a shocker, but so worth it.


Their catalogs are pure eye-candy. They often go to other countries for a photo shoot - I still remember a splendid fall collection shot in Morocco back in the 90's. A couple of months ago I received this catalog with a photo shoot in Botswana. The photography is so yummy, I simply have to share it with you.

 

This summer, Kaefer and I are both working on sketchbooks. We have decided that each of us will finish 25 pages before the fall. We bought two 5"x7" spiral bound sketchbooks with heavy recycled paper and carry them with us pretty much everywhere.

I had read on Gina's blog about National Day of Unplugging and thought what a wonderful idea that was. I'm spending so much time on the computer, especially right now because I'm taking two online classes. Over the past few weeks I've tried to limit my computer time, switching on the PC not before 2:00pm, and sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't. I'd rather spend the time creating and the morning is my most productive time.

So I unplugged Friday night and didn't return to the PC before this morning.

The Geek was gone the entire day - yesterday was the regional competition for Odyssey of the Mind and he served as a problem captain for the Mousemobile problem. Kaefer woke up with a sore throat and coughing, but no high temperature. After getting some medication at the pharmacy, she spent the day bundled up on the couch, reading four books (Nancy Drew) and watching the 2010 Winter Olympic Games events we had taped last year. Some of them we actually watched together and it was amazing how exciting it still was although we already knew the results! I also spent time in the studio, working on canvas for the She Art workshop and thoroughly enjoying it. It was rather pleasant outside, so I worked several hours in the yard, weeding, cutting back and watching the birds. In the evening, after the Geek had returned exhausted from an exciting day, I cooked dinner for the family and we spent a good time together. It was just a lovely day. We all need those from time to time.

Do you unplug every now and then?

I’m 51 today.


Turning thirty and forty was no big deal for me. However, when I turned fifty last year, it dawned on me that more than half of my life was already over. How many years would I still have? Twenty? Thirty, if I’m lucky? And how was I planning to spend those years?

Those were the questions that occupied me for the first half of last year, and I only knew that I didn’t want to go back into an office job I didn’t enjoy, but do something where my heart was in it and that nourished my soul. I read books, I took my first e-course with Visionary Mom that helped me to name my dreams and formulate what I really wanted to do. Exactly around that time I started reading “Taking Flight” by Kelly Rae Roberts. She mentioned her blog in her book, and just out of curiosity I switched on my computer and visited her website.

Oh boy… She advertised her very first e-course, “Flying Lessons”. I read the outline and I knew that this was the course for me. This was exactly the answer to all my questions and my search. This was IT. I signed up the very first day – and it was the best thing I did for myself this last year and it has changed my life quite a bit.

I started my own blog without really knowing what I was doing. I “met” people in blogland who have become friends. I found enormous support and was amazed at what others were doing. I became serious about my photography, found so much inspiration that led me to try new perspectives, to take pictures of completely different motives than I did before. It was fun and incredibly encouraging. I made more art than before and I even showed it on my blog. It was a whirlwind.

Years ago I had stopped to make any New Year’s resolutions because I knew that I usually wouldn’t keep them. And honestly, who cares whether I loose ten pounds or not (actually I did over the past year! Without a resolution – but a lot of exercise). So no resolutions for 2011 either. But I have a few wishes for my birthday.

I want to be truly authentic. When I write or comment, it’s ME who spills out those words, my thinking and feeling. It’s not what I think others want to hear or read, but something that is ME no matter whether it is “popular” or not. It is okay to be different and to think differently. It is also okay if I can’t express myself perfectly. Everybody who comes to this site knows that I am not a native speaker, that some sentences will sound funny or weird. What the heck? It doesn’t matter. Being authentic means that I’ll be vulnerable. It needs a lot of courage, but I want to do this. Perhaps it’ll hurt sometimes, however, I can gain so much from that. It is perfectly okay to be imperfect.

There are other wishes – like doing more art, getting more serious about my photography, opening my Etsy store, read, write more and worry less, but being authentic is the most important one. Many bloggers had a certain word for the new year - my word for 2011 is

Yesterday, on a really hot day, the third annual Handcar Regatta took place in our town.

I call it the Festival of Weirdness, providing rich and sweet candy for the eyes. Homemade handcars were racing down the old out-of-use railroad tracks, cheered on by the crowds, many of them dressed up in Victorian costumes or spreading the flair of colonial India. Which, by the way, was this year's theme.

I wish I could have taken more pictures. But the disadvantage of those crowds, fun as they were to watch, is that you seldom have enough time and space to snap a decent picture. The light was gruesome, too (hot, sunny, bright, dusty afternoon). But I still hope you will enjoy these pictures that show some of the "Victorian science fiction", as one visitor described the event.

Earlier this week I told you that I decided to participate in Louise Gale's Creative Color Challenge. This week's color was raspberry red and this is what I created:


I first painted the canvas with berry red acrylic paint, glued some scrapbook papers onto it, adhered the photo that I wrote about here and finally stamped shapes and letters using shades of the same acrylic paint. For painting the lighter colors on the bottom and in the upper right corner I used for the first time the paper towel technique that Kelly Rae talks about in her book "Taking Flight" (at least I think she mentions it there). I love this technique!

This was a very interesting challenge since I was only allowed to use one color including its shades and only add black and white. I loved it and I really enjoyed the process. I hadn't been creative for quite some time (pretty much the whole of summer break), so this was just wonderful. It took a few days and occupied my mind a lot, I loved mixing colors, going through my stash of papers and the stamps. I liked it more and more whenever I came back to my work table.

My work space is our former dining table. It's now really mine - only on rare occasions do I completely clean it, for example when I'm teaching a private card class. Meals are being eaten at the kitchen table.

Today I'm working on the Creative Color Challenge. I always have a huge piece of paper beneath my work on which I doodle, try stamps and inks, jot down ideas. It stays there often for weeks or even months and eventually turns into its own piece of art.

If you want to join the "What's on your workdesk? Wednesday" hop on over to Stamping Ground.

Yesterday I decided to join Louise Gale's Creative Color Challenge. Every week in the month of August we're creating with just one color (plus black and white) in all its shades. It sounds really interesting and after I had looked at all the wonderful art work of the "Sunflower Yellow" challenge I decided to join.

I haven't done a creative challenge for a very long time. There was always this "I'm not good enough" feeling that stopped me from joining any kind of challenge. But yesterday I thought "what the heck can I lose?" This is supposed to be fun!

This week's color is Raspberry Red - a great color, and one that I love on top of that. My mind is busy with exploring the possibilities. Since I couldn't stop thinking of it I tried something new yesterday evening.

I started out with a photo of my daughter that I took a few weeks ago.


And then I converted it into black and white.


In a final step, the word "Love" turned into (raspberry) red.


No idea yet whether I will use this photo for the challenge, but it was a lot of fun to work with Photoshop. The Geek is a Photoshop expert and walked me through every single step of the process. I'm not sure I could repeat it right now, but I'm going to practice this with more of my pictures. I really like the result!

The German language has a beautiful poetic word, "Abendstille". It describes the sounds of silence in the evening: all is quiet except for the song of the nightingale, the soft murmur of water, the whisper of the wind in the trees. You get the picture.

"Abendstille" is always the first word that pops into my head when I look at this photo of Lost Lake in Alaska. We had arrived at the campground around 10:00 pm., pitched our tent and finally went down to the lake. The scenery was so peaceful - the colors that the midnight sun painted in the sky were reflected in the water, a lone duck quacked softly and tiny waves rolled gently onto the shore. A perfect "Abendstille" whose magic I tried to capture in this picture.

Do you have a special word that reflects in your creations?

Recently I went through the letters that my mom wrote to me while I was away at school. My mom and I were very close, even though I have to admit that I sometimes treated her horribly during my teenage years. But you couldn't tell from those letters. She wrote about the good times she remembered before I left for school and how much she missed me. I could almost hear her voice while going through these letters.

There are many more letters that I received from my mom over the years, but these ones touched me in a very special way. In simple words she mentioned what we had done together, our little quirky gestures and sayings that only both of us understood and were like a secret bond between us. I had almost forgotten some of these and it was heartwarming to be reminded of them again.

My mom passed away three years ago. There aren't many letters left from the last 15 years of her life because we had talked more on the phone. After my daughter was born I had no time for writing letters, and I also tried for Kaefer to see her grandparents as often as possible. That became very difficult when we moved to the States and always involved long, exhausting flights with ridiculously long waits in airports.

I feel so blessed to have these letters that were written as a loving mom to her youngest daughter. Eventually they will be passed along to Kaefer when she will be grown up and can understand the treasure of these written words. Handwritten letters to and from loved ones are so powerful and even more treasured in our computerized age.

I copied three of the letters and created a little collage with a photo of my mom that was taken in the sixties. I haven't worked much on canvas, so this was still pretty new to me. How much did I love to play around with gel medium, crumple up paper and mess around with distress ink (one of my favorite "toys"). The copied letters fit exactly into the glass tubes that I sealed with dried poppy seed heads sprayed with glimmer mist. My mom loved the fields in Germany that were colorfully spotted with thousands of red poppies.

The collage will get a special spot in my work room where it will always remind me of the power of my mother's love.


April 2011: I'm linking this to this week's Inpiration Avenue challenge, "Mother".


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