messy Miss Kate

Geeky Stuff: Draw Something...

In between all the craziness thats been going on here lately, I've been finding minutes to play a new geeky game.

And I'm in love.

Really. This game was made for me. Made for me in the sense that I love to make, I love to draw, I love to scribble.

Its a game you can download from the App Store for iPad or iPhone [actually there may even be an android version, yes, there must!] and you basically play against opponents you know or random players from around the globe. Its like Pictionary without the board. You get 3 options of things to draw, each having a difficulty level attached & the more difficult, the more you win [if guessed by your opponent].

Its so cool. I normally play sitting in the car at school pickup, late at night before bed, in the middle of the night when I can't sleep & the odd minute here or there when I can catch a tiny free spot of time.  I play with my sister, several facebook/twitter/instagram friends and also some randoms from no idea where.

If there were points awarded on how quickly I draw, I would be a definite last.  I just enjoy the process and depending on the thing I need to draw, love spending as much time as I can making it nice. Ironic saying that since I just posted about our general busy-ness lately. But really, I play in the small cracks of my 24 hours. The times when I am limited in what else I can do. And it relaxes me. Thats a good thing.

Here's some of my drawings from the last week. Just for fun. And just so you know, I use mostly my iPad and mostly a stylus. I've done several with finger on iPhone but its much nicer to draw with a larger [iPad] canvas I think.

 

   

   

 

 

 

 

 

 

So much fun yes?  So if you wanna play with me, please do! I'm Kate_Mason. Same as my Instagram ID.

Cheers,

Kate xo

Arty Things: Creativity is all around...

Been at my scribbling again, here's a little girl with some worries. She wears them like feathers in her hair....

 

 

I've also managed a bit of messing in my art room this past week.  Oh how I love it in there. Immersing myself in papers & napkins & glue...

Hopefully I will have some new works to share soon! 

I am not sure I have shared this already.  Its a piece of artwork that I made for my brothers birthday for his house.  He lives pretty close the beach.  I think I'll have some prints made up of this one for the shop, eventually..... 

And these little ladies have been hanging around for months!!!  I was originally going to sell them but we need more hooks at home for bags & storage etc so I'll be attaching these to our walls. But I will be on the lookout for more home decor functional pieces and painting right on over the top of them. I have another couple of coat hooks that I did with some girly girls on them. One of them I'll share soon & add to the shop for sale! 

 

I sometimes run a little drawing club here in my home. For my kids. It usually follows a bout of boredom or squabbling and basically we get out megasketchers, paper & pencil, iPads, whatever medium we desire and we get drawing!  We'll each have a turn at picking something and we all have to draw it. Most of the kids need guidance and help with drawing, especially if its animals or something. But by doing this on a more regular basis I hope they grow in confidence.

I'll post some drawing club pics in an upcoming Monday Making post soon. 

Lately, everyone around here is getting into drawing again. Even little Buddy. He loves doing "Ho work!"

 

Recent drawing by George. Cute, love the motion in the hair. 

Chels & her cute faces. Yes she does have a sticker next to her eye. They had been good so I gave the twins 2 stars each & they wanted to wear them like eyeshadow/makeup sparkles. As you do. 

Mimi is enjoying writing quite a bit and also colouring in, but she hasn't been enjoying drawing. This was a good breakthrough for her & she is growing in confidence now. 

And here is some artwork made by Charlotte last year.  I helped her do some stitching on the sewing machine for the first time. She loved it. Georgie did one too, except hers is a birdy.  You can see it on the kids blog here. 

 

So whilst it seems we never have enough time to do all the creating that we would like to be doing, we are still getting some pieces done.  And that to me, is super special.

Kate Mason xo

Arty Things: My First Exhibition...

Well my very first art exhibition in the Warwick Art Gallery in QLD, has come to an end.  And a very successful exhibition it was.

I sent up 11 original paintings, 2 from my personal collection & sold 8 out of the 9 for sale. Feeling extremely grateful & lucky for that!!   

You can see all my other work close up here in this post.  Most of them are available as prints in my etsy shop here.  If out of stock currently, I will be re-printing & re-stocking as soon as I can. Feel free to leave me a comment here or send me a tweet or email if there is something you are after but can't find.

Here is the painting I will be listing in ETSY as soon as I get around to it and once it has flown home from its little Queensland holiday!

Noble & Worthy:

 

This is actually the cropped version for the print.  The actual painting is a little taller, somewhat extended in both directions!   For sale for AU$90.

About this artwork: 

A piece very close to my heart. I chose to stay at home with my children & squish my creative & career interests into all the little cracks of my life, around my children. I haven't yet been able to finish my degree. I have not yet cracked my first million [actually so far from....] But to me, putting aside or keeping to a minimum, your aspirations, to be the first carer & teacher for your babies, at home day in & day out - IS noble. And it IS worthy of recognition. Sometimes when I'm feeling isolated & left behind, I need to remind myself of that and feel super good & proud of what I am doing here. I made this artwork to celebrate my noble-ness {!} & worthiness. 

I always thought this would make a great gift for a new mum or an experienced mum who needs reminding.....  And I think it would be pretty cool to hang it somewhere like the laundry or the kitchen!  Why not?

Prints of this canvas have sold out in the shop but I will get some more printed soon-ish. In my next spare 5 minutes.

Anyway, thought I would share a few pictures of my artwork on the exhibition walls in the Warwick Art Gallery. Photos courtesy of the lovely & super talented Loretta Grayson who not only invited me to exhibit with her & other amazing artists but who so generously received all my work, hung it for me in the gallery & now doing all the reverse to undo the exhibition. Well of course not only that, but a zillion other things in the gallery to make sure it all went smoothly.

Thank you Loretta, this opportunity has made me feel so appreciated & valued.  I now have confidence to maybe do something like this again!

So the art gallery pics...  my artwork was hung in the foyer of the gallery so it was the first work people saw as they entered.

 

 

Can't tell you how exciting it feels to see my work hanging up like that!

So there it is. First exhibition done & dusted.

kate xo

Scheduling: Breathing space to organise....

I totally love it once term 4 at school finishes [in my whole 2 years experience of that happening hehe] and we can somewhat drop the tight schedule & relax a bit around the house.  Of course we are preparing & planning for Christmas but on the whole there are lots of fun things happening too.

Here was my big pre-Christmas scheduling session charts before I added in all the crazeeeeee!

Some of what I had planned went out the window but we managed.

Anyway, I love Christmas Eve, I love Christmas Day & I always really really look forward to Christmas night when the kiddies are tucked in bed & I can organise all the 'stuff' from the day.  Boxing Day, I'm also in my element integrating new things into the house, pottering around, relaxing, playing with the kids....

But something a bit magical happens in the few weeks following Christmas too.  I get a bit of breathing space!  Jeff is home on holidays.  And the kids are so busy playing, playing & more playing that between meal times, I can get some stuff done! Its fabulous.

And getting some happy mail too! Yeeeee!

And just before Christmas I got some new Moo business cards too! Moo to that! Loved seeing all my little paintings in miniature on all those cards. Bit cute huh?

So the last week or so I've been able to get a few projects done around the house, caught up on some blogging, kept up with my graphics job and been able to get some forward planning done too.  Next I need to attack my inbox & get up to date there.

So projects.... Here's a temporary kids art gallery wall that I put up one morning while the kids ate breakfast.  I got the inspiration from Pinterest.  Its temporary because we are waiting for the wall to be painted. In the meantime, why not scribble on the wall and display some lovely colour?  Once it is painted, I'll have to do this somewhere else. Perhaps buy some nice colourful frames or something.

I also got my handychick tool set out & put up 1 of these inspiration clippy bar thingo's above each of the girls beds to hang postcards, artwork, puppets, Zhuzhu pets?, photos etc.  Yes 'clippy bar thingo' IS the technical term. You can buy them cheaply at Ikea. The girls love them.

This holidays, I've also taken the kids to the movies, we saw Alvin & the Chipmunks 3; Chipwrecked [3 stars from me] & taken the girls shopping. I bought them lalaloopsy pencil toppers. And ok, I may have bought myself a pack or two too! Its really helped with my planning & list making. Really.

And today I've been getting stuck into said planning & also working out my direction for this year.  I worked on day to day scheduling, art business idea generation & also came up with some personal wants for this year.

This year I want to:

1] Love myself - because I've never tried that before & I need to treat myself a little better. Lots more to write about this under my Living-to-100 posts.

2] Simplify & diversify - Learn to say 'no' more. Do things I like. Try some new things.

3] Have direction & goals - Have a good schedule to point me in the right direction & work towards achieving some personal goals.  BUT not beat myself up if there are bits I miss, or I don't achieve everything I'm working towards - I want to enjoy life along the way!

I tend to accumulate all sorts of little books & cute stationery for my prolific list writing, plans, ideas & sketches so today, I consolidated some things to reduce the numbers of notebooks I carry around each day! There is still too many but thats me, I like it, so a few books on hand everyday is ok.

I also came up with a little plan for my blog. There are lots of categories I like to write about & up until now, I've just written willynilly about whatever, whenever.  One of my friends organises herself very well on her blog so I'm taking a leaf out of her book and organising myself into loose daily posting topics.  Not that I'll be posting everyday. That would be nice to be that organised but I just know with all my commitments, that I couldn't maintain it! So we'll see how this goes. Need some picture buttons for topics in my sidebar, but will get to that in time!

Here's my basic plan.... EDITED!  I've tried this plan on for a while & I'm redefining, shuffling things around just a bit more as I'm discovering what is working & what is not. Massaging it all to where things fit nice for me with my schedule.  Still major topics to focus on but without restriction of naming them for a particular day.  I will try to organise myself that way still, having a daily topic, but my posts don't have to have the day in the name & I'm not going to be shattered if they don't exactly get posted on the intended day!  So here they are updated..... March 2012.

Mondays - "MONDAY MAKING" - now known as "ARTY THINGS" &/or "SCRAPPS FLEA MARKET"

- where I'll blog about my painting, work in progress, my scribbles & illustration, general crafting & Scrapps Flea Market [my art business]. I've also signed up for an art journalling course this year so I'll share some of my pages from my art journal too!

Tuesdays - "TECH TUESDAY" - now known as "GEEKY STUFF" &/or "INSTAGRAM"

- I like to talk about anything technology/blog/App/graphics/Apple/photo related so will fit this in on Tuesday + share my Instagrams for the week for the #JANphotoAday challenge I've been doing. Also any new photo challenges.

Wednesdays - "WEDNESDAY WEARS & WARES" - now known as "THRIFTY" or "WHAT WE WORE WEDNESDAY"

- What we wore Wednesday posts & thrifting finds.

Thursdays - "BEAUTIFUL THURSDAY" - now known as either "BLYTHE", "INSPIRATION" or "KINDNESS"

- Inspiration, beautiful Blythe & something I want to work on a bit more this year - Kindness.

Fridays - "FAMILY FRIDAY" - now known as "FAMILY & HOME"

- I'll continue my recording of family & home goings on + parenting challenges under category, 'Supermum? Not so much.'

Saturdays - "SATURDAY KITCHEN" - now known as "KITCHEN" or "LE CORDON BLEU"

- Things I create [sorta badly] in my kitchen & my ongoing quest to become a Cordon Bleu chef. Don't worry, I won't bore you with all my recipes, I actually plan to take Saturdays off from blogging altogether, but in case I cook something I have to share [because it turned out!] I'll share that on a Saturday.

Sundays - "SUNDAY SCHEDULE" - now known as "SCHEDULE" or "LISTS" or "LIVING to 100"

- My 'Living-to-100' posts on healthy living + schedule for the coming week, best practice within our home, organisation etc.

So by just tidying up my blogging schedule & having something to work towards, I think it'll free me up from thinking I have to post everything now, not getting an opportunity & then posting everything at once way down the track!  

Of course I will post as often as I can, if I can & just work through the variety of topics so its spaced out all nicely. Occasionally I'll have something I'll be busting to post about so may throw the schedule out for a day or two. And thats ok too!

Next Sunday night, I plan to be totally caught up with blogging & I'll be sharing my wrap up & reflections post on 2011 & saying a formal hello to 2012. 

I am looking forward to things I have in the pipeline & to share them on my blog too. Fun fun!

Kate xo

Family: Christmas Cards 2011...

Christmas post 2 of 3:

Well lots of blogging to catch up on, both from last school term, now Christmas & soon the twins will be turning 4 so I had better get cracking on my blogging as I have lots of plans & busyness coming up in 2012. Right skates on....

What am posting about? Yes, Christmas cards 2011!

The girls cards to hand out to classmates, super easy. They drew their picture onto the iPad, we coloured them in Photoshop & I maneuvered the digital handwriting under the pictures & copied across so I had 3 vertical cards onto an A4 sized sheet.  I took them to my printer & had them printed. Worked out pretty well having 3 on each sheet. A quick guillotine, candy cane attached & they were ready to hand out!

  


As for our family Christmas card.... not so easy.  I love to photograph the kids together at least once per year, looking nice, hopefully smiling & enjoying being with each other. Hopefully capturing happiness.  Candid & imperfect totally ok, just a wee bit of happy is what I am after.  Did I do good?  No. Supermum? Not so much.

Charlotte was upset about something, I cannot recall what. Buddy, well he was not in the slightest bit interested in joining the girls and wandered around in all directions. Then when I sat them all down, he burst into tears.  I gave up when I dropped my DSLR camera on the ground with my most expensove lense on board. Sigh. 

I did get some lovely portraits though.

 

Ok, so this wasn't so grand.... and she'll kill me when she see's I posted this but oh well, its real life.

 

  

Learning to be quite the little posers.

I wonder where they get that from?

After not really getting anything suitable, in a mad hurry, I took my camera with family in tow out to grab some shots just minutes before we visited Father Christmas for a photo. We stopped at a footy oval somewhere along the way & little Mr Bud once again decided he would not be in the shot unless there were tears. So this is the best of the bunch.

Maybe in hindsight, something from the first bunch at home was better. Not sure. This new batch taken on the fly, weren't at all sharp. Maybe I did actually do some damage when I dropped the camera. Maybe I was rushing the shot. Anyhow, will need to look into getting it checked out.

Not exactly what I had in mind but well this is our life. Little posers, sisters doting on the little man, little man doing whatever he pleases, because you know, he's the only boy and just entering into the terrible two's - which every parents knows actually starts at 18 months!  I guess 'terrible two's' sounds better than terrible eighteenmonthsthsthsthstheses!

Not a perfect Christmas card, but I like it anyway. Sharing the Christmas Joy!????

 

And what do you know, the camera chick taking shots of kids with Father Christmas, clicks once and gets this.... Gahhhhh!!

 

Anyway, we did manage to print & send all our cards out this year which is something. I am grateful for that.

Kate xo

Get Scribbling - the modern way...

A while ago I was guest blogger over my friend Kass Hall's blog.  For my readers & the sake of recording... yada yada... here's my article.

- - -

I think many artists would agree that their ideas for working creatively come from anywhere, often unexpected and at any time.  I wish I could harness all those ideas that plants seeds in my brain & get them recorded, written down, scribbled out.  If there were some sort of USB port implantation into the brain to capture ideas, I'd be first to put my hand up for that innovative new surgery, for sure.  But I don't think its coming any time soon.

I also think many artists would agree that to progress work from just an idea to something real, tangible, workable, you need to get that idea written down, sketched out, expanded upon.  Artists often keep visual journals with notes, scribbles, swatches, colour options and research prompts. Its one of the first things you learn in arts study at uni. And you are assessed on it! 

There is no doubt in my mind that I find it difficult to progress any new work at all without first scribbling it down in my visual journals. Its not often I've left the house without a sketchbook, just in case inspiration strikes!  Until more recently that is...  You see I got an iPad this year.  And I am loving the ease & fun I am having with the Adobe Ideas application.  Its a vector based drawing program and its fabulous.  I find no matter where I am, I can get out my little iPad and scribble out some ideas very easily.  I've also bought the additional 'layers' program so that I can easily add layers from photos or previous artworks I might have in my iCloud, Dropbox or iPad photo albums.

Whether your work is digitally based, paper based or on canvas, this portable way of progressing ideas with easy save & email functions is definitely worth having a look at.  I mean for starters, not only can you access varying widths of line, but a comprehensive colour palette, eraser tools, opacity levels & layers relocation.  You will seriously love seeing your lines, handwriting & each mark made, snap up sharply, taking out all the wobble. Its fabulous. Did I say that already?

And there is no bulky pencil case to lumber around! Nor eraser & pencil shavings.  I also love how you can zoom right in to work on tiny details too and zoom back out to get the right perspective on things.  

Whilst I still do love paper & there's nothing like the feel of scribbling with an art marker, there certainly is a case for using this new tool to work out some great colour concepts with ease or working an entire digital piece from scratch on your iPad!  Documents are saved & emailed as PDF's so they are quite a decent size once emailed onto your desktop, should you need to expand your work in photoshop or other graphics programs.

Here's a quick little step by step of how I created my one of my little scribbled ladies, which will later transfer onto canvas for collaging.

Image 1:  I pulled a work in progress [on canvas] photo into Adobe Ideas as my first layer as I wanted to have a patterned dress to work from.

Image 2:  I've added a new layer and painted all the areas from the photo layer I don't need with white to block them out.

Image 3: I've now got my basic dress shape and I've opened the colour palette to choose my skin tone.

x

Image 4:  New layer has been added & I've sketched in arms, neck & head

Image 5:  Another new layer and now I've zoomed in to work on the finer details of the face

Image 6:  New layer and this time I've added hair & outlines to body & dress 

Image 7:  Last layer added, I've added a birdcage to finish off.

Image 8: Saved my image & emailed the PDF to my desktop. Easy peasy.

 

Adobe Ideas can be purchased from the AppStore for around the $7 mark & the layers add-on [which I think is definitely worthwhile] is another $1.  And even if you end up not finding it useful in scribbling out some ideas on the go for your own art practice, you certainly will have some fun with it.  My 5 & 6 year old daughters are very proficient at using this program [without the layers] and use it on a regular basis for their own digital art working, so its obviously very intuitive and hey, its lots & lots of fun!

Kate xo

Creative process follow-up & she's finished!

Remember this post back here where I shared my creative process from scribble onwards?  Almost all of my canvases start off as a sketch, scribbled down note or iPad digital drawing.  These days more often than not, I'm resolving colour & sketching up on the iPad. I love it! 

Anyway, here we are again, and here's where it started.  Back in April, I found this little half sketch. My kids did the blue crayon bit, it was unfinished & left lying around.  I snaffled it, as I saw a little person in the sketch busting to appear. The words came straight out & I scribbled in sparkles for eyes. She has sat, stuck in my visual diary for months and months.

Fast forward to August/September & I had a little play with it on my iPad. Words changed a little. Colour evolving. 

Then sketched out onto canvas.  

Well here she is finished, words changd again, all collaged & painted and ready to go to QLD for my upcoming exhibition.

This is only a sneaky peek view, taken in poor light in the wee hours here but you get the idea. I will be posting a better image soon and there will be prints coming to my shop also.   I'm moving into some new directions with my making. More simple, less cluttered, more painted backgrounds. Its nice to move away from comfort zone. Thats not to say I won't be doing scrappy patchy backgrounds with all my beloved morsels ofpaper & napkin yummy - I love that the most!  I'm just playing with new ideas too.

So there you go! Process from sketch through to finished canvas from an idea generation perspective.  

As for method, well I am working away over here on a little workshop that I would like to hold after Christmas, working through an actual canvas together.  Something that you can make yourselves for a gift or for your home. I'll walk you through with my step by steps, we'll have a flickr gallery and probably either a private facebook page or blog so we can chat & open a forum for discussion. Those details I'll work out soon but no matter where you are in the world, you can join me!

If you are interested, please email me or leave a comment with your email address and I will be sure to get some details out to you as soon as I am ready!  I'd also love to hear the sort of canvas you'd like to create.  A babushka doll? Something girly? An alien? Houses?

Please let me know!

Kate xo 

PS. Did you enter my PRINT GIVEAWAY yet?  Check out this post here. I think there is only 2 days to go!!! Yes, go Go GO! 

 

 

I want a vintage caravan...

Being a fulltime stay at home + working 2 part-time jobs from home, Mum, I am a bit isolated from a physical social life.  My besties in Adelaide don't live so close so its phone calls & emails & catch up on facebook. I guess this is the way it has become for many busy mums. For daily contact, I have loved growing my online group of friends; mostly crafty & Blythe collecting mums and I certainly start to miss these friends a bit if there's not some tweeting chat with them through the week.

Now I have to say, we talk about all sorts; Blythe collecting, craft, ETSY, Blythe clothes, eBay, kids, Pinterest, fabric, paper, Flickr, we share instagr.ams, talk about Blythe shoes, share blog posts and even chat a bit about Blythe dolls & beauty treatments.

Lately, there's been talk about vintage caravans. So my incorrigable & enabling friends have gotten me all hot under the collar for a vintage caravan of my own. Well, to share with my family of course.  Its mostly that Mel's fault. She just bought one so we are all drooling & following her journey as her family decks out their new van with all the cute trimmings that a cool caravan should have.  You can read all about it here.

There's also other cool caravan journey blogs & caravan info sites you can check out if you want to get on the bandwagon , I mean caravan-wagon.

My cool caravan and Foxs Lane. Great great great!  

And if you google vintage caravan images, oh my, this is what you get! CUTE +++

Seriously cool!  Sadly, I'm not sure my little family will be investing in an actual caravan anytime soon.  In the meantime, I am pinning cute caravan pics here in my Pinterest [still in its infancy] and I'm sketching a number of ideas for cute vintage caravan artworks on canvas too.  

Artmaking my caravan may be my only way to own one. I guess thats ok for now. But I am putting it onto my bucket list! So there!

Kate xo

Artist: Kass Hall...

Its a kinda a funny story how I met Kass.  It was years & years ago at the scrapbooking convention where I was announced as one of the winners of the Elite Team. I was so painfully shy & thrust into the limelight of Australian scrapbooking [actually tiny insignificant bubble in the grand scheme of things] and could hardly speak let alone make new friends. I knew nobody!

There definitely seemed to be many names & people I had recalled from photos in scrap magazine publishing & it seemed that so many people knew each other, had confidence & were having such a fabulous time.  I really couldn't allow myself to relax AT ALL.  The downside of extreme shyness. Actually is there an upside at all?

I remember being in the bathrooms at one stage & next to the hand dryer that Kass was using. I thought she was so famous & although I wanted to say 'hi', I just couldn't. Frozen. Pathetic I know.

Cant even remember who made first contact years later but anyway, by email I was able to spill my pathetic little shyness at the bathroom hand dryer story & she thought I was ridiculous. We've been friends ever since.

Kass, a Melbourner, came to visit us in the Melbourne Royal Childrens Hospital when we were going through one of the darkest & scariest time of our lives, Chelsea's major heart reconstructive surgery.  It was so great to have her there. We had to move to Melbourne temporarily, with all the family + both Jeff's & my mother. She provided a welcome distraction for me & visited my tiny tubed cut open baby in ICU.  I will never forget that kindness.

My dear friend Kass had recently been diagnosed with her 4th round of cancer. Can you believe it? Just how many challenges does one person need?  I am devasted about the whole thing.  I still don't know what I want to do for her. It has to be special.

Anyway, when Kass put out the call for guest bloggers, I jumped on it.  I'll post my article on here later for my blog readers but for now you can jump over to Kass's blog and read all about her amazing journey through art [Zentangle & author extraordinaire], through life and through cancer.

 

Kass's blog is here: check her out!

My guest blog post on "Get Scribbling the modern way," is here.

 

 

Kate xo

In my little bubble...

There's been much going on in my little corner of the world lately & I've neglected my blog for a few weeks.

I've completed a huge new volume of work on canvas and have many more in progress. Of course I'm also bursting with inspiration to get some other stuff underway too.

This little idea (see scribbled drawing attached) popped into my head this morning as I was running around doing errands and listening to one of my all time fave songs by ColdPlay called 'trouble' on iTunes in the car. So I had to quickly sketch it out in the various spare 10 min blocks I've had today.

Rushed & way messy I know, but well thats me. So anyway, I'd like to get this started on canvas as soon as possible too.

Hopefully I'll be back soon with a school holiday wrap up & tell you all about my recent local market day AND.......

Info about my exhibition coming up AND......

A post about an eCourse I've been working on for YOU, my readers, who may be interested in interacting with me directly on a little canvas project!!!!

Right now, I need to get dinner started so be back soonish.

Kate xo