My Favorite Rejects

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Back in the year 2000, I bought my first copy of Somerset Studio magazine—the July/August “Tropical Paradise” issue. Before seeing that magazine, I had cut a few gift tags out of construction paper and made a few pretty Christmas cards with postage stamps using an idea from Better Homes and Gardens. But I had never imagined paper crafts as beautiful as what I saw in Somerset Studio. I became an avid reader, a subscriber, and even a contributor.

My very first submissions to Somerset Studio were accepted—two entries into the March/April 2003 Call to Creativity to make Boxes of Remembrance using Janet Hofacker’s techniques for making boxes and shrines. I was so proud and excited to see my work in a professional publication. I was hooked!

I submitted various pieces over the years; some were published, some were not. Somewhere around 2006 or 2007, though, month after month, effort after effort, resulted in rejection, and I got burned out on trying. I had found myself making things only to relate to a magazine theme rather than anything based on my own interests and ideas, and all that rejection took a toll on my creative self-esteem.

I thought I would use today’s post to share with you some of my “favorite rejects.” While there is plenty of my work that I can look at now and say, “Really? You sent that in for consideration?”, there are a few pieces that I really liked and wished I could share with a broader audience. Now is my chance!

This first photo shows a corner of the living room bookcase where I display some of the things I've made. The first "favorite reject" I will point out is Christmas piece in the back, with the decorated tags. It was inspired by Jennifer Hardy Williams' Canvas Prayer Board in Sharon Soneff's Faith Books and Spiritual Journaling.

Here are a few close ups of the tags:

My next "favorite reject" is a bird house. Maybe bird houses got a little overdone; I don't know. I still love them!

Here is the back side of the same piece:

Finally, for a Holiday Projects theme, I made a series of artist trading cards (ATCs), each one representing the theme of a Somerset Studio issue from the previous two years. I really enjoyed this project because it made me look back through two years of issues, which is always fun to do. I called it "An ATC Retrospective", and decorated a box from a regular set of playing cards for the ATCs to fit into. Here are the cards:

And a close-up:

So that's a little tour of some of my "favorite rejects." I get to take advantage of the self-publishing aspect of blogging, and show you a little bit of my art and craft style in the process!

"A Mommy Who Draws"

Recently I’ve developed an interest in learning to draw. In writing this, I am reminded of something I read in a book, a quotation from Howard Ikemoto:

When my daughter was about seven years old, she asked me one day what I did at work. I told her I worked at the college - that my job was to teach people how to draw. She stared at me, incredulous, and said, "You mean they forget?”

I’m not sure I ever knew, and I certainly never received any training. So instead of the logical and probably most effective course of action—taking a class with an artist who could direct my efforts—I fell back on my usual course of action—hitting my local Borders bookstore. My first drawing-related purchase was Carla Sonheim’s Drawing Lab for Mixed-Media Artists. Sonheim presents a year’s worth of weekly drawing exercises or challenges to “put fun back in drawing.”

The first week’s lab invited me to draw cats in bed. “Draw about thirty cats from your imagination while sitting or lying in bed.” Since my imagination is feeling a little malnourished, and all of my daytime drawing basically takes place in the family room while the girls watch Mickey Mouse cartoons, I sat on the sofa instead, and accepted Sonheim’s permission to copy some of the cats she included in her book. So essentially I was making bad sketches of someone else’s sketches. Doesn’t sound too promising.  And yet…

Katy and Bayla came over to see what I was doing, and they were amazed. Their mommy was taking a white piece of paper and making kitty cats appear! Out of nothing! And so began a chorus of, “Draw another kitty here, Mommy!” “Draw one here, Mommy!” I happily obliged, feeling like a cat-drawing rock star with an instant fan club.

Now, just so you know what kind of standards the toddler set has for its artistic rock stars, I’ll show you my page of sketches:

(In my defense, they look quite a bit like Sonheim’s sketches. No, really, they do!)

No matter how much I may try to convince myself otherwise, I cannot deny the energy I get from others’ compliments and approval. Having that positive response from the girls gave me a boost that first day with my drawing book. Suddenly I was “a Mommy who draws.” They don’t know I’m not any good yet! My pictures looked like kitty cats to them, and that’s all that matters!

And this opened up the possibility that they could draw, too. Every day now, Katy has some piece of paper—often magazine subscription cards or a note we’ve gotten in the mail—that she spends hours drawing on at the breakfast table. Suddenly she is a “girl who draws”! I probably have more of value to learn from her about confidence and imagination than I have to learn about technique from any library book. (But don’t worry: I’ll try to pick up a little technique before I subject you to any more pages from my sketchbook!)

P.S.: Here is a small gallery of some of Katy’s recent work.

The third time's a charm!

I considered starting an entirely new blog to cover up my poor blogging track record. But I decided to return to Drawing Near and keep my blogging history intact. The first time I tried blogging, in 2008, I had a newborn daughter and an ambition to blog daily with a different theme for each day of the week. In a word, crazy! My second foray into the blogosphere came in 2009, when I had a toddler and a second newborn daughter. Though more realistic about my blogging schedule this time, I just couldn’t keep up my enthusiasm. I skipped a year and let both my girls get solidly into toddlerhood—they are now 2 and 3—and now I’m ready to try again. This time around I’m not doing a daily theme and I’m not focusing on updates on the girls. Instead, I’m interested in recording my efforts to revive and maintain my identity as a creative spirit in the midst of my roles as wife and mother.

I don’t like to get too caught up in a narrow definition of what it means to be creative, so that if I don’t create an art journal page or work on a collage, I feel like I haven’t been “creative.” I want to recognize all forms of creativity in my life—planning activities with the girls each day; finding some new way to brighten the house or recharge its energy; figuring out how to organize the toys, papers, and other piles that seem to crop up everywhere; planning meals; thinking of some new food, activity, or craft to try. But beyond the everyday creativity required by parenting and “homemaking,” I also want to explore and describe my broadening interests in arts and crafts.

If there’s one thing I love, it’s paper. And beads. And fabric. And paint. And pens. And books. And art journals. And collages. And decoupage. And altered objects. And polymer clay…You get the idea. What I lack in focus, I make up in variety! I have discovered by reading the words of many other blogging moms that I am certainly not alone in trying to enjoy my creative identity and share the fruits of a creative spirit with my children. I am hoping to use this blog to celebrate and explore my creative self.