i LOVE being off work

i have talked to so many friends and coworkers who say "I could never stay home - i'd get so bored! need some time outside of the house..." well, it's been almost 3 weeks that i've been on disability leave now, and i still can't fathom WANTING to go back to work. i just feel like i get to be so "normal" now! I cook, keep the house clean, hang out with friends, read, and be creative as much as i want! yesterday i made 22 scrapbook pages!! workin' hard on getting caught up! and the 2 days before that, i made, wrote, and sent off 35-40 thank-you notes from my shower! SO MUCH FUN... i hope joey comes on his due date 'cause then that gives me 6 weeks still to get all caught up and ready for him! we shall see... babies come when they want to come, but i'm doing everything i can to keep him inside a few more weeks! (lots of resting and staying hydrated) plus then my mom can see me pregnant before she meets the new little one (living in hawai'i, she hasn't been able to see my growing belly - much to her dismay)... yes, this is the first grandchild (on both sides of the family) so EVERYONE is so excited!


well, i'm not going to post pictures of my creative endeavors of the last couple of days, 'cause there are too many pages, and i already sent out the thank-yous! but i have a shot of a piece i made a while back that needs a home on my blog - it's made up of a bunch of pics of things around our house - turned out kinda fun...

3 months later...

wow - it's been a while... i guess i took a break because of how sick i'd been feeling and the total lack of energy... but in july i found a "magic medicine" that made my morning sickness go away - just like that! amazing stuff! i just take one little sleeping pill (Unisom SleepTabs) with a B6 every other night, and abracadabra! no more nausea! discovered this stuff and stopped feeling sick about 3 days before going on a cruise to Alaska (a-mazing.) and ate everything in sight while i was there (because i could finally stomach more than fruit and gummy bears!)... and ended up with a gallstone. so ever since then, i've been having lots of little bouts of pain after almost every time i eat because of this gallstone (doc says i'll probably have to have the whole gallbladder removed after the baby's born - just what i wanted to be doing in those "bonding weeks" i get off from work)... but i seriously feel so much better and like a normal human being again, after finding my little magic blue pill :)




of course, as my pregnancy has progressed, i just feel more and more like my body is falling apart... everything hurts - feet, legs, back, pelvis, belly... and then a couple of weeks ago i started having contractions at work. i work 12-hour shifts as a nurse in the ER and don't get a lot of "down time". so at about 29 weeks, i started having fairly consistent contractions towards the end of each shift (like 8-9 hours into the shift, i'd start having consistently 6 contractions an hour), and i was also totally exhausted - like i was about to cry the last couple of hours of each shift. so after a few days of all these contractions, my doctor took me off on disability - 5 weeks early! yay! now for the last week or so that i've been off, i've been feeling so much more "normal" again! i mean, i still feel like my body is falling apart ;) but only 2-3 contractions a day, and i'm just getting to rest a lot more and do "normal" things like keep the house clean, and cook and bake and stuff... AND i've had more time to "be creative" finally! which is mostly taking the form of getting "caught up" on my scrapbooking from the last few years... i finally did our wedding (6 years ago now)!!! and i just want to get everything chronicled from pre-baby before he comes and all my scrapbooking will be about him... i really need to do some painting/collage and stuff, too. i miss it. i have this piece that has been in progress for a couple of months now (the 3rd piece in the Coldplay series - Cemeteries of London)...







here's the only 2 pieces i finished this summer (during my blog absence), both based on pictures from my baby sister's wedding in april... HUGE departure from my usual color schemes... but i think they turned out pretty good... i'm thinking about making prints and marketing them as like cards or something (bridal shower invitations?)

ok, fine, you can see it today...

here is the piece i made today... it's the second piece in my "coldplay" series - this one is about the song "Clocks"

and this one below was the first in that series, based on - you guessed it - 'yellow'! i like how the silhouettes leave ambiguity about the emotion involved in the scene... in the clocks one, the person could be wistful, longing, or just glancing up on an evening walk to see the giant moon. the yellow silhouette could be jumping for joy, reaching for the stars, or just motioning to something (or i'm sure there could be a lot of other interpretations, depending on who's looking at it!)

these pieces came about because i really liked how my birthday party invitations i made this past year turned out, with the multicolored paper and paint backgrounds (a technique learned from kelly rae roberts' book Taking Flight) -- see them below! but with these 2 in the coldplay series, i purposely chose colors i normally wouldn't first pick - but i like how they turned out!!

i hand-delivered each of these invitations to the dozen or so invitees - it was so fun! and so was the party! most of the people that came had NO artistic background whatsoever, but a few did, and i just got to hang out and help people "play" - so fun. i need to have another one of those parties!

I threw up at the grocery store on Tuesday.

I’m 4 months pregnant – the morning sickness is supposed to be OVER by now! It is so miserable just feeling nauseous all the time… but I think the reason I’m MOST disappointed that it hasn’t subsided is that the second trimester is supposed to be the time you feel the best (like, ever in your life), from stuff I’d read before being pregnant, at least. And I had all these big plans of things I was going to accomplish during these 3 months: get caught up with my scrapbooking , make lots of art, start an etsy site and start selling it… ‘cause once the baby comes, I know I’m going to have a very new focus in my life, and these things may have to take a backseat for a while. I mean I’ll still HAVE to create stuff… but won’t be able to dedicate large chunks of time to it – like I SHOULD be able to now. Pero, no. I’m already a month into the second trimester and all I do is lay around all the time. Ok, not completely, but by the time I do some laundry, grocery shopping, errands, cooking, cleaning (plus working full time) – all in between times of feeling so sick I just HAVE to lay down – there’s just not much time/energy left.


At least I have an amazing husband that supports me and loves me through all the whining, “I feel sick, but I HAVE to eat now. No that doesn’t sound good… no. no! blech! no. no. no. Ok we could try that…” and all my frustration with never getting anything done “all I did today was ONE load of laundry, and went to the grocery store and I threw up. :( ” He’ll say, “but did you do your ONE job for the day?? Taking care of the baby??” “yeah, I guess…” “then good job!! You accomplished everything you needed to today!” he’s sweet. And then there’s my sister Kristi… for mother’s day this year (my very first soon-to-be-mother’s day) she gave me a card that says she’ll clean my house once a week until next mother’s day, because she knows how tired I’ve been and that’s not gonna go away when the baby comes… omg. I am loved. I would NEVER do that for someone – such a huge sacrifice, with everything else going on in life. Thanks, sis!


The other part of what I was “supposed” to be doing during this time was getting ready for the baby! Such an incredibly gigantic life change is about to happen, and I feel like I haven’t even been able to think about it much/process/engage emotionally with the fact that a new little human is inside of me, forming… all that aside from physically preparing – nursery, picking names, shopping, etc – can’t even THINK about all that yet at this point! Guess I’ve been waiting till the morning sickness was over… but at this rate, I better start trying THROUGH it now! My mom was sick for 8 months with me, so hopefully this isn’t payback for that ;) and hopefully it’s not genetic… :) but I worked on some art today! My fingers and fingernails are all turquoise right now – have to show you when it’s done!


the baby at 10 weeks (7 weeks ago now! my little "joey" is much bigger now! and more human-looking ;)

up to speed

So I wanted to give everyone a little background about me and my art journey before I started blogging about the everyday “stuff”, so I think you’re pretty well up to speed now! Oh! Except I took one more class at the community college – intro to painting – and got to play with paint and learn how it works! Here’s my two favs from that class:

Now, in other news, Jason (my wonderful husband) went off-roading with his jeep and some friends last weekend and look what he brought me back!! He said they were from some old mining camp from the 1800s (but could’ve been from campers in present day too ;) – still so cool! Can’t wait to figure out something to do with them!

first tries

these were my first mixed-media art pieces. I had read an article on transferring images and absolutely HAD to try it! i used shots jason had just taken on our anniversary (for those of you who already saw this post yesterday, when jason got home i made him take new pictures for me, so these ones are better :)

Then I started taking my first art class – an intro to design class (with Barry Krammes – lol) – and I LOVED it! Just putting colors and textures and ideas together in visually appealing ways… felt so much like just playing! I was 26 and in a class with all these cute little college freshmen, many of whose skills with drawing or painting far exceeded mine… but I could hold my own with design! :) my 2 favorite pieces from that:

lovin' the silhouettes!

Barry introduced me to beeswax, and i fell in love! this piece got a little... melted, 'cause i originally hung it above the oven in my kitchen -- not such a good idea :)

Biola was too expensive even to audit, so after that I took a drawing class at the Community College, and loved that, too! I mean, I was REALLY unsure of myself at first “never” having drawn before. But my teacher, Alexandra Weisenfeld, was so encouraging! I felt like the star of the class – she not only praised my technical abilities in drawing, but also my playful, creative side – made me feel like a “real” artist with real potential. A couple of pieces from that class:


self-portrait

my "art area" (known to most artists as the studio? i guess because it's only part of a big room, we call it that...). picture got smudgy from being in my portfolio with charcoal drawings...

While I was taking that class, they had a contest at my work (Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles) for nurses to submit art pieces with a theme of “Family-centered care”, so I made a last minute piece and turned it in! that was so scary – putting myself out there like that… only about 7 nurses entered, but I WON! $500! It was crazy! And SO exciting! I took Jason out to dinner at the Yard House with that money to thank him for his support and celebrate with me, and then with the rest, every last penny went back into supplies and stuff for making more art! (if only every piece I made could be so profitable! I really could quit “work” and just “play” making art! :) think it’ll be a while before that happens…… ) Anyways, here’s that piece (I got paid $500 for it AND I got to keep it!)

it all started with scrapbooking (2 of 2)

Then the transition to “art”. My husband and I love to go on “dates” to Borders. Sit in their café area and read together, drink yummy concoctions… so I would always grab a huge stack of all the scrapbooking magazines and thumb through them till I had so many new ideas floating around I had to go home and play (oh, and sometimes we buy books and magazines, too – we’re not JUST freeloaders ;)! Well, one day, somehow a Cloth Paper Scissors ended up in my stack and I started reading it, intrigued by the images and my very first introduction to mixed-media art – I think I read it cover-to-cover that day. But the article that drew me in the most was the one by Kelly Rae Roberts. I delighted in my first glimpses of her art, but even more than that, it was her story! So similar to mine. That she had been in the medical field, totally not using creative talents at all, and then eventually after she discovered the joy she had in creating, she took the daring step of leaving that stable career and dedicating herself to making art as a full-time endeavor! That has been my dream since that moment. I also had a friend at the same time who was an art teacher, who was working on developing her own portfolio, and we began to talk about her art and the altered books assignments she was giving her class… she started giving ME creative assignments, too! And it was all downhill from there for me! I couldn’t stop! I started taking art classes at local colleges, to try to develop some of those skills a little bit more, and I have fallen in love. My day no longer seems complete unless I’ve created something that day. I am obsessed with rust and all things distressed. I love texture and almost none of my pieces get away without some sewing pattern attached to it, making it all wrinkly…

it all started with scrapbooking (1 of 2)

I know, I know. That statement is enough to make all the “real artists” out there shudder. But it’s true, and I can’t deny it! I had never considered myself “creative” IN ANY WAY. I grew up always being the smartie – good at stuff like math and science – guess that’s why I became a nurse! But anytime a project called for creativity, I was like “count me out!” Then I discovered scrapbooking. I mean, I had glued stuff in scrapbooks since I was like 15,

my first scrapbook ever

but never paid any attention to color or layout or anything, but when I was in college, some of my other nursing friends were scrapbookers and I saw a whole new world open up!

my first "cute" scrapbook

My skills kept developing in that area, but I still thought “I’m not creative – I just put together stuff that’s already there in my own way.” Then I had a conversation with a friend that helped me realize that that is exactly what creativity is! You don’t start from nowhere and create new worlds without a reference point in THIS world and the things and colors and textures you’ve experienced here! It really is just putting it all together in a new way that is “yours”. That opened up the doors of creativity to me – I suddenly had the freedom to do whatever I wanted with my supplies, and I loved it! I still stuck with paper pretty exclusively for a while, making cards and scrapbooking for myself and others.

People started calling me “their creative friend”! What a change! I hadn’t done anything creative like paint or draw or collage since I was a kid (part of the reason for the name “rusty artist” – the idea that everyone starts out as kids able to access their creative sides, but as many are encouraged in a different direction, they stop using those talents/that side of them, and it ends up “rusty”.) Now people were asking ME to create stuff for them and their families!

jason took pictures of a bunch of rusty stuff for me at Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco (you can't really tell from this picture, but the letters "RUSTY" have actual rust on them - not sure if that's too archival, but i like it :)

Explanation of the name RustyArtist

The reason for this name is twofold: first, I love rust. I cannot resist a rusty object. My sisters joke that for my birthday or Christmas, all they have to do is go look around on the street till they find something rusty, and I will be happy – lol – it’s true! I think I even put it on my Christmas wish list one year – “rusty stuff”. I buy objects from thrift stores and MAKE them rusty. Like this shield – it started out plastic with a shiny silver emblem – doesn’t it look way better now?? ;) The second reason for this name is the idea that most of us are “rusty artists”. We get to express our creativity boundlessly in childhood, but soon it becomes less accepted as we “grow up” and are encouraged in other, more practical directions. So my creativity was very “rusty” when I finally rediscovered it a few years ago, and I’m still getting all my creative parts in working order. Can you hear the tin man saying “oil can…”?