a much-needed mini vacation...

our 8th anniversary (!) was this week, and my whole family is in town from all parts of the western hemisphere, so they watched the kiddo while my love and i took off for catalina island alone! (and bought this cute wooden horse for joey - at a thrift store for a dollar, haha - i think i want to use it as one of those travel-icon-things, like the gnome in Amelie - take it with us on all our travels, and document our adventures - and its!)

our sweet little victorianesque pink hotel :)

we have lots more photos from the trip, but we haven't gotten to sort through them yet, so i thought i'd at least share the couple i had on my iphone! :)

my favorite part of these little jaunts (ok, this is only our second time ;) is the boat ride... wind whipping my hair (and dress) in all directions, salty ocean spray, so much sparkling blue... here's the sharks we bought at the candy store on the island (i know - they really look like they're swimming out there, right? ;) - in addition to some awesome childhood-memory-inducing jawbreakers :)

art for joey's room!

i had some inspiration a while back to make more playful art. i had brainstormed about toys i loved as a kid, and wanted to turn those into little artworks... so i did! as i created them, i noticed that the color schemes went perfectly with Joey's room! perfect! art about my childhood in my one-year-old's room - feels like i'm passing something on... plus, this bear that i drew actually does sit on joey's shelf (his name is peter... except for a couple months in grade school, when i decided i wanted "him" to be a female bear - then it was petrina ;), so it all works!
i'm not really sure what this toy was exactly... i think it was a little plastic coin bank. but it stands out in my memory as a "favorite", so i drew it :)
a tiny double-decker bus that i rediscovered recently and had included as some of my decor in my art room - knew i needed to include it with this project, as i have very fond feelings associated with it (along with the mailbox) from my childhood bedroom that i lived in (with 3 younger sisters!) until age 8.
peter: isn't he so friendly? he used to have a knit nightcap and sweater when i was a kid, but those got lost somewhere along the way to 2011...
you can see it best in these last couple of pictures, but i wanted to make sure i said that what i drew this bear on was an actual first-grade composition i wrote ABOUT peter. i wished afterwards that i'd made copies first. i think i still have the rough draft somewhere, complete with Mrs. Birlew's red markings... but i think it makes the piece even more authentic-feeling, using actual personal ephemera. and the porous composition paper took to the beeswax nicely in this encaustic piece! the other two pieces were drawn on a theology book page and a children's book page, respectively, before being adhered with the beeswax to the boxes.

can you see my name there? "Jamie Miller" (well, that USED to be my name, before i attached myself to this wonderful guy with whom i will be celebrating our 8th wedding anniversary next week!) - a little difficult to read because the pencil from the back of the page shows through once the paper has been saturated with the beeswax - i love seeing how beeswax/encaustic medium transforms a given piece of paper (or fabric, or plant, or... my experiments have taken many forms ;).

new blog: transformed by design

oh! i forgot to tell you! i started posting on my other blog! and it's (dun dun dun)

transformedbydesign.blogspot.com

after i chose the name, i couldn't sleep for two hours because of second guessing it. it seems too boring or stuffy to me, like it'd be a section header in a master's thesis or something. i wanted to make it something more fun and fresh and colorful... but, alas, once you choose it, you're stuck with it! and it really does encompass a lot of what i want that blog to be about: the process of transformation, and it being "by design" meaning 1)on purpose, and 2)created to be this way by God's design... and ALSO, the fact that i plan to include lots of little things i've altered (transformed): clothes, accessories, etc. AND that i PERSONALLY have been transformed already by the design process - by discovering my creativity, and the ways that i personally and uniquely reflect God to the world! so, although it's a little stuffy (and the fact that i realized afterwards also, that there's a fashion blog called "alteredbydesign" already, which is very similar), i'm sticking with it/stuck with it :) so check it out if you haven't already! tomorrow's post will be a food one...see you there...!



p.s. can you tell i've been obsessed with instagram lately? along with the rest of the iphone world, i guess :)

renegade!

it is so very therapeutic for me to go places like this. i come away bursting with inspiration, but most of all, i feel like i'm not alone - there are other people out there like me! and there's proof! :)

i am absolutely in love with this shop - everything about it. here's a couple shots of what she had displayed (and how she displayed it, i love almost as much as the jewelry itself!)...

and in other news...

i'm starting a new blog! this one is not going away (oh, no it's not!) - just a new one with a different focus. this one will remain my art and poetry and life and thoughts blog. my new one is specifically about becoming healthy. about the transformation i foresee taking place as i embark on a new journey (starting soon, details to come!) toward wholeness, body and soul. beginning the journey toward eating healthy, enjoying exercising my body, and - get this - fashion! (what?? i'm a fashion blogger??? how did THIS happen? i never thought i'd see the day!) it all just came to me as an idea at once, to sort of document the process of transformation via "fashion". i have only recently begun to be interested in developing a sense of personal fashion and beauty (i have a hard time even calling it "fashion" - more just "an expression of me in what i wear" :) but over time i have become more and more interested in letting my own creations become a part of what i put on, personalizing my wardrobe, changing and growing over time. and i have really been in a process of transformation that God has been taking me through, in relation to my having "a beauty to unveil", and i think this is part of it. so, expect great things!

beauty. creativity. delicious. colorful. me.

my goal is to post every day on one or the other of these two blogs (but we all know how that can go with a toddler in tow, so it's at least something to shoot for!), so if you haven't heard from me for a while over here, check the other one! i'll tell you the address in the next post, once i have something posted on my new blog!

ps. i'm sorry to those of you whose lives this complicates, as you have this blog set as your homepage, and now will never know when to be jumping between them (this includes a very large readership of my sister and April - i'm sorry ;) - just think of it as "spicing things up a bit" ;)

finding beauty every day...

on lambert road...

on the walk between michael's and starbucks...

in the little things i notice

in "accidental art" (more on that later)

in my amazing family...

(also, can you tell i've been obsessed with yellow lately? i think it started with that tree ;)

it's been a while...

almost 2 months...! life got really crazy there for a while (okay, it's not really all that much less full now, as i keep being reminded), especially around easter. hadn't been making much art & really just lost my rhythm in life... organization who?

so, although i don't really feel like starting again, i think sometimes it's taking the first step that puts us back on a healthy path to living the life we want and were intended to live...

i had been saying i hadn't made any art since that lovely snowy mountain retreat, but then i realized OF COURSE I DID! all the artwork & decor for the church! our big "launch" was on easter, so although we'd been meeting for a couple months before that, and had completed lots of projects here and there, i had a lot more big ideas in my head (and heart) to finish... ended up getting LOTS of help from people willing to paint-by-number and make random things designed by me... but there were a few things that i needed to do myself, and ended up staying up to the wee hours working on... mainly these four art pieces, which now hang proudly along a wall they were not intended for ("what?? a huge industrial light stand with spotlights and stuff is blocking half the back wall?? that's where these pieces were designed to hang... plan B - the blue fabric folding wall!"

the idea for these pieces started with some of the vision statement of Whittier Hills Baptist Church (both the parent "russell" campus, and the new "uptown" campus) which has been fleshed out in the past into some graphic design-y color-coded rectangles and an alliteration of words creating the mission statement: red = Reborn (ie salvation), green = Reshaped (ie sanctification), orange = Retooled (for ministry), and blue = Released (on a mission with God)

so here they are (my version :)

and some of the rest of the decor...

it's so weird to see my ideas actually made, and "out there" in the real world. feels like my heart is on display - which is a good thing, unveiling the beauty God has uniquely given me and all that - but also so vulnerable and risky! i pretty much feel naked every sunday, especially when people talk about my work, ESPECIALLY when the person preaching for some reason continually points it out to be an example of how God is working, and asks for people's responses "isn't this amazing? how this place has been transformed?" it IS amazing. amazing how God has worked in my heart to bring me to this place. i could never have imagined a year ago THIS. and truly (not just in like an "i made a touchdown, but i'm pointing to God to be humble" kind of way) it has been his work. his ideas even... there have been moments that i have really felt like it was HIM stirring my mind in one direction or another - waking me up at odd hours with tons of inspiration flowing, not letting me get back to sleep until i get up and write them down, stuff like that. and to just be able to share pieces of my journey and what i have learned and am learning about the heart of God has been so good. sometimes i forget. glad i finally buckled down and wrote this so i could remember...

it's also very weird for me to have sketched my vision out and then see it "come to be" (like a "real artist"! ;) - these sketches were done before we started working on stuff and look at the next picture how (eerily ;) similar it ended up!

handmade

i had been brainstorming for a photo series, and also writing that self portrait poem, referring to myself as "tactile and colorful but still sensellita (a word jason's family used to describe me when we first started dating... means like simple one - not too "done up" or fancy... down to earth)" so i decided to document a week's worth of my little accessories - afterwards looking back and realizing i have an affinity for all things handmade (who knew? ;)

<---- a super-colorful frayed flower pin i bought on etsy
one of my favorite pieces i've made - can't bear to post it in my shop to sell cause i love it & wear it so often :)

*closeup below - it's a paper flower in a found metal gaskety thing :)

<--- lovin' the red & purple for some reason right now; earrings made by a friend

<---HUGE flower in my hair - it was on one of my Christmas presents this year (thanks Joanne :)

below: i had to be the "marshal" at heather's birthday murder mystery dinner, so i made a makeshift cowboy hat & badge :)

a pendant i made (found object, moss, beeswax)

kristi got me this ring on etsy for christmas

and this necklace was bought on etsy by ashley for my birthday! they know me so well :)

my "beauty" fabric cuff i made when i was making cuffs for gifts for christmas - had to make one for myself too!!! ;) this one has gone through the wash 'cause joey puked on it when he got carsick on the way up the mountain last month (ew.)

i guess i'm less "sensellita" than used to be... but i really feel like it's truly ME as i make and wear these little pieces of beauty