It's good to keep some sort of record of our life because - speaking for me here - I get so forgetful. But when I look back at my photos or what I wrote here, it all comes back. And that's good. Right?

I just read what I wrote in my previous post and I smiled. No, I have absolutely no books to show. I still haven't finished the one I need to ship to US as a thank you gift. And I haven't done much creatively either. Which is making me think what did I do? And aha! I illustrated a healing book! That was huge for me and I am so thankful to my teacher that he asked me if I had the time for this challenge. So I was a bit creative after all. Not showing anything though, it needs to be published first which will happen in 2020. 

I can show you the creative prompts for #My52in2019 till now... because - pretty :)

I managed to draw a few prompts too but am falling behind again. Di's Sketchpack Project sure helped immensely as I was on track till pretty much the last day. So at least this year, I won't be drawing everything till midnight on December 31st :) Hope so!

On a completely unrelated note - I went through my old blog over on blogspot - madebynini.blogspot.com/ - which I stopped writing in 2017 and started again here in 2018. These two blogs are so different, they are both from me but have completely different vibes. Reading the "made by nini" one made me realize I would still like to be that person very much. I hope I can channel her again so please, do drop by as you are very warmly invited. 

I think I will use "made by nini" for my creative offerings. For all the things I make and offer in my Etsy shop - kinda my WIP blog with a tutorial here and there. Maybe. But definitely creative stuff. What say you? Let me know please, I'm tired of writing into the void here :D

Wishing you a lovely autumn - it's so gorgeous out there these days - and thank you for reading. All the best, always.
♥
nini

I almost can't believe it's September already and yet at the same time, I sure can because time is acting so weirdly. 

I'm having a bit of a writing block at the moment but wanted to jump in here nevertheless before it's next year and I need to write long posts to catch up :)

This week is Ex-tempore Piran week. I participated three years in a row and very much hope to finish something up to take in this year as well. So far, I have nothing yet. Just a blurry sketch and I only stamped one piece of paper. I figured I'd do a submission on paper because I really don't have any space left at home to hang what I participate with. And I have a big lovely 1 x 1 m canvas in works downstairs. So there's that. I can show it  to you, here's how it looks up close:

It just dawned on me that August's Sketchpak-ing is over. I mentioned the Sketchpack Project in my last post because I jumped in to use it as a catch up thing for my own My 52 in 2019 Project. It worked really well I must say. I only missed two entries :D and I am rather happy and proud I did so well. Some pages were done with such ease that it took me by surprise and I wish to be able to experience such ease more often.  Here's a few of the drawings I made:

I also had quite an interesting month related to my spiritual explorations. It isn't finished yet but I can report I will be finally making those sketchbooks I set out to do last year. Yes, it's been over a year now :/

Sooo, I hope in my next post I'll be able to show some of the books I'll be making - of course I have (too) many ideas :D  And can't possibly make everything at once. Sadly :D

I might also get an opportunity to teach. We'll see. Exciting times ahead for sure :)


Wishing you only the best, always.

With much love,
♥
​nini

Right, so I said I'm back in my previous post and then I disappeared again :)  Well, luckily I didn't say I'll be more consistent this year since I know how easy it is to fall into whatever is going on at the moment and just not carve out time for this. And this, this does take a bit of time, who would have thought eh ;)

It's August now and I'll do my best to be as short as possible to cover what was going on till the present moment.

For starters, I kept my morning pages routine. I found this adorable and irresistible blank notebook and decided it'll be my first "sketchbook" to fill up. It's pages were of absolutely no good watercolor quality but I know that sometimes such a thing makes you be more creative and more inventive and also makes the book less precious to use. You can see in my first photo, second picture, that I did use watercolors in it and it kinda worked. Paper buckled a lot but as long as I kept drawing on one side only it was ok. And I did come to the last page with two things going on in my mind:

1. I did it!
2. Let me get back to the proper watercolor paper now! :D

Looks like it really is a good idea to use the best paper you can, especially if you like using watercolors, as it makes for a huge difference in the experience of drawing itself. Not necessarily the outcome, but the doing, the painting and the way color behaves on paper. And since with a morning page one kinda sets up the whole day, it's good to have fun not experience bleh moments due to paper. I basically ended up using mostly black pens and fineliners as they worked really well on that paper so all in all, everything was good in the end. Phew! 

At the same time I launched, or better said, continued with my group activity over on FB. I resurrected My 52 Project and named it - My 52 in 2019.  What a surprise eh ;)  Since it was such a last minute thing I used the prompts from 2017 and only adjusted the second one, which covers Chinese sign of the year. I read my blog post abut the 2017 experience and how I wrote it wasn't as successful as I wanted it to be - mostly by doing a lot of catching up in the last days of December and how it wasn't supposed to be this way. Well, it's happening all over again :)  I'm in a big catch up mode at the moment and am using Di Metcalf's Sketchpack Project to come even with the prompts. I did do some at the appointed weeks but mostly not. There are two reasons for it if I think about it:

1. I did my morning pages every day and that made me think I already was creative enough and that I could do other things - Ego chat for sure, keeping me away from my own project
2. I'm creating visual posts for these prompts to post on IG and FB - and it kinda makes me think I did them already - really weird trap to fall in

Speaking about these visuals, let me put all we had till now right here because they look soooooo cool all together :D  And because I'm inviting you to use them and hashtag your creations over on IG should you wanna share them:

I don't want to be too long so I'll just write down my conclusions about art challenges so that maybe, somebody else can find some use in them. And for myself of course, because I need reminders! 

1. always finish what you started - what you said you will do - because if you don't, it will nag on you and make you feel bad and with this, lower your vibration significantly (and we all know that's a pretty bad thing).

2. if you like a challenge and would like to participate but don't know if you can commit to finish it - go in just for fun, no strings attached a.k.a. "I will do this!" as you don't want the line 1 to happen. Just do it and see where it takes you, you might even finish it and be really happy about it. Which is high vibrations and something we strive for :)

3. Jane Davenport wrote it down somewhere and now, I can only wholeheartedly agree with her - "Life is too short to use crappy paper." It was somewhere along these lines. So do yourself a favor and buy the best you can and use it with joy and pleasure. OR Know what your paper is suitable for and don't go over that. 

4. It's never too late to start and never too late to finish - so dust your art supplies and start finishing what you started and get all excited about it again :)  Yup, I wrote this in my last post too.

5. It's OK to fall back with the project because let's face it, life has other challenges as well. The important thing here is to not feel bad about it but to return to it as soon as possible and just catch up and be all positive about it again. There must have been a good reason it resonated with you in the first place you just need to remember it. 

6. Share your challenge with your like minded friends as they will most certainly support you and cheer for you along the way if not even join you. Everyone does better with a cheer-leader :)

7. For drawing challenges - if they take a while - choose small pieces of paper to work on (or a small sketchbook) as it will be easier to accomplish your daily task. Trust me on this one, my 52 in 2017 was about A3 in size O_O ! No wonder I procrastinated so much. It also had the crappiest paper which I had to gesso prior to creating on. Must be my take on learning the hard way :D

8. I asked my dear teacher Guy Steven Needler about getting out of a challenge before finishing it and he said this: "One can only truly stop before finishing if the experience of learning has been achieved and the rest is supplemental or a slightly deeper experience but with no additional growth."   It does make sense, doesn't it? Only, it's hard to know if we really learned all we were supposed to so I think it's better to finish than to be sorry later :)


Now let me wrap up this post as it's a bit longish and I don't want to keep you here too long.
If you have anything to add to my conclusions, please write a comment and I'll add it to the list. I can't think of anything else right now but I'm sure there's still something to be mindful of before jumping into a creative challenge. Right?

Thanks for reading and all the best, always!

With  much love,
♥
nini

Wow, it's July 29th, 2019 and I'm writing about the end of 2018. It might look crazy to you but I need a closure for the Blogging Project in 2018 so that I can move on. I just re-read my posts from the beginning and oh my do they look familiar. It's like I'm in the loop of the same things going on without much advancement. Well, maybe I did advance a wee bit since I'm actually listening to my own advice and finishing this off properly :) 

It's never too late to start and I think it's also never too late to finish something - don't let old promises weight you down.

Let's log the end of last year out, shall we :)

I made it to the new sketchbook for my morning pages and was really so happy about it. It made a huge difference on my days because I started the day with something creative and it got me connected right away. Looking at it now, seeing I stopped with my third full sketchbook, I could be missing it a bit. But I did need to stop for a while because it became a chore not a joyous thing to do every morning. August will change this but let's keep this for another post (yes, I'm back! :D). 

The second photo actually shows my word for a year! I received the word in November already and am still using it. It's such a great word to me, it definitely motivates me if I don't forget about it. Which I of course do. A lot :/ I think having the word of the year on your wrist is THE perfect way to go about it. Instant reminder and many times a day. Ok, making a note of this too :D

I actually got lucky with the Artober thingie (that was our Inktober hosted by the art shop) and won this lovely set of Micron pens. I also got to meet the uber talented Vixi who was also posting daily and doing an amazing job with her drawings. I'm happy to say we became friends and thanks to her, I got to know a few more Slovenian artists I'd otherwise probably never would have. 

Right picture shows my little collection of Daniel Smith watercolors - OMG FABULOUS! I finally filled the pans with the ones I have (posted about them here). They are all simply gorgeous and really hard to choose from! I still haven't finished with the color testings and haven't ordered any since. Well, I really don't need any new colours plus I've discovered (or better, Vixi discovered) Paperkay and her handmade watercolors which are, if you ask me, REALLY AWESOME too!  

In December our local art supply store Art invited me to host a needle felting workshop. I was really looking forward to it and I came up with this little mushroom ornament for this occasion but nobody applied so it was cancelled. Oh well. Maybe this year :) 

I also got myself this gorgeous looking unlined notebook to have as a diary, the one where you have a week per spread and I made it all in advance. But. The poor thing just never got used. Looks like I am not able to keep a journal/diary/to-do/bullet journal anymore. Really weird as I do have a few. Must be my Instagram and one photo a day project that killed it, in a way. I am keeping the covers of this little notebook to use for a watercolor sketchbook. They are the reason I bought it in the first place anyway :)

The rest of December kinda speeded by as I was busily preparing for a craft fair. It didn't go well at all, the fair I mean, but at least I made quite a few things that I was later able to donate for animal charity auctions. Glad to help if I can. 

So this is it, really. A quick review of my creative endeavors in November and December. Looking back now I am amazed at the fact I was incredibly creative throughout the whole year and yet it didn't feel that way at all. My initial wish for recording my thoughts about the won e-courses vanished somewhere along the way but I still have them and am happy I can watch them any time I feel like. I may have bought a few new ones since but who is counting, right? ;)

Now let me thank you 2018 for being so good to me and for bringing so many new people into my life. Things are definitely changing and I love it. 

And also, thank YOU, for reading this ♥

​
With much love and gratitude,
♥
nini

Ha, time speeded by again, but only relatively. Loads went on and I had troubles fitting 5 weeks on my cover photo here :D So let us see what happened creatively... 

October is the month to be drawing with inks as it's also called the Inktober. The idea behind this project is simple - draw something every day and thus grow your skills. But since some enjoy a more challenging approach a list of prompts is also given - not a simple one I must add. But as it happened our big art store decided to do their own version of this project and I decided to play with their prompts - admittedly in hopes of getting a prize but only IF I succeed to post all 31 prompts on time and IF I get randomly chosen :D  They haven't posted the winners yet but I won in my eyes as I managed to draw every single prompt on time no matter where I was and I pretty much like all of them. So a big YAY for me! :)

I made all my Inktober/Artober pieces on the same sized paper and in the same size circle so that they would end up being a cohesive group. I also had the idea of binding them all into a simple book - let's see if I end up doing it.

I also visited Vienna with two of my dear friends - Andrea and Liezl - and it was a lovely almost week. All was great but the afterwards math. I shall write no more but I will say this - being totally misunderstood sucks VERY much! ​

Immediately after Vienna I had to dive hard into creating for ex-tempore Bled - time to hand in the final piece was on 13th of October and because of Vienna I lost 2 days already. Well, kinda three but it happens. I got a really nice idea for the topic of "Celebrating the Bees" and I went straight for it. On a paper I never worked on before and which really challenged me. I was going with watercolors this time (not the usual acrylics) and this paper - 100% cotton mind you - hated the masking fluid AND the eraser. Oh my, I still can't believe I managed to pull it off anyways. I think I had a lot of help from above so here's a huge thank you to all my guides and helpers - Thank You All so, SO, much.

Above is a photo from just before I finished it and the finished image I submitted. I can happily report it won one of the prizes and I was really, really proud. 

After ex-tempore Bled the Inktober was still happening (meanwhile too) and my morning pages as well. I think my "25 days of tea coffee" really pushed me through some kind of artsy barrier because I have been doing something every day (morning really) since then. 

At the moment I am using the smallest Moleskine's watercolor sketchbook and after a bit of the struggle at first, I got used to the paper and can now paint quite freely in it  I am actually 2 pages from finishing it! Which is another milestone for me - I have never ever fully filled a sketchbook before! So OMG I think I can be proud of this as well! :) Here are two of my favourite images from it:

Another creative thing took place in October - a special watercolor workshop with the artist Minh Dam. I haven't done such a workshop before but I must say it was really interesting. We all painted the same scene - a yellow tram on busy streets of Milano. I was lucky to have Mr. Dam's help with my poor beginning so it looks quite cool now :D It's still not finished but I certainly caught a glimpse of a different type of watercoloring and I too love the way my tram came out :)  Looks like I just really can't stay away from rainbow colors!

All in all a lot of creating got done in these four and a half weeks - just like I wished for and I am very happy about it. I also sewed a tiny wee bit and made a few little fishes filled with polyfill and cat nip so that they can be auctioned at the upcoming online auction together with a few of my Kitty Cards. So here's my last collage for this post and a wish for a peaceful and creative November!  

Read you soon I hope :)

With much love,
♥
​nini

So I did went and had a hike with Alexandra and the group that was staying at the gorgeous place that week. I must say it was the best decision I could have taken. People I met there were all awesome and I had the most wonderful and exciting conversations. Pretty much all of them were creative or spiritual and I learned so much. But what I learned the most was about myself and things I need to pursue and continue with. This hike was a huge eye opener and I am so very grateful for it. Thank you guys! From the bottom of my heart! And thank you Big U for gently pushing me forward ♥

Autumn reached us for sure and it can be seen in a lot of things - cool and foggy mornings, different sunsets, gorgeous golden afternoon light, leaves turning color and mushrooms growing everywhere :) M and I picked up so much goodies like never before. Yummy too :) 

And it felt so good to be on a hike again. The one I had with Alex was beautiful and it reminded me of the ones we used to go on and that I actually missed them. My favourite type of hike is the one where the majority of the trail is in the forest because I just love seeing all the greenery and little things. And ideas just start pouring in and if I am not too tired afterwards, I definitely feel like creating and that's the best after effect for me :D

I also started watching my favourite watercolor teacher's new e-course called The Art of Bonsai and it sparked a whole avalanche of ideas! Oh I am so excited about diving into a real mixed media project - like a real mix of different materials mixed media. Nothing done at the moment as I am, well, busy with other things, but I am still very excited about this particular idea.

These three pages are from my little Moleskine I chose to work in for my morning pages. They took much more time than anything I did before (splatters of color for example) but I enjoyed every minute. Except for the paper :D I need to get used to it; it's a good paper but still very different from the one I worked on before. 

There is just so much going on in my head I can't possibly keep up with all the ideas. Good thing but kinda exhausting!

I started making "My Traveling Pages"  - an older sister to "My Pages" project - because I am traveling next month and I will have the best opportunity to test these pages out. I am meeting two on-line friends in Vienna and I can't wait for it. I have been in Vienna many times as I fell in love with the city so it's always a pleasure to return and discover something new. I have a feeling this time will be extra special though :)

And because of my travel I decided to sew myself something new to wear there. It has a lot to do with Liezl's dress/tunic she sent me back in July as I have been wanting to sew something similar ever since I saw her wearing them. In NYC last year! Ohh, the awesome memories! I digress.... 

So I kinda copied the dress she gave me and made one out of a pumpkin fabric - it was an ok attempt but too big and weird. So I fiddled with the pattern just to make my dress no.2 even poorer! OMG, I need to learn how to draft a pattern from scratch. I really do. No excuses anymore. 

​Note to self - I need to start with keeping up a Project Journal. or more of them. One for sewing would be very useful as I seem to forget about mistakes and then I tend to repeat them. And having some sort of notes about the a-ha moments in a notebook would be, well, useful to say the least :)

Oh and just because I can, I started altering a magazine I found in Ljubljana when I was there with Alex. At first I wanted to have it for a special travel journal but when I trimmed it and reinforced the spine I so very much disliked the result I just wanted to toss it and not spend a minute more on it. But then I changed my mind. Currently I use it as my "getting the noise out of my head" kinda pages and I might add to them later on or I'll just leave them like they come out. It is therapeutic to just throw color on the pages without much thinking or just doing what I really like doing - making colorful splashes with acrylics :)  Who knows what will come out of this weird book in the end. 

I feel like I forgot to write about something but if I did, I'll add it later. I'm just soooo incredibly all over the place but it does feel good and I love all the creativity pouring out of me. I hope it doesn't stop anytime soon :D 

I hope I'll have more things to show next time. "My Traveling Pages" for sure! :)

See ya guys and have a great time till then. 

With much love
​♥
nini