You Were Always on My Mind

I took a little vacation this holiday weekend.  On Thursday my husband, my brother, his girlfriend, and I all piled into my brother's tiny hatchback and drove six-and-a-half hours from New York City to New Hampshire to meet my mother for a family friend's wedding in Vermont.  We had a great time eating, antiquing, hanging out, eating, playing night wiffle ball (well, I watched), sitting by the lake, eating, sleeping late, driving all over the place, and did I mention eating? And though I neglected my e-mail, my blog, my facebook page, and didn't even bring my real camera, there's one part of my business that I didn't leave behind.

People often ask me how I find the time to do so much.  I wrote a long post about it here.  But I truly believe that one of the reasons I'm able to accomplish so much is because art and being creative are always on my mind.  I'm obsessed.  Every single day of this vacation involved some crafty related incident.

We visited a thrift store.  I immediately headed to the purses and started imagining painting flowers all over a big pink leather clutch that I found.  I ended up coming home with these fun sandals instead:

But it was the flower pattern on them that first attracted me.  I was looking at how the flowers were drawn and thinking about how interesting it was that the red and green combo didn't look at all Christmas-y.  Inspiration in a rack full of $5 shoes. 

We stumbled into a huge Cabots that had cheese tasting, wine tasting, an antique barn, and even a toy museum!  While the family was eating cheese, I scoured the antinques and I finally found a printer's drawer!  Yay!

I can't wait to fill it with all sorts of little treasures like I did with this small modern version from 7gypsies:

And after buying some antique industrial spools on etsy for *outrageous* prices I found some unbelievably cheap ones:

(My hand is in there for scale.)

I have a couple of awesome artful projects on my mind for these bad boys!  If I didn't have to cram them into my suitcase for the train ride home, I  might have bought the entire lot!

But you don't have to buy anything to have art-making on your mind.  I find that my iphone camera is an invaluable tool for gathering design inspiration.  My sweet husband is infinitely patient as I insist on stopping everywhere to take photos.

I love this mustard and grey color combo:

Yes, these are trays of cupcakes, but there's a great design in there too:

One large circle with several smaller circles tightly clustered together inside.  The inner circles have a dark rim, white center, with a yellow dot.

A trip to Target (we don't have one in Manhattan and I am insanely jealous of all of you who do) was full of cool design:

That notebook with the scallops reminds me of the pattern I drew that is in the header of this blog.  And there's that yellow and grey combo again on the notebook below it!  Love it!


And those big stitched flowers totally reminded me of these stitched flowers I did a while ago:

But I like the way they did the centers much more.  Going to have to try that!

Spied these puppies guarding a doorway:

Love the bright pink bows!  The contrast of hard and soft too!  They really make me think about how easy it is to transform the look of an art object with a single embellishment.

This is a covered bridge that is very much in use.  Had to step out of the road a few times to avoid being run over!

I loved the interesting shapes created by the lattice work.

Speaking of interesting shapes....

Love that cornerless square shape at the bottom of this doorway.  I do a lot of echo doodling and this simple shape feels like a great alternative to a plain old square!

How cool are all the small lights at this restaurant?

They made me think about how I like to use white paint or pen to really make a design pop!

I spied these plates in the window of a store.  Love!

I want to try my hand at making some animals.  It's something I've never tried before and I'm in the "gathering" phase of that idea right now.  Trying to think about how and what.

And I always love interesting shadows.

I'm not sure that I've ever done anything with my shadow photos, but they're there for when I'm ready!

There is also some literal art-making that goes on while I'm on vacation.  I brought a tiny art journal with me and I've been doodling.

I rarely leave home without a crafty project.  I've got a long train ride home later today and I've brought some stitching to keep my hands busy!

I may not be at my desk.  I may not be in my studio.  I may not be in New York.  But wherever I am, art-making is on my mind!

Thanks for stopping by!