Art for the Soul

*This is not a paid endorsement of Valinda Martin's Art for the Soul, but a post about my own experiences while visiting this store.  I was not compensated in any way and the opinions are purely my own.*

Last weekend while visiting Southern California, I strolled the streets of Balboa Island near Laguna Beach.  If you have never been to Balboa Island, you must take a couple of hours to visit this adorable little place of summer beach homes and eclectic shops.  There are little clothing stores, local food and best of all, gift shops.  I consider myself a creative person, but walking through these shops puts my creative thoughts into overdrive.  I don't normally write posts about stores, but I can't describe all the cool stuff I saw in this one little shop without mentioning it - Valinda Martin's Art for the Soul Gallery & Gifts.  According to the employees, Valinda finds independent artists from around the country and gathers their unique gifts in her little shop.

I wanted to make everything in the store.  The creativity was oozing out of the walls in this store, and instead of trying to describe some of the amazing art, I took the liberty of taking some pictures.

This was the display just inside the door.  Valinda found an artist from Arizona who recycled license plates and makes plaques from the individually cut letters and numbers.

There were several of these little "woodies" and some 60's style VW buses around the store.  They open to reveal a small chest that can be used as a beer/soda cooler.

There is an entire wall devoted to shiny ceramic pendulum clocks.  Look at the quirky designs!  I wanted to take everything home!

Here is a wall of sheet metal sayings.  I loved the way everything was displayed on bright yellow walls.  The bright cheery vibe kept my interest (until my 15-year old son dragged me out).

Finally, I found a wall of wooden plaques made by a North Carolina artist.  While I'm not sure how these were made, it looks like a paper background was made from little pieces of different kinds of paper "modge-podged" into a single sheet that was then copied.  The artist then drew directly onto the paper and the entire thing was again copied (probably for more mass production).  It was really cool.

I'm just scratching the surface of all the treasures in this quirky little store.  (I didn't think it was too polite to stand around taking pictures of everything.)  I will definitely go back again and maybe try out a few ideas I saw in this shop and several others.  If you do get to Balboa Island or their other store in Laguna Beach, stop by and enjoy the creativity on display.

cindy

Wreath Recycling in Phoenix

Recently seen in Phoenix City Hall - lots of junk:

The Public Works Department put together a great display of wreaths made from recycled materials.  The wreath above is made from magazine or book pages cut in the shape of leaves and glued to a cardboard round form.  This one is the most interesting:

It's a wire wreath form that goes through each of these plastic water bottles.  The bottles are filled with little bits of colored paper or items and then the caps are corked with recycled corks.  Isn't that clever?

When I first saw this one, I thought it was recycled bows and ribbons.  I still think that would be a great way to recycle, especially after Christmas.  But it's not ribbons and bows.

These are aluminum cans cut into strips and curled.  See the Diet Coke, Coke and Seven Up cans?  I was so impressed with the creativity expressed in these displays, but what was more important was that it opened up lots of ideas about reusing items we normally think of as trash.

Full Disclosure Here - I am watching "Hoarders Buried Alive" while I'm writing this, so I don't want to suggest that anyone collect trash in an effort to find some use for it in the future.

This was the prettiest wreath I saw and is a great way to recycle after Christmas.  They used white tissue paper dipped in a little blue paint, blue cardstock cut into stars and balled up aluminum foil for the star centers.  Around the edges are cut up plastic water bottles.

Again, I wouldn't suggest that anyone pile up stuff just to find a way to reuse it (I'm still watching "Hoarders"), but we could keep so much out of a landfill with just a little effort and creativity.  Isn't this what bloggers are good at anyway?

cindy

The Art of Learning

On Saturdays, it's my job to teach my 11-year old son, because my husband does it all week.  I teach Language Arts and Art.  Language Arts is fine - I'm pretty comfortable with that - but Art is another issue.  I am creative, but not artistic.  I can craft, but don't make me draw a picture.  There is a lot of picture drawing involved in this class.  There are no patterns involved.

As part of this teaching gig, I'n learning about elements of art.  Line, color, shape, texture, are part of my vocabulary now, but only to the extent of appreciation.  Today we were learning about balance.  The easy type of balance is "formal."  It's the easiest to understand because it's simple symmetry.  We also learned about radial balance, in which items "radiate" from a single point, frequently unseen.  The best example I can give is a fan.  Finally, the last form of balance we learned about was "informal" or asymmetrical balance.  That one was the most interesting, but also the most difficult to understand.

As part of the lesson, Christian and I had to walk around the house looking for examples of each type of balance so he can sketch them.  Here's his example of formal balance (symmetry):

What I realized is that there is a natural sense of balance in all kinds of things.  I didn't realize that what I find myself doing when I take pictures is trying to achieve a type of balance, especially asymmetrical balance.  (Photography is the closest I get to being an artist, and I'm hardly a good photographer.)  But, I will say that learning some of these elements of art might make me a better photographer, so at least my scrapbooks (if I ever make them), will be more interesting.

One of the best things about working with my son is that I get to channel my inner teacher.  I've taught a bit, mostly informally.  I really like it.  If I weren't a lawyer, I would like to be a teacher.  But doing this one-on-one with my son is a great opportunity to connect with him on a totally new level.  It's awesome to see the lightbulb go on when he grasps a new concept.  So, with something like art, we're learning together.  Cool.

cindy

Wordle

Do you sometimes feel like everyone knows about something you don't?  I had that feeling tonight when I found my daughter playing on a website called Wordle.  Once I looked at it, I realized how many of you are doing your word art.  Shame on you for not sharing!  I'm still not great at this, but I'm having fun trying.  (Please excuse my screen shots, I haven't figured out how to get these images in anything larger than a thumbnail)

Just so no one can accuse me of failing to share . . . Wordle is a website where you type words or paste text and it creates a word "picture".  The more you use a word, the larger it appears.  The picture above represents some of my labels from Straddling the Gap.  

You can use the "Randomize" button to create different font, colors, backgrounds without trying.  Here are words A to Z in two different settings:

Our school has started to use this as a way for kids to practice spelling words - isn't that clever?  It makes it fun to practice their spelling words (and it's great for mom because Wordle has spell-check.)  Here are Mackenzie's spelling words this week:

You can also design your word art the way you want.  You can pick from a bunch of fonts, align horizontal, vertical or any which way, choose colors and backgrounds.  I'll warn you now - it's pretty addictive - not Pinterest, but great for a half hour or so.  However long you like to do it, your elementary kids will LOVE it.

cindy