Blog Award!

I haven't posted for a while! I've been on holiday from work - not with big plans to go anywhere, but taking lots of day trips and overnighters to places. It's been lots of fun, and very relaxing. Also, Daylesford is very, very, VERY cold at this time of year. *shivers* Thank goodness for electric blankets.

I've been very lucky - one of the newest bloggers I'm reading lately has nominated me for a blog award. Thanks Diane!



Here are the rules (or guidelines, as I prefer to think of them):
1. Put the logo on your blog
2. Link to the person who nominated you.
3. Nominate seven blogs you love to read
4. Link to those blogs
5. Let those bloggers know with a comment that they've been nominated.

People I've nominated - please don't feel obliged to do the same. These memes are fun to do, but sometimes they can feel a bit like a chain letter. I can talk for hours about the blogs I love to read and why, but the people I've nominated shouldn't feel pressured to do the same.

Seven blogs I love to read! (Only seven? That's hard.)

The first person has to be Debbi Baker. Her blog got me into blogging about my art, and probably helped me get my feet solidly under myself after my hiatus from art. She's a great insipiration, artistically and as a friend. She's a great Aussie artist, we've been in swaps together for a long time, and I'm really glad to have her blog on my reader. Thanks Debbi!

France Chevalier's blog is fun and entertaining, a bit like an awesome, eclectic cafe that always suprises you with the menu. There's art - at the moment, France is doing some great polymer clay work with jewellery and Krafty Lady molds. Sometimes there's recipes, sometimes there's philosophy, she always has interesting links to places I wouldn't normally come across while browsing. Her blog is a cool, chatty place to hang around.

Julie H makes the most astoundingly gorgeous found object jewellery, actually, her blog is chock full of to-die-for art. I love her blog for the visual inspiration it provides, but also I love her posts about her home and her pets. It's a very grounded place, very inspiring.

Barb P is another friend from the email list days. (Listen to me being all nostalgic when those lists are still going strong!) Barb makes gorgeous cards, loves to try new techniques, and frequently goes travelling on great adventures.

Inspirato is Stacey Apeitos' blog. Stacey is an innovater, no matter what she's working on. She's the organiser of the fabulous Paperific conventions, which are so good that they nudged me out of my hobbit-hole and all the way to Melbourne to attend.

Annette Husband is a phenomenal artist from way, way up north. Her art is lavish and colourful, and she makes wonderful video tutorials to explain some of her really clever techniques. She does amazing things with Opals and beeswax and paint. She's a bit of a crack-up, too, sometimes!

Creativ Spirit is Rob's blog. She's recently taken over as list-owner for my favourite new email-group, Chunky Books. I have one of her pages in my first book from this groups! We follow a lot of the same challenges, I think, like Gothic Arches. I've only recently added Rob's blog to my reader, but I'm already enjoying it.

I have some art to post later but for now, I'm going to be catching up on everyone else's blog - you guys have been so busy!

Tagged!

I was tagged by Debbi for this meme.

The rules:
1. Link to your tagger and post these rules.
2. Share 7 facts about yourself: some random, some weird.
3. Tag 7 people at the end of your post and list their names (linking to them).
4. Let them know they've been tagged by leaving a comment at their blogs.

1. My family is almost all Taurean. Four out of the six of us were born between the end of April and the middle of May. Mum claims that the only reason she can cope with four Taureans is because she's a Virgo. I think it's my Taurean tendencies that make me reach for the gold paint nine times out of ten. I like things to look lush.

2. I was a role-player - with the funny-shaped dice and the dragons and so on. This is why I get so carried away with the story-telling aspects of my art. I don't RP so much any more, but I still have those dice. They glow in the dark. I want to use them in an assemblage, as soon as I find the right piece.

3. I can't use microbeads. They swarm all over my mat like bugs and freak me out. I like to look at them when they're used well, but in their little jar, they look like caviar. I can't stand things that swarm. *shudders*

4. A few years before we both got into papercrafts, my mum threw out a box of ratty old photographs. We both mourn this loss terribly. This reinforces my need to hoard everything. HOARD EVERYTHING!

5. Sometimes I worry that I like to paint paper and make backgrounds more than I like to make actual art. I have folders and folders of painted paper that I'll never get rid of, and yet, when I'm starting a new project, the first thing I do is paint a collection of papers for inspiration. Maybe I should give them away?

6. Bury me with Stampington's True Colors. I think it's the most re-read of all my art books, and the one that inspires me the most.

7. When I'm stuck for an idea, I put random terms into Wikipedia and read. Some of my favourite pieces have been inspired by high physics or philosophy.


I don't really know enough bloggers to tag for this, so please feel free to do it if you want to. And link back here, so I can go and learn about you, too.

And now, some random art from the past, a spread in an altered book from a few years ago, demonstrating that the ability to write dodgy haiku is never a waste: